As told before our staff is currently working on the summer-activities of the NSL. After the Season it's the time of Tournaments and Cups, but this time we are trying something else as well.

To write it short: there will be a ladder after Season 6 - for the summerbreak.

What is the goal?

As you know the ladder had been a hot topic in the NSL for quite some time now. Before you break out in tears (of joy or anxiety), let me explain our motivations and goals of this ladder.

This ladder will be experimental in two ways. First: we - as staff - want to gain experience on this format. We have a look on what kind of work it produces us and how much of it. We also find out what features on the website would help us in a ladder. Second: how does a ladder perform on the your side. How active and proactive will teams be, what portion of PCWs will be replaced by ladder-games? To what extent are team-captains capable of organising their matches themselves?

There are many questions related to a ladder-format and the goal of the off-season-ladder is to make some firsthand experience. It is as new to the staff, as it is to you.

How will it work?

The details on how the challenging system works had been formulated by Vindaloo and simple some time ago and we will mostly stick to it. You can read about it here.

The registration for the ladder is open as today. You can find the contest-page here. You can either enter your Season 6 team or build a completely new one. The teams in the ladder stand in no relation to any of the Season 6 teams. As a new team you can join the ladder at any time, especially after it started.

The ladder runs in addition to any other activities on the summer-break. This should cause little problems, as the ladder runs in the background of things. It start on 15th of June and go on until Season 7 (first estimate on this is mid of September) including some time for a ladder-finals between the top-performers.

At the current state the homepage does not provide much to support a ladder. On the other side noone wants to invest a lot of time in such a support - as the ladder might never be the main-format. To break through that chicken-egg-cycle the ladder will be managed with the tool we have at hand: our forum. In the next days you will find a forum dedicated to the ladder. In this goes any challenges exchanged between the partaking teams and anything related. The details can be found in that forum. Thanks to our webmonkeys (simple taking the lead here) we have a contest-format in which admins can move teams and mark points - so you don't have to leave ensl.org for that.

I want to remind everyone that this is by no means the "finished product". It is not our best effort in producing a ladder. Further it neither is something, which puts a stop to future ladder-attempts, if it should fail, nor guarantees a S7-Ladder, if it should be amazing.

The more teams partake the more useful the off-season ladder will prove itself - and it also makes the ladder itself more interesting. So, I hope for a nice large turnout on this.