Player vote pushes Splinterlands to add brackets to Modern ranked play

In Brief:

• Splinterlands (official site) announced that Modern Ranked Brackets will launch in the coming season after the community voted for them.
• Under the new setup, the single Modern ladder, where players at every collection level face each other, gives way to six brackets containing nine divisions apiece.
• The move builds on the bracket system the studio first rebuilt for Survival mode in February 2026.

Starting next season, Modern ranked play in Splinterlands will be divided into brackets, the studio announced Tuesday in a post on X.

“You voted for it. Modern Ranked Brackets arrive this upcoming season!” the team wrote. “6 Brackets. 9 Divisions each. A whole new climb.”

The announcement didn’t include a specific launch date, bracket requirements or details on how rewards will be allocated. Instead, it directed players to a guide and cautioned that adjusting to the new system could take a while.

“Expect a little ‘wait, how does this work?’ at first,” the team wrote. “Take your time, learn the ropes, and get ready to battle.”

What changes

At present, Modern ranked uses a single rating ladder. According to the game’s documentation, leagues stretch from Novice to Champion and serve as a visual indicator of where a player’s rating falls. All leagues other than the lowest are divided into three tiers.

A win earns 20 rating points and a loss costs 20, while win streaks pay out 40. Following updates shipped on March 3, upsets now carry bigger swings: defeating an opponent rated more than 1,000 points higher is worth 60 rating, with the losing player dropping 60. A win against someone rated 500 to 1,000 points higher yields 40.

To earn Reward Points, players must reach at least Bronze III in Modern or Wild, the docs state.

Under the current system, accounts at low and mid levels can end up matched against fully leveled opponents. The brackets are meant to keep those groups apart.

From pre-proposal to launch

Calls for Modern brackets emerged in March. In an end-of-season recap dated March 15, one player wrote, “There’s now a pre-proposal to bring brackets back to modern, in the past we had leagues – which had it’s own problems.”

According to that writer, the change would put an end to battles against higher level decks. They explained that they had cut back on playing because “it just felt like a waste of time when I would constantly face max level opponents.”

The final vote count wasn’t released alongside Tuesday’s announcement. A community post published this week said a recent event had been held to trial the brackets and gather feedback ahead of their arrival in Modern. Per that post, players who finished 250 matches with a win rate of 50% or higher and submitted feedback received 250,000 Glint.

The Survival template

Brackets aren’t a new concept for the game. After a pause, Survival mode returned on Feb. 15, rebuilt around 11 brackets whose caps range from Novice level to Champion level.

In a Feb. 7 post, the team said each Survival bracket has its own summoner and card level requirements, difficulty and automation rules. Players can opt for human-only play or bots-allowed play. They select a single bracket each season and remain locked into it until the season wraps up.

Survival bracket caps also determine cooldowns, which run from 10% of standard cooldowns at Novice up to standard rates in the higher tiers.

Survival rewards have since been reshaped through governance votes. One approved proposal divided the pool, sending 30% to manual play and 70% to automated brackets, with each portion further split by bracket according to Collection Power contributions. Another suspended SPS rewards for Survival and replaced them with fixed GLINT pools per bracket, granting the top 25 in each bracket an entry token to a post-season tournament.

Release notes dated June 30 show the studio subsequently switched Survival Brackets 1 through 5 to the Modern format and shifted Bracket 6 to Wild. If a player remains in the same bracket from one season to the next, their Survival rating now resets the same way as in ranked play. Those who change brackets begin again at zero.

Modern’s history

In June 2022, Splinterlands divided ranked play into Modern and Wild, with each format getting its own leaderboards and prizes. Modern only permits cards from the two most recent core editions, while Wild allows every card.

Modern matchmaking has been adjusted several times this year. An update on Feb. 24 tweaked Champion I matchmaking to “greatly reduce wait times before being matched.” Then on March 3, the terms of service were revised to state that “you can only play one account in Modern Champion at a time.”

The team closed its announcement with the same line it opened with, a nod to the players who pushed for the change: “You voted for it.”