The Real Rules Of SuperCoach

The Team Picker is now open! You can now ignore your family once again, and make 11,059 versions of your team until you find, and then settle on a structure you like and adore for the season ahead.

But with SuperCoach, there are rules. Not the rules on how to play or how it works (Although they are useful, too) we’re talking about the REAL rules of SuperCoach.

Now, rules are a loose term. Nobody follows rules. We all have rules we want to use or rules we have added to our repertoire after disaster struck in some way, shape, or form the season before. We’re all reckless in our own way, and rules are meant to be broken, interpreted and even interpolated to suit, and justify to ourselves the way we’re playing.

But what are those rules… Well, let’s dive in - shall we?

RULE#1 - decide your strategy but stay nimble

When we construct our teams, there’s several strategies that impact how we then use our trades. There are 3 main builds that people begin with; Guns and Rookies, Midpriced Madness and the lesser known “Lone Wolf” strategy.

‘Guns and Rookies’ is when you usually start with 11-14 premiums and the rest of your team are rookies, makes it easy to keep a backbone to stay competitive, but also have a strong selection of rookies complimenting them to generate cash and points.

Midpriced Madness is when you have a few premium options, but a lot of your other options fall between that 250-450k price range for whatever reason. These are usually guys who are breakout contenders, or stepping into a lucrative role, or missed a large chunk/entire season through injury. There are other factors that can come into this price range, but those are the main ones. These players are usually priced below expected output, and can be used as stepping stones to better more reliable players, while still being good for a score of 70-90 most weeks outscoring their $ value. With rookies coming into the competition a lot more readymade however Midpriced Madness is becoming less and less of an alternative strategy.

Lone Wolf is when you pick points of difference and do a whacky structure, and play your way the entire way through. Lone Wolf builds are usually popular by those who play purely for league results rather than overall rank.

These builds usually decide how you then plan your upgrade and trade strategy, and it’s important to not deviate off your path. Sometimes though, through injury, a stalling of cash generation or someone performing too well to ignore, you have to be nimble and change your approach. This shouldn’t be a long term adjustment, but it should assist your strategy going forward, and who knows, it might even progress you further ahead of your plan.

RULE#2 - balance the upgrades

This one is a little harder to explain, but the gist of the rule is basically ditch the crappy rookies and keep the good rookies as long as you can, especially if they are providing a service on your field. By “good” rookies I mean the ones averaging 70, 80, 90+.

This rule is about aiming to maximise points on field. No point trading out 140 (70+70) points, only to bring in 140 points (100+40). That’s not “upgrading” your squad. You are upgrading a player, but in SuperCoach it’s 22 scores that count towards your weekly score.

It really did feel like at points last season that Levi Ashcroft was the only rookie making any money. Played every game in his debut season, and averaged 75+ regularly returning scores 70-100, in fact 14 scores last season in that range. His price rose sharply, and then hovered around that 380k mark, and it was then a lot of people moved him on.

The question I kept asking myself when I was planning to move him on was, who’s coming onto my field if he’s no longer there. The trade didn’t seem viable unless I was bringing in a premium, obviously I wasn’t bringing in a premium for 380k so I needed second trade to bring in a newly minted cash cow, but what if my bench rookies - while slowly but surely reaching desired value - weren’t quite there yet? It’s all well and good to trade two rookies on your field who have both reached peak price, but who are you bringing in to score in their places?

RULE#3 - Let the green dots decide your trades

Too many times people will fall in love with a trade, or a series of trades, and won’t think about points on field, or numbers of playing vs non-playing. Too many times we are so engrossed in the trades we could do, we never think about if they’re trades we should do.

There’s plenty of examples, but none more recent than Sam Davidson.

He made more than double his starting value quite quickly, and plenty moved him on early in the season, but the issue that arose much to many dismay, rookies stopped getting games. Davidson was recruited as a mature age recruit out of Richmond’s VFL winning the competitions best and fairest, and he played 19 games in his debut season. Plenty traded him once his price peaked - or so they thought - in Round 8, but the shrewd coaches around the league got an extra 17k out of him and fairly reliable bench cover until he was dropped after Round 19. He was a green dot every week up until that point, and he never started in the sub vest either.

Cash generation is the aim of SuperCoach and rookies are a big part of that - buy low, sell high, make upgrades - But with overall rank a focus for many as well, it becomes a balancing act. Cash gen can recover, especially when it comes to rookies who have a breakeven than can regularly reset, your weekly score and rank take longer to reach parity.

rule#4 - don’t sacrifice enjoyment to satisfy strategy

This one is pretty simple. If you enjoy SuperCoach by bringing in players you enjoy watching into your team, then don’t ruin your fun by bringing in players you don’t enjoy watching.

I recommend not doing this for rookies or rookie priced players, but there’s always several premium options to choose from that can get you the same, or sometimes an even better result.

Play how you want to play. It’s a game after all, and your team is YOUR team.

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