Quote:1. CW TRIVIA, 3 TPE max - 1.5 TPE for participation, 0.5 TPE for each correct answer. This is completed through a Google form linked below. Make sure to spell your answers correctly or you will not get credit. Post your verification word in your CW post.

CW TRIVIA LINK

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Quote:2. Written, up to 4 TPE - Grab Bag: Pick up to 4 Challenge Cup related topics to write about! Each topic is worth 1 TPE. Each answer must be 50+ words.
a. Both Winnipeg and Philadelphia have taken the long road of drafting and development to find themselves in the Challenge Cup Finals. Winnipeg in full scale rebuild, and Philadelphia in the expansion draft. Each began nearly 10 seasons ago. From your point of view, which build is more impressive? Full scale teardown to challenge cup, or expansion draft to challenge cup?
b. Winnipeg's Mikko Rashford has been an unstoppable assist machine with 25 in 20 GP. If you're looking to shut down Winnipegs offense, who do you target? Rashford, or goal scorers surrounding them? Do you double down on guarding the scorers and letting a pass-first player take a shot, or do you go heavy on the passer and hope nothing squeeks through?
c. Philadelphia's BASE PACK has made over 500 saves in 17 GP. If you're a Winnipeg team looking for a weakness to exploit, do you think this is one? Does this signify an exhausted goalie that you can pepper with shots and eventually break the dam? Or is BASE PACK just an on-fire goalie that you need to find another way around?
d. As always I ask... who you got? Usually when I analyze teams for this segment I see a contrast in results or deployment or something I can latch on to, but these look like remarkably similar teams at this point in the playoffs. So who wins? Why?

a. I think both ways have their merits and it is good to see that they can both work out. It's tough to pick one that is objectively more impressive here because both have their unique challenges but also circumstances that could help them. While a full-on rebuild looks impressive on paper, you could argue that it's not actually that hard and many have done it before. Just stockpile picks spread out over a few season, draft well and then hold course. At the same time, the expansion route depends so much of the rules of the specific expansion draft, in the past they have fluctuated a lot and could either be very favorable towards the expansion teams or quite unfair to them. At the end of the day I think I'd go for Philly and their expansion route though, since if I remember correctly, the last expansion draft actually wasn't very strong.
b. I think it would be a mistake to go out of your way and target specific players on the Jets in order to shut them down at the cost of leaving open others. They have too many strong players, so I would say just stick to your game plan, it got you all the way to the finals after all.
c. I don't think you can tire out a goalie like that, at least not over the course of a playoff campaign. Maybe it can work in an individual game, but over the course of a series I think stopping that many shots actually makes a goalie stronger, it helps him get in the zone, stay sharp and gives him tremendous confidence.
d. Well, too late but my money would actually have been on the Jets, who ended up losing. But it's good to see what at least I would consider a small upset, even though the finals weren't as close as people would've expected. I think the Jets have built a great team over the last few seasons but they gotta be careful now to not become one of those franchises who build a great regular season roster, that can never quite get it done when it really counts.

Quote:3. Written, 3 TPE, Chemistry Lesson (150 words min.)
Tell me about who your linemates were this year, and how the season went playing together. Why do you work well together? Why don't you work well together? If there was anyone on your team you don't play with but you'd like to, who is it? Why? If you're a goalie, tell me about your bond with your goaltending partner!

I think it was a bit of an up and down season for us as a line. I've been playing with the two guys that I've basically spent my entire career with ever since coming up, Grogu Mandosson and Duncan MacKenzie. The two of them carried me to a Jesster trophy in my first season in the league which included me breaking the leagues rookie scoring record, but since then we have been treading water a bit and I have actually regressed somewhat in terms of individual numbers. None of us reached our career highs this season and especially Duncan and I were quite far off, while Grogu at least still broke 90 points and got relatively close to his previous career high of 97 points. I think our story is a bit emblematic of the teams as a whole, while we have grown and added a bunch of skill and TPE, we have failed to take significant steps over the last three seasons to get us into that next tier, so this will have to happen soon.

Quote:5. Written, 3 TPE, Fire and Light (150 words min)
Last season I loved the anthropormorphic boats vs. bulls question because people came up with some really fun answers to read, so I'm going to ask it again with the Forge and the Aurora, even though these teams' have less concrete branding. Tell me who wins in a fight: an enormous god bear made of colourful rays of light, or a massive magma monster with a giant hammer. The arena and the rules of the fight can be whatever you desire. Get creative!

Wait a second, if we go by actual team identities, doesn't this fight make even less sense? We would essentially have the Northern Lights go up against a building, or even just a very specific part of that building, depending on how literal you wanna be with this. Or, if you want to be more poetic, you could also describe it as a battle between Ice & Fire... In any case, yes a Forge is hot and has hammers and anvils and shit, but is there any doubt in anyones mind that an Aurora is so much cooler, both in terms of asthetics and the science behind it? In fact, as Wikipedia has just told me, the aurora borealis is actually an "Elektrometeor", how friggin cool is that? So yeah I would definitely go with the supercharged polar bears in this one, sorry you guys with the big hammer and the building that can make crude tools by burning stuff.

Quote:7. Milestones, up to 3 TPE

Milestones are folded in with CW. So just link your Milestone claim as task 7 for up to 3 TPE towards your 16 total.
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Post your claim in the milestones thread for tpe earned per stat, and then link that post in your CW submission. This is done because the person who grades CW will be a different person than double-checks milestones.

+3 TPE

Quote:20. Written / Graphic, 3 TPE, Seige Engine (150 words min.)
We all know what a seige engine is, and we all have a favourite one! If you had to design a seige engine based on your team's branding, what would it be? What would that seige weapon do? What would it look like? What are its advantages? As a graphic option, you can depict what it would look like in action!

Ehmm we all know what a seige engine is, really? Do we? Because I've never heard of such a thing and when trying to google it, Google tries to autocorrect me. So did you mean a "siege engine" by any chance? Well in case that is what you were asking for I actually have it easy, because my team are the motherfuckin' Dragons so were are basically a siege weapon at is. From taking down towers or city fortifications to literally ice walls or huge fortresses, Dragons can do it all. The only real problem here is the collateral damage you are likely to do. After all, chances are that you are attacking this city or castle because you want to take it over, but when using a Dragons then there is a decent chance that you might end up burning large parts of your desired trophy to the ground, or at the very least kill quite a lot of those people you were trying to conquer ehhhhh I mean liberate.