I'm in for total overdose.

Since my vamps would be in amongst all those nasty high TV teams, I'll go with a new team.
As E_A said, there are a lot of tall chaos already around, so I will bring short chaos.
Introducing "Religiously Unlucky"...

If too many people go with new teams, we'll have to put some in the high TV division if we keep to divisions with 10 people each.

If the spirit of the TV division season is to let teams only play against others with a roughly equal TV we might want to go with smaller divisions, because atm while all the new teams are together in the second division, I'm not sure the teams at the bottom of the first division are at all in the same ballpark as the top ones.

anyone's up for a practice match tomorrow?

I'm actually enjoying my khemri, so i'll bring them back

Both have been added to the Season 5 List.

Smaller divisions would mean 4 players per division. We could have them play against each other twice to have six instead of only 3 matches but really this doesn't appear to be attractive to me.

Also please keep in mind that while we do sort by TV this season, TV alone doesn't say it all about a team's strength. The type of team, the skill of the coach, TV bloating, lucky level-ups, and of course the mighty Nuffle - all this influences the strength of a team.

Take Ghiro's Khemri for example. Their TV is "only" 1260 but they went through the last season nearly unbeaten (I think the only losses he got were due to disconnects). If now another team were to enter the first division with a higher TV then the Khemri would end up in the lower division. Tough luck for the teams there.

We cannot make it all perfect, we cannot stream-line it all. This is the first Tier Season, please let us see how it goes.

Why 4 people? 4 groups of 5 teams each would make more sense. Unless of course Blood Bowl won't let you do groups with an uneven number of teams. In which case expanding the league to 24 people again, and putting together 4 groups of 6 teams would probably work best.

That being said, I don't care that much one way or the other. I'm fine with playing like this and seeing what could be improved afterwards. If I actually cared about losing, given my record so far, I'd have quit a while ago. :p

It's just that if the intent behind a tier season is to try to have only roughly equal teams play against each other, the huge TV differences in the first division don't seem to fulfil that goal.
You can't tell me that you think a match between a TV 2300 Chaos team and any 1500 TV or less team isn't seriously unbalanced. Unless MafiaK1's Chaos team is seriously unlucky he's likely to win pretty much every game.

BB doesn't let us have divisions with an uneven number of teams.

Then the season would have only 5 matches if you play against each player in your division once, or 10 matches if you play against each opponent in your division twice, which I would find boring. Which I would find either short (with 5 matches) or boring (same opponent twice).
Also the TV of the first 6 teams currently reaches from TV 2300 to TV 1430, while taking all 10 teams into account it reaches from TV 2300 to TV 1260. So it wouldn't "equalize" all that much.
Next problem would be the play-offs which, as I understand it, need 8 teams. Choosing those from three divisions could be difficult.

I'm really reading what you think and I take your worries seriously but right now I don't see a way to improve things without making a mess of everything. :p
So I agree with you: Let's wait and see,

There are inducements. And as mentioned before, there are also other factors to take into account, not just TV. From my point of view, not the high-level Chaos team itself could be a "danger for the rest of us" but the fact that MafiaK is rapidly improving as coach. And that cannot be changed anyway. :-D

In our old, "normal" seasons the TV difference within the division would even by higher.
So let's just try out how this tier season works. (The three Chaos teams might cannibalize each other.)

he is also going to be facing lots of wizards, starplayers, halflings chefs and bribes the whole season...

its not fun, seriusly. i had more easier time with my near 1000k vamps than the more developed vamps at 1800+
i see that just a question of beer. does anyone live near him? :)

In my experience inducements don't make that much of a difference. Sure getting more rerolls and stuff is nice, but it just doesn't make up for the skill difference between a well developed team and a new one.

As for star players, well let's just say my personal experience with them is mixed. I think I used Morgn'Thorg 4 times and he only made a real difference once. He was useless once, was injured early on another time, and died from a double red skull block when I was in a good position to score the last time.

there are plent better value star players, but it depends of team.

I haven't because
1. I don't know how to do that
2. I have a very low internet connection
3. I'm not sure my computer could even manage it

I can see that facing 3 developed Chaos teams with a much better TV than one's own team is kind of a frightening prospect.

Yes, you can win with a team that has a much lower TV. It's also fun (at least it was for me) to be able to use all these inducements, have amazing star players on the pitch, use wizards and halfling chefs, etc. And I also believe that TV is mostly overrated - it's just that there _is_ no other objective measure to gauge the strength of every team, and so we take the one that we have (TV), as bad as it may be. I think a well-designed team with lower TV can actually have an advantage against a high TV-team, depending on the circumstances. Ghiro's ogres certainly suffered from having too high a TV in previous seasons.

Nevertheless, I think everyone more or less expects the low-TV teams in the first division to have a harder time than any of the second-division teams, and that's the main problem I think. We currently have a situation where some teams are facing a very difficult season, while selling one or two players to bring their TV down might suddenly turn the team into a serious contender for the play-offs, and we're kind of depending on people's sportsmanship to not do that, otherwise we'll see a race to the bottom of the TV barrel.

I think we could perhaps use some more incentive to put a team into the first division, and one such incentive could be the prize distribution. One of the main reasons for having the prize pool was always to give the players who are having a hard time something fun that they can look forward to at the end of the season. So I'm planning to distribute the prizes for season 6 like this:
- first the 8 teams that made it into the play-offs
- then positions 5-10 of division 1
- then positions 5-10 of division 2

This way, good playing still gets rewarded, but voluntarily dropping into the second division becomes risky with regard to prizes. However, I'm reluctant to decide that on my own, since it could also benefit my own team. So I'm open to suggestions/feedback.