Initially I had six players signed up including myself. We lost one player early on because she decided the game just wasn't for her. Due to that, I decided to play an additional team so that the Corporation humans wouldn't go unrepresented and we would have an even number, so as not to leave one team with a bye each round.
One of our players still needs to pay his league fees, and another isn't available every Sunday but otherwise things seem to be proceeding fairly well. If there's enough interest in running another league I will likely have to stipulate that players should be willing and able to play on league days. Of course life will get in the way occasionally, but that should be the exception rather than the norm.
A few of the teams have played additional exhibition games as per the rules and those have been helpful in acquiring additional cash and experience, especially if the team is coming off of a particularly nasty defeat in a league match. Now that the second round of play has closed our standings are as follows:
| Team Name | Value | League Points | Games Played | Wins | Losses |
| Brett's Bruisers | 157 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Avion Yellowhawks | 116 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Funky Fathers | 111 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Royal Eternian Rams | 111 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Snake Mountain Smashers | 106 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Seb's Veer-myn | 83 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
With the challenge system in place I do see the possibility that teams won't be required to play each other team, which isn't exactly ideal. It works out nicely in that players can modify their challenges to suit so that they can play their league match right away, but can lead to some repeat match ups and less variety. With a small league like this it might have simply made more sense to create pre-set pairings instead so that everyone played against each other team once.
However, the benefits to the challenge system does become apparent when you're dealing with large gaps in the team values. For example having the Veer-myn play against the Bruisers using the above examples could be disastrous, unless the Underdog bonus were spent acquiring both MVPs and free agents, and plenty of them. In fact, with the pairings set for Round 3, a few of the match-ups will indeed provide large amounts of underdog cash. That's going to provide some interesting drama.
Round 3 Pairings
- Veer-myn vs. Yellowhawks: 33mc underdog bonus to Veer-myn
- Smashers vs. Funky Fathers: 5mc underdog bonus to Smashers
- Rams vs. Bruisers: 46mc underdog bonus ro Rams
With the high amounts of underdog cash going out to the Veer-myn and Rams it's likely that they'll each end up with one of the available MVPs as well as having monies to spend on free agents. Additionally, it is possible that the prices for the MVPs will be driven up high enough that teams won't be able to afford them at the start of round 4. At this point of course, it's entirely speculation.
The final thought I have at this point is how to handle the championship match. I don't know that it makes sense to just pair off the two teams with the highest values. The options I am considering are:
- highest value vs. second highest value
- highest value vs. most wins
- highest value vs. best win percentage
- highest value vs. most league points
- best win percentage vs. second best win percentage
- most league points vs. second most league points
- most wins vs. second most wins
In retrospect I should have chosen this prior to starting the league, but I didn't realize that I would have so many different possibilities. I'd like to choose something before round 3 begins, so that players have three more league matches (plus any exhibition ones they wish to play) before the championship match.
What do you feel would be the most fair way of choosing the two finalists for the first Trilogy Cup?
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