I think that, because there&#039;s only 8 teams, that successful teams will have to be more than solid.&nbsp; It won&#039;t be enough to not make any mistakes, you&#039;re going to have to make amazing plays in order to get over your opponents.&nbsp; Captains that ignore this and always choose the safe player or the safe strategy will ultimately be disappointed, I think; risk will be necessary this season.&nbsp; However, there&#039;s a fine line between risk and recklessness, and captains will have to walk that line carefully.<br /><br />And as Xen mentioned, there is the Euro factor.&nbsp; This season we have more Euros than ever before, and with the success of WAD (with Nero), I&#039;ll bet you&#039;ll see some more Euros popping up on teams 4th string.&nbsp; Players are starting to see that high ping doesn&#039;t necessarily cripple a player, and I think you&#039;ll see some interesting strategies crop up involving high-pinging, yet clever Euro players.<br /><br />Also, again due to there only being 8 teams, teams will have the option of having a varied roster instead of a strong/weak roster.&nbsp; For instance, teams can draft a strong fragger for their 3rd, and a strong runner as their 4th and switch as necessary (not in game though!).&nbsp; I think you&#039;ll see a lot more 4th string players get play this season because talent is so dense.<br /><br />I predict that teams will change drastically before trading ends in Week 4 (Wednesday of Week 4 actually).&nbsp; I think this will be because of players disappearing, and team chemistry.&nbsp; Trading is unlimited during the preseason (i.e. between the draft and Week 1), and I think you&#039;ll see quite a few players change hands before things are settled.<br /><br />I&#039;m hoping that demo failures aren&#039;t as big an issue this season.&nbsp; The penalties for not uploading a demo have been softened and we&#039;ve introduced a new penalty that was originally suggested by Fastidious: the power play.&nbsp; A power play is where a player must sit out for a specific period of time OR until a flag is scored on their team.&nbsp; Power plays by themselves are pretty intense, and they also complicate a team&#039;s strategy; does a team just let the other team score immediately to get their player back, or do they try and hold out?<br /><br />Scheduling should go much, much more smoothly than it did last season as well.&nbsp; I won&#039;t explain the new system here, but suffice it to say there&#039;s a well thought-out process for determining game times fairly, and penalties for teams that fail to do so.&nbsp; Even if there are problems at the beginning of the season, I expect captains will resolve those problems quickly to avoid further punishment.<br /><br />And I think stacking clan mates on a team probably won&#039;t happen this season.&nbsp; Nostar might try to form the mighty NS, but I expect other captains will keep that from happening... or JKist might just be too busy to play often, forcing Nostar to play his 4th instead.&nbsp; And as has been noted before, no team composed of 3 or more clan mates has made it past Wildcard Round in the playoffs.<br /><br />All in all, pretty exciting stuff!&nbsp; I&#039;m pumped!&nbsp; [b]PUMPED![/b]