Playing

Queues, parties and avoids

How matchmaking picks players, queueing with friends, and choosing who not to team with.

Every scrim starts in a queue. This page covers how the bot matches players, how to play with friends, and how to keep away from people you'd rather not have as teammates.

How matchmaking works

When you join, the bot looks for players within 200 rating points of you. Every 120 seconds it widens that window by another 100 points. Close matches come first. If nobody is close, the search keeps getting wider, unless your server set a widest gap.

A server can run several queues. The free plan has one ranked and one casual queue. The paid plan has as many as you like. Some servers split them by rank, some by region or format, and some have just one. Join the one meant for you. The channel name and the panel title say which is which.

Each queue can also have its own format, so the same server can run 1v1 best of 3 in one channel and 3v3 best of 5 in another. The panel and the Join button always show what that queue needs.

If the bot finds a match but can't start it, for example because it's missing a permission, the players aren't dropped. They go back in the queue, or can join again straight away.

Queue pings

Servers can choose a role for the bot to ping when a queue is nearly full, one or two players short of a match. Get that role if you want to hear when a game is about to start. The ping waits at least 10 minutes before it fires again in the same channel.

Parties

A party lets you queue with friends. Parties hold up to 3 players, and everyone in a party always ends up on the same team. That also means a party can never be bigger than one team, so a 1v1 queue is solo only and a 2v2 queue takes pairs.

1. Run /party. You become the leader.
2. Press Invite on the party panel and pick a player.
3. They press Accept. By default, invites run out after 5 minutes.
4. When the leader presses Join Queue, the bot asks the other members to confirm. Once each of them presses Ready, the whole party joins together. They have 60 seconds by default. If anyone presses Can't play, or time runs out, the party isn't queued.

A party can't queue while anyone in it is still in a match on the same server. Wait until that match has a result or is cancelled. A match on another server doesn't count. By default, neither does one that started more than 3 hours ago. If a match is stuck, a Scrim Supervisor can end it with /setresult.

Parties are also how teams sign up for tournaments. See Playing in a tournament.

The avoid list

If there's someone you'd rather not have as a teammate, put them on your avoid list. You can avoid up to 5 players.

• You're never put on a team with anyone you avoid, or anyone who avoids you.
• If avoid lists stop the next players being split into two teams, nobody is taken out of the queue. Everyone keeps their place, and the bot tries other players from the queue instead. If no match works yet, the queue channel gets a short note saying why.
• It only affects teammates. You can still play against people you avoid.
• It only works in queue matches. Lobby teams and tournament teams don't use avoid lists.
• The other player is never told.
• A party overrides the avoid list. If someone in your party is on your avoid list, or you're on theirs, you can still queue and play together. Your list still works for everyone outside the party.

Each server can turn the avoid list off, so these commands may not work everywhere.

Verification

Some servers only let you queue after you link your Brawl Stars account. If the bot asks you to verify, follow Linking your Brawl Stars account.