Black Market Duck Cup ​

Black Market Duck Cup Game mode · Manager

★★★☆☆

Statistics

Entry	Ticket, via the dock boat menu
Loadout	Anything — you don't fight
Structure	Six bouts a season, two signed fighters
Your input	Read odds, bet, one call per bout
Mutators	No
Maps	DEMO Ultimate Challenge only
Difficulty	★★★☆☆

What Is It? ​

You are not a fighter here. You are a manager.

Sign two contenders, read the odds, call exactly one order, and let them fight all six matches for you.

You never step into the ring. You spend the whole season in the stands with nothing but a bell. How it goes is half about who you signed and half about the handful of decisions you make before each opening whistle.

Six matches per season. Match 6 is the final. There is no match 7.

Getting In ​

• Interact with the boat at the base dock. Alongside "Boss Rush" there is a second option: Black Market Duck Cup.
• Costs one BossRush Ticket, exactly like a normal BossRush run. It is charged when you confirm on the map selection page, not before.
• No mode-specific item is required, and you do not have to strip your gear.
• Only DEMO Ultimate Challenge for now. The mode needs a map to define a ring, stands, a staging area and an exit, and DEMO is the only one audited so far. The map screen only lists what works, so you cannot pick wrong - there just isn't a choice to make.
• You cannot enter while another mode is running (Standard BossRush, From Scratch, Faction War, Blood Hunt, Fate Echo and Zombie Mode all count).
• If entry is turned away anyway — content not ready, unsuitable venue, a clash with another mode — your ticket comes back, along with the reason.

Getting in does not start a fight. First comes the tryout.

The Tryout: Sign Two, Lose Three ​

Candidates are dealt once per season: five fighters, one of each role — Assault, Ranged, Tank, Sustain, and Finisher. Each card lists the role, the temperament, a quirk, and a rumor about them.

• The display order is fixed. Closing the page and reopening it does not reroll anything, so do not bother trying.
• Sign your starter first, then your relay.
• The three you pass on immediately draw a destination card each:
  • Return Ticket — comes back as the enemy core in match 5
  • Waitlist — may show up in the transfer window after match 2, giving you one more shot at them
  • Torn Up — removed for the rest of the season; nobody gets them

So while you are picking, spend a second on the other question too: which of these three do you least want to meet in match 5?

How a Season Runs ​

Six matches, all on the same rhythm:

Brief → Loadout → Odds → Lock In → Entry → Bell → Report

• A match lasts at most 180 seconds. If you have not won by then, you lose. There is no extra time.
• The opposition escalates every match. The first two cap at two enemies on the field at once; from match 3 the cap is three.
• A transfer window opens after the settlement of match 2 and match 4.
• After match 6, your champion goes into the Hall of Fame.

Transfer Windows ​

Only two all season, and there is no refreshing. You get what you get, and sometimes you get nothing.

• After match 2 — your Waitlist fighter may come knocking.
• After match 4 — a special enemy you just beat may be willing to sign.
• Accepting one bumps your relay. The fighter you dropped is released on the spot and cannot be re-signed this season.
• You can never sell your starter. The only way the relay is promoted is if the starter retires while the relay is still standing.

Loadouts and Reward Kits ​

Loadouts use gear the mode hands out. It has nothing to do with your warehouse and consumes none of your own supplies.

Each fighter carries up to 4 pieces across five slots — armor, helmet, primary weapon, secondary weapon, and melee weapon — one piece per slot.

Win a match and you are offered one to three reward kits. Pick one to unlock it for the rest of the season. How many you are offered depends on how much your stake won that match.

The pre-match page: roster, kits and command ​

The odds page carries an Edit roster / kits / command button, and that one page settles all four pre-match decisions:

• Who starts — pick one of your two contracted fighters to open.
• Who relays — the one who takes over when the starter goes down.
• Rest relay; fight solo — bench the sub for the whole match and win it with your starter alone.
• Kits and command — swap reward kits slot by slot, and lock this match's order.

Go back to the odds page and the odds and public summary are recalculated from the selection you actually made, and only then do you lock the board.

Reading the Board and Betting ​

The enemy plan is frozen before you start building your loadout. What you see on the board is final — nothing you equip makes them swap anyone in — so build straight against it.

The brief discloses their head count range, primary role, entry pace, ring condition, and any known high-threat core. The rest you have to guess at.

Free Scouting: One Look Per Match ​

The bottom of the brief gives you one free scout, once per match. Pick one of four:

• Hidden Quirk — reveals the enemy core's quirk and temperament
• Current Injuries — reveals how many of them are carrying wounds
• Members & Order — reveals how many arrive in each wave (counts only, not who)
• Secondary Gear — reveals the enemy core's extra capability tags

Which one you want depends on how you plan to bet: unsure whether to go big, check injuries; worried one particular core will turn the match, check the quirk. The reveal folds into the public summary, so it moves the odds too — showing that they're wounded shifts the board your way.

Once used, that row shows which one you picked and the buttons are gone.

Where the Odds Come From ​

The odds are a straight conversion of the public score gap, from x1 to x5:

• Gap of 20 or more → x1, heavy favorite
• Gap of 5 to 19 → x2, slight favorite
• Gap of -9 to 4 → x3, even money
• Gap of -24 to -10 → x4, underdog
• Gap of -25 or less → x5, long shot

How much you bet does not move the odds. A small probing bet will not shorten the price.

Virtual Credits ​

You start each season with 6 credits, capped at 30. Each match you may stake 0 to 2, never more than your balance, and staking nothing is always allowed.

• A win pays stake × (1 + odds)
• Every 2 credits of net profit adds one more reward kit candidate that match, up to 3
• A loss deducts the stake

One line worth memorizing: a full 2-credit stake never loses money on a win, at any price. If you want reward kits, do not be shy. Read it the other way and the math still holds: 6 starting credits absorb exactly three full-stake misses.

The Bell: The One Thing You Actually Do ​

You get exactly one active input all match: ring the bell.

• Before the match, lock in one order.
• During the match you may ring once, and the order runs for 6 seconds.
• Ringing does not pause the fight and does not open a menu. The clock keeps running.

Eight common orders: Steady / Press / Center / Spread / Finish / Hold / Guard / All In.

Five more are signature orders, available only while the fighter who owns them is in the ring: Weak Point / Anchor / Last Mag / Together / Hand Off.

A few situations make the bell do nothing, and those do not consume your use — you can ring again once things change: nobody on the field can take the order, the signature order's owner is not in the ring, the order needs the relay fighter to enter first, or the enemy count does not meet its condition. The screen tells you which one it was.

Fighters Get Hurt, and Fighters Retire ​

The two fighters you signed are a resource you can run out of.

• Going down once leaves a fighter injured.
• An injured fighter who enters again and goes down again retires for the season and cannot be used any more.
• An injured fighter who never sets foot in the ring during a match recovers afterwards.

That last line matters: benching an injured fighter genuinely pays off, because they really do heal. Pushing them out for one more match can cost you them permanently. The match report says plainly who was Fully Rested and who Retired for the Season.

If your starter retires, the relay is promoted. If both contracted fighters retire, the season ends right there — even in match 3.

Scars: The Riskier the Win, the More There Is to Keep ​

Win a match at locked odds of x3 or better and the settlement page offers the surviving fighter a scar, at most one per match. Safe boards (x1, x2) offer nothing — scars only grow out of hard fights.

A scar is one permanent change with an upside and a downside welded together, drawn only from those compatible with that fighter's archetype. Two examples:

• Broken Shield Charge — after armor first breaks: sharper sight and turning, but no shooting on the move in that window.
• Bell Dependence — orders hit harder after the bell, and skills land less often before it.

The settlement page gives you three ways to answer:

• Take it — added to that fighter's scar list and live immediately.
• Replace one — the list caps at 3. When it is full the page lists all three so you can swap one out.
• Decline for fame — fame +1 (capped at 99). Fame changes nothing about combat, odds, rewards or transfers; it is just a number on the record.

That "N scars" line in the Hall of Fame is the running total of these decisions you made for them.

Real Stakes (Read This Before You Bet) ​

This is the only place in the whole BossRush mod that touches your real property. That is why the warning line at the top of the entry page cannot be dismissed.

• Entirely optional. Nothing is staked by default. You can play a full six-match season without ever staking an item, and the virtual credit track is unaffected.
• At most 3 items per match.
• On a loss, everything you staked is gone permanently. No partial refunds, no mercy for the one and only copy of a piece of gear.
• On a win, your stake comes back in full, plus extra items of the same quality equal to the raw odds multiplier: x3 pays 3 items, x5 pays 5. The quality matches the highest-quality item you put up.

Real stakes and virtual credits are two parallel bets. Neither converts into the other and neither affects the other.

The Hall of Fame: 32 Seats, and You Can Be Pushed Out ​

Win the sixth match and your champion is inscribed in the Hall of Fame.

• The Hall persists across seasons and holds exactly 32 seats. When the thirty-third arrives, the oldest record is pushed out.
• Each record carries the champion's name, archetype and temperament, signature order, that season's best odds win and best credit win, and how many scars they carried.
• A champion with an anomaly is marked apart in the list.
• The season wrap-up page shows you the current Hall directly, so you can see how many seats are left and who is about to be pushed out.

Being pushed out is not a failure. It is what the rule was always going to do — names not lasting is the normal state of this place.

Questions You Might Have ​

• Can I fight myself? No. You are the manager here, and you stay in the stands the whole way.
• Can I bring my PetNest companions? No. You never enter the ring, so there is nothing for them to follow.
• Are there mutation affixes? No. This mode applies no mutation affixes and fires no in-run random events. What the board says is what walks into the ring.
• Do kills here count toward the Duck King Codex? No. Your fighter landed the blow, not you.
• Can I reroll the candidates? No. Closing and reopening the page changes nothing. Those five are the five.
• What happens after a season? The season closes and your champion is recorded in the Hall of Fame. The Hall keeps only 32 places — the 33rd entry pushes out the oldest one.
• Does a technical failure count as a loss? No. The match restarts from the same brief and no defeat is recorded.
• My season is stuck and won't continue. Interact with the boat and you get a recovery page instead of the usual entry. It can hand your staked items back, and it offers Abandon this season and settle stakes — that closes the stake ledger, clears the stuck season and lets you start a new one. Stakes are returned as they were; the season itself is gone.