Info on CW Racing

Color War Challenge
1

OK, so to recap (for the old and new CW players) how racing works:

Each team gets assigned horses (every team currently has 6, they may lose/gain horses as the year goes by).

The goal of the racing challenge is to race the horses and gain points.  However, points are based on how well the horse does in the race (weighted for competing against other CW horses), as well as the level of the race.

Maiden Races: For every horse your CW horse beats, they gain 1 point.  If the horse is owned by a CW team, your horse gains another 2 points (3 total).  For every horse your CW horse loses to, they lose 1 point.  If the horse is owned by a CW team, your horse loses another 2 points (3 total).

Allowances: Same as maiden, but 2 points lost/gained for non-CW horses beating/being beaten by your CW horse, and 5 points for CW-owned horses beating/being beaten by your CW horse.

Stakes Races: 5 points lost/gained for non-CW horses, 10 points for CW horses.

As you can see, coming in last in a stakes race will be a lot more harmful to your team than coming in last in a maiden.

Also, keep in mind that with the new race code, horse confidence does play a role…if your horse consistently loses, they will gradually lose some/all of their “will to win” and be less likely to run well in the future.  (You do not want this happening with your team horses! :wink:)

Entering Races
Prior to entering races, CW teams must vote on the race in question.  Any team member may suggest a race, provided it is at least 7 days in the future (and no more than 6 weeks in the future).  Once a suggestion has been made, the rest of the team is expected to vote on it.  Any vote counts for participation from the team member (see below).

In order to enter a race, the race must have at least 4 votes (5 total, counting the person who suggested the race).  The race must also not have a majority vote of “no” for the race. (Ties votes will count as “yes”, and the horse will be eligible to enter.)

Horses are expected to run on a realistic race schedule.  If the horse is being worked out, that must be taken into consideration as far as energy/fitness, but if horses are just sitting around doing nothing and losing fitness for no reason, this will count against the team.  (If a horse has a reason not to race, such as injury, then it’s not an issue.)  Likewise, horses are expected not to be overraced.  Not only will this hurt the horse, but it will hurt your team, as a horse with no energy won’t run well and will cost you points.

Team Participation
Points gained from racing will be “weighed” based on the participation from the team.  For each race, the points earned will be adjusted based on how many team members participated in the decision (i.e. voting) for that race.  Obviously, you want all your team members participating on every race decision, if possible.

Any questions, please post.

2

Thank You for posting this.  It helped alot to this “newbie”.  My team captain has been very helpful too but this gives more about points and participation. 

3

Just as a reminder/re-post, all teams are expected to race their horses on a regular basis, unless the horse is injured.

This means that you should do your best to find some race to enter your horse in every 2-4 weeks, depending on the horse’s energy/fitness level.  You cannot give your horses “a break” just because they suck at racing, or seem young, or whatever.  You can, obviously, ship your horses home to the farm to rest, but they should not stay there for weeks on end (unless they’re at F energy the whole time or something).

Basically - use common sense, and no “permanent holidays” for your horses just because they’re losing points for your team because they suck at racing.

Enjoy, and good luck!

4

Question (and I think our team captain PMed you about this, but it might be something everyone’s interested in):

Is obvious immaturity a sufficient reason to not race a horse?  We’re talking about one of our 2yos who I think is 13.3h at the moment.  Obviously she’ll need to race at some point, but the team’s trying to decide if we’ll get penalized for waiting a couple months to give her her first start.  At least until she’s over 14.2h hopefully!

5

Yeah I was wondering that.  We’ve got a really small one too that I was wondering about.  CW to me is sort of about managing things right, not just about run run run and win win win.  In our personal barns we wouldnt race the heck out of a very very immature 2yo for fear of breaking them.
Like Andrea said, clearly these horses will run at some point during the season, but a couple months delay might be good. :slight_smile:

6

Notice that I never said “race the heck” out of any horse…I said you should aim for every 2-4 weeks, unless they’re injured or obviously need more rest.

Immaturity is not a reason not to race your horse, though it will obviously allow you to race them a bit less frequently since presumably the babies will need more time to recover from racing.  Since it’s a created horse, the 13.3 filly’s mature height could be 14.3, in which case she’s in better shape than a 15h 2yo who’ll top out at 17.2.

7

And yes, CW is about cooperating and learning to manage a stable, but part of that learning can be in “how gently do you need to race an immature horse”, and “how much does immaturity [and height] affect racing ability”?

The goal of CW is not to win a ton of races, or turn all your horses into stakes winners, it’s to build a team and learn more about the game in the process.

[Keep in mind that FF doesn’t care how big its babies are that it races, so even if you are racing a highly immature 2yo, she’s better off in your hands than the game’s :wink:]

8

Yeah, but I doubt those early 2yo races are going to have too many FF owned entries :wink:.  If all the teams got handed equally immature horses, then I guess it’s not a handicap because we’ll all have to deal with immature horses taking on much more mature 2yos.  It wouldn’t bother me as much if I wasn’t worried about the risk of injury to an immature horse and then losing it for the rest of the year.  Seems safer to give the horse a couple extra weeks/months to mature in order to increase odds of horse running all year.

But if you say it’s ok to race them, we’ll race 'em!

9

I don’t think immaturity is a huge factor for injury chance…no more than running on the wrong surface or running with too little energy, anyway.

10

Is the horse automatically entered into the race after there are a sufficient number of votes? Or does the team captain have to manually enter them?

There have been several suggested races for horses in my team that had enough votes to enter and ended up not entering or racing, and after so much time I am afraid our team will be penalized for it.

11

You have to manually enter them

12

Who is “you”? The person who suggested the race? The team captain? Anyone on the team?

13

Captains either one

14

Okay, thank you for the clarification.

15

Your welcome :slight_smile: