Middle Earth Fantasy Football World Cup

[Sleepy Ranger]

All the teams have a real-life counterpart behind them. The reason they've not been given away is to maintain the aura of the contest. Though I reckon when screen-shots start going up you'll probably start figuring it out yourself. As for now all we can reveal is that the teams have been assigned based on strength of the area and to an extent, their fan support. The more central characters will be given to priority for the best players on their respective teams.

Just as an example,
Were Angband to be Argentina. Melkor would be Crespo.

Think along those lines and it'll clear it up for you.

[Nogrod]

Like I thought it would be...

I'm not competitive in this. Indeed I think this is just pure fun for an occasional football fan like me. But just as a matter of principle, isn't there a minor problem with you and Arcticstorm taking part in this as you will know exactly which team is which and who will be who?

To be sure, I'm not wishing you to reveal the teams or the players as that would mean that we all players here would have the tools to start working with our choises to make educated guesses about the relative chances of certain players' success - and that's the last thing I want as I think this should be fun played with the left hand and not something I'd need to study and work with.

But you should try these "team-editor" -things one day. It's a bit of work but it's fun also. We used to have something like 20+ teams with my Fifa 03 (04?) together with Lommy and her sis. There were the teams of the ancient Greek philosophers and the German philosophers of the 19th and 20th century (following the lead from Monty Python), there was the cartoon team Comix (characters from Asterix, Tintin etc.), the sci-fi team (characters from Iain M. Banks, Star Wars, Star Trek etc.), Tolkien goodies team and a baddies team (that's why I will cling to the Witch King as he was the top-scorer in that team of ours ), a team of RL dictators (Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Stalin... their playing suits were green with tints of red and gold like military style), a team Enlightenment (from Franklin to Robespierre), Corpus Christi for medieval theologians and a team for 15th-16th century humanists (Montaigne, Ficino... funnily including Savonarola!), there were Hollywood stars and Finnish national cultural heroes, there was a team of Lommy's an her sis' roleplay characters and a team of our shared fantasy-characters with whom we make Olympic-games (in things like archery, drinking, writing poems, Ms./Mr. competition, card-playing, composing, drawing/painting, favourite song judgement, the weakest link etc...) and whatever...

And we actually built those teams from scratch making every player with the looks and the stats from nothing just trying to balance the overall level of all teams to be relatively competent with each other. That was a lot of fun - and playing threesome with these teams was just great.

Sadly we lost them all when I had to upgrade my computer as the earlier one broke off...

[Volo]

Originally Posted by Sleepy Ranger

...their fan support.

You mean Niggle's Parish will be the strongest team around?

[Sleepy Ranger]

As nice as it would be to make all the teams that would bring about two problems. The first in the game I'm using it costs game money to make players, I wouldn't have near enough for the required number of players. Second, there's only enough room for about 15 teams. So again, it wouldn't really permit a World Cup.

Mind you, we have selected only the stronges of the teams in the game. So everyone should have a decent shout at doing something.

[the phantom]

Can we please run 3-4-3 since Arnor is doing it in the tournament? I was trying to put together a team and my 3-4-3 team is the only one I really like.

[Sleepy Ranger]

After talking it over with Arciticstorm we've decided to make 3-4-3 a legal formation. To give you time for any changes we'll postpone the tournaments beginning to the 10th, so you have ONE day more to make any changes before the trade system kicks in.

[Glirdan]

Okay, I think I've finally picked my team.....

GK:
THEODEN (Rohan)

DF:
GLIRDAN (Barrow-Downs)
GLORFINDEL (Rivendell)
CELEBORN (Lothlorien)
EOWYN (Rohan)

MF:
TURGON (Gondolin)
SAM (Shire)
DAERON (Doriath)

FW:
SLEEPY RANGER (Barrow-Downs)
THE SAUCEPAN-MAN (Barrow-Downs)
TREEBEARD (Fangorn)

[The Saucepan Man]

Hmm, I'm not so sure that it is a good idea to allow the 3-4-3 formation in a fantasy football competition.

As far as I am aware, it is a very rare formation in real life as it can leave teams very vulnerable at the back. It is an option available only to very skilfull teams, and is uncommon even then. Yet, in the fantasy game, it is the only sensible option, as it minimises the prospects of gaining negative points (from defenders), while maximising the prospects of gaining positive points (From midfielders and forwards). Also, the 3-4-3 formation requires defensive midfielders in reality, whereas defensive midfielders are rarely selected in fantasy football games.

Making the 3-4-3 formation available in the fantasy football competition means that everyone (if they have any sense) will have the same formation, reduces the impact of defenders on the competition (thus lessening the skill involved in selecting them) and does not really reflect 'real life' (as it is the only sensible choice for fantasy football, but rare in the real world).

Accordingly, I would recommend retaining the prohibition on the 3-4-3 formation.

If, however, it is to be allowed, then my team will (obviously) change to that formation, and be reconfigured as follows:

[DELETED, as no longer required]