Desert Storm overview
Desert Storm is the centrepiece weekly event for any active alliance. The platform handles the full lifecycle — match auto-creation on Friday, signups, building assignments, post-match results and attendance — so officers don't end up running it from a Discord thread and a screenshot of a spreadsheet.
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A match, end to end
A Desert Storm match runs through five states. Most of the time the platform handles transitions for you — officers nudge the edges.
- Planning — the match exists and is open for signups. Created automatically on Friday morning if auto-create Desert Storm is on, or by an officer manually.
- Active — the match has started. Reminders have already gone out 60 minutes before kick-off to everyone assigned.
- Completed — the match has finished and results are recorded. Attendance and individual scores can still be edited.
- Cancelled — the match was set up and then called off. Different from skipped (see below).
- Not played (skipped) — the alliance never entered teams that week. Stays in history as a no-show but doesn't count toward attendance stats.
Demo mode — every action runs against React state. Your dashboard would call the backend instead.
For the full planning flow — roster setup followed by battlefield assignments — see the Match planning guide.
Auto-creation and the schedule
Most alliances enable auto-create Desert Storm in settings. With it on, two matches (one per team — A and B) appear on Friday at the configured Desert Storm time, in planning state, ready for signups. Reminders are scheduled automatically: 60 minutes before each match the platform fires personal reminders to assigned starters and substitutes.
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Signups and assignments
- 1
Members request to play
From the match page, any member can hit Request to Play. Their request lands in the officer queue with a pending badge.
- 2
Officers approve and assign
R5/R4 see a queue of pending requests on the match page and a drag-and-drop battlefield map for slotting players into buildings. The roster auto-fills with member power levels and preferred roles so you can balance frontline, support, and harasser cleanly.
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Substitutes are tracked separately
Subs who never get activated (the alliance had enough starters) don't count for or against attendance. Subs who step in mid-match do — they're scored exactly like a starter from that point.
Recording results and attendance
After the match, an officer records the result (victory or defeat, alliance and opponent scores, optional MVP awards) and attendance per player. Both can be entered manually or — on Pro — extracted automatically by pasting the in-game post-match screenshot. The AI scanner pulls outcomes, scores, MVP names and per-player individual scores into the form for review.
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When you forget to enter teams
It happens. The platform auto-creates the Friday match, the week gets busy, no one signs up, and Friday comes and goes. Now you have a planning-state match in your history that should really read “we didn't play this week”.
From the match page, open the actions menu and choose Mark as not played. The match stays visible in history with a muted “Not played” badge but is excluded from attendance stats and Pulse's DS attendance signal — exactly the right behaviour, since penalising members for an officer-side miss is unfair.
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History and stats
The history page shows past matches — completed, cancelled, and not-played — so officers can see the full week-by-week picture. Stats counters (win rate, average score, win streak) only count completed matches with recorded results, so a skipped week never dilutes them.
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