The Complete Guide to Nerd Leagues
In-depth articles covering every feature — from ELO ratings and league management to the deck builder, life tracker, and online play.
Getting Started
Welcome to Nerd Leagues
A quick overview of what Nerd Leagues does and how the pieces fit together.
Read more →Download the Nerd Leagues App (iOS and Android)
Where to get the Nerd Leagues app, how signing in lines up with your website account, what works without an account at all, and the two things the app can do that a browser cannot.
Read more →Leagues & Seasons
What Is a Nerd Leagues League?
A league is a persistent group with its own leaderboard, its own ELO for players and decks, and optional seasons. Here's what's inside one, who can see it, and how league ELO differs from your all-time rating.
Read more →How to Create a League
Creating a league on Nerd Leagues takes three fields and one click. Here's what each field does, what happens when you submit, and what you can change later.
Read more →Inviting Players: Invite Codes and Joining a League
Every Nerd Leagues league has a shareable invite code. Learn how to find yours, send in-app invites to friends, and join a league using a code, link, or notification.
Read more →The Commissioner Role: What It Can Do
An MTG league commissioner controls settings, members, seasons, Discord notifications, and flagged-game resolution. Here's what each tool does.
Read more →MTG League ELO: How Per-League Ratings and Standings Work
Each MTG league keeps its own ELO standings. Here's how league ratings start, how every game updates them, and where to find league standings in the app.
Read more →Adding Decks to an MTG League
There's no add-deck button on a Nerd Leagues league page. The first time you record a league game with a deck, that deck registers itself, starts at 1000 ELO, and joins the league standings.
Read more →Recording an MTG League Game: How to Log Results to Your League
Recording a league game on Nerd Leagues is the standard Record Game form with one extra dropdown — and that dropdown is what wires the result into your league's standings, ELO, seasons, and Discord channel. Here's how each path works and what changes when you pick a league.
Read more →MTG League Seasons: Time-Bounded Standings Inside a League
A season is a time-bounded scoreboard inside an MTG league — its own ELO standings running from a start date to an end date, leaving the league's all-time ratings untouched.
Read more →Creating and Managing MTG League Seasons
How to create, edit, archive, and delete MTG league seasons from your league's Manage page, and what separates archive from delete.
Read more →Overlapping MTG League Seasons: How One Game Updates Multiple Scoreboards
A single recorded MTG league game updates every active season whose dates cover it, each with its own independent standings. Here's how that fan-out works and why the same game can move two seasons by different amounts.
Read more →MTG League Season Standings: Reading the Per-Season ELO Tab
Every active MTG league season gets its own pill on the league page. Click one to see standings, an ELO chart, the deck list, and the games — all scoped to that season's date range.
Read more →Commander Pod League: How to Track Your Friend Group's MTG Games
Set up a Commander pod league for your friend group: three fields to create it, a handful of settings worth touching, and standings that build themselves as you record games.
Read more →cEDH League: How to Track Competitive Commander on Nerd Leagues
Run a cEDH league on Nerd Leagues: per-player and per-deck ELO, seasonal cycles, and the flag system for disputed results.
Read more →Public vs Private MTG Leagues: How Privacy Actually Works in Nerd Leagues
Nerd Leagues has no public/private toggle. What controls visibility is the login wall and the invite code. Here's how the layers work and which settings only look like privacy controls.
Read more →ELO & Ratings
MTG ELO Explained: A Plain-English Guide for Magic Players
ELO is the rating system Nerd Leagues uses to score every Magic player and every deck. Here's where it came from, what the numbers mean, and how it adapts to multiplayer pods, leagues, and seasons.
Read more →Player ELO vs Deck ELO: Two Scoreboards, One Game
Every recorded game rates you and your deck separately, against different opponents. Here is why the two numbers drift apart, the four ratings a single league game moves, and what happens when you lend a deck or build a new one.
Read more →Yearly ELO: Annual Resets and Historical Records
Alongside your all-time rating, Nerd Leagues keeps a yearly ELO that resets to 1000 every January. Here is why both exist, where to find the year tabs, what a reset does and does not clear, and how yearly ratings differ from seasons.
Read more →What the Plus/Minus Stat Means
The +/- Spread on your profile counts one point for every side you beat and one against every game you lose. Here is exactly how it is calculated, how team games count, and what it tells you that your ELO and your win-loss record do not.
Read more →Deck Builder
The Nerd Leagues Deck Builder: A Tour
A tour of the Nerd Leagues MTG deck builder: the hub where your decks live, the two ways to start one, folders and bulk actions, and what the deck editor gives you — zones, stats, combo detection, a playtester, and import/export.
Read more →Organizing Decks with Folders and Tags
Folders sort your decks; tags sort the cards inside one deck. Here is how both work, the two-level nesting limit, what deleting a folder actually removes, and how tags move in and out of Moxfield through hashtags.
Read more →Commander Brackets Explained: The 1–5 Power Level System
Commander brackets are a 1–5 scale for describing how strong an EDH deck is before the game starts. Here is what each bracket means, which cards move a deck up, and why Bracket 5 works differently from the other four.
Read more →Checking Your Deck: The Commander Bracket Calculator and Deck Audit
nerdleagues.com/commander-bracket takes a pasted decklist, a Moxfield or Archidekt import, or one of your saved decks, and returns its bracket plus a full audit of ramp, draw, interaction, mana, curve and price. Here is what each number means and which ones are estimates.
Read more →Recording Games
How Game Recording Works in Nerd Leagues
Recording a game is what turns a night of Magic into a rating. Here is the form, what every field on it means, who you can add to a game, and what happens to everyone's rating the moment you press submit.
Read more →Formats and Sub-Formats Supported
Every format and sub-format you can record a game in, what each sub-format means for the shape of the table, and how the two dropdowns change which decks you can pick and how much a result moves everyone's rating.
Read more →Flagging a Game That's Wrong: How to Fix a Bad MTG Result
A recorded game with the wrong winner, the wrong players, or the wrong format can be flagged for the league commissioner. Here is who can flag a game, what the commissioner can change about it, and what happens to everyone's rating in the meantime.
Read more →Archiving and Restoring Games
Archiving takes a game out of every rating and standings table without deleting it, and it can be undone. Here is who can archive a game, where the two differently-labelled buttons live, and what it does to ELO, standings, and seasons.
Read more →Life Tracker
The Mobile Life Tracker: What It Is and Why It Records Your Games
A shared life counter where everyone tracks their own total and the game records itself at the end. Here is the difference between Quick Play and a lobby, what the game screen tracks, and exactly what lands when you pick the winners.
Read more →Using the Life Tracker in a Browser
The Life Tracker runs in a browser and records games exactly as the app does. Here is the create-and-invite flow, what the game screen tracks, how a game ends, and the three places the browser and the app differ.
Read more →Spoilers & Card Search
MTG Spoilers Hub: What's New in Magic
MTG spoilers happen fast. The Nerd Leagues Spoilers Hub at /spoilers shows you the next set being previewed, recent card reveals, upcoming releases, and Secret Lair drops - all on one page.
Read more →Browse All MTG Sets: Search and Filter the Full Set List
The Browse All Sets page at /spoilers/sets is the full MTG set catalog — search by name, filter by type or Standard legality, or scroll the categorized layout.
Read more →Inside an MTG Set Page: Color Sections, Filters, and Alternate Art
How an individual MTG set page works on Nerd Leagues — color sections, filter and search, the alternate-art group, and the deck view for Commander sets.
Read more →Inside an MTG Card Page: Oracle Text, Pricing, and Printings
What's on a Nerd Leagues card page — full art, oracle text, prices in USD and EUR, every printing of the card, and direct buy links.
Read more →MTG Commander Precons: Browse Decklists by Set
Nerd Leagues collects every Magic: The Gathering Commander preconstructed deck on a single hub page, organized by set. Tiles show commander art, hover stacks reveal partner pairs, and clicking any deck opens its full 100-card decklist with stats, type sections, and copy/import buttons.
Read more →Importing a Commander Precon into the Deck Builder
Any Commander precon on Nerd Leagues can be imported into your deck builder from its decklist page — as a new deck, or merged into a deck you already own. Here are the three import modes, what each one does about cards you already have, and what the new deck looks like afterwards.
Read more →Advanced Card Search: Colors, Mana Value, Format, Price
A form that builds a filtered card search without any syntax. Here is what every field does, the difference between colors and color identity, how the comparators work, and why every search you build is a shareable link.
Read more →Combos
What Is the Nerd Leagues Combo Finder?
The Combo Finder checks any list of Magic cards against the Commander Spellbook database and tells you which combos the list completes and which it is one card short of. Here is where it lives, what a result contains, and what you can see without an account.
Read more →Finding Combos in a Deck You're Building
The deck editor's Combos button checks the deck you have open against Commander Spellbook without exporting anything. Here is which zones it reads, how to narrow a long result list, and why the 1 Card Away tab is the one that changes deckbuilding decisions.
Read more →The Standalone Combo Finder: Paste Any Card List
nerdleagues.com/combos takes a pasted decklist, a Moxfield or Archidekt import, or one of your saved decks, and returns the combos in it. Here are the four input modes, how to mark commanders, and how to save the result as a real deck.
Read more →Searching Combos by a Single Card
Search Combos by Card queries the whole Commander Spellbook database for every combo that uses one card, whether or not you own the other pieces. Here is how it differs from the deck overlay's filter, and how to send a full combo into one of your decks.
Read more →