Store qualifiers → regionals → a national championship
The v2 hook that makes stores care about more than a single night: store-level events feed regional qualifiers and a national High Noon championship across seasons. v1 already ships the data sockets — region, season, event history — so this layers on later with no migration. The bones are in from day one; this lights them up.
A one-off store tournament is fun, but it doesn't give a player a reason to keep coming back or a store a reason to run events all season. The thing that turns casual play into a scene is stakes that ladder upward — a local win that means something regionally and, eventually, nationally.
The trap is building that competitive hierarchy too late. If season, region, and event-history structure isn't in the data model from the start, adding it later means a painful migration across every store's historical data.
So the strategy was to ship the sockets in v1 — region, season, event history on every event — even before the rollup UI exists, so the national ladder can layer on with zero migration when it's time.
Local nights that ladder into a national season.
Every event carries region, season, and event-history fields today — the structural sockets for rollup are live in v1, so v2 needs no data migration.
Store events feed regional qualifiers, and regionals feed a national High Noon championship — a local win that visibly ladders toward something bigger.
Play organizes into seasons, giving stores a recurring reason to run events all year and players a standing to chase and defend.
Not yet built as UI; the data foundation is already in. Here's the path.
Origin: Stores and players need stakes that ladder beyond one night. Designed as the v2 hook, with its data foundation shipped in v1.
Prereqs: Foundation done — region/season/event-history sockets are live. Rollup logic and surfaces are the remaining build.
Status: Data foundation shipped (R1); rollup logic (R2) and public regional/national surfaces (R3) are v2 roadmap with no production code yet.
Internal strategy page. Keep this honest as the build changes.