NEW: Changes to Fantasy Rugby ahead of 2022/23 URC season

Starting with this season’s United Rugby Championship (URC) fantasy game which has just gone live and is available to join now, we will soon be introducing a fairly significant change to our transfer system in fantasy rugby.

As those of you who have played fantasy rugby on Superbru before will know, our current system has a standard transfer limit per round. While that limit has varied depending on the tournament and the number of fixtures per round within a tournament, we have always prevented more than a certain number of transfers from being possible within a round. However, that is about to change.

In a move that we hope will reward long-term planning and add a fresh tactical element to fantasy rugby on Superbru, the transfer ‘limit’ per round in this season’s URC will now be replaced by the number of ‘free transfers’ you are permitted, meaning extra transfers can now be made if you wish but said extras will be in exchange for points.

A standard URC fantasy round will see the team limit of a maximum of 4 players from a single team retained, while the typical round will permit 6 free transfers. Each additional transfer made after you have used up your free transfers allowance will cost you 10 fantasy points.

Why are we doing this?

During the opening season of the URC (and throughout the post-Covid era across many tournaments) we saw lots of fantasy disruption caused by fixture cancellations/postponements but also down to some other non-Covid factors like squad rotation for certain tours depending on context etc.

Often, because of such disruption, we decided to raise fantasy transfer limits (sometimes at fairly short notice) in order to allow more players to get a team together and while we still feel this was the correct thing to do within our existing system, we have now created this new format which we believe will improve our games.

Technically, it will now always be possible for all brus to get a full squad of starting players in each round of a fantasy rugby tournament, it’s just going to cost you a considerable number of points if you haven’t planned as well as other players might have.

If you’ve already used up your free transfers and then find a member of your squad has been withdrawn from a match ahead of the round deadline, or a fixture has been postponed and will no longer take place in the round, you will be left with a tactical decision as to whether it’s worth the 10-point hit to replace said member of your squad with an extra transfer.

While there will still be some occasions where the number of free transfers permitted is raised because of the number of fixtures in a round, our aim will be to only make such changes well in advance so that long-term squad planning can still be rewarded.

E.g. This season's URC calendar sees two South African derbies played in early February when no other matches are being played. You will already be able to see in our game that twice as many free transfers are permitted before and after that round given the obvious need for greater flexibility.

Why 10 points?

We have decided upon 10 points as the cost for additional transfers after reviewing the average points scored by a starting player in various fantasy rugby tournaments that we have run.

Assuming a player you are replacing will not feature in a round and will therefore not score any points, an extra transfer would have to result in the player you are bringing in scoring a slightly above average number of points (>10) in order to have been worthwhile.

This means that you will have to think carefully before opting to use an extra transfer. For instance, if your kicker is a late withdrawal then there's a good chance it will be worth replacing him with another kicker given the increased number of points they tend to score, and this update to our game provides you with an opportunity to make that necessary additional transfer.

However, if you're concerned about having a light bench or being short of a starting prop, it won't always be worth taking the hit just to get that extra starter involved.

Points for extra transfers will be subtracted from your round total at the end of the round when subs are run and standings are finalised.



A couple of other things to note ahead of this year's URC fantasy specifically:

- Turnovers have been added to the scoring system meaning players will score 1 point for every turnover they manage within a match

- Lineout steals have also been added to the scoring system - a player will score 1 point each time they steal an opposition lineout

- We’re also hoping to return to live scoring for this year’s tournament with players’ points totals to be updated every couple of minutes during matches.