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Scrim Blocks on Discord: Scoring a Whole Practice Session

Two rosters, several rounds, one booked session — scored as one thing rather than as five unrelated matches.

A scrim block is a booked practice session between two organised sides: several maps, or several rounds, played back to back at an agreed time. It is arranged in advance between people who already know each other, which makes it the one format on this list that never involves a queue.

The thing that makes it awkward to score is that the block is the unit, but the block has parts. Five maps in a night is not five independent matches — the same two rosters played all of them, in one sitting, and treating them as five results tells your ladder it saw five times as much evidence as it did. Recording only the final tally throws away the per-map detail the coaching conversation actually runs on.

The resolution is that a block needs two scoring axes at once, and they are configured separately. A per-round sheet accumulates the maps or points and decides who won the night, and a series result fires exactly once when the block closes and is the only thing that touches ratings. Set up that way, the block is one rating event with a full scorecard underneath it.

The second defining property: the entrants are named rosters, not ten individuals who happened to show up. That makes scrims the one format where rating the team is the obvious answer rather than the exotic one — it sidesteps the attribution problem entirely, because the thing that played is the thing being rated.

Setting up scrim blocks

The decisions specific to this format. Everything else follows the general setup guide.

1
Create the rosters first

Build each side with /team_admin create, add its members, and set a captain with /team_admin set_captain. The captain matters operationally, not ceremonially: they are who submits results, which means one person per side is responsible for closing out the block instead of five people assuming someone else did.
2
Rate the team, not the players

Point the leaderboard at Team Alias (Specific Format) at your team size. This is the rating type that keys off the named roster rather than the roster composition, and it is the one that pairs with /team_admin teams — the plain Team types key off who is in the lineup instead, which is not what you want when the whole point is that this is the team. If you also want individual ratings, run them on a separate leaderboard rather than trying to make one board do both.
3
Make the block a single result

Set the queue or lobby to a series format — best-of-N when the block is a match played over several maps, cumulative over N rounds when it is a points-scored session. Either way the series produces one rating event, which is what stops a five-map block from moving ratings as hard as five separate matches.
4
Watch the two scoring menus — the names are inverted

This is the setting that catches people. Configure Scoring sets the series scoring — how the block as a whole is decided. Configure Cumulative Scoring sets the per-round scoring — the points inside it. The names read backwards from what they do, and picking the wrong one produces a block that looks configured and scores nothing the way you intended.
5
Open a lobby per block, not a standing queue

Scrims are arranged, not matched, so the right container is a lobby for tonight rather than furniture that sits open. Use /host to open one directly, or /queue_team hosted if you want a joinable post that the second roster claims. Either way the block starts when both sides are actually there, which is the only trigger that means anything for a scheduled session.
6
Submit each round as you go

For a cumulative block, each side submits its round score with /score as the night progresses, and the series closes itself when the configured number of rounds is in. Use /record_match team_alias for a block that was played somewhere the bot was not — it takes the rosters directly and files the result against the same ratings.

Commands you'll use

/team_admin Create and manage teams /host Create a matchmaking lobby for other players to join./queue_team Create a team-based queue or lobby launcher for predefined teams /score Submit your team's score for a cumulative match /record_match Record match results and update player ratings

Games that run this

Not a supported-games list — nothing here is title-specific. These are the games whose own setup page has something extra to say about this format.

Battle Royale

The result is an ordering, not a winner — placement-and-kill scoring for the block, real ratings underneath it.

Call of Duty

GB-shaped 4v4: a Hardpoint-Search-Control rotation in one series, and a ladder for the same twelve people.

Rainbow Six Siege

Customs with a real map ban, series that decide the rating, and a queue that knows what to do with a five-stack.

Valorant

Elo-balanced 10 mans, captain map veto, and a ladder that survives a smurf.

Guides worth reading first

Written about the wider problem rather than about this format, but they cover what scrim blocks run into.

A Drop Is Not a Match: Scoring Battle Royale Scrim Blocks on Discord

A battle royale scrim block has to answer two different questions — who won tonight, and who is actually good. They need two different scoring axes. Here's how points and ratings are configured separately, and the recording limit that decides whether you rate teams or players.

12 min read

Call of Duty GBs: Rating a Series That Isn't the Same Game Three Times

A GB is a Hardpoint, a Search and a Control — three different games with one result. Here's why rating each map is worse in Call of Duty than in any other shooter, whether to split ratings by mode, and why the roster is usually the thing to rate.

11 min read

Scoring Free-For-Alls: Rating Battle Royales and Multi-Team Matches

Elo is defined for a pair of players, and a free-for-all has no pairs. Here's how a placement is converted into ratings, why a 10-player FFA would otherwise move ratings nine times too far, and where the approach genuinely breaks down.

10 min read

Scrim Blocks on Discord — FAQ

The questions communities ask before setting this up.

Should scrims count towards ratings at all? They are practice.

That is a real objection and there is a real answer: rate them, but decide once and apply it consistently. A block where both sides are trying is the best evidence you will ever get about relative strength — far better than an official match played once a month. If you genuinely want a session excluded, mark it casual rather than skipping the record, so the scorecard still exists and only the rating impact is dropped.

We scrim the same three teams every week. Does the rating still mean anything?

It means something about those four teams and nothing beyond them, which is usually exactly what you wanted. The thing to watch is that a rating built on a tiny opponent pool drifts — repeated wins against the same side keep paying out long after they have stopped being informative. Turn on anti-farming alerts so a long streak against one opponent is surfaced rather than silently inflating a number.

Can we track individual players from scrims too?

Yes, on a separate leaderboard, and it answers a different question. Team-alias ratings tell you which roster is stronger; player ratings from the same matches tell you very little, because a five-man result attributes equally to five people who did not contribute equally. Custom stats are the better tool for the individual half of a scrim review — they record what someone actually did rather than inferring it from a team result.

What if we play a different number of maps every block?

Use best-of-N sized to your usual block and let short nights end early, rather than reconfiguring per session. A block that stops after two of three maps still produces one result, which is the property that matters. If your blocks genuinely vary from two maps to seven, cumulative scoring handles the variation more gracefully because it accumulates whatever was played.

Ready to run it?

Team Up is free to start. Add the bot, create a leaderboard, and record your first match — the ladder builds itself from there.

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