Last entry we got how the training work, how to manage your team and how to set you up for the game.

How to Build your team

1- Getting player :

The only way to get new players is through the Waiver Market.
The waiver market is where you can bid credits for players. If you bid a amount that you have and that you are the highest bidders, the player will be added to your team roster and have the amount of credits that were bid will be deducted from your account.

Not that you have to have a player that have been place on the waiver market so the new player will take is place. If you don’t have any player that are place on the market, you wont get any player even if you win the bid.

Remember only way to be a winning bidders is to have the highest bid and to have the credits your their account. There is no cost to place a bid.

What happens to the player that I put on waivers?

He go in the minor and you pays half is salary… no wait that the nhl. In order to bid on a player, you have to make room for him on your roster by putting a player on waivers. When a new player join he replace the player on the waivers and that player is then gone … forever.

In player management click on the player you want to put on the market. In the player information screen you can place him on the waiver market by clicking on the exit sign that say Put on waiver market.

if you change your mind, You can take the player off waivers, by clicking the TAKE OFF WAIVER MARKET button.
A player that is replaced by a winning bid is retired from the game. The manager receives 0 Credits for the player! You are buying a new player from the Waiver Market.

How many players should I put on waivers?
Place as many as you like. It probably better to start slow, putting one or 2 player on the market. The player are replaced when you win a bid, since there no limit to bid you might end up wining a lot of them. So what I did in the past is to put on the market a group of the same player (2-3 defence or winger) and bid only on the type of player I want to replace.

The players that you bid on may be with your team for 6 seasons or longer, so make sure that they are a good fit for your team.

When does the bidding process take place?
All bids are processed in the morning a 3h00 am GMT. Players immediately join their new teams and replace the player(s) on waivers. Any players on waivers who were not replaced remain with their teams.

How much should I bid?
I tend to bid really low and somehow tend to still get decent player. If you want a star player you need to be more aggressive but I noticed that if your team is in a lower division you seem to get player even if you have low bid.

Check the number of bidder near the player you want, 23 probably mean the minimum wont get it but sometime you’ll be surprise there might 22 that all bid 500 credit and you can go and bid 750 and win.

Let take this example, today there to player that are interesting and you really like to get them on the team.
So if you want them both you need at least two of you players on the waivers. If both bid are successful you will get both if only one win the first player in you list will be replaced (the one with the lowest roster no). So, if the waived players Roster Numbers are 3 and 6, the number 3 slot will be the first one filled.
Remember, a winning bid is a new player. If you waive a goalie and a center, and have 5 bids out on goalies and 3 bids out on center, if you win 2 bids on the goalies, then you will get 2 goalies added to your roster. CAUTION: When trying to acquire players at different positions with more than 1 bid per position, you can get more players at a position than you really wanted.

How are bids resolved? (from the shl forum)
Bids are resolved by position: goalies, defensemen, wingers, centers respectively. All goalie bids are resolved, then defensemen, then wingers and finally centers. Within each position, your highest bid of the highest overall rated player is considered first. Tie bids go to the manager with the lowest manager rating number. Recommendation: don’t try to bid on 2 players at different positions unless you only place 1 bid on each of those players. You’re probably going to have to pay a premium to get them, too. It’s better to place several lower bids on players at one position to get the best deal. Don’t forget to check Waiver Market History the next day if you didn’t win a bid, to see what the player went for. You can also check to see what team acquired the player by clicking on his name; this will let you know who is active in the market.

How much should I bid for one of these Star players? (from the shl forum)
When a star player is available, usually there are many more bidders that are interested and the player will go for the maximum possible bid. Since this means there will be several tie bidders, the manager with the lowest manager ranking will be awarded the player. The auction process becomes a kind of lottery. The question is, is this player worth the 10,000 credit price? If a manager is patient, he can usually acquire a very good player for even the minimum bid of 500 credits. Training a team for one season costs approximately 1500 credits. That’s 75 credits per player per season. Over the course of 6 seasons, that’s 450 credits in training per player. So, for 950 credits you will have an almost star player for several seasons. Is it really worth 9,000 more credits to have that “star” player right now? To some managers, the answer is yes. But if you’re just starting to build a team, probably not.

How should I build my team?
Plan for the future. Start with a good goaler, then go for a defenseman, and a scoring forward or a center. Remember, like we said before, players attributes will decline in their 7th season with a team. For some reason even training won’t help these veteran players, no matter what their age is. Taking that in consideration it’s probably better to split acquisitions over the course of several seasons, so after 6 seasons, you don’t have to replace all 20 players in one shot. And during any given year, each position has some veterans and some rookies. Bid only on the best players available. Players that are second or third rate will not catch up to the others, even with training. Many managers only have 2 goalers on their roster, it’s probably better that way since they don’t tend to get injured. After that it’s more up to you, I still recommend defence over offence at first but if you have 4 strong Def and 2 good line you can do pretty well specially in most division.

Is there a better time during the season to bid on players?
At the start of each season, winning managers get credits from SLH, so there are many managers bidding on players. At the end of the season, the bidding seems to fall off. If you can wait, the best the deals are probably to be had at the end of a season.

How to know if a player is good does the overall is enough ?

When buying players do not go by their Overall rating. Like we say before, this isn’t worth shit.

You need to check the other Players Attributes to decide on the best buy, these are different between position.

Here what attribute is the best to look at :
Goalkeepers – Goaltending, Puck Control, Speed, Passing
Defender – Hitting, Strength, Stamina, Puck Control
Wingers – Speed, Passing, Shooting, Puck Control
Centers – Shooting, Speed, Passing, Puck Control
Stamina is an attribute that you should look at before every player bid. Try to always bid on players with a minimum of 70 stamina.

Other things to check when bidding
Don’t forget to check how many bids the Player has. If it is lots then you may have to put a good bid in but if it is only one or two then you may be able to get a bargain. Not that defensemen tend to have a lot of bid, it’s because computer controlled players will bid on these but put in minimum bids the defensemen.
If a bid is tied then the team with the lowest manager rating gets the Player. If you don’t get the player then go into waiver Market History and look at your unsuccessful bids. Here you can see how much he cost and then click on him to see where he went.

Note that new need credit to bid so here how to get credits.
Top ten way to get money in shl

Extra information :

Players Age
Should I just bid on younger players? I did notice major difference between young player than older player. Some say that younger players progress faster during training. But other say they can be a little irresponsible and tend to have more AWOL. Older players can be more reliable, but they may not respond to training like a young talented player would. Then again, some older players respond very well to training because they have never had a good manager before.

Promotion and Relegation/ Changing Divisions

If your team is really shit and your division is to strong, it can be a good idea to switch for a lower division and build a team from the lower end by wining playoff and division title. You have the option to switch during the first 5 game weeks to Join a Division. If you select that option, it costs 500 credits and the Manager leaves his old team and players and takes over a new team, in the Division chosen, with players that are already on the new team’s roster.

That all for the guide hope you’ve enjoyed it.

The are many (no so many way to make credit) in SHL.

1- Confirm your account for a extra 1000 credits

2- Win games

Winning game is the most basic way to get credits, it not a lot (I think they should give more) but it’s a start.

Division Games
For a Win – 10 credits
For a Tie – 5 Credits
For an Overtime Loss (OTL) – 5 credits

3- Vote every days

Another great way to get fast credit is to vote every day, fast and easy way to get up to 60 credit per day.

4- Finish first of your division

Finishing first of your division will get you a lot of money, so fight to be the best.

For finishing first in the division at the end of the season:
a) in League 3: 500 credits
b) in League 2: 750 credits
c) in League 1: 1000 credits
NOTE: Game win credits only apply to division games and no credits are awarded for exhibition games won.

5- Win the playoff

Winning the playoff is another great way to make money, a good 1000 credit if you succeed.

6- Win champion shield or/and elite cup

Once you finish first or won the playoff, you get to enter automatically two other tournament, the Elite cup (1st of your division) and the champion shield (all server playoff winner)

Champions Shield
This tournament is for all of the servers playoff winners from the previous season (256 teams).
Winner – 5000 credits
Runner – Up – 2500 credits

Elite Cup
This tournament is for the top 64 managers according to Manager ratings from the previous season. (that what they say on the forum, but from what I see it seem that it’s all those who finish first of there division)

Winner – 5000 credits
Runner – Up – 2500 credits

7- register knock up tournament and exhibition game

If you have spare credit you can always enter other tournaments. There a nifty fee to enter but the reward might worth it. You can use you extra credit to do exhibition game too the top team in exhibition get a extra 5k credit.

Knockout Cups
a) Beer Cup (cost 500 credit)
Winner – 1500 credits
Runner – Up – 500 credits
b) Super Cup (cost 750 credit)
Winner – 4500 credits
Runner – Up – 1500 credits
c) World Cup (cost 1000 credit)
Winner – 12 000 credits
Runner – Up – 4000 credits

Exhibition Match Standings   (each game cost 100 credit)
Winner – 5000 credits
Runner – Up – 2500 credits

8- Be the best manager

The top manager manager get to have a lot of money, so if your the top manager you get a extra 5k credit.

Manager Standings
Winner – 5000 credits
Runner – Up – 2500 credits

9- credit promotion

Like other game they have credit promotion, they seem to only work in certain region though…

10-pay

If you’re ready to spill some money you can get your self a decent amount of credit.

Training costs 30 credits per day when activated. This is where you build your team through exercises. You must decide what kind of team you want and train accordingly….

If you want an offensive juggernaut, then you may want to spend a little more time on passing (PS) shooting (SH) and puck control (PC)…

If you want a great defensive team, then you may want to train more often in weights, defence and penalty killing…

One VERY important thing to remember is that if you train the same thing for too long your players will probably get bored and not train very well at all.

This also effects their morale and chances for going awol. Come up with a rotation that mixes up their training schedule while focusing on the key attributes that your team needs work on.

Evaluate your team by sorting each attribute column. From this you can see where your team needs improving.

When you train a player certain training affects certain attributes.

Here is a rough guide to what affects what:

Line Rushes – Speed
Shooting – Shooting + Goaltending
Weights – Strength
Passing – Passing
Aerobics – Stamina
Puck Control – Puck Control
Light Skating – Speed/Fitness
Power Play – Special Teams
Sit-Ups – Strength/Stamina
Nice Rest – Fitness
Penalty Killing – SpecialTeams/Goaltending
Defence – Hitting
Rehabilitation – Moral (Fitness slightly)

If you click on a players name, you will see his attribute GRAPH. Turning RED means he is in decline. This will happen to older guys or players who have been with the team for a few seasons with no current training. Turning GREEN means that he is improving from training. You should see changes from training after about 4 or 5 games.

Training Availability:
If you use training then you receive training for the following;
Every Division Game you play
Every Elite Cup or Champions Shield Game you play
Every Exhibition Game you play where you issue the challenge
Every Knock Out Tourney Game you play
There is a max of 2 trainings per day. You only receive one for any combo of exhibition, or tourney games that you have and 1 for any division/elite or shield game.

At last there one more part to this guide and after I’ll move to another hockey simulation game.

I recently wrote the beginner guide part 1 – tactic and advance tactic to follow up in this guide we going to talk about team management:

How to know the strength of your player

The Attributes
In the team management page, you can see your players attributes. Even if a players have a high overall you should focus on individual attributes before his overall rating.
Here the list of attributes:

GT… Goaltending
HT… Hitting
PS… Passing
SH… Shooting
PC… Puck Control
SP… Speed
SR… Strength
S.T.. Special Teams (PP, PK)
ST… Stamina

Hitting and Strength are more important than the overall rating for a defenseman and shooting, speed and passing are what you should be looking for your attacking line.

Injuries

This is indicated by a little red cross. Every manager has to deal with injuries. It’s an important part of coaching to be able to set lines when some key guys are injured. Then again, it’s great when your opponent has lots of injuries, so it works both ways…

You can see details on the injury by going to RECENT INCIDENTS or clicking on the player and going to the player information page. Some injuries can last for several weeks. The most important thing to remember is that some guys can play injured as long as their fitness is above 60….

AWOLs

This is indicated by a little beer bottle or red exclamation mark symbol. These players will miss the game for personal reasons (working, watching TV, vacation..). Every manager has to deal with AWOL’s on a regular basis and there’s really not much you can do… Just set your lines and wait for your guys to return….

Bans

This is indicated by a no entry symbol. Players who take too many penalty minutes may receive a BAN for a number of games for excessive minutes. Bans are usually a direct result of how aggressive you play with certain referees. Players with bans cannot play until their ban is served. Once again, a great coach can work around this….sometimes.

Setting up your team

Setting Your Defense
When sorting your Defencemen onto your lines remember to check their season stats and try to abide by the following rules.
Attacking Line A – Use Players with good Shooting and Passing attributes
Defense Line B – Use Players with Best Hitting and Strength Attributes
C/A Line C – Always use One Good shooting Player. Players with good Speed are a must also

Sorting Player Positions
It is key to have the correct amount of cover in each position within your team.

The ideal layout is
GK – 2
D – 7
LW – 3
RW – 3
W- 1 (The more W the better as they can cover both positions)
C – 4
You can interchange the Wingers if you can get W as opposed to RW and LW but they are not always easy to get hold of. And sometimes their initial attributes can be weaker.

Setting Your Special Teams Units
This is important as Power Play and Penalty Killing can win you games. When setting your Special Teams sort your Players Attribute by the S.T Column to see who your best Players in that department are.
Set the Units as follows:
Penalty Killing Unit –
3 x D-men
1 x Fast Winger
Power Play Unit –
1 x D-man
3 x Wingers
1 x Centre
Remember that these units involve extra Ice Time and tire players so try and spread your Lines and S.T Units about the team. You may find players with low fitness vanish for the next game.

Player Rotation
A Player will improve with training obviously but he will also improve with Ice Time. If you have a fairly good team and are playing an extremely weak team then rest some of your big players and give the others a game. They need to play to improve. Playing also improves their morale as does winning.
Try and stagger when you buy Players in certain Positions. You don’t want all you Centers hitting 7 seasons at the same time or any of the other positions. If you have 2 Goalies try and have them so that one is in his 1st season and the other in his 3rd or 4th. That way when its time to waiver the old one because he isn’t performing, you have a ready made replacement who you have played and trained up over the seasons.
Another way to go is to get all your players at the same time and train them up over 3 or 4 seasons. They will then all be at the top of the game going into the 5th, 6th and 7th seasons and will be pretty hard to beat if you originally picked up top players. The problem is you will then have to replace them all at the same time, or begin replacing some as early as their 4th season.
It is better to stagger them and be competitive all the time.

The 170 Rule (from the forum also)
If a Players Morale and Fitness do not add up to 170 then they do not perform to their highest ability. If possible, try to make sure you keep Morale and Fitness even and only play Players who are above 170.

Stamina
If you are going to double or triple shift a Player then make sure he has high Stamina. The same goes for your whole team in general as if it is low then they will tail off toward the end of a game

7th Season Decline
A Player will stop improving in his attributes once he hits his 7th season with the team. His attributes will start to drop. You do not have to visit the waiver market straight away though because even though he is getting worse attribute wise he is still better than a new player who you have to train up. Use the 7th season players for as long as possible until you can get hold of a decent replacement in the waivers. But don’t think you have to drop him as soon as he hits 7 seasons. As a rule, many of the top Managers will nor replace a player until they can get a new one with higher attributes….regardless of seasons played.

Keeping Your Players Happy
When you set your lines try and use every player who is fit. You do this by making sure everyone is either on a Line or on a Special Team Unit. This will keep your players happy and cut down on them going AWOL. If they get Ice time then they generally turn up for the next game. It will not stop all AWOL’s but it should cut down on them. When doing this remember to keep their morale high and this will also help them as well.

Fitness

A Player is fit enough to play if he is 60% or above (regardless if they are listed as having an injury), However I do not advise playing them if they are that low. If you use training you should aim to keep the fitness level as close to 100 as you possibly can. If a player has low fitness then don’t throw him on more than one line as he will not be able to perform. Also be aware of the stamina of players as this dictates if they can perform for long periods of ice time.

Morale

It is absolutely crucial to keep morale as high as possible. A motivated team will play their very best and an unhappy team will play well below their abilities very often. You can help keep morale high in a few ways:
1. Log-in everyday to manage your team.
2. Select morale-building in the training page. Rehabilitation is the best recommendation for division games. Nice rest for Exhibition games. Note that some player react differently to moral building activity and pub crawl tend to give a lot of AWOL the day after…
3. Play all your guys as often as possible. A guy who doesn’t play will lose morale very quickly.
Also, players love to win and a winning team will generally have good morale…

Hope it helped, the 2 other part are coming…

Inspired from The SLH Beginners Handbook from chinook@gator

Like I told you in my review tactic and advance tactic are pretty essential to set-up. We are going to go in a in deep analysis.

TACTICS:

vs Referees

Here the best way to play the refs

Patty Wagon – Normal (Pansy if losing late on)

 
Jon Bon Phyre – Normal (Pansy if losing late on)
Colin Fairgame – Normal or Mean
Seymour Clearly – Mean (Never Psycho) (Normal if losing late on)
Stan Trial – Normal (Pansy if losing late on)
(Note: I usally got Pansy against this ref)

Ed Jucashun – Normal (Pansy if losing late on)

Stan Dupcomic – Psycho

Note that has been serious debate over the moves to Pansy late on the forum.
Some swear by it, others would never do it.

Remember – These settings are not absolutes. Some refs may decide to call penalties or give out bans even when you set your aggression to normal depending on your players physical style and your opponents settings.

Playling style vs Ice Conditions

Fast Ice – European works best. (Can also use Possession)

Normal Ice – Possession works best. But you can use any tactic that is your teams strength.
Surface Water – D+C (Late game change to European if losing)
Slush – D+C works best. (After 30 mins use possession if your team is fit, but this has also been debated))

Poor Ice – Possession only (if your team is unfit change to D&C after about 40mins)

Instruction

If teams are evenly matched then the tactics decide the game usually. If you have a team with much weaker attributes than they usually do not apply, and your team will lose regardless of which tactics are used. Although, having the tactical edge will make the final score closer than if you didn’t.

Defense beats Counter Attack
Counter Attack beats Attack
Attack beats Defense

Setting up the same tactics as your opponent doesn’t give a edge to any player.

Also of note, when setting tactics is how much time a line will play based on which tactic you select.
Attacking……… Line 1 will play the most (Approximatly 50%)
Defensive……… Line 2 will play the most
Counter Attack.. Line 3 will play the most
So if, for example, you select DEFENSIVE in the tactics page, then you may want your best players on line 2…
Note on setting up tactics versus the psycho aggression level:
Using Counter Attack (unless the ref is Dupcomic) seems to result in more injuries than the other two tactics.

Setting Up For The Game

Scouting (AKA checking the recap)

Go in the schedule of our opponent (click on him first then schedule)

Check some report of his team, the recap part is more important, that where you see when he change tactic.

You see ? When trailing after 12 minutes the Wanderers switched from counter attack to attacking. I might be a good idea to switch to counter if we are leading against them in the advance tactics.

It’s very important for all managers to take a look at their opponents before each game. This is very important against tough teams. You need to go into the team you are playing Schedule. Check back over several games. Try and find tendencies in your opponent.

Read the recaps, and check when he changing instruction particularly, even if you have a weak team vs a strong team if you always have the right counter tactic you can win games.

Try and look at several games where he lost and the same when he won. From this you can see what he does if he goes behind and how he changes things as well as what he does when he is in the lead. If you cant remember it all use a scrap piece of paper or notepad. This will win you games as if you are playing someone predictable you can blast him off the ice 9 times out of 10.

Advanced Tactics

Your opponent can see which tactics you selected, but he cannot see your ADVANCED TACTICS. Like I said previously, this is where you can set your tactics to change depending on what’s happening in the game. For example, switch strategies if losing after the 2nd period or switch goalies or switch aggression levels…

What I usually like to do is to set up one set of tactics (which they can see) and then set my advanced tactics (which they CAN’T see) to something else for the very start to try and fool them….
If you think another manager might do this, you can prevent this by reading their recaps.
If your opponent always plays Counter attack for example but never changes if he is winning or losing, make sure you account for this being the first time he does change, then switch your team in the advance tactic too defence. Note: You can come stuck as not everyone will play the way you expect them to.

Hope you liked that guide, part 2 and 3 cooking 🙂