Talk Fantasy Football

Some friends and I are thinking about forming a new League. We would like to have a bit more structure than the "open" one in the LRB.

Particularly, we would like a more set format so that teams develope at a roughly similar rate. We are also adults (average age is certainly 40ish at least) and come from a background of historical miniatures, so we will expect all teams to be painted -- "if it isn't painted, it's too sick to play".

We will be using the LRB without Star Players or Wizards and no experimental teams. Starting teams will have the standard $1,000,000.

What I'd like advice on is how many games should be in the Season? Also how people suggest handling the Championship Tourney at Season's end? And most especially, how to handle the start of the following season -- how do you help balance new teams joining the League?

All advice will be appreciated. (By the way, we are all relatively new to BB and there is an "open style League" at a local store from which we can probably recruit). And before anyone asks, we are in Monterey, California.

How many regular players will you have, and can they be expected to play to a schudule (within reason)?

This are questions you need to answer before you decide if you want an open or league format. It's great to have a 8 game season with fixture list all planned out, but if 1 player can't make it or weeks on end it sends it al to buggery.

Case in point. We had (at the time) 8 players in our club, so we divided it at random into 2 divisions of 4. The idea was to play everyone in your division once (3 games), everyone in the opposite division (4 games) ten everyone in your division again (3 games), for a total of 10 games. Then, for the finals, #1 in div.A would play #2 in div.B, and vise versa, with the winners playing the final, and losers playing the 3/4th play-off. Meanwhile the 3rd in A would play the 4th in B, with the losers playing for the wooden spoon and the winners for 5/6th spot.

This meant every team would play a total of 12 games. We sat down and worked out a weekly fixture list. It didn't even last a week. The 12 week season lasted 20 weeks! due to no-shows etc.

When (if?) the rest of the group decide to play BB again, we wil have an open format, just for this reason.

The ECBBL main competition plays a regular schedule - you have fixed games decided at the beginning of the season. However you can play them in pretty much any order so there is no fixed dates to play certain people.

Then you reckon each player will miss ~1/4 games - giving you a season 25% longer than the number of games each has to play.

The only real guidelines are don't play someone twice in succession and if you have to play people twice, try to play them all before you play one twice. These are guidelines though, not hard and fast rules. At the end of the season you will need to do a bit of organising to ensure a climatic finish.

I would say that this only works with a fairly dedicated group. If your turn-up rate is less than 75% you will struggle to have a "fixed" format and should adopt an Open format.

Thank you both. I am aware of "no-showism" (after all, I've been gaming for 25 years). Your points are valid.

But, again, I'm more concerned at the moment with how to integrate new teams in a second season with as little disruption and inequity as possible.

And, yes, I know that it seems premature to be thinking about Season Two before even starting the first season; but thinking ahead often forstalls problems before they arrive.

So, please, address if you will the latter point.

Well the ECBBL runs multiple seasons. The premiership is the main competition. Coaches who join too late for the start of the season can join the Conference where some experimental teams & rules are allowed. The conference plays on a completely open format - just play whoever is available. That means teams in the conference normally get a few games in to let them join the main league.

Other options are a Draft (basically free skills), more money or some combination of the two. TR 100 will get thrashed by TR 150+ teams so you need something to balance it out.

Please note: I'm not familiar with the English Football System ("soccer" to those of us in America).

I've read a number of posts that refer to a "Premiere" Division and other Divisions and teams moving up and down, etc. These posts simply say that it is similar to the way English Football (soccer) operates. Can someone please explain this so that I can understand the reference -- and how it works?

Thank you in advance.

Most football leagues operate a system of promotion and relegation. Teams that finish bottom (or bottom 3 etc) get relegated into the division below them while teams who finish top get promoted. Obviously there is no promotion from the top division.

Further to Ian's note -

The top division (Premier) is a better standard - ie has international players - the divisions below are weaker and get weaker as you go down.

To put this in a BB perspective, the premier will have more experienced teams - ie a higher level of TR.


A lower division can be used for new teams to play each other to gain experience - A rookie team will likely suffer big time against an experienced team unless, they have very fortunate Handicap rolls (eg Virus and the experienced team has lots of players wiht niggles). This way the inexperienced team will learn some skills before they take on a more advanced side.


Thus - you could have a promotion and relegation league with the best one or 2 sides going up form the lower league and a similar number going down from the higher league.

Or you could expand the top league by all the lower league teams once they have completed their own season - if you go this way the lower league could then be a new set of rookie teams.


Dave

Our league of 12 coaches has a reliable system in with scheduled games. To make it work, everyone needs contact numbers, a place to play and a schedule around 8 games or less. Anything over that tends to get bogged down.

The "contact numbers" is a good thought that I'd had (and then forgotten). Thank you.

You say that you have 12 teams but that each only plays 8 games (thus not playing 3 opponents). What criteria is used for selecting the particular opponents? Also, how much time do you give them to get the games played? One a week or what?

We do a scheduling matrix and then randomly drop in the teams. We generally schedule a game a week, but we also all run two minor league teams so we will have something to do when our major leagues are behind. Minor leagues can only play 1/2 as many games as the majors, but it's a good way to develop a backup team or bring in a new member slowly.

I'd suggest that you start with a "Division" system and a very short 4 or 5 game regular season for your first tournament in order to make sure your players like the scheduled format.

We've got about 12 players, of which 11 are playing in the major leagues right now. I think we're up to 35 total teams in our league, with some teams having played as many as 30 games and others looking for their first one. The team with the highest TR in our league is an Orc team at 239, but they just lost to an Amazon team with a 124 rating. I'd be happy to send you our house rules through PM, if you're interested.

How to add new teams to the mix will depend largely on how many games u end up playing every season, which should depend on how many teams u have. A good system should be to give new teams an extra "incentive" fund, the amount would vary with the tr average of the league, this fund could either be added as money to a starting roster or divided by 10000 (just like it is in the tr calculation) for 5 spp's on the team. The fund should be enough to bring the starting teams tr to just under the middle tr in the league already.

One possibility that I don't see mentioned (though I could just be being blind) is splitting the 12 coaches into two conferences of six teams. In each conference, each team plays each of the other teams once (for a total of five matches each). The top two teams from each conference qualify for the championship semi-finals.

If you wanted, the eight teams that don't qualify for the semi-finals could qualify for a knockout competition (which would work really well with 8 teams).

Martyn