Season 55 of the Dominion League is officially underway. Players have hit the ground running and it’s great to see so many matches already played or on the calendar for the coming weeks. It’s been a while since we have posted a newsletter, as we haven’t seen many changes in the past few seasons. Things have been running smoothly, most of the feedback we have received has been in favor of keeping the status quo, and there hasn’t been much voice for drastic change. With that, I wanted to highlight a few items that have been posted in other places the past few seasons and provide a few other updates as well.

Good luck and have fun!

Moderator Churn

In the past two seasons we have bid farewell to two long tenured moderators: catmom and EmmiPlays2000. catmom joined us in Season 41 and moderated her final season in Season 53. During her thirteen season run, catmom served for many seasons as our Issues Chair, helping resolve conflicts as they came up. EmmiPlays2000 began in Season 46 and moderated her final season last season. Not only did Emmi take on division moderation, she also stepped in for many seasons as our Onboarding Chair. During those seasons, she oversaw the seamless transition of taking players from signup to being fully integrated into the league community. Maybe you were one of those players! It was an absolute pleasure calling these two colleagues for so many seasons and we wish them the best of luck in all their future endeavors.

With these departures we will once again be putting out a call for new mods this season. Last season we opened applications and unfortunately received none. I believe some of this can be attributed to what we deemed to be poor messaging where we made the job look more daunting and time consuming than it is. This time, we will be laying out the potential duties and responsibilities better in an effort to clear up any confusion. Keep an eye out for the call in the next week or two. We hope you’ll consider joining the team!

Plunder Release

As you may already know, the latest expansion is nearly here with the imminent release of Dominion: Plunder. Since this will be released mid-season, I want to remind everyone of the relevant league rules pertaining to new cards:

• 4.8: Per 4.6.7, the default card pool for Kingdom generation each season includes all cards. However, either player may opt to remove new expansions from Kingdom generation.

  • 4.8.1: An expansion is considered new if its initial version was released after the end of the previous Dominion League season. For example, Allies, which was released in the final week of season 50, would be considered new for season 50, but not for season 51.
  • 4.8.2: Previews of expansions are always considered new.

This means that players may unilaterally opt out of playing with any of the cards from Plunder for this season. If you were involved in playtesting the expansion, I would encourage you to let your opponents know so that they can factor that into their decision of whether to include the new cards or not. For everyone, please be respectful of any opponent’s decision should they choose to exclude them.

Feedback and Rule Change Highlights

As I mentioned in the introduction, there has been strong indication that people are happy with the status quo. In Season 51, we asked players about the default card pool level for matches and flex divisions. There was a strong majority of players wanting to keep the default level at 10 and players were in favor of keeping flex divisions for players returning from breaks. In Season 52, we asked about Card Lists. Again, players voted in favor of keeping the status quo, with 70% of players wanting to keep the ban list, 63% wanting to keep the dislike list, and only 30% of players wanting to add the like last. In Season 53, we polled players on division size and how long players can take a break while maintaining their tier status. For division size, players voted strongly for maintaining six player divisions. On break length, players tended to be in favor of shorter breaks, with about 60% voting in favor of a three season limit. Last season, we asked about whether players wanted to shift away from timezone based divisions. Again, there was strong support for maintaining what we have, with close to 80% of players wanting to play with players in similar time zones.

Given the results above and little to no call for changes via other channels, very few changes have been made rules wise in recent seasons. Following the feedback we received in Season 53, players can take a two season break and still return to the tier that they left in the third season following their departure. This is a reduction from the five season break and return in the sixth season that was in place prior. Outside of that, there have been only minor changes and rewordings in our rules document. For a full listing, you can take a look at our change log.