The 8 Steel Challenge stages

Steel Challenge is shot on a fixed set of eight stages: 5 to Go, Showdown, Smoke & Hope, Outer Limits, Accelerator, The Pendulum, Speed Option and Roundabout. Each one is five steel plates shot in timed strings, and seven of the eight score your best four strings of five, with Outer Limits scoring your best three of four. Because every stage at every match is drawn from those same eight, a time you post on Smoke & Hope is directly comparable with anyone else’s, anywhere.

By Michael Minik. Sources are linked at the foot of this page if you want to check them yourself.

Each stage’s SCSA code, its Appendix B entry, how many of its strings count, and whether it carries rules of its own. The table scrolls sideways on a narrow screen to reach the rules-of-its-own column.

Stage names, codes and rulebook references from SCSA Rules, Appendix B. The string counts are rule 9.1.2.

How every Steel Challenge stage is built

Six things are true of all eight, and none of them changes from stage to stage:

• Five plates. Four standard plates and a fifth designated the stop plate, which is the one that ends the string (9.1.1).
• Every standard plate has to be hit at least once before the stop plate (9.1.1).
• You may fire as many rounds as you like in a string — there is no round limit and no reload requirement (9.1.1).
• You start standing inside a shooting box (8.2.1). Every box on the range is 3′ × 3′ except Outer Limits, which uses 4′ × 4′ (2.2).
• No string can score worse than 30 seconds, however many misses or penalties it collected (9.2, 9.2.1).
• The clock stops on your last shot. The rulebook is blunt about it — “The time stops with the last shot fired” — and the timer is not backed up for extra hits on the stop plate or for anything fired after it (9.2.2). A make-up shot you take after the stopper has already gone down lengthens your time rather than being ignored.

What happens to those string times afterwards — the dropped string, the +3 second miss, the procedural penalties — is how Steel Challenge scoring works.

How the eight stages differ

Only four of the eight stages carry rules of their own: Showdown, Outer Limits, The Pendulum and Speed Option. The other four are shot under the standard rules above and differ only in how the plates are laid out.

Showdown — two shooting boxes

Showdown is one of only two stages shot from more than one box. It uses two 3′ × 3′ boxes, and you shoot three strings from one and two from the other (2.2). The order is yours: “It is acceptable to shoot in the 2-2-1 shooting order if the competitor so chooses; however, 3/2 or 2/3 are acceptable sequences as well” (8.2.4). You never move during a string. Fire a fourth string from the same box and the Range Officer will require you to move and reshoot every string fired from the wrong box — those strings do not count, only the reshoot does (8.2.4). In the rimfire and PCC matches, Showdown gets an aiming point in front of each box rather than one (8.2.3).

Outer Limits — three boxes, and movement on the clock

Outer Limits is the only stage that moves you while the timer is running, and the only one shot as four strings rather than five — so your best three count instead of your best four (9.1.2). It uses three 4′ × 4′ boxes, set 6′ apart, and you use two of the three depending on whether you are right- or left-handed (2.2). The rulebook describes the run: you start in your weak-side box and engage the 20- and 35-yard plates on the weak side of the centre line, “move to the middle shooting box, while on the clock, and engage the remaining two plates and stop plate” (2.2). Like Showdown, it gets an aiming point in front of each box in rimfire and PCC (8.2.3).

The Pendulum — two targets set higher

The Pendulum is the only stage whose targets are not all at the standard height. Everywhere else, round targets stand 5′ to the top as seen from the box and rectangles 5′6″; the Pendulum has two round targets set at 6′ (2.1).

Speed Option — the other long stage

Speed Option carries no rule about how it is shot. It is here because it is one of only two stages a Level II match is permitted to leave out, and for the same reason as Outer Limits: the distance it needs (Appendix A1, below).

5 to Go, Smoke & Hope, Accelerator and Roundabout

These four carry no stage-specific rules at all. Everything in the section above applies to them unchanged, and the only thing separating them from one another is the plate layout. The layouts are the diagrams in Appendix B of the rulebook, which are USPSA’s own drawings — see them at the source.

Does every match shoot all eight stages?

No, and the rulebook says exactly which two may be dropped and why: “Level II matches may elect to run only 6 of the 8 Steel Challenge stages, and may omit ONLY Outer Limits and Speed Option, due to distance limitations.” A Level III match — regional or national — “must run all 8 Steel Challenge stages” (Appendix A1). Both of those requirements are written for Level II and above; a local club match is Level I.

Where a stage time goes

Each stage has a published peak time for each division, and your classification percentage is the total of the peak times for the stages you have shot divided by the total of your own times on those same stages. Outer Limits carries the longest peak time in every one of the sixteen classification divisions, and the three shortest always belong to Smoke & Hope, Showdown and Roundabout — the actual order among those three changes from division to division.

The full table, all 128 figures, and the arithmetic run for you: Steel Challenge classification calculator.

Where this came from

Every fact and every quotation on this page was read directly in the rulebook, not taken from a summary.

• The stage names, codes and rulebook references — Appendix B, Stage Diagrams, B.1 to B.8.
• How a stage is built and scored — rules 9.1.1 and 9.1.2 (plates, the stop plate, rounds fired, best 4 of 5 and Outer Limits’ best 3 of 4) and 9.2, 9.2.1 and 9.2.2 (the 30-second ceiling and the time stopping on the last shot).
• Shooting boxes, Showdown and Outer Limits — rule 2.2 (box sizes, the multi-box stages, the Outer Limits run) and 8.2.1, 8.2.3 and 8.2.4 (start position, aiming points, the Showdown string order and the reshoot).
• Target heights and the Pendulum — rule 2.1.
• Which stages a match must run — Appendix A1, Match Levels.

Checked against the SCSA Rules, edition 2026-03, on 29 July 2026. The rulebook is republished at scsa.org/rules, and the online edition is at rules.uspsa.org/scsa. Rules change; if something here no longer matches the rulebook you are holding, the box below comes to me.

Related

• How Steel Challenge scoring works
• Steel Challenge classification calculator
• All guides

More guides: Steel Challenge scoring · IDPA scoring · What is hit factor? · Your first USPSA match