Everyone's favorite game is back! I determined what everyone's favorite was based on how much they talked about it. That seems legit, right? Anyway, let's construct some teams for some ambiguous sport that could definitely be anything. Maybe it's a Killing Sports Game? I don't know man, I'm just trying to be on brand here while also making you miserable.

Prove your leadership abilities in Nekomaru's Team Manager!

Team Construction Rules

Every team must have 18 players. Any tribe that does not sign 18 players successfully will automatically be eliminated from the challenge. Your soccer team will consist of your starting 11 and your subs. When building your team, you must abide by the following rules:

1) Your starting 11 must form a strategically sound formation. Sport formations can be found here (see the "alignment" dropdown). Note that the two formations under "classic" will not be accepted because they're not real formations. However, we've simplified this process. All players are goalkeepers (GK), defenders (CB, LB, RB), midfielders (CDM, CAM, CM, LM, RM), or strikers (ST, RW, LW). You can play any striker at any striker position and so on with no penalty. No need to pay attention to the letters on all those circles, just note the numbers in the dropdown menu. "5-3-2" just means 5 defenders, 3 midfielders and 2 strikers.
2) Your sub bench must have at least 1 goalie and may not have two players playing the same position (exact position titles do matter for this one).
3) You have a salary cap of 3.5 million. You may not at any point have players whose combined salaries are above this amount.
4) You may only have up to 3 players whose salary is $450,000.
5) You may have up to 8 international (not American or Canadian) players.

The Players

Players will be presented to you in the following format:

Name - Position - Strength - Salary - Country

Your current players, remaining salary cap, and international slots remaining are up to you to track.

Assessing Team Strength

At the end of the five rounds of puzzling, each tribe will decide which of their players to use in their team, and in what formation. All teams' strengths will then be assessed. Your starting 11 players count for their full strength, and subs count for 75% of their strength.

In addition, if you need a player to play in a position other than what is listed in order to follow team rules 1 and 2, any player may be played out of position, but they will only count with 75% strength.

Acquiring Players

There are two ways to acquire players:

1) Complete jigsaw puzzles to acquire players. The mods will post a very large number of jigsaw puzzles in this thread, along with an associated player for each puzzle. When you finish a jigsaw puzzle, post the completed version in the thread along with the name of the corresponding player (so other tribes can tell what you claimed) to sign that player. Once a player is signed by a tribe, no one else can sign them.
2) A few players will be hidden around the forum at the start of the challenge. If you find anything suspicious, post it in the challenge thread!

Unacquiring Players

You can release your drafted players at any time by posting to that effect in the challenge thread. They are not back up for draft; you're just murdering them.

The two tribes that perform best (highest team strength) will be immune from this round of Class Trials.

We will run this challenge live if we can get enough players. We'd like to have 3 or 4 players from each tribe participating, but if that's not possible we will run it with 2. If we can't get 2, we will alter this challenge to a semi-live version.

A whenisgood or something like that will be up soon.