Website: weekender.fantasyleague.com
Price: Currently a Free Trial
Private Leagues: No
Pros
* Currently free to play
* Can be played in 10 minutes
* Ideal for Fantasy Football newcomers
Cons
* Teams can’t be altered once saved
* Only ever likely to be a supplementary game for experienced FF players
Game Rules
Nice and simple. You select a team of 11 players in a 4-4-2 formation from the pool of players who will represent you for one week’s set of fixtures. There’s no budget so you can pick who like but the catch is you can only select one player from each club. Once your selection is made and saved to your account, it cannot be altered. The deadline for each week is the kickoff time of the first fixture in the current gameweek.
Review
This brand new game mode from Fantasy League is designed to catch the casual player who fancies a quick flirt with some Fantasy Football over the weekend. The friendly drag and drop interface and simple game rules make it easy to spend a quick 5 minutes at lunch to select your team and each week, you scrap the lot and play again. It’s slick, simple and a great addition to the Fantasy League suite. Certainly while it’s free that is.
The idea of picking a team without the constraints of a budget sounds easy enough. However, when you’re only permitted to choose one player from each club, it does get a little tricky. If Spurs are playing Hull for example you might pick a Spurs defender but then, as a result, you would have to shy away from picking a Hull midfielder or attacker since a goal or an assist from them would deprive you of your Spurs clean sheet. With effectively 5 clean sheets to look for, and 5 clubs you’re hoping to provide them, it means you only have 10 teams remaining from which to choose your remaining 6 players. That is of course, if you’re playing to win.
Right now the prizes are simply books and DVDs, however, no doubt a cash prize will be on offer should the game take off and a registration fee is introduced. It is of course difficult to judge just how worthy this game will be once the Fantasy League have assessed its popularity and come up with a price point. As it’s something you can dip in and out of from week to week, they could simply charge a £1 fee each entrant or come up with a season ticket charge to allow player to play for a set period of time. We’ll have to wait and see what they decide and I’ll be eager to revisit this review once they do.
Examining how it works right now however, I can see a major issue that will need to be ironed out if Weekender is to become popular. Currently, once you’ve made your selection and saved the lineup, it’s impossible to go back and edit your team. This obviously means you have to be confident that your entire lineup will play come Saturday when you make your selection, or wait until the Saturday morning team news has come in before you make your choice. That kind of defeats the object of creating a game you can play in a few minutes at your desk, unless of course this game is to be aimed solely at the casual player. Right now, playing for free and for giggles and with only some DVDs up for grabs, it’s not an issue. Once I’m paying for the game however, I want the opportunity to edit my original lineup up until kickoff.
We’ll have to see how Fantasy League develop the game once they’re making money from it. A challenge mini-league facility would seem an obvious addition once the game is underway, allowing you to take on a few mates over a series of weeks. That’s for the future though. Right now it’s free, quick and easy and certainly worth a dabble if you’re new to Fantasy Football or looking to add some new interest to your Fantasy Football weekend.