About | The Eternal Turnover

What is a Lineal Championship?

A lineal championship can only change hands through direct competition. Unlike tournament rankings or seasonal champions, the rule is simple: to be the champion, you must defeat the champion.

This creates an unbroken chain of succession from the first titleholder to today. Every champion can trace their lineage through every previous champion, one victory at a time. No points systems, no ranking criteria—just victory over the reigning champion.

It also puts a target on the current champion's back, which is kind of fun.

Championship Rules

Direct Succession The championship changes hands when a NAF-registered coach defeats the current champion in direct, face-to-face competition. The moment of victory is the moment of succession.
Inactivity Reversion If the current champion has not competed in any NAF sanctioned Blood Bowl match for 120 days, the title automatically reverts to the highest-ranked active player based on Elo ratings calculated up to the reversion date. This ensures the title remains with active, competitive players.
Ranking-Based Succession When a reversion occurs, Elo ratings are calculated on-demand up to the reversion date. The highest-ranked player who competed within the previous 30 days becomes the new champion. This ensures succession is based on both skill (Elo rating) and recent activity.
Match Validity Only NAF sanctioned face-to-face tournament matches count for championship purposes. Friendly matches, leagues, exhibition games, online, and practice matches do not transfer the title or establish succession rights.

Why start with Blood Bowl 2003 Nottingham?

The Blood Bowl 2003 tournament in Nottingham serves as our inaugural event:

One of the first major NAF recorded tournaments in the database
Held at Warhammer World, the home and origin of Blood Bowl
230 matches with 119 unique coaches—a sizeable affair
Provides a fixed starting point with historical significance

Every lineal championship needs a genesis moment. This is ours.

Data Sources & Methodology

Championship data is compiled from the NAF database. Data is updated regularly; view the full lineage history.

Our algorithm determines the current champion, but if you spot any issues let us know at lineage@eternalturnover.com.

Rating System & Methodology

For inactivity reversions, we use Elo ratings calculated from NAF match data using NAF's Elo algorithm. Our rankings differ from NAF's official Elo standings due to different filtering and aggregation:

Elo Implementation We use NAF's Elo ranking system (NAF provides both Elo and Glicko-2 rankings). Our calculations match theirs: each coach starts at 1000 rating, K-value scales with tournament size (K = 2 × √(min(participants, MAX)), where MAX is 60 for majors and 32 for regular tournaments). The difference is in filtering: we include only face-to-face tournaments and merge all races together, while NAF may apply race-specific filtering.
On-Demand Calculation Ratings are calculated on-demand when needed for reversion, not maintained continuously. This ensures accurate historical ratings at the exact moment of reversion rather than using monthly snapshots.
Tournament Filtering We include only face-to-face tournaments (Classic, BB2020, BB2025 variants). Online tournaments are excluded. NAF's official rankings may include different tournament types or apply additional filtering (e.g., races, Stunty exclusions) so differ from ours.
Activity Definition For reversion purposes, a player is "active" if they competed within 30 days of the reversion date, regardless of their rating deviation. This differs from NAF's phi-based inactivity filtering.

These ratings serve one purpose: determining succession during inactivity reversions. They are not general skill rankings and will differ from NAF's official standings.

Credits

The Eternal Turnover is maintained by members of the Blood Bowl community who enjoy this kind of competitive ridiculousness. Special thanks to tournament organizers, league commissioners, NAF officials, and coaches who make the game possible.