New Challenge Rules
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:46 pm
We are proud to announce a complete overhaul of the TBL Challenge rules!
We have always tried to make the Challenges as varied, challenging, and enjoyable as possible, but during the past few Challenges things have perhaps become a bit stale. Over the past eight weeks we have been working hard at bringing the fun and variety back into the Challenges.
We've held our hands up and have admitted that the rules were getting too complicated and were making it difficult for new users to join in. Thus we re-wrote the rules virtually from scratch with an emphasis on making things as simple as possible. By taking this approach, we have cut the rules down by about 20-25%. Hopefully this will make things a lot more straightforward - both for experienced users and new users.
In order to make the Challenges both challenging and fairly realistic, some of the rules we have introduced are quite restrictive. One of our testers, jbsnadb, perfectly summarised what the new rules aim to achieve: "Overall, I am enjoying playing with the limitations. Makes me think more about what I need to do with the team rather than what I could do to the team."
However, we have also introduced some flexibility. For example, whilst the number of UFA acquisitions has been greatly limited, you have a choice of how many UFAs you may bring in by trading this off against the players' reputations. Thus, you may sign several UFAs with a lower reputation or one star player per season. By giving this flexibility, we hope to encourage users to take a variety of approaches and really think hard about how they want to improve their team year on year.
We have also completely removed the salary budget limit as well as the Core and Home Grown rules. We think the removal of these rules will make the Challenges much easier to understand and mean fewer things to monitor (whereas before you had to be very conscious of how many games a Home Grown player played each season). Hopefully this, along with the fewer end of season screenshots required, will make it easier to record your end of season stats.
To help make things easy, we have designed a handy "Cheat Sheet" that you can print off and refer to whilst playing EHM. This sheet contains a summary of the main gameplay rules in a format which we hope you will find easy to understand. You can download the Cheat Sheet here. We also have a new version of the Challenge Stats Recording Sheet which can be downloaded here.
We will announce which team we will take control of for Challenge 13 this coming Wednesday. In the meantime, please ensure you thoroughly read the three rules threads and the Cheat Sheet so that you are familiar with the rules. You can find the three rules threads in the Announcements Box at the top of the Challenge Forum (www.ehmtheblueline.com/challenge).
We would like to thank jbsnadb, rookier, thunderbug, and tksolway for helping to test and develop the rules. Their help, as well as the suggestions made in the Challenge Rules Feedback Thread, were invaluable.
Please use this thread to discuss the rules and ask any questions you may have regarding them.
We have always tried to make the Challenges as varied, challenging, and enjoyable as possible, but during the past few Challenges things have perhaps become a bit stale. Over the past eight weeks we have been working hard at bringing the fun and variety back into the Challenges.
We've held our hands up and have admitted that the rules were getting too complicated and were making it difficult for new users to join in. Thus we re-wrote the rules virtually from scratch with an emphasis on making things as simple as possible. By taking this approach, we have cut the rules down by about 20-25%. Hopefully this will make things a lot more straightforward - both for experienced users and new users.
In order to make the Challenges both challenging and fairly realistic, some of the rules we have introduced are quite restrictive. One of our testers, jbsnadb, perfectly summarised what the new rules aim to achieve: "Overall, I am enjoying playing with the limitations. Makes me think more about what I need to do with the team rather than what I could do to the team."
However, we have also introduced some flexibility. For example, whilst the number of UFA acquisitions has been greatly limited, you have a choice of how many UFAs you may bring in by trading this off against the players' reputations. Thus, you may sign several UFAs with a lower reputation or one star player per season. By giving this flexibility, we hope to encourage users to take a variety of approaches and really think hard about how they want to improve their team year on year.
We have also completely removed the salary budget limit as well as the Core and Home Grown rules. We think the removal of these rules will make the Challenges much easier to understand and mean fewer things to monitor (whereas before you had to be very conscious of how many games a Home Grown player played each season). Hopefully this, along with the fewer end of season screenshots required, will make it easier to record your end of season stats.
To help make things easy, we have designed a handy "Cheat Sheet" that you can print off and refer to whilst playing EHM. This sheet contains a summary of the main gameplay rules in a format which we hope you will find easy to understand. You can download the Cheat Sheet here. We also have a new version of the Challenge Stats Recording Sheet which can be downloaded here.
We will announce which team we will take control of for Challenge 13 this coming Wednesday. In the meantime, please ensure you thoroughly read the three rules threads and the Cheat Sheet so that you are familiar with the rules. You can find the three rules threads in the Announcements Box at the top of the Challenge Forum (www.ehmtheblueline.com/challenge).
We would like to thank jbsnadb, rookier, thunderbug, and tksolway for helping to test and develop the rules. Their help, as well as the suggestions made in the Challenge Rules Feedback Thread, were invaluable.
Please use this thread to discuss the rules and ask any questions you may have regarding them.