Ranked Leagues Explained: Skeleton 1 to Legend I
What Ranked actually replaced
Ranked mode went live with the 6 October 2025 update and took over from the old multiplayer trophy ladder. Supercell had announced it a month earlier, on 2 September 2025, as something coming in the next update. The switch matters for base design because the scoring changed shape: instead of a single open trophy count, you sit in a named league, you play a set number of battles, and your placement inside that league decides whether you go up or down.
The ladder is 33 numbered leagues. The bottom is Skeleton 1. The top is Electro 33. Above all of them sit the Legend tiers.
A tuning pass followed on 26 January 2026, which adjusted the promotion and demotion percentages and cut the number of battles required in the higher leagues. If you last played Ranked seriously in 2025, the thresholds you remember are not the ones running now.
The Legend split of April 2026
The 27 April 2026 update, announced in a Supercell post on 16 April, broke Legend League into three tiers: Legend III, Legend II and Legend I. A migration week starting 20 April 2026 placed everyone: the top 12,500 players went into Legend I and the next 50,000 into Legend II. That placement was a one-off event, not a rule that runs every season.
The three tiers share the same Star Bonus and League Bonus. What separates them is the battle schedule and the Battle Modifiers each tier runs.
| Tier | Battles | Cycle | Movement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legend III | 24 per week | Weekly | Top 5 promote |
| Legend II | 30 per week | Weekly | Top 3 promote |
| Legend I | 8 per day | Four week tournament | Rank outside the top 10,000 demotes weekly |
If you are demoted out of Legend entirely, you land in Electro 33 and climb back from there. The same April update also raised the inactivity tolerance from one week to four, so a short break no longer costs you your tier.
One more change worth knowing, because people confuse the two ladders: the August 2026 update rescaled the Clan War League modifiers at the top end, so CWL Titan I now runs the Legend II modifier rather than the Legend I one. That is a CWL change, not a Ranked change, but it is the reason a CWL defence at the top can feel different from what your Ranked defence sees.
What Ranked scoring does to base design
Percentage is the whole game here. Every attack against you is scored, and a base that leaks 55 percent to an average attacker will bleed you down the ladder even when it never gives up a three star. This is the difference between a Ranked layout and a war layout, and it is worth being blunt about it:
- A war base accepts the two star and refuses the three. The Town Hall can be reachable if reaching it costs the attacker their whole army.
- A Ranked base refuses the second star. The Town Hall has to be genuinely unreachable without a full commitment, and the rest of the base has to hold the first 50 percent as well.
That is the anti-two-star framing, and it is why we keep anti 3 star and anti 2 star as separate filters rather than treating them as synonyms. If the distinction is new to you, read anti 3 star vs anti 2 star first.
Practical consequences when you place buildings:
- Town Hall deep, ideally islanded. Put it where a single funnel cannot sweep it up on the way past something else.
- Storages as shields, not as bait. In Ranked your loot is not the target. Gold and Elixir Storages have high hitpoints, so use them as slow walls around the core.
- Nothing valuable on a shared axis. Hero equipment burst is a real threat at the top. Keep the Monolith, the Super Wizard Tower and the Revenge Tower off the same straight line so one Giant Arrow or Fireball cannot line them up.
- Redundant coverage on every side. A base that holds three sides and folds on the fourth is a percentage donation eight times a day.
- Spread the Air Defenses. At Town Hall 18 you have four of them and two Air Sweepers. Four Air Defenses in two compartments is two Air Defenses as far as an Electro Dragon chain is concerned.
Which base type to run at which tier
| Where you are | Base type to run | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Skeleton 1 through the mid numbered leagues | Hybrid | You are still farming upgrades. Protect loot and trophies together. |
| Upper numbered leagues, Electro 33 | Trophy and Ranked | Loot matters less than percentage denial. Pull the Town Hall in. |
| Legend III, II and I | Legend League | Eight scored attacks a day from players who scout first. Anti two star or nothing. |
The Legend hubs exist from Town Hall 13 up, because that is where the tier is realistically reachable.
Re-checking your base each tier
Because the three Legend tiers run different Battle Modifiers, the layout that held Legend III is not automatically the layout for Legend II. The modifier changes what armies are worth bringing, and that changes which side of your base gets probed. Two habits are worth building:
- Watch your own defence log by tier. When you promote, the first ten defences tell you more than any guide. Note which side attackers enter from and what they open first.
- Move one thing at a time. Swapping a whole layout after a promotion throws away everything you learned. Move the trap cluster, or reposition one Inferno Tower, then watch another ten defences.
The current top end punishes anything predictable. Root Riders with Healers behind them, the Royal Champion walking a lane with Throwers following her, and Electro Dragon pushes with the Dragon Duke tanking are all reliable enough that your base needs a specific answer to each rather than general strength. Layered walls that force Root Riders to retarget, dead zones that pull them off their Healers, and Poison Spell Towers on the likely lane are the standard answers, and every layout page on this site names what it is built to stop.
Where to go next
Pick your hall and filter for the base you need. Every layout page shows the full base picture to rebuild in the game.
- Town Hall 18 layouts and Town Hall 17 layouts
- Anti Root Rider bases at Town Hall 18, and the guide to defending Root Riders and RC walks
- Layout finder if you want to filter by hall, type and the attack you are trying to stop