owzat!! (battrick.org)

Member Name: bailey_kipper_uk

Product:	battrick.org
Date:	31/07/07 (776 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Online Cricket Management, I don't know of any others

Disadvantages: Not enough games

At first glance you may think, I recognise this, it looks very similar to bailey's previous review, but it is in fact different. This is a review of Battrick which is an on-line cricket management game. Yes there are many similarites between it and Hattrick but there are also many differences, also, although many people play both games they are very separate entities. Having already written the Hattrick review I'll compare a few things as we go along so if you read both you'll get a good idea of the differences. I will focus more on the differences so if you are really interested I would suggest also reading my Hattrick review.

Now that the plug is out of the way then, starting off with the first similar thing, in that you need to register. You have to go on the site and request a team, preferably from the country and county you live in, although I don't think this is essential. If you and a housemate both want a team you need to email the helpdesk and let them know else they will think you are trying to create multiple teams, which is definitely not allowed. After a few days you will receive your team.

The game is very easy to navigate using a combination of a menu bar which has the high level screens and then sub menus that contain more specific screens, below that you have words on screen highlighted in a kind of dark red colour that will provide further information when clicked, such as taking you into a player record, a team record or a specific league.

League system
~~~~~~~~~~~
Similarly to Hattrick there is a league system in place and it works on the same principle in that there is one top division and then 4 2nd divisions, 16 3rd divisions, 64 4th divisions etc. Also there are 8 teams and you play each other twice but the second 7 games are in the same order as the first seven.
Promotion is only achieved by winning your league, and basically by winning all your games and being one of the fastest run scoring teams. Battrick works first on points scored (Won, Tie and Lost) and then by Net Run Rate (NRR) which as I understand it this is basically how fast you scored runs compared to the opposition (There is a whole section in the rules dedicated just to this). If you are not one of the highest scoring league winners you will play a play-off against either a 5th or 6th placed team in the leagues in the level above. The 7th and 8th placed teams auto relegate, unless you can't go down any more.
This seems a fair way of doing things but it is frustrating when you win all your games bar one and then have to play a play-off and find yourself up against the best bad team in the division above, to think you’re on the verge of winning and then to collapse in the period of about 8 balls as I did last season.

Squad
~~~~
As with Hattrick you have a squad of players, however unlike Hattrick there is no real benefit currently from having more than 11 players. Basically, you don’t get injured, you can lose form but so far (it’s a new feature) this has not had much of an effect on my team. At this point I feel I should point out that Battrick is a much newer game than Hattrick, in the UK there are under 5,000 users, whereas in Hattrick there are almost 20,000 users. In the whole game there are only about 10,000 users, in Hattrick there are almost 1,000,000.

You can tell who is the best at certain positions very simply by looking at their stats, for division 5 a very good player is someone with Quality Batting, Bowling or Wicket Keeping. You also need a good level of Stamina (I’ve found Proficient to be quite good), and also decent fielding (Mediocre or above for every player is pretty good). Obviously when you start you will not be able to afford all this, a Quality player probably sells for about 5 million… Your starting balance is about 250,000 though I’m not 100% sure, it changes occasionally and isn’t in the rules.

Transfers
~~~~~~~
So to start with you need to see what your team is like, generally after reading the rules you’ll think you have about 5 or 6 players who will be decent to have as lower order batsman or 5th bowlers (I’ll come onto competitions in a bit but the main competition is one-day - 50 overs a side – games). So there is a nice little transfer market that you can use, I say little as there are maybe 500-1000 players a day on the market, however on Hattrick there are 40,000 – 50,000 a day. However as there are less members then the market actually operates very similarly. There is the 3 minute delay at the end if someone bids with less than 3 minutes to go, to ensure fairness all round. Bidding wars tend to happen more during the evening and weekends as there are more people on-line so if you can get on during the day then you can often find bargains. This type of person is called a day-trader, and is someone who buys players on the cheap and then re-lists them to sell at busier times in order to make a profit. Luckily in Battrick this hardly happens at all as you have a 40 day initial contract with a player that means he cannot be sold until those 40 days are up, so this is a definite benefit for those who cannot get online as much.

It is very hard though to work out the actual value of a player, there are no transfer listing fees in Battrick (BT from now on), and so people will list their player at a stupid amount to see if they can sell them, people will often fall into the trap and the owner will make a good amount of money. However as you can see if people want a player badly enough they will pay the asking price.

Training
~~~~~~
So once you have your players you have the choice of leaving them alone (they don’t seem to deteriorate once they reach 30 unlike on Hattrick), or you can train them. Training works better the younger they are, 17 is the youngest, and it essentially takes a week longer for them to ‘pop’ (increase one skill level in a certain area) for every year older they get. The discussion boards are full of useful spreadsheets that can calculate these things for you and there are many that will also help you manage your team and work out where best to play someone.

There is a big difference here between the 2 games in that in Battrick you can train up to 10 individual players on 10 individual areas, so you can either train 10 different players all on Stamina. Or you can give one player all ten ‘nets’ and make them into a super player who is good in all areas of the game. Or of course you can go somewhere in between. Personally this is what I do, I try to always have one batter and one bowler being trained with 2 nets each, and then a couple of players training stamina, a couple on fielding and then 2 others depending on where I feel I am lacking skills.

Competitions
~~~~~~~~~~
There is the one-day league that I have been describing throughout this review. These games are played on a Friday and are in real time. So basically last from about 10.30am till about 5pm. There is also a cup competition which like Hattrick is a straightforward knockout competition where the worst team plays the best team and so on. This is played on a Sunday, again in real time, and as on Hattrick you can arrange friendlies when you are out of the cup. You can use your main team like many people do or you can have a reserve team like I do, this is so my players don’t get too knackered but I don’t think that this actually happens much, it may just be in my head.
The other reason I have a reserve team is in preparation of the First Class (FC) games. This was supposed to have happened about 4 seasons ago but was delayed for further testing (I understand this being a User Acceptance Testing Co-ordinator myself), however it is supposed to happen at the start of next season. I won’t go into it in detail but the idea is that it runs from Tuesday to Thursday with 2 innings for each team. You will be able to set detailed instructions about how your team plays and also be able to change tactics each evening.
There is also a 20-20 cup that happens at the end of each season and games happen daily. This started last season with groups of 4 teams who played each other once, the top teams then went into a knockout competition, but could play any team randomly selected. This was brilliant. People absolutely loved it, as it was the first time that this had happened and meant you actually stood a chance of getting through the first couple of rounds as you could be drawn permanently against teams worse than you even if you weren’t in the top 50% of all teams.

Finance
~~~~~~
It is very easy to make money in BT, compared to HT. This is mainly due to the fact that currently you get £55,000 a week in miscellaneous income, also you can easily earn interest on credit balances up to £80,000 a week. Also it’s very cheap comparatively to improve your stadium, probably about half the price of HT. This all means that you can make a lot of money, hence why even good Div 5 players go for 4-5 million.
On top of that the stadium income is more. I make 150k for a 21000 seater sell-out in BT which is the same as I make for a 30,000 seater sell-out in HT.
The wages also seem to be a bit cheaper, again though this is hard to compare but I would say that be studying how good my team is in BT compared to HT then this is the case.
You will also need to pay for trainers similarly to HT, and other backroom staff such as Psychologists, PR Officers and Financial advisors, there are formulas for each of these (mainly Financial Advisors) for how to get the most out of them.

Other
~~~~
There are also the following options and here’s a brief bit on each.

Youth – You have a Youth Academy that you have to maintain otherwise it falls into disrepair (this doesn’t matter unless you are promoting youth players). To promote youth players you need to buy ITS (Intensive Training Sessions), again these cost money and then you have limits on how many ITS you can apply to a player depending on age and the state of your Youth Academy. Personally I don’t use it as it seems as though it costs a lot and there is very little benefit as you can make money other ways and training can be easily and cheaply focused to get a very cheap youth player up to a very good standard in about 2-3 seasons.

Sledging – This is the community of BT. There are many different conference boards you can join including one for your league, so you can ask questions (that you don’t find answers to in the rules), chat about random things, request friendlies, or promote the latest player you are selling.

Membership – As with HT you can become a member, again this costs money and only provides you with additional stats and additional functionality, none of which is of any actual benefit over someone who doesn’t have membership. However it does add more to the game and is only £15 for a year. Also, if you enjoy the game it really does help keep it running and helps the owners improve the functionality.

I think that’s about it. I’ve been playing for a bit over a year now and almost went up to division 4 last season, hoping to this season, currently I’m in line for auto-promotion so just need to make sure I win my remaining games. I haven’t managed to get as many friends involved as I would have liked so do tend to play friendlies against people in my league or random people on the message boards. I probably go on most days as it can take a while to arrange a friendly, unless you request one on the message boards. Also, you need to select your team before the games on Friday and Sunday, plus training updates are Monday. I’m sure I will get bored eventually and find something else to fill my time, especially if I decide to work in London and commute from Southampton, however for now I love it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys cricket, but gets bored watching it on tele.

Summary: A good game that is improving all the time