UNL: end of season 20/21

This was officially our best season yet. We managed to win every competition we were involved in which includes the UN League, the UN Cup and the Champions League. It was just an outstanding year for Heidelberg. A very consistent year as you can see from our fixtures, we pretty much dominated most games and with the help of some of our long term players we've achiever much more than was expected. We finished in first with 76 points, followed by Minato with 69 pts and third place went to La Pichard with 65. I feel that I can comfortably say that at this point these 3 teams are the cream of the crop in the United Nations League. While this is our first trophy, Minato has won it 4 times now (2014, 2015, 2019, 2020). They have been an impressive side over the history of the UNL.

La Pichard has had an impressive run as well, even though they only have 1 title (2017) they have placed 2nd twice and 3rd once. Beyond that, the UN Cup runner ups, Kalevipoeg, have also won once in 2018, and the other 2 german clubs have won it once each as well (FC Berliner in 2016, 84 Munchen in 2013)

In terms of notable players during this season, the player of the year award went to Espen Moe (Minato, Norway), with Piotr Pontus (Accra, Poland) in second and Rob Tol (Accra, Holland) in third. All players under 22 years of age. The top goalscorer this season was Will Baxter, the Englishman from Kalevipoeg with 27 goals and an average rating of 7.50. Todd Thomas (AC Lombardia, Australia) was tied with Aurel Lengyel (La Pichard, Romania) for second with 21 goals each and an average rating of 7.43 and 7.34 respectively. Lastly, the top goalie of the season was Philip Hulme from Heidelberg with an avg rating of 7.05, quite a feat for our 20 year old American goalie. 2nd place went to Osigwe, which is our old goalie, quite exciting to see 2 Heidelberg players get those awards.

UNL: 20/21 season update

2020 has been a great year so far for our Heidelberg side. The long term investments into young players with great potential are starting to bear fruits. We are currently in 1st place in the UNL and I have a strong feeling that this will be the year we win the League. We've had just a flawless campaign so far with hardly any losses. Perhaps the biggest challenge this season has been the departure of Zhao, our trusty target man for so many seasons. Just as he became a mature player we were forced to sell him to Manchester United. Perhaps I could have kept him for longer, but it would have been difficult to keep Zhao pleased in the club while so many of the best teams in the world were offering outrageous amounts of money for him. We ended up letting him go for a record 21M dollar deal. With this in mind I knew we would have to find some other player to replace him, which is why we brought in the Argentinian target man, Orsi, for 7M. Orsi is another great young player that I am sure will be a major threat to the opposition once he fully develops his game. This 21 year old striker may not be quite at the same level as Zhao, but he has certainly been an effective player at the front against some of the other teams in the league.

Beyond Orsi, a few players of not this season have been our defenders Antonio Jose and Kelisson Roberto. Both have had an incredible season so far and it is hard to believe these two are only starting their football careers. It's difficult to imagine they could get even better than they are already.

Another player that has been a pleasant surprise so far is the Japanese winger Kitazawa. He's always been a bit of a rotation player. I tend to only bring him in to rest some of our other players, however this season he's been playing superbly well. To the point that now I'm having trouble getting everyone enough pitch time since I have almost too many options at the front. I may actually have to sell one of our strikers/wingers at the end of this season, especially if I'm not going to be able to give all my players enough of a chance to develop. My main candidate to be sold is our Ukrainian striker/winger Ruslan Voytsekhivskyi. While he has been a strong reinforcement over his stay with the team, I believe our formation and tactics don't really offer him a place to really shine. He's really great as a lone striker, but so are our other 3 lone strikers. I use to play him in the wing a lot but now that's becoming difficult too with so many options on those positions too.

I've also purchased a few other players for this season, keeping up with my tradition to bring in young talented players. I purchased the Brazillian Rafael Fernando for $1.5M from Kobenhavn. Rafael is 23 and plays right full back. He has very high tackling, bravery and first touch. I was looking to get a full back with more offensive capabilities, but I have had a really hard time finding one, so I settled for this guy since he looks very promising as a defensive full back.

Lamine Diallo is one of my other purchases ($300K). This defensive midfielder from the Ivory Coast already has some impressive stats considering he is only 18 years of age. I plan to send him away on loan but probably get him some first team action next season already. My last purchase was the Brazilian left midfielder Dimas (bought for $650K). This kid is only 16 but has a great set of stats, incredible for his age. He has 14 crossing, 15 dribbling, 14 passing, 14 technique, he's really almost ripe already. If he can develop more over the next couple of years he has the potential to be a real threat for the opposition.

Lastly, I'm considering posting a few team profiles on the blog, just to give my readers a chance to get familiar with some of the other exciting side in the UNL. If anyone has any requests, just leave a comment. I'm probably going to do some profiles for teams that were suggested by fellow Redditors.

UNL: Conclusion of the 19/20 season

Another superb season for Heidelberg, we've managed to finish at the best position so far in the UNL and on top of that we made it to the semi final of the Champion's League and were the runners up for the UN Cup. I don't think there is a doubt that this was our best year yet.

We had a very strong season, which mainly featured a good start, where we essentially dominated in the first half of the season during 2019. I feel that Heidelberg began to struggle towards the end mainly due to the number of games we had to play and I believe the team take over that happened around April had a negative impact on the team. It was unfortunate since we may have been able to pull 1st place if it wasn't for that. Instead Minato once again grabbed the 1st prize with 81 points, quite a strong performance. Although this is not the best in UNL's history, in the 14/15 season Minato finished with 87 points and during the 17/18 season Kalavipoeg from Estonia finished first with 81 points. We were in second place with only 66 points, closely followed by Londinium FCwith 65 points. Much like Heidelberg, Londiunium have been improving over the years moving from bottom of the table during

the first 4 seasons to 11th place in 17/18, 6th in 18/19 and now in 3rd place after the 19/20 season. This is definitely a team we will need to keep an eye on for upcoming seasons.

In terms of individual players, one of our highlights is our young striker Zhao who finished the UNL seaosn with 24 goals, 2nd best after the Egyptian Islam Farouk from Londinium FC. Fabian Eiling from Norway (Bygdoy) snatched 3rd place. Zhao was also 2nd in Player of the Year following Farouk and ahead of the Brazillian winger from Londinium, Fernando Cesar. All 3 players are between 21 and 22 years of age, so we can expect that the UNL is only about to get more competitive and full of talent.

March 2020 - Team profile

It is almost the end of the 19/20 season and I figured this would be a good time to profile some of the players that have made it possible to be in 2nd place in the UNL, the final of the UN Cup and Heidelberg even made it past the group stage of the Champions League, which is completely novel to our squad.

To start, let's look at my two goalies. Both of them were chosen because of their age and potential. The 19 year old American Philip Hulme is our starting goalie, he's been absolutely great for our team despite his young age. He is also supposed to have a great amount of potential according to our scouts. Our second goalie is another young German player, Manfred KneiBl. He's slightly smaller than Philip but still has a lot of the great qualities of a player that may develop into a world class player for us. As I've mentioned before, we're really trying to build up a team with young players. UNL is still developping into a really competitive competition, so we can still afford to use some less inexperienced players to get the job done, which gives them so much experience. This is certainly part of the reason they have been developping so fast.



In the back we currently employ Kelisson Roberto and Antonio Jose. Both are our Brazillian defensive prodigies. Both are great players in the air, Kelisson being a more defensive minded player while the capitain Antonio Jose does have a bit more speed available allowing him to play a cover DC role with some offensive capabilities.

Beyond these two fenomenal Brazillians, we also have our two veterans, the 34 year old Jose Goncalves, who much like Kelisson takes more of the stopper role, while the 29 year old Zelimir Busic is our other ait threat. This Croatian DC has been with us for quite a few seasons now, and still starts games for us on occasion.


As full backs, our left side has the talent of the Dutch John Berghuis as well as the Italian defender, Rossano Luppi. Bot these players are actually quite similar in style and both could potentially be long time players for Heidelberg if I can keep them in the club. Unfortunately, on this side of our defense our players are defense minded, which at this point does limit our attacking potential from these roles


In terms of right full-backs, our veteran Xavier Arellano still plays for our team. He is perhaps slightly faster than our other DR, Kevin Bigler from Switzerland. Bigler is a very technical and creative full back. Our right side however is weaker in talent when compared to our left side.

Our current tactics involves a 4-1-2-2-1 formation using a lone defensive midfielder, often in an anchorman role or sometimes a defensive DM role. For this position we have the Mexican Erick Cardenas, Cesar Guerreno, Javi Garcia and Freddy Mveng. Garcia is our veteran with a strong air presence and quite a bit of physicallity to supplement that. Mveng is perhaps our best DM in my opinion so far. This 27 year old Cameroonian is shorter but much faster than Garcia.

Both the Mexican Cardenas and the Paraguayan Guerreno are 19 years of age and still have a lot of developping to do. Cardenas is tall and more defensive minded while Guerreno can play a bit more of a playmaker role since he is much more technical.

Guerreno is also one of our options when it comes to the mid field, however the Spanish Efijota certainly has more creativity and attacking potential, so he often is made the started with a DLP supportive role.

Beyond the mid fiel we have left and right attacking midfielders, often with an attacking winger role or even an inside forward role. On the left side we have another pair of Brazillians. The 22 year old Nilson Chule and the 22 year old Marcos Roberto. Both of these players are actually fairly similar, very fast and technical. Both have been a great part of our success this season so far.

On the right side we have the Ukranian Ruslan Voytsekhivskyi, who we just recently aquired. Despite his usual role as a striker, we have mostly used him in the AMR position so far, which is alright considering his speed and attacking skills.

Beyond that, Yoshinari Kitazawa is our Japanese forward that we tend to use as backup to a lot of different roles up front.

Chang Joon-Ki, is our 18 year old Korean that has also been doing a great job showing his talent.

Our two biggest stars perhaps are the two forwards, Tihomir Maric and our Chinese star, Zhao. Zhao tends to play either as a complete forward or simply a target man. Maric is a bit smaller and tends to be used in speedier roles.

UNL: Conclusion of the 18/19 campaign pt.1

After another period without posting and for the most part playing as well, I finished season 7 of the Heidelberg saga. It was a very strong season for the team, which was really what I expected considering how we've been building the team up for the past few seasons. Heidelberg finished the 18/19 season in 3rd place, quite nice, despite the fact that we were #1 for a good while at the end of the season. Unfortunately we had a few bad games in April/May, which were likely due to some injuries and the divided effort between the UNL and the EURO cup. Overall though, I am pleased with the performance of the team this last season. On part 2 I will post more details about some of the highlights.

The UNL winners this time around was the Japanese club Minato. They have been a very strong side since the beginning of the game from what I can recall, and they came in second place last season. The French team La Pichard came in very close in 2nd place. It was unfortunate that the first 3 positions were decided on the very last day of games. Prior to that day La Pichard was actually in first and they were playing Minato and Heidelberg was in 3rd. We could have moved up had we won our match instead of the 2x2 draw but only if La Pichard had won their match. In the end Minato creamed La Pichard 4x1 putting the Japanese side in first place with 73 points and making it so that even winning we would still only clinch the 3rd spot this season.

Some of the key players this season included our Chinese striker Zhao who managed to be the best young player this season. Despite his young age and inexperience, Zhao is slowly becoming our primary forward, usually in a Target Man role. Some other important players were Svoboda, our right winger, another young player with a great career ahead of him. Our young defensive pair Kelisson Roberto and Antonio
Jose. These two are also very young and have been playing like grown ups this entire season. As I keep saying, we've had a few struggles in the last few seasons but I feel that this was the first season where our young side full of potential is starting to blossom. We have a ton of players under 22 years of age that are replacing our veterans very often that will become superstars in a season or two, putting us in a very comfortable position. The heavy scouting and emphasis on young players will pay off in the end.

Some of the surprises in terms of the UNL final standings was the fact that Kalevipoeg really dropped quite a bit from where they were in the last few years, they actually won the UNL last season and only placed 8th this year. ASS Riga also dropped big time, being one of the teams relegated this season. This Latvian team went from being on the top of the table for quite a few seasons to a complete collapse, and I'm not sure why. Beyond these two baltic teams, we also saw the Italian team R&R, the Finnish FC Suomi and the Portuguese Atletico da Baixa, all being relegated this year.  Kobenhavn and Bygdoy just missed getting relegated by a couple of points and will get to keep their UNL spot for next year. R&R were 4th place last year, which also makes it a bit of a surprise to see them drop like that. Germany will continue to have 3 teams in the UNL next year, making it the country with the most teams in the first division. I supposed if you count the UK as one nation then they also have 3 (Glasgow, London United and Londinium FC, ?or is it 4 if you count Wales too?).

DayZ review: my journey so far

I've been fairly excited playing this game in the last little while. I'm currently writing my thesis for graduate school and Dayz has been a great source of distraction for my breaks. Perhaps a bit too distracting at times. I thought, because this game is so new and there isn't much out there in terms of material on DayZ, it would be a good one for me to post about it.

DayZ Standalone is the standalone version of an Amra II mod that became very popular. To be honest, I never played Arma very much and it doesn't matter. DayZ is a game of its own and I won't be surprised when it surpasses Arma in terms of popularity. DayZ is a multiplayer survival game where you basically start off in a huge map wearing a T-shirt and pants and you have to try to survive. What that means is that you have to find water, food, better clothing to protect you and eventually weapons to fend off foes. While this is a zombie game, the zombie aspect of it at this point is fairly small, they are sparse and mostly just a nuisance. The most scary part of the game is coming accross real people. Real people (for the most part) will try to kill you to take the equipment you spent hours gathering, and then you'll have to start over. So as you can imagine, the game is very punishing if you are not ready.

Overall, the idea of a survival game is not particularly novel and I have played a fair number of them over the last couple of years. However, what I think makes this game in particular stand out is the level of realism that these developpers are trying to put into this game. They are really trying to make the environment look beautiful and real, trying to give you the sense that the world out there is hostile and that it only takes one mistake to lose it all. Not only can you die from being shot by another person, or eaten by a zombie, but you can die of thirst, sickness, infections, food poisoning and a miriad of other things. It all really adds up to a game that makes you feel on edge the entire time even though nothing is actually happening for the most part. As I mentioned, the map is very large so even getting from A to B takes quite a bit of time on foot (which currently is the only way to get around), so a majority of the time I've been playing this game has consisted of running around scavaging for scraps. The truths is, to me that all just adds to a more realistic experience.

One warning though, this game has been out for less than a month, and it is only a month of Alpha. So if you are reading this and considering buying this game, do it with full knowledge that it is still in development. It's buggy as hell and very much unfinished (check out my photo on the right of me beating myself up after my character lost all its gear and bugged out). Regardless, it has been a ton of fun playing it with my sister and bother-in-law. We're just three survivors, trying to get through another day.

XCOM Enemy Unknown Review and beginner tips

As of today, I've put in a solid 31 hours of this wonderful game I've picked up on Steam. For those that are not familiar with XCOM: enemy unknown, this is a reimagined copy of the early 90's tactical shooter also named XCOM. The original game is a game I have never played, but it is a well known title among gamers for being one of the greatest yet hardest games around.

XCOM is a turn-based tactical shooter game with an overarching strategy game component. The highlight of the game is definitely the shooter aspect though. To be completely honest, until 3 weeks ago I was unfamiliar with the genre myself. I knew of other games like this one, such as Jagged Alliance, but had never played them. It encompasses a turn-based game where you have multiple units that you must strategically position and use their skills to destroy the opposing units. In XCOM you will control between 4-6 infantry units that can be of one of four roles. They can be of the following types:

• Heavy - Tough units that use a LMG (Light machine gun) as well as a rocket launcher.
• Sniper - The name says it all. They are great at shooting enemies from a distance with sniper rifles. These units are critical in this game since taking damage, especially early in the game, is something you need to avoid. It is not uncommon to lose a unit with full health in one turn. This is definitely a game where mistakes have high cost.
• Assault -  One of my favorite classes, they are the sturdiest units and the only class that allows you to chose a main weapon. You can use an assault rifle which gives you a little bit more range, or a shotgun which can be very useful in close range combat. As I mentioned, this is a game that rewards safe strategies, however a well timed move by an assault unit can be devastating to a team already crippled. I sometimes also use assaults to initiate a fight. Once my entire squad is in a safe firing squad position, you can send in the assault unit, obliterate one of their units right of the getgo and then pick off the others with your more ranged units.
• Support  - Arguably the most versatile class in the game. They can be fairly mobile, they have abilities that make them strong healbots and just overall offer great utility as well due to their extra inventory spot. I tend to take 2 supports when I can with my team.

Overall, I highly recommend this game to anyone that enjoys a good strategy game. It's a 2K game, so there is an extra incentive to try it from Civilization fans. This game does seem to have some of the same appeals as Civ games does to me. Another cool aspect of this game and other games of this genre is the RPG element of building up your squad that develops as you use individual soldiers. You actually start to get pretty attached to your soldiers, which can make the permadeath from a mistake a fairly traumatic event to the player.

Lastly, here are some of my tips for this game from my first 30 hours of play:

• Don't focus on training up only a handful of soldiers. Expand your team and make sure you always have a backup. Soldiers can get hurt in a mission and be out of comission quite often. I've been in situation where I literaly had 10 soldiers hurt and only had 5 rookies to chose from, which is something you really want to avoid.
• In terms of the non-tactical part of the game, make sure to do your research and try to focus on building up your technologies. Especially the satelite/interceptor related ones.
• Don't overspend, only buy things you need now or soon.
• Try to get more satellites up as soon as you possibly can, I promise you will regret not doing that.
• In terms of research, research laser weapons early as well. They are much better than the standard weapons. Aside from that focusing on armor is also important. I try to get the skeleton armor early if possible since it has nice stats and allows for great mobility.
• Any research that tells you it's urgent or priority is only priority if you want the game to move forward. With only a few exceptions, not doing those things right away is actually a good way to slow down the pace of the game. This can make the game a bit easier since the aliens don't get too difficult too quickly and you have time to do more research and get more money before things get too tough. One exception for me so far was the skeleton key research to be able to invade the alien base. At that point in the game you will not have very many satellites up, so your fear levels will slowly get out of hand even if you are completing missions every time. So my advice is to basically do the research and build the skeleton key, but then hold off on actually going to their base until you have a country on the RED. Once you beat the alien base invasion you will get rid of a lot of the heat around the world. Of course, you need to beat that mission for this to work.
• Dig and build before you need them. While it's important to not overspend in this game, you also don't want to be waiting 20-30 days on something you need today. So plan ahead when you know you will need to dig deeper to expand or build another power plant.
• In terms of office training, I don't tend to bother with wet work until I have a lot of cashflow, it's not a big deal. Just try to get to 6 member squads and get the iron will quickly since those are very useful. Heaving the quicker turn around in terms of healing your units is also very nice.
• More engineers is always useful for progressing, more scientists is nice but I never need to build labs for that reason. So when it comes to chosing missions, I'll pick engineers first, unless I need the money. Sometimes you may want the soldier if it's a class you need.
• In terms of squad composition, I tend to use:

1. Heavy (mainly focused on suppression skills and holo-targeting), he serves as my first move in a turn usually to weaken opponents or last move if I need to shut an enemy off a bit. (Fire Rocket -> Holo Target -> Suppression -> Heat Ammo -> Danger Zoone -> Will to survive -> Mayhen, although Rocketeer can be good if you like the granade launcher build better). This character will usually carry a granade or maybe a scope if I don't need the granade.
2. Shotgun assault (Mobile and heavily armored, with the idea he will be deadly when enemies get close). My build usually is Run and Gun -> Tactical Sense -> Ligthning Reflexes -> Rapid Fire -> Close Combat Specialist -> Extra Conditioning -> Killer Instinct. I tend to wear a vest on this character for the extra hit points
3. Sniper, always with a scope and a laser pistol once I get them. My built is Headshot -> Squad Sight -> Damn Good Ground -> Disabling Shot (i love this one in tough situations, works to prevent mind control even) -> Opportunist -> Low Profile -> Double Tap
4. Support, I often carry the healing pads on this guy and maybe the stun gun if no one else has it. My build is Smoke Granade -> Sprinter (good for scouting)-> Field Medic -> Revive (although this is not necessarily the best) -> Combat Drugs -> Deep Pockets -> Savior
5. Rifle Assault, this guys will be more of a ranged class which will carry either a granade, stun gun or scope. It's more of a flexible role I suppose, not a substitute for the other build unless you are playing on a big open map. Run and Gun -> Tactical Sense -> Ligthning Reflexes -> Flush (great for first moves) -> Close Combat Specialist -> Extra Conditioning -> Resilience
6. The sixth position can either be for a rookie you want to take along, another sniper if the map is open and large or a support which can always be useful
7. Another worthy mention is the alternative build for a sniper I use. This is for a mobile sniper, perhaps not as deadly as the other one, but useful in crash maps and maps with a lot of indoor fights.  Headshot -> Snap shot -> Gunslinger -> Disabling Shot -> Executioner -> Low Profile ->In the zone