EHM The Blue Line

Ok so we all had some time to get use to patch 3.02 now and I would like to start off by sharing my experiences. Basicly what I am going to try is describe, how and why this game is too easy imo.

Did a fantasy draft as Colorado with a random draft position with reverse pick order, ended up with the 10 overall pick to start off with. Got a team together of mainly young players and players in their prime with good long contracts, ala Gagne/Hejduk and no ufas to be for maksimum value of assets.

Then Proceed trading all the spareparts off for a horde of picks, untill I was down to 6 defenseman, 2 goalies and 9 forwards. 2 things are key here, first it gave me the picks to trade up for the first overall picks in the coming years and the foundation to dominate for many years. Nothing wrong with that, teams do this to a degree in rl as well, but however trading rubbish x5 for a second round pick is too easy, not only in fantasy but also normal games.
Then trading those 2/3/4 round picks along with my own 1 rounder for the first overall pick or sometimes the top 2/3 picks as well, depending on how much purging you have done to your team that year.
Basicly with commen sense, decent asset management and replacing some ufas once in a while, you can have the first overall pick every year without hurting your roster. This allows a cup contending team to get at least one SUREFIRE star every year, which keeps the talent level up and wages down.
When I hightlight surefire it is because it is too easy and predicable to select high end talent, in year 2014 I have had 12 top 4 picks and ALL 12 are very good NHL players and most are bonafide superstars. Ofc high picks should be good players in generel but the failure rate seems really low.
About the 9 forwards, I really dont see why I should use more, despite SI claimed they fixed it in 2007.
I am in my 9th season of that aforemention fantasy draft. I have made it to the finals all 8 years and winning the last 7 straight cups!, I never had more then 9 forwards playing and rarely 10 on the roster. Been down to 6 forwards sometimes due to injurys, but still cruised through the the regular season to yet another presidents throphy. In the playoffs I have yet to lose more then 5 games in any of the cup runs, so much for needing depth for a grinding playoff streak!.

Conclusion I love this game but it is getting silly easy, I simmed most of the regular seasons, just stopping to made trades/asses the team etc once in a while. Havent changed line tactics since day 1 and yet still steamroll everything, but the most scary part is my team never been in better shape in terms of prospects/salary/talent then it is atm (season 9). There is no reason why I cant win another 7 straigth cups apart barring major injury blows in the playoffs or just bad luck, this simply cannot be right. Sorry if it sounds like a rant and no I am not upset at winning, but I just want to be challenged and have a different feel to each game, rather then a "recipe" for success everytime that is too easy to follow.

P.S. In rl teams dominate then have to do some sort of rebuild at least, ofc teams like Devils/Wings/avs to a degree overcome this with late round gems and superb scouting, but this is just silly.

You want some challenge?

So start from Denmark or Austria as a recent player (i.e. lowest reputation), and try to make your carreer to the NHL title! That's what i actually do. Just two rules for that:
- don't go to another team unless you won the title in your current championship (or get promoted if you play in lower divisions like Allsvenskan)
- when you move to a stronger team, bring at least 2 players and/or staff from your old team, minimum for two years, and of course use them!

That allows to discover more leagues and players, and it's more difficult. For example, when i played my first season in Denmark, i wasn't use to deal with players with attributes of 4-5 on my third line, having just 1 assistant coach and no scout (and no one who wants to come!), no players who want to come to my team, and a board who didn't allow me money for trades...

Those two rules, are they good ideas to follow to help you succeed, or are they addded rules to make it more of a challenge?

Shadd666 wrote:You want some challenge?

So start from Denmark or Austria as a recent player (i.e. lowest reputation), and try to make your carreer to the NHL title! That's what i actually do. Just two rules for that:
- don't go to another team unless you won the title in your current championship (or get promoted if you play in lower divisions like Allsvenskan)
- when you move to a stronger team, bring at least 2 players and/or staff from your old team, minimum for two years, and of course use them!

That allows to discover more leagues and players, and it's more difficult. For example, when i played my first season in Denmark, i wasn't use to deal with players with attributes of 4-5 on my third line, having just 1 assistant coach and no scout (and no one who wants to come!), no players who want to come to my team, and a board who didn't allow me money for trades...

Hehe despite being danish I dont even know my local team Odense Bullsdogs all that well hmm, perhaps that should be changed . Doesnt adding more leagues make the game slow?, normally play with nhl/ahl enhanced and it runs fine so should be ok?.

Hi Forsberg,

I agree with your post, but, I have read many like it with EHM 2005 as well. It all comes down to how you want to play the game. Whenever I play a game like Call of Duty or Half Life, it's easy to get the cheat codes and dominate the game. Sometimes it's even fun. But after a while, I want a challenge.

It's the same with the EHM series. Shadd's post is a perfect example of how to be realistic and make the game hard for yourself! Another way to make it difficult is like what I did for the fantasy draft challenge here at TBL. I picked players all from one country, and I will only trade/sign players from the same country. I picked American players because there were a lot to choose from, but you could pick all of your players from any country. With this method/restriction, you would develop young players from your chosen country and eventually have a pretty dominating national team as well....

Maybe you can even think of another way to make it harder and post your idea for us!

Thats a pretty good idea timmy, the trade system is alot more fun the then "buying" system that euro leagues use, so would like to stay Nhl/Ahl.
Selfimposed salary cap is the only thing I can think of atm, but lots of rl team have those and that certainly could cause one to lose a star or to once in a while hmm.

Yes, trading is more fun than buying But the most difficult thing in euro leagues is not to buy good players but to sell bad players to have enough money to buy better players without being bankrupted, especially when you have a team who plays in a low reputed league, where noone will want those players... So you can just release them, but it costs some money...

So while it's less funny, it also more challenges you

actually in rl i haven't heard about a team in europe buying a player once. i dont know if it even happens. the old new club pays some kind of compensation sometimes but its not the kind amunts that is the game.

Here's a wacky idea to make things more difficult. Only pick players with unique numbers throughout your GM career. Like you're only ever allowed to have one NHL player with the number 12 and after he's off your team, no more players who wear 12 in real life are allowed on the team for the rest of your career. Come to think of it, that might get a little out of hand after a couple years, but maybe play around with the concept to find a way to limit the possibilites....

Having fun with "Team Scandinavia" atm, basicly like Timmy suggested only sign/draft/trade players from here.
Thought about doing team sweden, but the limited amouth of players would handcuff me and take the fun out of the game, for instance only 6 ranked players in the 07 draft. A sweden only fantasy draft can be very viable in the first 3-4 years, at least untill the huge drop off in talent comes, when the golden generation starts to retire/decline too much.
Doing it with all of scandinavia seems like a fair challenge, while still being able to at least choose somewhat which players you will depend on and develop.

First season of Team Scandinavia = presidents trophy and 16-1 cup run!, something needs to be changed at nhl level!.
I am outshooting and outscoring my opponents bigtime, and thats with my best players injured most of the season, it is just not right. A tweak to AI ingame adjustments and drafting is needed hardcore imo.

PS. Won 8 cups in a row with the avs, going 16-0 in the 9th season, not even 2005 version was THIS easy.

Forsberg wrote:First season of Team Scandinavia = presidents trophy and 16-1 cup run!, something needs to be changed at nhl level!.
I am outshooting and outscoring my opponents bigtime, and thats with my best players injured most of the season, it is just not right. A tweak to AI ingame adjustments and drafting is needed hardcore imo.

PS. Won 8 cups in a row with the avs, going 16-0 in the 9th season, not even 2005 version was THIS easy.

Make sure your coaches etc are from Scandinavia aswell, otherwise your cheating!!! And yes this game is too easy. I expect I will stop playing the game soon because I'll be bored of winning everything too easily. Its too easy to sign strong players as free agents, and then get cheap but good players to play on the lower lines (or prospects). Game AI needs to be imrpove, and really we need differant skill levels to suit players of all abilities.

I only have one rule when I play, and it has made the game fun and challenging 100% of the time. The rule is to only play the way a real hockey team would. I have always used, and never strayed away from, the idea of building for the team's good only(not signing my favorite real-life players, or getting hot real-life prospects just to say I got them in the game), and I have also always treated players/staff as if it was a real person - which means none of that mass firing junk where you fire an entire coaching staff on your first day as GM, or trade away all of your veterans players on your first day.

I've been playing this way since EHM2004(actually, since the freeware... but the freeware was ridiculously easy no matter how you played) and I have never had a point that was too easy.

I'm going to try a game and deny myself trading. Only being able to bring up prospects that I drafted. And hiring Staff that played on my team.

I always play realisticly aswell. I did fire half the coaching staff, but only because I felt they were below par. In reality, wouldn't you do that aswell if you had much beter options open to you? I do always buy the players that will be best for me.

Panjar wrote:I'm going to try a game and deny myself trading. Only being able to bring up prospects that I drafted. And hiring Staff that played on my team.

Thats actually a very good idea. Only problem will be players who leave you, and you'll be unable to get a replacement.

miked1991 wrote:I always play realisticly aswell. I did fire half the coaching staff, but only because I felt they were below par. In reality, wouldn't you do that aswell if you had much beter options open to you? I do always buy the players that will be best for me.

Panjar wrote:I'm going to try a game and deny myself trading. Only being able to bring up prospects that I drafted. And hiring Staff that played on my team.

Thats actually a very good idea. Only problem will be players who leave you, and you'll be unable to get a replacement.

That's the whole point. But after looking at it..... I just limited myself to trading for only guys that never played an NHL game.


It's gonna take years to build a team in my image I'm thinking of removing the cap, losing guys that i nurtured along might be too much to take

An idea to make the game truly difficult. Follow Shadds plan and start in a really low league, AND restrict yourself to only using players of the nationality of the coutry you are playing in. So if you start in the bottom Denmark league, you must release all your foreign players and then only sign players from Denmark. Would make the game very difficult. Take the English Elite League as an example. Teams are allowed 10 imports, who are usually the best 10 players on the team, except in a couple of cases. With this rule, you'll only be able to use brits, and your team will therefore most likely be one of the weakest in the league, but you'll still have to produce the results! It will get easier once your into North America as you'll have either Canadians or Americans to use (remember they are differant countries!), so the challenge is more a case of getting there. Challenge finishes with your first Stanley Cup win. How many years can you do this in?

I just started a game with unfaking unemployed.

Got a job with some team in the EPIHL...

No restrictions, just playing to play leagues that I would never play normally.

I have won 2 consevective President and Stanley Cup's with my Caps, and with Blue Jackets I lost in the C. Final twice before I took over Ducks and managed to climb from 14th place to 7 in 25 games and then winning the Cup. Now I restarted with the unfake-db and I'm currently managing IK Oskarshamn in Swedish Allsvenskan. So far it goes pretty good as I'm 1st after 20 games (although I have lost all games against the "Big" teams (Leksand, Rögle, SSK and Björklöven). I have all leagues selected except the Candian ones and I'm aiming to get to the NHL someday.