Talk Fantasy Football

Most teams in my league are TR260+ and all vicious gits it is hard for anyone new to enter, even with the handicap/AF rules. Can anyone suggest some measures to allow an easier start? I thought of allowing an increased starting treasury and some free SPP roles, but I am unsure how generous to be.

Dunno what kind of system your league runs, whether you're using 4th, OSPA, IGMEOY etc; but is is possible to ask some of your coaches to run second teams? Pairing newer teams against each other should allow them to develop and close the gap.
We have 16 teams at present, and we intend to add 4 rookie teams next season. Longfang and I decided that the best way is to run two divisions of 10 based on TR. I'm guessing that the cut will be around 230-240, but at least the rookies should play a fairly high % of games against similarly rated teams (and the Gobbos!), and avoid the teams getting to around 300. Other than that, all I can suggest is using the DZ SP cards rather than the 4th ed. tables, they're much stronger and therefore help the handicap a lot.
Incidently, it helps if we know which rules you're using when trying to advise!

Sorry, 4ED, AF, OSPA (but not IGMEOY, we felt it took some of the fun out of the game, we have looked at FORRSS but no decision yet.) We have tried ,where possible, to replace 3ED stars with 4ED big guys/home grown stars, my favourite being one of my Witch Elves

Galadriel Mourning 7,4,5,8 Block,Dodge,Jump Up,Leap,Pass Block,Frenzy,NervesofSteel 45 Touch downs and still crueler than a tax hike in winter.

I hate doing this .... but when the new 4th edition rules are finally released, you should find that if you retroactively apply the new rules to existing teams and then use them going forward that they will go a long way to balancing out your league.

The new system goes a long way to encouraging coaches to eventually retire their superstars or to reach a point where its just very difficult for the team to advance unless they are only playing teams of like TR.

The BBRC should be release the new rules soon and then I'll talk at length with anyone who wants to ask how they work. My league played over 200 games using the new system with some teams playing 18 games, so I'm confident that they work IF you use all the rules together ... delete one piece and I'm not so sure.

Anyway, an answer to your question should be coming sometime this month.

sounds good, to be honest it wil be good to get something definitive, I feel swamped sometimes with all the rules(+variants) you can choose from.

you shouldn't be sorry to advise in this manner, as it is only positive and can only help the coaches in my league to become better players. Too much reliance on one way of doing things can kill a league, the dangers of becoming "Mr One Play".

much appreciated

The reason that I apologized is that I have a 90% certain knowledge of what is coming and I cannot say more about it when people ask questions.

I cannot go into details without break the vow of silence, but at the same time I really dislike telling someone ... just wait the answers are coming.

The other problem is that not everything that my league tested is going to be made official this year, some of it was going to be tested more and finalized for October 2002. So if I come out and say ... HEY, this is fixed and the answer is ... and then its not part of the official 4th edition release then that would not be good either .....

Ah well, I've emailed the BBRC and asked them to hurry with the release as I'm pretty sure that they have all the data from the 3 major playtest leagues by now.

Cool, thankyou oh venerable storm giant. Perhaps we could offer them cash if they will release it early.

What about a two division league.
The first one for the big boss.
The second one for newbies.
After a year, two teams change their divisions

Look at a rule of retirement( to downgrade the team with old players).
For example, after a season, for each player who have at least a niggling injury roll a dice, if the score is equal or less than the number of niggling injuries. He retires of the team, go to an Lustrian beach and a lot of cheerleaders(8-o)

we will be running a short 2 tier system next season with newbie teams joing the main league after about 6 games.

That should work quite well.

Can you explain it more clearly please

still working out all the details, we are not sure if we are going to run it in a similar way to DW and LF.

ok, i ll wait then.

They run an amalgamated rules league in A'dam...

They use the ageing rules and handicap table from 2K1 RR, but still allow bonus MVPs for different TRs. This serves as an incentive to play the bigger teams and also helps to build your team up more quickly!

PS It's not my league, OK, I just play by their rules, so if you don't like the rules, don't tell me! (Tell Lucy... )