Its time for the first scores update for the Fantasy game - for all 98 teams who entered the game in January. Predictably, the Tour Down Under was the key race. 16 teams entered after the TDU (and therefore also San Luis and Bongo) and they are in the bottom 17 postions - but the season is long, so plenty of time to catch up.
Andre Greipel was the key rider, scoring 497 points. Hendersen was the next best on 208, Luis Leon Sanchez scored 195, before the Bongo winner Charteau on 182, and San Luis winner Nibali on 167. Such was Greipel's dominance, the 19 teams who picked him all made the Top 23 (Scotty's Spitfires, Bonnet de Douchebag, Musteline Warriors and Lucca Tuscana being the teams up there who did not pick him). Two articles have now been posted, one showing Rider Rankings and the other showing Rider Value Rankings,
LDF - Velingnews.com are the leading team for January, with 24 scoring riders, including the likes of Greipel, Henderson, Dumoulin and Roberts. Tinkoff Revival trail by 369 points with Cyclopaths in 3rd - the highest placed team to have missed the early National Championships. The current Top 10 is below, full standings can be found by reading the extended news article.
As we said when releasing the Public Beta, it's now time to get started with the 2010 careers in PCM. As always, the interest is picking up with the cycling season having started again, and for the same reason, it's a pleasure to announce the final version of PCM.daily's 2010 DB.
Many of you have tried out the Public Beta, and naturally, there's not much new in the final version compared to the Public Beta - except for the bug fixes, that is. We did add a few things, though. Since the release a week ago, several new shirts, frames and helmets have been released, and we've included as much of that as possible. In the meantime, OlegTinkov has been helpful with making the 2010 version of the World Championship (both RR and TT). These two profiles have also been added along with Jaap90's versions of Grand Prix La Marseillaise and Trofeo Laigueglia. We also found some room for a couple of new teams: Adageo Cycling Team, Bahati Foundation and Team Raleigh. As you all know, our main focus is Britain/USA, and these teams fit that perfectly. Lastly, and to some the most important of all, we also managed to make it possible to sign riders from the 1st of January.
Other than that, you do of course get the features from the previous DBs. Updated teams according to UCI and CQRanking, the 2010 race profiles for Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, Tour Down Under, Tour de Suisse and the two new Canadian Pro Tour races - and the features from the 2009 DB, e.g. the new scouting zones, several new variants, including some for National Championships, doping banned riders who return when their suspension ends, etc.
Update, 21:22: The DB is currently being compressed to an exe file. This is a process which takes quite (at 84 % now) a while which means that we'll either end up with a quite late release today or a release early next morning - we'll see :)
Update, 20:02: Success - finally! :)
Update, 19:47: Unfortunately, no progress has been made so far. I'd like to get in contact with one who played the World Championship in the 2010 Public Beta - if you did, please contact me at MSN / CrueTrue@hotmail.com.
Update, 15:38: Testing has now ended, and we did find one problem that we're still trying to fix. It's not fatal / game stopping, but it's annoying enough to keep me from releasing it. Will update you once a solution has been found.
As mentioned Saturday, PCM.daily's 2010 DB is set to be released today - and that's definitely still the plan. We're running through the last couple of tests and have corrected a few minor things throughout the day.
One of the things that we have finally managed to 'fix' is the possibility to sign riders from the 1st of January. We had problems with this in our 2009 DB for PCM08 too (and eventually fixed it), and luckily, we found the setting in PCM09 too.
Anyway, if everything goes well, the released is expected in a few hours from now.
We have now reached the final week of January, therefore entering the transfer zone for all teams in our Fantasy game. You now have until the end of the month to decide and submit any changes you wish to make, that will come into effect immediately on February 1st.
Teams can: - Bring in up to 4 new riders - Get rid of as many riders as possible
So long as you stay within the team limits of 16-30 riders, do not go above the 10 million budget, and always have at least 5 ProContiental riders.
Your changes can be PMed to either Rjc_43 or SportingNonsense, or posted in the comments section here - and it is not too late to enter a team, if you have not done so already and would like to, just refer back to the original article and then PM your team to one of us.
We have also updated the rider lists to include some new riders that can be picked: Gilberto Simoni, Simone Mascaiarelli, Didac Ortega, Jerome Cousin, Volodymir Gustov, Mauro Richeze, Armando Camargo, Robson Dias, Tiego Justo, Magno Nazaret, Renato Ruiz, Andrei Sartassov and Luiz Tavares. Simoni can be found on the ProTour rider list, while the others are on the ProContinental list.
The deadline for making your February Transfers is January 31st, and the first scoring update should come at the start of February. In the meantime, you may like to discuss the game in the January Discussion Thread.
I've been receiving an awful lots of e-mails and PMs about the release date of the final version of PCM.daily's 2010 DB (V1), therefore it's probably good to clear up some confusion.
The 2010 DB will not be released today. The reason for this is that the 2010 World Championship (both RR and TT) stage files are being made, and we'd love to include these with the DB. They should be finished at c. 21-22 tomorrow, and this means that there's no chance that the DB will be released before that time.
The earliest release is at c. 23 tomorrow, at the latest mid-Monday.
