How to Play

Every player is a real season

Every card in the game is one specific season. The 2015-16 Stephen Curry you draft is the MVP year, with that year's real stats.

Build your five

• Each of your five picks starts with a spin. The wheel lands on a real team and season, and you take one player from that roster. You get one team re-spin and one year re-spin per draft, so part of the skill is making the most of a landing you did not want and knowing when to re-spin.
• You fill five positions: point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, and center.
• Before you sim, a scouting report breaks down what your team does well, where it's vulnerable, and why. Pro Advanced Scouting goes deeper, analyzing your offensive and defensive profiles with advanced statistics and pro-level metrics.

Trades

You get one trade per season, with a value system that keeps deals fair. Salaries need to roughly match, and younger players carry some extra value for their potential upside, so you can't endlessly flip prospects for win-now stars.

Run the season

The engine plays out a full 82-game season, complete with hot and cold streaks. You can then enter the playoffs against real NBA championship teams from throughout league history. The competition gets tougher every year, with each title raising the difficulty.

Run It Back

After any season, you can keep your five and run it back. Players age as their careers did, along with their real season statistics, while every championship raises the level of competition you'll face. Building a dynasty means knowing when to hold your core, when to trade for youth, and keeping your team competitive and balanced as it ages.

The Daily Challenge

There is a new puzzle every day. Each one is built around the same anchor star and a salary cap, so how well you solve the puzzle shapes which season of the star you get and what is left to spend on the other four teammates.

The formats rotate through seven unique mini-games:

• Mystery Legend: Guess the mystery player from a series of clues.
• Climb: Evaluate player stats and see how far you can climb.
• Scout: Use a scouting dossier clue by clue until you can identify the player.
• The Trophy: Claim all twelve linked plaques and achievements by solving each one.
• Cliques: Sort sixteen players into four connected groups.
• Board: Complete the grid by matching players to teams and various career achievements.
• Roll Call: Five questions about who these players are, including where they played college, who drafted them, and what number they wore.

Modes

• Classic: Draft five player-seasons and play out a full 82-game season. Make the playoffs, run it back, manage your roster as players age, and see how long you can keep a dynasty alive.
• Arcade: Classic player ratings, with an added layer of lineup chemistry. Certain combinations of players, roles, and play styles create synergies that can strengthen the entire five, so the best collection of individual players is not always the best team. Build around fit, discover different combinations, and find lineups whose strengths amplify one another.
• Peak: Use an extra spin to turn one player you drafted into a different season from his career, bringing over his real stats, team, and age from that year. You get one Peak spin per dynasty season, and each player can only be spun once during that dynasty.
• Expert: Player cards show only the name, position, and team-year while you draft, with no ratings, stats, fit grade, or achievements to weigh. Stats are then revealed after each season.
• Salary Cap: Draft under a $125M or $140M cap. The cap uses its own prices unique from classic mode, so a star in his prime takes up the most room and a superstar in a down year can be a bargain. Salary Cap uses its own leaderboard.
• Challenge Modes: Rule Forge builds your own rule to play, share, or turn into a Ladder. One Franchise is five from one team across its history, One Decade is five from one decade, Iron Five is no trades and no re-spins, and Rookies Only is five rookie seasons.
• Duel: Challenge another user and draft your best team, then play a best-of-seven series to determine a winner. Face a live opponent, the House, or a real five previously built by another Legacy Run player.
• Roll Call: A trivia game about pro basketball and the players who shape it. Keep answering correctly to build your streak and see how long you can go before you miss one.
• Locker Rooms: A private room for up to ten players, with its own career standings, daily standings, and head to heads. Live Duels, Roll Call races, and private Ladders can all start from the locker room.
• Daily Challenge: Everyone starts with the same featured star and salary cap. Spin the other four players, stay under the cap, and compete for the top of the daily leaderboard. Keep your streak going by playing each day's featured star and completing the full set of daily games across the week and month.

Arcade and Peak are separate from Classic, so results from those modes do not count toward the 82-0 leaderboards.

Curious where the numbers come from? See How the Ratings Work.