Battrick

Newbie Guide

So you have finally received your team in Battrick and are totally confused on what you need to do?

Well here is a short guide that will hopefully help you along your way during the first few weeks.

Any comments or suggestions email: battrickguide@googlemail.com

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1.	The 6 Important Things To Consider
2.	Fixtures
3.	Squad
3.1	Bowlers Types
4.	Pitch Types
5.	Backroom Staff
6.	Setting Your Squad
7.	Financial Update
8.	Training
9.	Youth Squad
10.	Newbies Guide to Buying Players
11.	Update Log

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1. The 6 Important Things To Consider
Once you have received your team you are no doubt eagar to get going, but they are various points that should be considered before you start so that your battrick career isn´t a short one. It is obviously important to read and understand the official rules of the game as set out on battrick under "Help" and then "Rules". Once that is out of the way, you should carefullly look at the team that you have ended up with - most of the time the team won´t be very good but Rome wasn´t build in a day. This guide will help you with the issues that are not explained in the official rules, and help you along in the first few weeks.

Things to do:

- Sort out the players that you have, any under mediocre properly won´t be worth keeping, firing them is the easiest way of saving money on their wages.

- Decide which players are going to be in your first team, you will need:

Wicket Keeper	*1
Bowlers	*5
Batsmen	*5

- You will then have to sort out your training sessions, more details can be found in section 8 below.

- Sort out the investment in your youth squad, this is one of the most vital areas of Battrick and need to be dealt with straight away - more detailed explaination you will need to read section 9 below.

- Buy some young (17yrs-19yrs) trainee players to use in your training sessions. It is vital here to make the right decisions when purchasing these players as decisions here will benefit you in seasions to come. Read the "Newbies Guide to Buying Players" in section 10 below, for a detailed run through of the points that you will need to consider.

- Sort out the "Background Staff", which is done from "Club" then "Club Info" - you will then be able to hire/fire the staff that you require. Read section 5 of a clear and easy to follow guide to the number of staff and the type that you will require.

and here are TWO points that you SHOULDN´T do:

- Don´t go out and waste all your money within the first few hours, you WILL regret it in the long run. You will need money in the first few months, as you will not be able to break even for a number of months (if not longer) - therefore you will have to be sensible with the outgoings over the first few days.

- Don´t increase your stadium until you have found out what types of crowds you will get, there is no point in increasing your stadium at a huge cost (costing more per week in maintance also) when you are unable to fill the current one.

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2. Fixtures
There are two games per week, one on a Friday (your league game) and one on a Sunday (which is either a cup game or when you get knocked out of the cup its your weekly friendly).

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3. Squad
This is obviously where you will find your players, due to there not being injuries this season (season 2) it would be useful in the beginning to keep the squad as small as possible. You need 11 per game, but it won´t let you go below 14 member squads. Personally I would keep it to the low number thus saving you wages.

Each player is given a rating called a "Battrick Rating", this rating is made up of the players skills and gives you an idea on whether the player is a good one or not - the higher the battrick rating the better the player should be (in theory at least). The player has a rating for each of the skills (Stamina, Wicket Keeping, Batting, Concentration, Bowling, Consistency and Fielding) ranging from "useless" (being the worst) to "elite" (being the best).

mediocre

It is also important when first examining your squad it is probably best to fire/sell any players with less than mediocre in batting, bowling or wicket keeping, unless they are young and/or have good second stats.

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3.1 Bowlers Types

There are obviously various types of Bowlers available, if you aren´t a cricket fan you might not know what the particular types of Bowlers there are. We have tried below to set out the different type and explained how these should relate to Battrick.

RF = Right handed Fast pace bowler
RFM = Right handed Fast Medium pace bowler
RMF = Right handed Medium Fast pace bowler
RM = Right handed Medium pace bowler
RH Spin = Right Handed spin bowler

L = Left handed

RF (Right handed Fast) or LF (Left handed Fast)
Fast bowlers are best used opening the bowling when the ball is still hard. It'll give them that extra bounce and movement off the seam (especially on Green, Cracked or Uneven pitches). Stamina is very important for these bowlers since they bowl at high speeds (above 90mph), they’ll lose their consistency if they bowl long spells. In my opinion they are best used at the beginning and end of an innings. Current real-life examples are Steve Harmison, Andrew Flintoff or Brett Lee.

RFM (Right handed Fast Medium) or LFM (Left handed Fast Medium)
Like fast bowlers, Fast Medium bowlers bowl quickly, although they rely more on movement and deception rather than raw pace. Therefore, they are generally less explosive and can bowl in longer spells if they have decent stamina. Like fast bowlers, they will perform best on green, cracked or uneven pitches. Current real-life examples are Matthew Hoggard, Simon Jones or Glenn McGrath.

RMF (Right handed Medium Fast) or LMF (Left handed Medium Fast)
Although I do not completely understand the difference between Fast Medium and Medium Fast, I should believe it has something to do with the pace they bowl at. Despite that, I think the two styles are rather similar and thus will have the same attributes. They perform best on Green, cracked or uneven pitches and can bowl longer spells than fast bowlers.

RM (Right handed Medium) or LM (Left handed Medium)
Medium pace bowlers do not bowl quickly, but rely on deception and underestimation. Wobbly medium pacers can be very difficult to deal with, especially if there are good swing bowling conditions. They perform best on seamers pitches as those will give them most movement. Because they don’t bowl at high speeds, they can bowl for longer spells and tire less quickly. They are best used bowling in the middle on an innings, containing the opposing teams (especially if they have good stamina and consistency). Current real-life examples are Paul Collingwood or Mark Ealham.

RH Spin or LH Spin
As battrick does not differ between leg spinners, off spinners and slow left armers, the spin bowlers are put on a big heap. They function best on dusty pitches although I would imagine they can work well on cracked pitches as well, making most of the cracks to gain spin. Spin bowlers rely solely on deceiving the batsman by variation or turn. They can be used in long spells (as Shane Warne showed this Ashes series) because they don’t have to work up a head of steam and charge in like a mad bull. Currently real-life examples are Shane Warne and Ashley Giles.

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4. Pitch Types

Uneven/Cracked & Green are all supposed to favour Seam bowlers which I would class M/MF & FM.
Flat & Hard & Fast are supposed to favour Batsmen.
Dusty is supposed to favour spin bowlers.
Slow favours all bowlers.

Weather will also favour different types of bowlers/batsmen but its not very clear how.

It all is a bit of trial & error to find who plays well on what pitch/weather.

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5. Backroom Staff
This is obviously one of the first things you will need to address, it is important to set the number of staff ("coach") up depending on the type of training that you will be doing. Below you can see what my backroom staff looks like, I train 5 bowling slots, 3 batting slots, 1 wicket keeper slot and 1 fitness (stamina) slot.

Backroom Staff
Bowling Coaches:	5
Batting Coaches:	3
Fielding Coaches:	0
Wicket Keeping Coaches:	1
Fitness Coaches:	1
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Sports Psychologists:	5
PR Officers:	10
Financial Advisors:	2

The bottom three staff types are needed for differing reasons:

Sports Psychologists: Help with improving consistancy and concentration.
PR Officers: This isnt as important when you are first starting, the more PR people you have helps with getting more crowds to your home matches. In the beginning it would most likely be worth only hiring 2 PR Officers until your finances are balanced.
Finance Advisors: Only necessary when you have money in the bank, help with regards to interest amounts.

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6. Setting Your Squad
Under "Club" > "Fixtures" you will be able to set the squad and match tactics under "orders". Here you will be able to select the 11 players you wish to play for you, you will also need to select your five bowlers, wicket keeper and captain. At the bottom of the screen there are various options:

Make your call!: You decide whether you want to call heads or tails, dont really think it makes much difference to be honest.
If you win the toss, do you want to: bat first or bowl first, some believe bowling second is an advantage, but I´m still unsure about that.

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7. Financial Update
This happens on a Saturday and you are then able to employ a new youth team player once the financial update has occurred.

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8. Training
The training for England happens on a Monday, for your squad you get 10 "net" sessions. This gives you the opportunity to train upto 10 different players at one team (one of the main differences from hattrick), you are able to train these players in different skills (keeper, bowler, batsman, stamina and fielding). You are able to give a player more than one "session" which means that he will get more training, for example:

1 net session = 1 training point
2 net sessions = 1.4 training points
3 net sessions = 1.6 training points
and so on.

That is how some teams have already managed to get so called super players by giving them maximum training slots and getting their battrick rating upto over 40k points.

It is important to remember when hiring staff you cant have more than 10 main coaching staff at one point.

When you consider training a player it is important to get young trainees as they take less time to go up a level. This means its important to get 17-19 yr olds to put in those training spots, it wouldn´t make sense to have someone aged 28 in one of these spots as it would take weeks more to train him. The training times are still being found out so its hard to say at the moment the exact lengths.

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9. Youth Squad
This is probably more important in Battrick than it is in Hattrick, due to the fact its currently in development the best and cheapest way of getting young players to train is through the youth system. iirc the youth squad starts on "mediocre", this gives it the opportunity to go up to a maxium of superb (with investment) or down to useless (with no investment). The higher up your youth squad goes, it gives you a better chance of getting a good quality youth pull. You are able to get a new youth player once a week, after the financial updates have occurred.

	superb	- The highest possible youth squad rating.
	strong
	proficient
	respectable
	competent
	mediocre	- This is the starting point when you first join.
	feeble
	woeful
	abysmal
	worthless
	useless	- The worst possible youth squad rating.

In my personal experience (and yes I´m sure some may disagree), its important to invest as much as you can AFFORD in the youth squad as I have had some gems from my one which have sold for over 400k pounds.

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10. Newbies Guide to Buying Players
This is where a lot of new users make a major mistake, and this type of mistake can have long term negative effects on the team. So it is important to buy the right players at the outset to allow you to develop your side in the right (and hopefully successful) direction. When buying your first set of trainees it is important to look for players 17-19yrs of age, this is because the younger the player the quicker the player will train. You then have to look at the main skills of the player these are:

The main skills being "Bowling", "Batting" or "Wicket Keeping". It is therefore important to get players of the correct age (17-19yrs old) with at least "mediocre" but "competent" is better in one of the main training areas. Example One above shows what I mean when I say "mediocre" in at least one area (if possible get in more than one), it is also important to consider "Stamina" in a player as this is a vital area of Battrick that alot of people misunderstand. Concentration and Consistency can be increased with the use of Sports Psychologists as explained it section 5. It is no point in buying players such as in Example Two as the main skills would take far to long to increase to a suitable level. It is important to monitor the transfer market before you go and splash out on a few suitable trainees, as it is important to see the prices at which players are going for - it is no good if you spend huge amounts on trainee and then find out you have overpaid for them.

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Update Log (Six Most Recent Changes)

23/09/05 - Put complete update log on seperate page.

23/09/05 - Made it easier to navigate the different sections.

23/09/05 - Included automatic links from section menu.

23/09/05 - Added link to "Update Log"

23/09/05 - Added pictures to example bowlers.

23/09/05 - Added more details regarding bowling types - thanks to WLKRAS.

Full Update Log Available Here

Thanks to OTF for helping in writing this guide.