What is the National Championship Series?

The National Championship Series (NCS) is a online tournament held for North American players. These tournaments are held every Saturday at 6:00 PM PST/9:00 PM EST. 

Registration

• You have to belong to the NCS steam group found here. This is done to help the tournament organizers to locate participants easier.

• Your Challonge username needs to be the same or as close as possible to your Steam display name. You can change your Steam display name any time without affecting your Steam ID. We require this to make locating opponents easier and faster.

Competing

• You must check-in on the Challonge bracket. The Challonge website will remove players who do not check-in. Check-ins open thirty minutes before the tournament starts and are open till the start of the tournament. The tournament is not affected by players signing up and missing the tournaments. Feel free to sign-up for any tournaments regardless if you know you can make the tournament or not.

• During the tournament you need to be in the NCS Steam group chat found on the overview tab of the NCS Steam group page found here. This is needed for opponents to be able to quickly and easily find each other.

• Tournament admins will announce when the bracket is final and the tournament has started in the NCS Steam group chat. When this is announced, refresh your Challonge bracket and find your opponent's name. Find the same name in the NCS Steam group chat and send them a direct message. The NCS chat room will have a list of all tournament participants. If you can not locate your current opponent through the NCS Steam group chat then directly message one of the tournament admins. 

• After a series is completed you may enter the set score on the Challonge bracket. You may also report your score to a tournament admin and they will report your score for you. The Challonge bracket will update automatically for you to find your next opponent.

• We highly recommend players do a connection test before starting their series. If either player is experiencing any connection problems contact a tournament admin immediately. The tournament admin will go through steps to resolve the connection issues and take appropriate actions from there.

• If for any reason you need to leave the tournament early or have issues not covered above, contact a tournament admin immediately.

Ruleset

• Players are expected to behave in a reasonable and respectable manner. Players may be disqualified, suspended or possibly banned from future NCS’s for not doing so.

• Players must sign up as the same Challonge name every week. This is needed to help seed the tournament properly. If you are signing up with a new Challonge name or would like to have it changed you need to contact a tournament organizer.

• You must have adequate internet connection to compete. You may be disqualified from the tournament if your internet is unable to keep up at a reasonable level.

• If a player loses connection during a match, that player will forfeit that current match. Opposing players may allow to restart the disconnected match if they agree to do so. Disconnections should be immediately reported to a tournament admin. 

• When a match desyncs, contact a tournament admin immediately and that match will be replayed with the same stock count. After each player removes any stocks needed the match will start on an agreed upon signal. This could be both players taunting, the clock at an agreed time or anything both players can agree on.

• The tournament is double elimination. All players will have the chance to compete in a minimum of two series. 

• All series will be played in a best two out of three format. Top 8 will be played in a best three out of five format. If you are unsure what the format of your current series is, contact a tournament admin immediately.

• Stages are struck using in-game stage-striking, with last-stage striking for the first game, and winner-strikes-one after that. For Bo5 matches, loser of the previous match SDs out if in-game stage-striking resets to the last-stage format in order to return to winner-strikes-one

• When choosing stages, you cannot return to any stage you have previously won on without the consent of your opponent.