Welcome to Season 71 of the Dominion League. There are a number of announcements entering this season, so read on.

Play Speed Surveying

Over the years we have received a large amount of feedback with respect to pace of play in the Dominion League, and our hope is to address this in the coming seasons. To start with, we are looking for more targeted feedback from players this season, which will come in three forms:

• Additional short sections on the check-in form this season asking players to reflect on their last two seasons for any matches which they felt were unpleasant due to opponents’ pace of play
• An instant feedback form for matches played this season that you feel were unpleasant due to pace, accessible here
• A town hall towards the end of this season that will go over some (anonymized) results from this feedback and ask players to consider some possible next steps

Our hope is to make the league a better experience for all players, and we will need your help to do so.

Minor Standings Change

We have made a small rules change regarding ties in division standings: we will no longer be applying the head-to-head tiebreaker in cases where promotion and demotion are not affected. For example, this means that two players both finishing with the lowest number of wins in a 6-player division (and so both demoting) will both be considered as having finished in 5th place regardless of their head-to-head result. While in general this will not affect anything but bookkeeping, in some cases it may make more players eligible for free non-demotions or play-in matches.

Possible Tier Contraction

There is a possibility that we will be eliminating K tier for season 72. Although the league as a whole remains with enough players to support 11 tiers, our skill distribution among those players has shifted such that we are only able to reasonably support 5 divisions in K tier this season, below our established minimum.

In an effort to retain K tier, we will only be guaranteeing promotion of 1 player from each of the K divisions to J this season. Our current plan is that if we remain without enough players to support at least 6 K divisions, we will move all current K players into J for next season and provide additional free promotions in J and I tiers to smooth out the skill differences. That said, we intend to solicit feedback in the K divisions on keeping K tier long term and may change this plan depending on the feedback received.

Extended Break

After this season there will be an extended break of four weeks to support the early rounds of the 2025 Dominion Online Championship, which many league players choose to participate in. We will provide a general announcement with information on how to sign up once it is available. Season 72 will begin on October 13th.

As always, best of luck to all this upcoming Dominion League season!