i agree with nostar. everyone screams murder every time a trade happens, [i]any trade[/i]. however trades usually involve two caps believing they are improving their prospects. if the wise and beautiful people behind idl thought trades were detrimental to the league&#039;s quality, they&#039;d be long forbidden. you could argue that a lot of these big trades were onesided or stupid, but that&#039;s connected to stupidity of certain caps - they probably already drafted wrong and their instinct tells them to make their trainwreck explode in an even shinier fireball. however the potential for improving teams/the league is so high we dare not interfere with the trade rules. [b]if more caps played their cards right, there would be much more pre-season moves and we&#039;d see [i]much better designed teams[/i] as opposed to groups of random guys connected by the quality of &quot;being the best available at draft pick #X&quot;.[/b]<br /><br />even this season i can see teams that will bomb because of poor balance. caps are hesitant to trade 1 for 1 because of power levels or whatever, but they ignore obvious conceptual problems their team will encounter. the 2 for 2 trades are very interesting as they reshuffle everything in unexpected ways. i&#039;d love to see even more complicated moves, perhaps involving even more teams and player combinations.<br /><br />i can&#039;t comment on the seasons i wasn&#039;t involved in, but i can add my two cents to nostar&#039;s analysis in the later ones. let&#039;s see...<br /><br />[u]season 6 - jkist for mortal[/u]<br />one of the most controversial trades for all the wrong reasons. SUC was stacked and i believe they&#039;d win even without jkist, because [i]mortal is far superior as a ctf player[/i]. he knows much more about the ctf dynamics and his reactions/aim are ridiculous even at high ping. any other team would profit from mortal more than from jkist, but SUC needed a dumb obedient mid turret and their two best options were... kist and fast. except fast isn&#039;t obedient.<br />on the other hand SPE was disfunctional from the go, because nero picked a wrong lineup. kist&#039;s ctf use is extremely niche. he&#039;s exclusively a mid player as we learned from our experiments on having him run. fast can run some, but his main prowess lies also in mid. oh, and he had unreliable connection that season. nero&#039;s specialization is fraggy o/mid even without the ping bonus... that is a horrible, horrible combination that left [b]me defending[/b] some maps. nero underestimated the limitations of fast and kist, we couldn&#039;t get a working lineup. on the other hand with mortal&#039;s ctf smarts we were dangerous to most of our opponents, even suc on map13, we just couldn&#039;t seal the deal because of the cummulative ping disadvantage and fast bailing on us, because he felt betrayed. the all euro team was stronger than the previous one, the &quot;professionalism&quot; improved, which is easily proved by the fact that me and mortal worked along each other without fighting. perhaps nero could&#039;ve tried to trade with another caps, but he was desperate to fix the team and suc was there, first in line with a sound proposal. [b]that&#039;s how trades are made.[/b]<br /><br />[u]season 7 - rose for fast[/u]<br />another trade involving my team, heh. this trade is significant for one reason - fast was one of the most vocal critics of one-sided trades, yet he was perfectly okay with a move that made his destination team stacked (later MB winner SUC). [b]hypocrisy much, guys?[/b]<br />i think shak/chow/fast could&#039;ve worked, it&#039;d be a superstacked team. however they really wanted rose, because they were gay for her and they&#039;d probably fight with fast a fucking ton, which could easily cripple any ambition. rose played excellent for bsk, it wasn&#039;t her fault they bowed out too soon. on the other side SUC got stacked, but fast&#039;s giant ego added to an already volatile mix of ralph and star. it wasn&#039;t easy to keep the guys from tearing each other apart.<br /><br />[u]season 8 - hatred for nero[/u]<br />yet another trade involving my team. yes, it was dumb, but we all know the story. hatred was just weeks from quiting doom [b]forever and ever, never to return again[/b] and goat, in his pathetic softheartedness, gave him a chance to shine in a more stacked team, blah blah, etc.<br />however, few notes to add - EBL picked nero from the free agency for clim, who underperformed that season. nero played exactly 1 match for EBL before the trade and he was excellent. we (me, nero, white) held the indomitable BBC (star, mike, mid) to 0-0 and 1-0 on chain&#039;s map05, then lost 5-0 when xen subbed in unprepared. nero was as good as ever, but he said fuck all when he got tossed away after mere one week into a dumpster team with obviously no playoff motivation.<br />some people hated on nero, because he didn&#039;t want to play anymore, but i can see many of the regulars throwing much bigger tantrums in the same situation. other people laughed at goat for being a nice guy. seriously, the only person to be blamed for this fiasco should be hatred - and perhaps the board for allowing the trade to happen.<br /><br />[u]season 9 - Nostar/Dr.Noob for Middd/Saber[/u]<br />goat took a gamble, it didn&#039;t work... but overall, i think he got a better operating team than he had before. dmr got stabbed in the back by connection issues of goat and saber both. on the other hand rus+star proved to be a mediocre def/mid combination, often saved by turska&#039;s heroics. then they benched turska, because rus needed late night matches... that doesn&#039;t sound like a well planned sweep for the MB title at all to me, tbh!<br /><br />oh and there was another trade.. involving me. reck&#039;s move to sxp stabilized the team frag/ping-wise, because bones had issues of his own that season and couldn&#039;t play his usual dominant style, so my ping disadvantage was extra inconvenient at the time. reck got much more playtime than he&#039;d get in suc and ralph knew very well why he traded for me. a minor swap in the overall picture, but a good example how it could look if all caps had brains.<br /><br />[u]season 10 - Nostar/Collision for Mikehail/Dr.Noob[/u]<br />as i said before, this balanced both teams nicely and they&#039;ll both be much better now. go do your own trades to make up for it!<br /><br />there was already a hint of a trade involving me/my team, but i proposed an easier option.. but hey, it seems like last 4 seasons it&#039;s me being near all the trades, so why is everyone always ganging up on star, eh?