So, we now have three EPL comps that were going to be running with as something to keep our fantasy minds ticking over through the off season.

So if youre a fan of the EPL comps, or perhaps want to branch into something new- the full details, and a couple of tips, are found over the break.

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<a href="http://epldreamteam.sportal.com.au/">Virtual Sports[/url]

So, the first game on offer is the <a href="http://epldreamteam.sportal.com.au/">Virtual Sports[/url] offering. This game is a fantastic game to start up the EPL dream as its mechanics are very similar to SuperCoach, youve got your players, youve got your bench, while you dont have emergencies, you do have the good ol faithful 3 week rolling average that youve been loving for the past 18 week.

One key change that you seasoned folks would have noticed is that the scoring has changed- your bench players no longer score half points- which for mine is a fantastic change in the rules. No longer will you be punished when Chelsea has a week off. Strategy-wise however, it does mean that upgrading your first 11 is more important than ever!

The general strategy that youll want to use in this game is the game as Supercoach, you want to pick your guns, and your rookies who will improve- the big difference in this game over Supercoach however, if a cheap defender/midfielder *team* score two clean sheets in a row, the player will go up millions over the 3 week period- so when picking your starting line-up, particularly your cheapies, you want to look for guys who have a string of games against easy teams, remember, it doesnt matter if they dont win, just so long as the other poor team doesnt score!

The other trick which can be used for salary generation is chasing strikers- basically, roll over a position in your forward line to whatever forward has scored 2 or more goals that week- because of the 3 week rolling average, it can be a decent way to keep your cash ticking up.

Finally, and I probably should have said this first- you have 40 trades, so you can expect to have a full team having spent 10-20 of them- meaning trading early and trading often is the way to go in this game- two trades a week, every week early til you get your team right.

Now, if youve gotten this far, youre probably after a league code, well so far Ive set up three.

For the new guy starting out, weve got the TooSerious: 305731, a league for anyone to jump into, regardless of whether its your first season, or if youre just after a more relaxed game. Currently there are 6 spots left at last count.

We have WaaaayTooSerious: 765653 - which is planned to be the #1 team in the league this year. Please, only sign up for this league if youre planning on taking this seriously as we dont want a repeat of last year where we had a handful of teams that signed up, but then just didnt try from week one.

Finally we have TooSerious Esq III: 863597, Ive set this up for when the other leagues fill up so that we can have a league where you guys can still play.

<a href="http://fantasy.premierleague.com">Barclays Premier League[/url]

The official game and the grand daddy of them all, <a href="http://fantasy.premierleague.com">Barclays Premier League[/url].

First things first, the leagues. Weve got two that are open to business- The Head-to-head league: 3753-2161, which currently has room for 21 more players- and the classic league, open to as many folk as we can get in there: 3753-2029. Remember, you dont have a limit to how many leagues you can roll in here, so theres no harm in joining both if you want!

Edit: Ive just created a second H2H league in case that first one is full! Heres the league code: 4870-128369

This game works fairly differently than the VS game, the biggest difference is seen in the salary movement, unlike VS who have the 3 week rolling average which calculates after lockout, Barclays moves their salaries daily, based on the trade-ins and outs of a player. Thankfully there is a site which tracks said trade-ins and outs so if youre on the ball, you can see when a player is likely to go up in value, and trade into them. I cant quite remember the name of the site off the top of my head right now, but Im sure someone will post it in the comments.

The next big difference is in trading. There are a couple of things of note here, firstly- you have unlimited trades every round. Well, kind of. Every round you have a free trade, however, if you want to make more trades, each will cost you 4 points off your total score- which is quite significant. The caveat to that is that if you dont use your free trade in a particular week, you can bank it to use in a future week. Though you can only store one of these.

The next thing about trading is the wild card- twice through the year, you can use your wildcard. This allows you to make as many trades as you want in a gameweek for free- so not only can you turn over your whole team, with the daily salary movements, you can actually turn a decent profit during it.

The trick is however, with all this trading available, the downside that has been put on to keep you from going crazy is this- and its probably easier to explain it as a case study.

If you buy Angel Rangel (still love the name) at 4.5 at the start of the year- and he does well, triggering other players to trade into him, and his price goes crazy- driving him up to 5.5. If you were to trade him out, you would only get half of the profit in credit to your account- so youd only get 5.0, while it would still cost you 5.5 if you wanted to buy back into him.

Thats good and all for the cash-generating rookie, however if you have a premium early who has gone off- who then loses form, it becomes a tough decision whether to trade them out for a profit and hope you wont need to buy back into them- or risk keeping their bad form and losing all of the profits gained as more and more other coaches trade out of them!

<A href="http://fantasyfootball.metro.co.uk/">Metro[/url]

The final game were playing is the <a href="http://fantasyfootball.metro.co.uk/">Metro[/url] comp.
The league code for this game is: 11241.

Now, Ive never actually played this game before, so I dont know how the salary movements work- nor do I know the best strategy to roll with- so Im more than happy to discuss it in the comments!!

So there we have it- three comps that should help the summer pass by while waiting for redemption over the summer (Or in Prompts case, something to do between spending ones prize money... )