Meta Plays Age of Mythology League Season 6 Announcement

We are pleased to announce the Meta Plays Age of Mythology League Season 6!
Meta Plays will cover key matches, with the rest being open to community casters.

Introducing the 1v1 Deathmatch Pro League Season 1:

Deathmatch Pro League Season 1 #1 - £100 + Community Donations - Double Elimination - Feb 8
Deathmatch League Season 1 #2 - £1000 + Community Donations - GSL Group Stage -> Single Elimination - Apr 19-20
Deathmatch League Season 1 #3 - £100 + Community Donations - Double Elimination - Jun 14
Deathmatch League Season 1 #4 - £100 + Community Donations - Double Elimination - Jul 19
Deathmatch League Season 1 #5 - £100 + Community Donations - Double Elimination - Sep 13
Deathmatch League Season 1 #6 - £100 + Community Donations - Double Elimination - Nov 29

Introducing the 1v1 Lightning Pro League Season 1:

Lightning Pro League Season 1 #1 - £100 + Community Donations - Double Elimination - Feb 9
Lightning Pro League Season 1 #2 - £100 + Community Donations - Double Elimination - May 10
Lightning Pro League Season 1 #3 - £100 + Community Donations - Double Elimination - Aug 9
Lightning Pro League Season 1 #4 - £100 + Community Donations - Double Elimination - Nov 8
Lightning Pro League Season 1 #5 - £100 + Community Donations - Double Elimination - Dec 6

Note: this article and our calendar will be updated as we progress through the season and new info becomes available.

A Different Approach

Most notably, we are featuring alternative game modes to standard in this season, considering the large amount of sponsored esports events. We would like to provide something fresh and different! In particular with Deathmatch, we have promised a larger event in the past, so we plan to host that early on. Like this, new players have a little bit of reference when it comes to learning the mode before diving into the larger event (compared to us opening with the big one).

In season 6, we are scattering individual events across 2025. There are no qualifiers and no main events. We believe this offers the following benefits that should result in greater player participation:

• Better prize pools for individual events.
• Increased schedule flexibility for players, as they no longer need to work around main events.
• Each event will now accept community donations as well, reducing the amount of time between contributions and effect.
• Without a main event, the slot they would normally occupy is now available for all players.

This is not necessarily a permanent change we will keep, but we are going through with it for this year.
In the event of significant budget/sponsorship changes, we would prefer running our classic league format with qualifiers and main events. As things stand however, it makes more sense to aim for maximized participation instead of small-time "premier" events.

The Provisional Ranking System (Seeding)

This will be the first occasion of us utilizing the Provisional Ranking System in Age of Mythology.
While in Halo Wars 2, we use this for segregating skill levels into different leagues, our Age of Mythology revenues are not in a place to allow for this setup yet. So we will use it from a seeding point of view only.

Moving through Provisional Rankings happens every time a tournament series or a showmatch gets a result on our website with immediate effect. So if you are currently rank 8, and beat rank 5, you will be the new rank 5, and the former rank 5 is now rank 6. Everyone in between loses a rank as well.

The tiers are distributed as follows for Age of Mythology:

• S Tier: Rank 1-8
• A Tier: Rank 9-24
• B Tier: Rank 25-56
• C Tier: Rank 57-120
• D Tier: Rank 121-184
• E Tier: Rank 185-248
• F Tier: Rank 249+

You can take a look at current Provisional Rankings here. Please discuss, offer feedback, and arrange showmatches if you wish to contest spots.

How the Seasonal Ranking Ladder Works

Each tournament we host will reward players that have won any series with Meta Plays Ladder Points. The more you win, the more points you receive.

These Meta Plays Points then will go towards a Seasonal Ranking Ladder. Each League has its own separate Ladder.

The Seasonal Ranking Ladder will start everyone at 0 points when a new season comes around.

The scaling of the ladder points works as follows:

• Base value: 10x Prize pool in GBP (or monetary value in prizes).
• The number of players in the tournaments will scale the points in the following way:
  • 4-8: -50%
  • 9-15: -25%
  • 16-23: no change
  • 24-31: +50%
  • 32-47: +75%
  • 48-64: +100%
• You can review the point spread between player placements using our Tournament Point Calculator.

Cosmetic Features In The Seasonal Ranking Ladder

Based on your position in the ladder, we assign you to a "Class" - one of D(lowest), C, B, A and S(highest). The classes give you a badge and will be featured on your Tournament Profile. For the Main Event, we will only take our own ladder into account for your seeding. Check out the Class icons below.

The top 4 players will also receive medals corresponding with their final placement in each Tournament.

DM Pro league players will be receiving special Hydra-themed medals.

For additional info, please check our Tournament and Ladder explainer posts!

Can I Help Meta Plays Directly?

For any of you looking to support our project, the best way to do so is becoming a subscriber on the website. This is a monthly recurring payment that you get perks and exclusive news for. The more goals we hit, the easier and safer it is for us to keep the project going.
We are also currently looking for Moderators to join our team, so that we can keep our chats, Discord and website a pleasant and friendly environment for all. Moderators will also help with entering scores during events. You can apply here.

Where To Watch

We will live stream all events on our Twitch, and YouTube, with edited videos released later.
Community casters will have access to cover matches - all games that we don't cover are open casting for live streamers. Please contact each event's manager for clearance.

Can I Host Tournaments Too?

Very soon! We have successfully split our ladders for asynchronous season timings, meaning that we can theoretically support partner tournaments and leagues. We just need a little more time to ensure that the partner experience of hosting is working fully as intended. We are looking for additional Content Partners that are interested in either helping to cover our own events, or once our work to allow this is complete, to host their own leagues on the website.
You can apply as a content partner here.

That is pretty much it! Let us know what you think in the comments below, join us on Discord for real-time chats, and we will see you on the battlefield!