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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?

Hello
Maybe I'm in for Season 5 .
Young HG team :)

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

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, 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

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)

I agree with your summations and thoughts, Wagner. And, given the amount of work you have put into this league (and continue to do so), I will defer to you on how many teams is enough. In other words, I will support your decision. Obviously, it would be great to have more teams in the HGL; however, as you have noted, quality v quantity is important to consider.

Thank you for your response MrJ, I appreciate it.

As mentioned, it's completely new situation in terms of 0 managers exiting HGL after Season, so on other Seasons it's been simple enough to accept new teams to replace exiting teams.

While this is still theoretically possible that some of us 18 would cancel their commitment to participate to Season 5 ((and therefore it would be easy to take in replacing team(s)), I would end up thinking it's not likely that any of us would decide to exit HGL after Season 4 (cancel their commitment).

Also, it's good to remember that theoretically, nobody "forces" us to play HGL during one BB season, but I kind of prefer it to be it that way, for couple of reasons. (On the other hand, it would also have some benefits to spread HGL Season over 2 BB seasons).



So obviously one option would be to spread HGL Season over 2 BB seasons, and play only 1 match per week during RS and during Playoffs.

There would be some negatives with this, though:

First, at least to me it feels more clear/apparent choice to play one HGL Season during one BB season, also because it's been the tradition since Season 1.

Second, given current BB Pickup match limitations, it's not possible to arrange 2 BB seasons' worth of Regular Season Pickup matches at once. So we'd be in a situation, where we'd have to have 2 RS match organizing windows, second one in a middle of RS, and that always adds to the risk of things not going well/as planned.

Third - and this could be an important point - for some teams that are not doing well, it could feel like a bad design choice, as they would then lose like 6 months of playing time (instead of about 3 months), if their Season goes South and it becomes apparent quite soon that their Playoffs chances would be already diminished.

Of course there would be also other aspects (negative, and maybe some positive also?) within this theoretical change into playing over 2 BB seasons. However, this isn't a planned chance, just a theoretical speculation at this point (into which everyone who feels like it can contribute, if they so feel like).



As for future, it's possible to think of different scenarios in terms of adding new teams, if necessary (keeping in mind the current limitations that I wrote about in my previous post).

If it seems to become "a habit" that everyone currently playing in HGL decides to continue in HGL on next Season as well, then we might (or might not- I'm wrestling with this as to begin with I'd like to offer all current HGL teams possibility to continue, to reward continuous commitment...) have to consider the option to have a short Play-in league or Play-in Playoffs, into which possibly 1-2(?) worst teams during each HGL Season would participate into, just in order to give some teams possibility to join as well. At least at some point, that is, when their team is at least so competitive that they can actually beat worst team(s) in HGL, or at least beat some of each other who are also "applying" to HGL if it's the case that some current HGL managers decide to retire but there would still be less open spots in HGL than there are willing participants.

This would kind of mimic real world situation (relegation battle in leagues), however, with the unfortunate difference that worst teams after Play-in league wouldn't play on next HGL Season. On the other hand it would likely give teams that are not successful in HGL Play-in league even more motivation to train better to be able to acquire a place in HGL by succeeding in HGL Play-in league on next Season.

Hello !

Maybe there could be another mini-league in which the newcomers fight to enter HGL. It could happen during the season or just before the season ending (during the playoffs).

The case where the worst teams could be ejected seems to me unfair. As HomeGrown we surely will know a time where our team will have to re-start, and when we'll have to fire many or some of our players. But we couldn't stay in HGL ?
Ah what a pity !
Maybe I like too much this league, but it would be very sad, for sure.

So, mixing my first idea + this second idea, if we had to make worst tems vs newcomers, we all should be aware before the season. I take an example (because my sentence was really not clear ;)

During S5, all teams know that there are 4 newcomers for S6. In S5, the 4 newcomers play an pre-HGL tournament. The 2 first will take 2 seats in S6. The 2 last in S5 will be "relegated" and they will hve to play a pre-tournament in S6 (to come back in S7 if they win). Managing a small tournement is very easy. The problem is that if there are 8 newcomers, how will we do... ??

Many answers, but more questions... sorry !

Hello !

Maybe there could be another mini-league in which the newcomers fight to enter HGL. It could happen during the season or just before the season ending (during the playoffs).

The case where the worst teams could be ejected seems to me unfair. As HomeGrown we surely will know a time where our team will have to re-start, and when we'll have to fire many or some of our players. But we couldn't stay in HGL ?
Ah what a pity !
Maybe I like too much this league, but it would be very sad, for sure.

So, mixing my first idea + this second idea, if we had to make worst tems vs newcomers, we all should be aware before the season. I take an example (because my sentence was really not clear ;)

During S5, all teams know that there are 4 newcomers for S6. In S5, the 4 newcomers play an pre-HGL tournament. The 2 first will take 2 seats in S6. The 2 last in S5 will be "relegated" and they will hve to play a pre-tournament in S6 (to come back in S7 if they win). Managing a small tournement is very easy. The problem is that if there are 8 newcomers, how will we do... ??
[..]

I completely share your anxiety about "kicking out" current HGL managers by relegation, so much so, that I really try to avoid that scenario if decently possible, but also limitations of all-manual league must be kept in mind.

It's always (at least to me) easier to not accept new requests, than to "kick out" current HGL teams (should there be need to restrict amount of teams playing in given season, just as there likely is on Season 5).

And of course, adding any teams to our roster of 18 teams would force us 2 more additional Rounds during RS, and as you all can conclude from my previous message, it's not preferred by me currently.

And having roster of 20 would again put us into a situation where we could question if 12 teams to Playoffs is enough, and if 12 doesn't seem like enough,
- should that 'major change' (or is it a major change? Opinions likely will differ..) be voted on, and if yes,
- what's the %-amount of votes demanded to enforce the change, and
- it needs to be noted that such changes shouldn't probably be made during that given season when they're supposed to take place, so we would already be in a rush with such voting as well...



I also share your view on that, that we should (at least preferably) know about the possibility of relegation from HGL, before RS has started. The challenge with this is though, than in this case we would have to know the amount of interested teams so to speak '1 season ahead', while in reality most often teams have let us know during the current Season that they'd be interested in participating to next Season.

Of course if it would be a known practice, that let's say that at least worst HGL team is subjected to possibility of relegation, then it wouldn't be an issue through a surprise - it wouldn't erase other negative aspects of it though..



One of the options, which would still give current HGL teams at least a theoretical chance to survive., would be that:

A) newcomers and current HGL teams participate in same "mini-league"/Play-in league

B) newcomers play Play-in league/Play-in Playoffs, and either;
B.1) best of such Playoffs will get place to HGL directly (if there's space and/or current HGL teams would be relegated on that Season), or
B.2) best of such Playoffs will face worst team(s) in HGL in single-elimination match(es), to determine participation rights to next Season

But this doesn't erase the problem, that if any high quality team would decide being interested in participating, they'd win against weakest team in HGL for sure, so chance to not be relegated could be purely theoretical.



This kind of "Play-in/mini-league" during HGL Playoffs has been on HGL rules as well, to potentially solve this situation.

Like you well pointed out; if there are more newcomers than open spots - that's the heart of the dilemma.



Last edited by Wagner at 3/13/2026 6:11:21 AM