THE

AARGH! FEDERATION

WEBSITE

(or Another Awful Result from the Gods of Hattrick)

BASICS

COACH

TEAM SPIRIT

CLOWNS

BUYING & SELLING

DAYTRADING

SKILLTRADING

TACTICS

SECONDARY SKILLS

YOUTH PULLS AND YOUTH SQUAD

CONFERENCES

BASICS

When you first get your team, don't do anything until you've read the rules.

Before you do anything else, read the rules again!

Don't buy or sell any players straight away-wait a while so you begin to get an idea about positions, formations, star ratings and values.The only ways to make money for your team are from your arena, your sponsors and by selling players. Recent changes have meant that all new players start with a stadium more than big enough for their first couple of seasons; however after this you may want to expand, so make sure you get the right balance of types of seats by using the arenacalc tool at The HatriX Files. It is worth checking this every season as changes made in Hattrick can alter how large your stadium needs to be.

In the long term a valuable source of income will come from training young players in their primary skill (playmaking, defending, scoring, winger or goalkeeping). Look at the youngest players (below about 21) in your starting squad to see in which primary skill you have the best group of players. This will be your best bet to set for training as you won't have to buy many (if at all) players to do this. This will also help to determine which formation you should play, to maximise the training; if you have chosen defending then you should play a formation with 3 central defenders & 2 wing backs (5-4-1, 5-3-2 or 5-2-3), enabling you to train 10 players a week; playmaking should be with 3 inner midfielders & 2 wingers (3-5-2, 4-5-1 or 2-5-3); scoring should be with 3 forwards (4-3-3, 3-4-3, 5-2-3 or 2-5-3); winger should be with 2 wing backs & 2 wingers (any formation but 5-2-3 is not recommended). Please note that if you have more than 3 players positioned as Forwards, Central Defenders or Inner Midfielders you will lose all your training for that week. You are allowed to play any formation you like within the restrictions of the team setup page but if you set a formation outside of those listed above & in the rules, your team will experience 'confusion' during the game, plus the repositioned players will always perform slightly worse, even in the standard formations. Ideally you should have different players playing in the training positions from the midweek game to the weekend game because players can only receive training in the last game they played that week before the training updates on Fridays. If a player plays in both of the week's games he will only be 'credited' with the midweek game. Training secondary skills (see below) such as Passing, Stamina and Set Pieces is also a good thing to do from time to time, often done in the off season but also in short bursts during the season, as these skills improve both the value and the performance of the players.

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COACH

You should have been given a weak coach to begin with and if you are going to follow a (recommended) training regime one of your earliest decisions will be whether to get a new coach or not. A stronger coach will speed up your training considerably, although that coach attribute has no effect whatsoever on your matches; only his experience, leadership and approach to games (defensive, offensive or neutral) will effect the team's play. You have a choice between appointing a new coach at a set price, or promoting one of your players to be coach (but this is only worthwhile if he has good levels of experience & leadership-to be significantly better than your existing coach he will have to have at least 1 level higher in both). This second option is normally cheaper.The more experience a player has the cheaper it will be to promote him to coach.

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TEAM SPIRIT

This can have an important effect on the performance of your team (the higher it is the better the team performs), and is influenced by several factors. Firstly it is always reset to composed at the start of every new season, and will always have a drift towards that level unless something else is acting on it. Second, your match orders (in competitive games only) will have an effect during AND after the game; if you Play It Cool (PIC) your team will perform as if the Team Spirit is lower (by about 1 level) but immediately after the game it will rise (by about 2 levels); if you play Match Of The Season (MOTS) the team performs as if Team Spirit is higher (by about 2 levels) but drops after (to about half of what it was). A Normal setting will not influence Team Spirit. During the days following a game the tendency will be for Team Spirit to drift back towards composed, but this drift can be faster or slower depending on the following things: (1) The leadership of your coach-the higher it is, the slower the fall & the faster the rise; (2) Your Team Leader-the player with the highest leadership will have an additional effect similar to the coach but dependent on his agreeability-a popular or sympathetic team leader will slow the drop or speed up the rise, but a nasty or controversial team leader will have the opposite effect; (3) Transfers-any transfer in or out of the club can impact on Team Spirit negatively, although most do not appear to (this effect is more likely if the player involved is either very high or very low agreeability); (4) Training Intensity-a large decrease in this (for example from 100% to 50%) will cause a one off increase in your Team Spirit after the weekly training update (how much varies on the amount of change, but in the example it would be between about 1 and 2 levels); equally a corresponding increase will have a negative effect. This should not be used frequently as it also has impacts on form and, of course, your training; (5) Psychologists-they have a small effect on Team Spirit but it is hard to quantify; they are more used to increase Confidence.

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CLOWNS

This is the perfect time to talk about clowns, semi-clowns and nasty (or anti-) clowns. These terms have been invented by Hattrick players to describe various kinds of team leaders, and generate endless debates on the conferences. To start with the definition differs depending on who you are talking to! My interpretation of them is as follows: A Clown is the best Team Leader you can have as he has Solid leadership combined with Popular agreeability (beloved team member is higher but only one of those exists!). Some people say that he has to be a rubbish player (i.e. no skills higher than poor or weak, and thus never plays) to be a 'true' clown, but in terms of the effect he has on your team (Team Spirit) this makes no difference so I choose to ignore that. A semi-Clown is one who still has high agreeability and leadership but one or the other is a level down from a Clown, so that would be either popular/passable or sympathetic/solid. A Nasty or anti-Clown is, as the name suggests, the opposite of a Clown, so he will be nasty/solid, in other words the worst team leader you could have! However it is not always possible to know who is your team leader if you have 2 players with (apparently) the same level of leadership-if you have a nasty/solid and a popular/solid you will get an idea by how quickly your team spirit changes though. Although clowns are useful to have, it is not worth busting a gut to get one, as their affect is marginal at best.

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BUYING & SELLING

Unless you are extremely lucky with your initial squad, you are going to need to strengthen it at some point in your first season. All we can say is-Be Very Careful! Do not blow all your money on a player with solid set pieces and no other skills! Wait until you have a really good idea about the market, and the best times to buy & sell, and don't always believe the ads! A feature available on each players page, called 'Transfer Compare'can be a very useful indication on how much players should fetch; however do not treat it as infallible as it has been shown to throw up some bad comparisons. Again we say-Be Very Careful!

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DAYTRADING**

Another controversial aspect of Hattrick! The opinion of this federation mirrors the apparent opinion of the Gods of Hattrick (they haven't made a statement on the issue but the fact that it isn't listed as against the rules is indication enough), and that is that daytrading is one way of playing the game that suits some people and not others. Basically, a daytrader will look for bargain transfers across the Hattrick world, and after buying the player will almost immediately relist him in an attempt to make a quick profit. The reason some people don't like this approach is that it is apparently easier for those in the larger countries to do this and make large amounts of money. However the penalties and risks of daytrading are plain to see-large numbers of transfers have negative effects on team spirit and formation experience, and there is no guarantee that they will recoup the money spent. It appears to be used in the main as a short term strategy to generate quick cash, and actually appears to benefit those in smaller countries in some ways, as not only do teams there get to sell their players (often at reasonable prices), they also get the sell on fee. The negative side of it is that the National teams in the small countries have trouble keeping their youth players with their own club sides who are more likely to train them up to a higher level. In the last couple of seasons several changes have taken place which have limited the effectiveness of daytrading, but it is still practiced by those who enjoy it.

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SKILLTRADING

Skilltrading is another way to use the transfer market to make money, but it is fraught with danger in the current economy if you don't have a lot of money to play with. Basically skilltraders will buy players they assess as being close to going up a level of their main skill, train them for a short time until they 'pop' in that skill and then sell them again. It is a difficult thing to do well, and it is advised that newbies wait before trying this.

TACTICS

Our advice on tactics for Newbies is quite simple; until you have grasped the fundamentals of the game and are aware of how ratings are affected by several different factors, do not play anything other than Normal in both team attitude and other tactics. Once you have been playing a while you can then start experimenting in friendlies with the Pressing, Counter Attack (CA), Attack In The Middle (AIM), Attack On The Wings (AOW) & Play Creatively settings on the match orders page. Formations are another part of your tactical weapons, but as mentioned previously, these are, to a certain extent, dictated by your training regime. You do have to build experience in formations except 4-4-2, but eventually (within a season) it is possible to have 3 formations at either solid or excellent-apart from 4-4-2 (which always stays at excellent) the other two will fluctuate between those levels as you alternate them. Most players tend to stick with only one formation however.

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SECONDARY SKILLS

Until a few seasons ago, the other skills of players than their main one were not regarded as very important, but changes made in the way the game works have seen them become more useful. Different people have slightly different views on which are the most important secondary skills for each position, but overall players normally benefit from having good stamina and passing whichever position they play in (except goalkeepers). Stamina trains quickly but also has a negative effect on form, so many people train this in between seasons during the two week period when there are no league games-they will often train Set Pieces (particularly useful in combination with good scoring skill) in the second week, as neither of these requires players to play a game to receive training. Short passes takes quite a long time to train but it will train everybody who plays in the midfield and attack so in theory you can train 16 players a week. It will add value to your players as well as enhancing the teams performance. It is probably better to wait a couple of seasons before considering training this, as the benefits become greater in combination with good (passable or above) primary skills.

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YOUTH PULLS AND YOUTH SQUAD

From season 32 you have two choices about how you approach the subject of youth players. The original system, which entails choosing whether you want a goalkeeper or outfield player and then clicking a button to generate a 'random' youth pull, or the new youth academy system which is much more involved, but essentially is a squad of teenagers who once they have been in the academy for a season and have reached the age of 17 (but no older than 19) can be promoted to the senior squad; you also have scouts who you can call every week to get new players for your youth squad, which has a maximum size of 16 players. Each week you have to choose whether to call your scouts or make an 'old style' youth pull - you can't do both in the same week; however, when you have players ready to promote from the youth squad you are able to do that and either call the scouts or make a youth pull in the same week. It is only worth pursuing the youth academy route if you join or set up a youth league with other teams, who play matches against each other every week, otherwise your youths will not get training. Training is slightly different in the youth academies, as are the player details - you don't know exactly what your youths' attributes are and have to rely on the match reports and trainers' comments to work them out.

CONFERENCES

The conferences in Hattrick are a very useful place to go to find out more about the game, but just as important they are a great place to meet people and ask questions or have a lively debate. You may have a bright idea about how to improve Hattrick, but please refer to our 'Perennial Conference Suggestions' before you write it in the conferences. A good starting point is the Newbies forum, followed by the Global forum (please note you can only post in English there) and your own country's forum. If you join a federation then you will also have access to their forum, but please note you must purchase Supporter from Hattrick to be able to join a federation.

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