Castle Battle · Ranked
The Ladders
Two ladders — the Duel Ladder for Duel 1v1 and the Alliance Ladder for Team Battle 4v4 — and a standing in each is its own: the commander who holds a lane in an alliance war is not the commander who wins a duel. Both begin with a five-battle Proving, and are climbed through six seats of command, from Levy to Warden.
The Proving
Your first five ranked battles in a ladder are not on it. No seat is shown and no pip moves: the heralds are taking your measure, and the fifth battle seats you where the measure falls.
- A seat, not a starting line. A Proving fought to an even record seats you around Proving — 0 of 5; one fought clean seats you considerably higher.
- As high as Proving — 0 of 5, and no higher. The seats above that are climbed in front of other commanders rather than handed over in private.
- Never a punishment. A Proving lost five times seats you at the bottom rung, which is where you would have started anyway.
- Once in a career. A season roll empties the record but does not re-measure you — a Marshal in Goldfall is not an unknown quantity in Reddusk.
The six seats
- Levy. Pressed men in a line: you are counted, and nothing else.
- Outrider. Sent ahead alone — which means you are trusted alone.
- Castellan. You hold a keep, which is the whole subject of this game.
- Banneret. You lead men under your own arms, not somebody else's.
- Marshal. You command the host.
- Warden. You answer for a march of the realm. There are only so many.
| Seat | Tiers | A win earns | Streak | Losses cost pips | Promotion pays | Season pays |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Levy | 4 | 2 pips | — | No | — | 1,500 |
| Outrider | 4 | 2 pips | — | Yes | 1,200 | 3,000 |
| Castellan | 4 | 1 pip | +1 from the third win in a row | Yes | 2,400 | 6,000 |
| Banneret | 4 | 1 pip | +1 from the third win in a row | Yes | 5,000 | 12,000 |
| Marshal | 4 | 1 pip | — | Yes | 9,000 | 24,000 |
| Warden | None | 1 pip | — | Yes | 18,000 | 45,000 |
Pips and tiers
Every seat below the Warden's has four tiers of six pips. Win and you take pips; fill a tier and you climb to the next.
- The first seat forgives. A Levy loses nothing for a defeat — the ladder's first rungs are for learning.
- A seat, once reached, is kept. Promoted into a seat, you cannot fall out of it for the rest of the season.
- A lost tier is cushioned. Dropping a tier never lands you below four pips of the one beneath, and never costs more pips than the defeat itself did.
- Streaks help where they should. The early seats pay two pips a win, the middle ones an extra pip for a run of wins, and the top seats one pip, always.
The Herald's Reckoning
Under the pips is a rating every ranked battle moves, and it is not idle decoration: it is measured against what the seat you are standing on is worth, and the gap between the two bends your track. This is the reason the climb is quick when you are in the wrong seat and honest once you are in the right one.
| The heralds say | When | A win takes | A defeat costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ascendant | your rating has run 80 clear of the seat | +one extra pip | nothing at all |
| Level | rating and seat agree | the seat's own rate | one pip |
| Overreached | your rating is 80 below the seat | one pip fewer, never none | two pips |
The rating itself never shows below the Warden's seat — what shows is the verdict, because a number is a thing to farm and a verdict is a thing to act on.
Leaving a battle
Every protection above has one exception, and it is the only one. Walk out of a ranked battle and it counts as a defeat that the Levy's forgiveness and the seat's floor both step aside for: 1 pip wherever you are standing, and two once you have left two battles in a season.
Where there is nothing on the track to take — the bottom of a seat, with no pips left — the pips are owed rather than forgiven, up to 6 pips, and your next win pays them before it fills anything. It still cannot cost you the seat: a floor is a promise about a season.
The Warden's seat
The top seat has no tiers. There the rank IS the rating — a percentile, and once you are inside the top 1,000, a position on the board. Above the Marshal's seat the question stops being how many wins you have and becomes how many commanders are ahead of you.
- High Warden — the commander at the head of the board. First of the marches.
- The Ten — the top 10. The ten who answer for the realm.
- The Hundred — the top 100. The hundred names on the board.
A position is only worth holding if it can be taken, so a Warden who does not ride for seven days begins to shed 16 rating a day and slides down the board. It costs no seat and no pip — only the figure the board is ordered by — and it stops at the middle of the scale.
Seasons
A season is one calendar month, in UTC, and each month has a name: Frostmoon, Thawtide, Seedfall, Greenrise, Longsun, Highsun, Emberwane, Harvestide, Goldfall, Reddusk, Mistfell and Deepdark.
When a season rolls, every standing is knocked back four tiers and the hidden rating is pulled 34% of the way back toward the middle — enough that last month has to be earned again, not so much that it never happened. Each season pays gold once at the roll, by the highest seat you reached: from 1,500 for a Levy to 45,000 for a Warden. A season with no ranked battles in it pays nothing and is not remembered.
What IS remembered is every season you finished: the seat you closed at, your peak and your record, kept twelve seasons deep — a year — in the chronicle on your ladder screen. A ladder that resets owes you a record of what it wiped.
Riding with a war-band
A band may ride for pips, and every member's standing moves on the result — so a band's members must stand within five rungs of one another: a seat and a tier. A band is paired on what its members average and then won by its best, and the rule is there for the commanders opposite. A member still in their Proving has no rung and never widens a band, so a band can always take somebody through their first battles.