The Winter Series is a Myth II, 2-team tournament. This is the 2nd installment of TWS and is being hosted by Paris in Flames.

TWS09 will be played on Marius, using the latest Myth 2 patch from Project Magma.

Once registration is complete, all teams will be given schedule through systematic process. Note that the Scoring for Regular season games will be game win-based and not score-based, unlike the Double Elimination Rounds. Keep this in mind as the transition of play changes. The pools will be balanced according to skill, as assessed by tournament officials. Each team should play a rough mix of power teams, weak teams, and average teams. The number of teams in the tournament, and various variables will make their schedule. These games will more likely be Over the first three to five weeks, each team will play the team they are scheduled to play based on the fallback time scheduled on their page (unless a different time is selected, see fallbacks). There will be one match each week.

Each QR match will contain three games. These games are listed on the maps page and will not change from week to week. Teams will play the same maps/games against all of their QR opponents. Note that, since the TWS is score-based and not game win-based, the order of the games IS IMPORTANT! Please play games in the order that they are listed on the maps page.

When all the matches have completed for all pools, the teams from each pool with the top average point differences will advance to the Double Elimination round. The date to make up any missed QR games will be the Sunday of the 3rd Weekend, at 9 pm CST the QR scoring will end and the brackets for the double elimination round will be made. Likewise, teams will be seeded in the DE round based on their average point difference. What this means is that teams not only want to shoot for a shutout in the QR, but also want to keep their opponents from beating their team at all costs. To calculate your team's own average difference, use this formula: (Games Won /number of games played). For example, if your match scores are 1-2, 0-3, 2-1, 3-0, and 2-1 after five matches(15 games), your percentile is .533 (1 + 0 + 2 + 3 - 2)/5.

After the Qualifying Round has concluded, a few teams will be eliminated from the tournament, but the rest will advance to the Double Elimination round, depending on the number of teams who enter the tournament. The Double Elimination round is more complicated than the Qualifying Round, so please read these rules carefully!

All teams begin the DE in the top bracket. At this point, all teams will be seeded based on their QR performance, and teams will be paired up based on seed. The top seed team will play the bottom seed, the second seed will play the next to last seed, etc. After the first round of Double Elimination, no teams will be removed from the tournament. Instead, any teams that lose a match in the top bracket will be moved to the bottom bracket.

Teams in the Top Bracket will play one match per week. Each match will consist of five games. The first map for each week will be played twice (it is marked by "x2").

Again, since match outcomes are determined by score, the order in which the games are played does matter. Please play them in the order they are listed on the maps page. Teams may not play games out of order, even if both captains agree.

Someone accurately pointed out that the Bottom Bracket is "twice the work for half the pay". Matches in the bottom bracket are divided up into two sub-rounds: Elimination and Winnowing. Teams in the bottom bracket must play TWO matches each week - one Elimination and one Winnowing - to halve their numbers each week and keep pace with the top bracket. You won't have to worry about the difference between Elimination and Winnowing; all you need to know is that if you lose any bottom bracket match, you will be eliminated from the tournament!

Bottom bracket matches will consist of 5 games, just like top bracket matches.

This is the biggie - the final match. After all Double Elimination rounds have concluded, two teams will remain standing in the tournament: the Top Bracket Champions, and the Bottom Bracket Challengers. The winners of the Top Bracket have gone through the entire DE round without losing a single match; the Bottom Bracket winners have lost only one match. These two teams will face off in a 7-game Grand Final series, for the TWS09 title.

If the Top Bracket Champions win the 7-game series, play concludes and the Champions are named the undefeated winners of the Myth World Cup. However, should the Challengers win the 7-game series, the Champions will, metaphorically speaking, be immediately relegated to the Bottom Bracket. Both the Champions and Challengers now have one match loss on their record, and play continues into Sudden Death overtime.

Sudden Death is quite simple: teams will take turns choosing previous TWS09 maps to play, until one team has won two games in a row. Ties do not count, but do not interrupt a streak. For instance, tie-win is NOT a victory, but win-tie-win counts as two wins in a row and IS a victory.

The Champions are allowed to pick the first game. If no team has won two games by the time 6 sudden death games have been played, the TWS Staff will choose one game that cannot tie - such as Last Man on the Hill - to be the final tiebreaker. Whichever team wins Sudden Death is named the TWS champion.