Going Up

Well a surprisingly good season in Battrick has come to an end, with 2 first places and a second place, in a season where I feared at least one relegation.

Managed to clinch FC promotion with a game to spare. It was only at near the half-way point of the season that I figured that I had a chance at success, and from then on fielded a near full strength side. Almost blew it straight off as for one game I forgot to set orders and my default side, which was filled with useless players, took the field. This was my only FC loss for the season.

Bats Abroad

The new Battrick season is upon us, and it's all change in my One Day league with three new teams, two promoted and one demoted. The camper at the top of our league was neatly disposed of by the team that finished second, but not by beating him but by deliberately losing so badly as to force the offending team into the final automatic promotion spot available for the next level.

Gone Batty

News from the Battrick site... And not an April Fools joke this time either.

Easy as One, Two, Six

The Battrick season has once more come to an end, with a better than expected final standings.

Managed to bounce back and earn promotion in the First Class after being demoted down to Div VIII last season. This was despite messing up my team selection on a couple of occasions. First using my outdated default team, who scraped an unlikely draw with my nearest rival, and then forgetting to set a lower declaration point against another team, the match petering out to a draw. Still managed to go the season undefeated, 8 wins, 2 draws.

Three Thirds

Another Battrick season comes to a close and somehow I've managed to finish all three leagues in 3rd place despite not even having an average team in all three.

First Class
In the final First Class match of the season I managed to grab the points needed to keep third place despite an heavy loss to one of the pre-season favourites who managed to lose their first three matches but still bounced back to take second.

This was the first season of the new look FC leagues and I think the new shorter season and re-alignment of the leagues are a big success. Things are now much more even between the teams but without the massive relegation trapdoor that could previously end an FC season before it even starts.

One Day
The One Day league was also a shock as I somehow avoided the relegation dogfight to finish a comfortable third in my division 4 league, and winning 9 out of 14 games along the way. The two auto-relegation spots had long been decided, but the playoff spots went down to the wire with three teams entering the final round on the same points. Our camping friend is again champion but this time in an auto-promote spot and so will be leaving my league. If the guys in the forums have got things right with the team coming down from division 3 then it looks like I'm going to be facing an old rival next season, one I competed with but always lost too when in division 5.

20-20
I think most of the people were throwing matches in the 20-20 league as that could be the only explanation for me finishing so highly against what were mostly better teams despite me not really trying. Despite it's real life success 20-20 does seem to be the unwanted relative of the other leagues. This is despite of the new international league structure that saw me face off against a number of suposedly quality Aussie sides.

Also of note is that John's team has finally bitten the dust after he got feed up with the game. That just leaves Ray and me as the remains of the four bar-flies who joined up within a couple of months of each other at the start of 06.
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Seasons End

The Battrick cricket season has finally come to an end and it has been a tough one. Managed to finish 6th in the One-day League and 5th in the First Class. Got through to the K.O. stages of the 20-20 but went out in the 2nd round.

I managed to survive the relegation playoff from division 4 in the one-day league. The other team had decided to throw the game, but I would of been favourite to win anyway (unless I had decided to throw the match as well! You do see some silly matches where both teams are desperately trying to lose.)

The OD league leader failed in his promotion playoff and it was my fault that he had to play that match in the first place. I had defeated him the previous week, in the final match of the regular season. This suprise upset denied him an automatic promotion slot on run rate! He must hate me, as his biggest rival for the title in the upcoming season has now strengthened his own team greatly. Once again I'll be happy to survive automatic relegation next season.

It's all change in the other competitions as there has been a complete reshuffle of the First Class leagues, and new 20-20 international leagues to replace the 20-20 Knockout Cups. Both of the new divisions that I am in are difficult ones. At least the relegation trap-door isn't as big in the FC as it use to be (8 in league, 4 down! is now league of 6 and 2 down.)
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End of Season

This week was the end of the Battrick regular season, the First Class and One-Day seasons are now over.

Some how I've managed to get 4th place in the one day league despite predicting a relegation fight at the start of the season, and have all managed to get promoted in First Class, moving from division 5 up to 4. Playing at Div 4 level in both leagues is going to make things hard next season.

Unfortunately it looks like we have got a camper in my OD division as, despite dominating the division, he has thrown the last few games to ensure that he does not auto-promote and instead gets a throwable playoff match. I'm sort of hoping some quality teams come into into the division next season just to make life hard for him.

There is only the knockout stages of the 20-20 cup to play for and most people rate it as as 'Mickey Mouse' cup anyway. And possibly detrimental to the teams well being in the following season due to the fitness hits, which can get large as its almost mandatory to use the 'Go For It' setting. I've managed to win the first couple of games in the KO but will go out next round, and I'm not sad to see the back of it.

Half Term Report

We at the half way point of the current Battrick season with the weeks break in both One-Day and First-Class leagues.

20-20 qualifying is in full swing and I should be able to top my group but may throw one of the games to conserve my players fitness for the second half of the season. I should still be able to qualify safely in 2nd place but it all depends on how other results pan out, I would want to risk falling down to 3rd. Given the lower level of a number of teams, I'll be playing my 2nd XI for a few games anyway.

Doing a lot better than expected in the One-Day league, my original target was to win 4 games so as to avoid automatic demotion from Division 4 and force a play-off. As it now stands I've got five wins at the halfway point! One win was lucky and another due to a mistake by my opponent in setting his team, but the morale boost should help in get the three further wins I need to secure my position.

First Class is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, despite only playing in Division 5. Currently leading the league but not convincingly. Re-promotion to Div 4 is by no means certain and the way things are scheduled will probably go down to the final game of the season.

Online Games I play

Other than the occasional game of Day of Defeat (a WW2 shoot'em up) I not a big player of online games and games such as WoW, Eve and LoTR online have never really appealed to me.

I prefer more primitive games that may not be nice lookers but do require a bit of thought. The current batch that I'm playing includes...

Battrick - Cricket Management game.

Signed up a couple of months after my friends did and have managed to put together a semi-respectable team.

Urban Dead - a game of zombies vs survivors in the fictional city of Malton.

Two characters in this game, one Human and one Zed. The zed was put on hold will I was playing in the Monroeville tie in for Romeros latest Zombie flick.

Popmundo - the music career game (formally known as Popomundo)

Read about the existence of the game on Battrick so decided to give it a go. Currently running a Blues Musician who's recently broke into the Blues top 200 rankings after a year playing the game. Strangely enough this also contains elements of Zombie hunting.


These games all have one thing in common and its the thing that makes me more likely to play this type of game than other more advanced online games. Its the fact that there is a limit to what you can do in in each game, there's only a minor advantage in spending hours on each game rather than minutes. And you can leave them for days on end without really damaging your position in the game world. They are also playable free of charge, but with optional payment to support the games you can get additional tools that make playing easier but still maintain the level playing field for payers and non-payers alike. No power ups involved.

I've recently finished a game of Travian, a game which does eat up more time than you would expect, and to get the most from this you do need to have a 'sitter' to enable for 24\7 coverage on your account else you can end up logging in and finding yourself destroyed. There's also the fact that the game has victory conditions, and eventually all your hours of work basically amount to nothing as the world resets and a new crowd of players enter. It has also started to feature a pay option, but this does directly effect game play - the ones who spend most get the advantage.

Further back in the past I was a player of the text based MUD Avalon RPG. Despite playing it regularly for a number of years I eventually quit as the background world, despite being remarkably well detailed was static, overall unchanging, even the in game politics didn't really allow for change. Basically all four cities just took turns in conquering each other, same with the Guilds. The 'modern' history could never match up with the background story and the world just became boring.