Talk Fantasy Football

This is just something that popped into my head today - I fully expect it to be shot down, as I'm sure I've missed something fundamental (not sleeping well), but here goes.


As a bonus (either per game or at the end) or as a tiebreaker, after each game a team is given (or subtracted) a number of points based on the differences in the tiers of the team.

As an example, assume 4 tiers (like the ARBBL Pick'n'Mix), and a flat 50/25/0 point scoring system. The numbers in the examples aren't important, just the general principle.

Two Wood Elf teams (tier1), one facing a Dwarf team (tier 1), one facing a halfling team (tier 4).
The one facing the drawfs has a bonus of 0 (1-1), whilst the one facing the halfling has a bonus of -3 (1-4)

Human teams (tier2) facing the same dwarfs and halflings would have bonuses of +1 (2-1) and -2 (2-4)

And finally, 2 goblin teams (tier 4) facing the same dwarfs and halfings would have bonues of +3 (4-1) and 0 (4-4).


This could be used in 3 ways:
1. A bonus added each game (and swiss from there)
2. A bonus totalled at the end of the tournament
3. Used as a tiebreaker

General idea is that the harder (or easier) games you have, the bigger the reward (or penalty). Obviously, if using this system you'd remove any leg-ups for lower tier teams.

Right, that's the outline - what glaring problem have I missed? Flame away.

Nippy tried something similar with his last Flame Bowl. The rulespack is still live if you want to check it out.

I managed to come second with High Elves, and the Swim Team won with Delves, Helves, Chaos and Flings.

So definitely opened up the tiers.

It depends how aggressive you want to be in terms of encouraging diversity.

I won Flamebowl III (the year of candles) with Underworld that went 3/3/0. This was somewhat suspect because two other coaches went 5/1/0 with tier 2 races (orcs and chaos dwarfs.... Flamebowl has quite a wide range of tiers). In fairness I held both coaches to a draw but it is a little difficult to justify 3/3/0 as a winning scoreline in that context - I nabbed victory purely on the basis of bonus points.

Personally I'm a big fan of points bonuses and overall I think I would prefer a points bonus as a reward for achieving with a disadvantaged team rather than getting extra money/skills to try and un-disadvantage the team. However, there are some considerations:

- mixing bonus points and bonus skills is risky (mostly because it is easy to go too far)
- run the numbers and work out just how much reward you are giving away
- depending on the level of reward you should probably apply the bonus points when calculating the draw each round (so a 6/0/0 wood elf player at least gets to play against the 4/1/2 goblin player that is really leading the tournament)
- don't apply the bonus points when calculating the draw for rounds 1-2 or else you will end up with lots of people drawn against their own tier