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Home-Grown League (HGL) Season 4 Official Thread

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This Post:
11
329501.165 in reply to 329501.147
Date: 2/18/2026 3:09:04 AM
BC Rajaleidjad
III.13
Overall Posts Rated:
3636
Yea, I plan to continue as a HG team for the foreseeable future and HGL is a way to make this journey more enjoyable.

This Post:
00
329501.167 in reply to 329501.131
Date: 2/18/2026 12:16:15 PM
Virtus Portici
II.4
Overall Posts Rated:
463463
I'm in for Season 5

This Post:
11
329501.168 in reply to 329501.167
Date: 2/20/2026 7:15:48 AM
Wagner College
II.2
Overall Posts Rated:
433433
I'm in for Season 5

Thank you for your announcement SventraCanestri - I had already marked your team with ++ status (continuous participation-status) based on your last summers' continuous commitment-announcement, but it's always positive thing to reconfirm it on Official Thread!

This Post:
00
329501.169 in reply to 329501.165
Date: 2/20/2026 7:19:56 AM
Wagner College
II.2
Overall Posts Rated:
433433
Yea, I plan to continue as a HG team for the foreseeable future and HGL is a way to make this journey more enjoyable.

That's nice to hear you're finding HGL adds positive things to your HG journey - same goes with me. Besides, one could say that you did step in at a perfect time (at least from possible success-standpoint) as you already have very competitive team for the league and therefore you don't need to wait for several seasons in order for your team to be able to compete in high level in HGL.
How do you see it - is medal your goal at the end of Season 4?

This Post:
22
329501.170 in reply to 329501.169
Date: 2/28/2026 4:45:03 AM
London Rams
II.2
Overall Posts Rated:
66
Hello
Maybe I'm in for Season 5 .
Young HG team :)

This Post:
11
329501.172 in reply to 329501.170
Date: 3/1/2026 5:36:13 AM
Wagner College
II.2
Overall Posts Rated:
433433
Hello
Maybe I'm in for Season 5 .
Young HG team :)

Hello UKAndrius,
Thank you for your message!
You said maybe, so I'd like to ask couple of things.

How does your maybe translate into, say, percentages? Does it mean like you'd like to join with 30%, 50%, 70% or 90% probability?

So your best player (Stannard) seems to be a bought one, so I guess you plan to sell him?

Also Seymour is not drafted by you, so you plan to sell him also before you'd possibly join HGL?

Have you been reading through about 18 first post on this Official Thread, and about 12 first posts on HGL Scores Thread to get the idea of HGL rules and practices?

As for current participation announcements, all but one current HGL manager (M a k e, manager of Alanurmon Rikkaat) have announced about their willingness to continue on Season 5.

Then as for new teams for Season 5, San Fernando VR (VR 75) announced they'd be interested also in playing on Season 5.

Then obviously we could or might not receive any new requests on Season 5 participation. We have not for instance received a request from Hadár (Svätý Jur Snakers), who might or might not be willing to join. He is aware though, that usually the deadline for for announcing participation is at the end of Regular Season of each Season (while of course he has seen that in practice often teams have been accpeted later as well, if reasonably possible).

This addition of many teams would put us in a place where match amounts would increase a lot. We are already playing 17 Rounds in Regular Season.
I think about 20 teams in a league is starting to be very close to even somewhat comfortable/bearable maximum limit (which would create 19 Rounds of play per RS, right??), as already now there are 2 of 3 games weeks, which is a bit much per week (and as said, I don't think Season should be extended in terms of timeline).

So, let's say for purposes of an example that Alanurmon Rikkaat would decide they'd want to continue in HGL on Season 5 as well, and then San Fernando VR and your team would be accepted for Season 5. That would put us to 20 teams already. Let's then assume that Hadár would announce of their interest in joining, which would put us into a relatively uncomfortable and crowded setup of 21 teams, requiring 21 Rounds instead of 19 Rounds, if 20 teams would play. ((With this though, we would definitely be closing into a situation that demars (manager of Elan Demars) mentioned, "I think 3 games per week is too much")).

There are two "easy" solutions to this though:
A) let's use end of Regular Season as a strict timeline for accepting new teams (so if you're late for that, then wait for one more season to join)
B) let's make a play-in league/playoffs for 'new-to-HGL' teams (here meaning teams that are looking forward to joining HGL immediately for the next Season), which would take during the current Seasons' HGL Playoffs.

This (addition of new teams, up to 20) also creates another layer of challenges, as if there would be 20 teams playing, I feel like at that point there would be a need to allow 2 more teams into Playoffs, so 14 instead of 12. (I have a planned system for this sort of situation already, as our current system allows that with only one minor chage, but I haven't had time to take this into discussion, and that situation still stands currently in terms of being short on time).

This also is a borderline decision that might (or might not?) require voting, and we can't (shouldn't) do that in a rush. Also, one could say it's a major change (while another person could say it's not), so it's also necessary to consider which percentage of positive votes (to favor the change) would be required for the change (of number of teams to Playoffs) to take place; would it be 50%, two thirds or more, or possibly 75% or more, etc.

It's also necessary to remember, that HGL is an all-manual-league and adding even one more team adds matches a lot.

Last edited by Wagner at 3/11/2026 6:42:20 AM

This Post:
00
329501.173 in reply to 329501.172
Date: 3/4/2026 4:23:54 AM
London Rams
II.2
Overall Posts Rated:
66
Hello, make groups A and B with 10 teams each. 1st and 2nd places go to the quarterfinals. 3rd-6th places play in the knockout stage.

This Post:
00
329501.174 in reply to 329501.173
Date: 3/11/2026 7:20:22 AM
Wagner College
II.2
Overall Posts Rated:
433433
Hello, make groups A and B with 10 teams each. 1st and 2nd places go to the quarterfinals. 3rd-6th places play in the knockout stage.

Hello UKAndrius,
Thanks for your response, but I didn't see any responses yet to any of my questions to you...

As for change of league system in HGL - sorry but I don't think that kind of change would occur in HGL. This proposition that you presented unfortunately also has some major downsides, which have been discussed in great detail earlier (including it's not ever possible to divide teams totally fairly among conferences - even if all would play all, based on which conference your team would be put into, it would affect how easy or hard it would be to reach certain position within a group), and this proposition of yours wouldn't actually change the number of teams included in Playoffs (I guess that wasn't your intention anyway).

If we change amount of teams that qualify for Playoffs from 12 to 14, then I'd by far prefer to use our current system with only two minor changes:
1. Only 2 teams would receive "a free ticket" to Round 2 (quarter-final Round)
2. Teams at positions 3-14 in Regular Season would play First Round in Playoffs (so 12 teams instead of 8), and 6 winners would proceed to Second Round (when also 2 best teams of RS would be included into Playoffs, as a playing teams).

So these simple changes would (should?) do the trick, if we'd want to add the number of included teams to Playoffs.

Whether we want that or not, is another discussion.

One way could be to pre-determine that based on participating teams/given season, for instance:
- if 18 teams or more participate > 14 to Playoffs
- if 17 or less teams participate > 12 to Playoffs.

Last edited by Wagner at 3/11/2026 8:22:15 AM

From: Wagner

This Post:
00
329501.175 in reply to 329501.174
Date: 3/11/2026 8:03:15 AM
Wagner College
II.2
Overall Posts Rated:
433433
Last then undecided team, Alanurmon Rikkaat, has decided they´d want to participate to Season 5.

This creates an exceptional situation, when all current managers have decided they'd wish to continue, and our team roster will be 18 teams (at least) for Season 5.

Usually, as you all probably know, usually multiple teams have withdrawn after each Season, putting us in an easy spot in terms of accepting new teams into HGL.

Again, HGL is an all-manual league, and that's why it is necessary to consider so called maximum limits/soft cap for participating teams for each Season. As addition of teams creates considerable amount of more work (in terms of confirming matches, contacting with managers not complying with their HGL duties, updating league tables and team stats), as you can see from table below, it's also good to ponder when it's not wise to exceed the soft cap anymore in terms of participating teams/Season, and if additional teams are added, what kind of "additional value" that provides vs. the amount of additional work required.

So far we have 18 teams and are playing 17 Rounds, that means also on 2 additional Sundays.

If we add any more teams, even one, that would force us to play 19 Rounds, so on 4 additional Sundays.

It's a tricky situation all in all, as:

A) quality is always more important than quantity

B) it'd be nice to welcome all teams without any limitations, but

C) it's necessary to remember that it's an all-manual-league, and for example if we add 2 teams to our 18 teams roster, amount of teams will be 2 so +11,1% but the amount of matches will rise from 153 to 19, which is +24,2%.
Remember, that's the added amount of work, not only in league background tasks, but also in creating HGL team stats, which are already hard to keep up with - I don't think it'd be optimal to possibly be forced to lower league standards just in order to be able to add teams that are not yet in a development stage in where they can compete equally against other HGL teams

D) if 2 very low salary teams would join - and this is not an insult towards anyone - it's extremely likely that their combined record would be 1 win and 37 losses; not exactly much of an added value in terms of creating more exciting matches.
This is not to say those would be totally meaningless matches, but personally I by far prefer games that are at least somewhat even (almost all are like that for myself this season, apart from few exceptions), and others can tend up to be filler-matches. I guess we've all seen what a massive amount of matches (in addition with purposely lost matches - this is luckily not a thing in HGL) does to NBA for instance - so again, quality is far more important than quantity.

So all in all, personally I'd even prefer maximum of 18 teams setup currently (but my opinion is open to change, maybe), and absolute ceiling would be 20 teams in my opinion (otherwise we'd have 21 Rounds at minimum, which is way too much in my opinion - 19 Rounds is already more than I'd personally want to see). Again, this is not a personal attack to any of interested teams (and not possibly my final opinion anyway, FWIW), but I just need to see this thing as a whole and make sure quality is maintained and not sacrificed just for the sake of amount.

Of course, it's not out of question that some team would decide to withdraw from Season 5.

So here's the table how addition of teams changes amount of teams and matches, in amounts and percentages:


TEA RD GM TACvs18(vs.previous) MACvs18(vs.previous)
18 17 153 0.00% (—) 0.00% (—)
19 19 171 5.6% (5.6%) 11.8% (11.8%)
20 19 190 11.1% (5.3%) 24.2% (11.1%)
21 21 210 16.7% (5.00%) 37.3% (10.5%)

TEAMS=teams,
RD=rounds,
GM=games
TACvs18(vs.previous)=Team amount change vs 18, % (% change vs. previous value; for example from 19 to 20 teams the amount of change is +5,3%)
MACvs18(vs.previous)=Match amount change vs 18, % (% change vs previous value)

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