Painless MAW

[bigcat]

From my vast experience of asking questions on the message boards and screwing up, here are some tips on running MAW without going broke in the first few months.

First I always do 3 things on any game of TEW2005.
1. Go to Options and Set to Calculation Methods to Weighted Average or Average. This will give you a better idea of someone’s actual talent at a glimpse.
2. In options, use Display Options to set External Screens to Statistician’s View.
3. Go to Business and then Merchandising and choose Just in Time for your Production System. This saves a ton of money.

Go set Rip Cord as your booking team, road agent and announcer.

Then we start dumping people like
Erik Strong and Flash Savage because they don’t fit your promotion.
D.C. Rayne, Eddie Howard, Titan and Atlas because you won’t be doing tag teams.
Oscar Golden, Stan Manna and Ricky Turner as they are too expensive for their lack of skill.
Mean Machine because he costs too much.
Nicole Kiss and Persephone because they cost way too much.
Jay Fair because you can’t afford an 800 buck ref.
Marv Ernest because you don’t need a 400 buck announcer, have Rip Cord and your best mic skilled wrestlers announce and do commentary.

Go to other workers and hit filter. We want Can Work : North America, Contracts exclude Unavailable and age 16 to 25.
Get wrestlers who are young, cheap and have at least a C tech rating like Flemmy Lemming, Marc Speed and Nomad. Make sure they fit your style so get Regular Wrestlers, Entertainers, Technicians and maybe Brawlers. Avoid folks with attitudes except for Flemmy, he is so good and cheap that he is worth the headaches. These guys should sign for 100 or 125 a match.
Marc Speed costs a bit more, but he will be a main headliner and his selling abilities will make for good matches. Also go for Champagne Lover and Samoan Machine. They are Strong style, which is a bit out of your promotion, but they are budding young stars that will give you great matches for about 425 bucks.

Get a cheap Ref like Oz Lord or Rob Perkins for 200 bucks.

Now you likely will have about 16 wrestlers and mostly heels. You will want 16 wrestlers, because you are about to ‘jump’ to the next level of popularity. Flip some guys to face. I usually pick Marc Speed and Steven Parker on the headliner level. Just make sure everyone you flip to face is at least Medium on Face performance. At this point you should have 16 Wrestlers and seven or eight Faces.

We have now recreated the roster and slashed expenses. We are stuck with Rip Cord and his $3,000 salary forever, but he is very useful as booker, announcer and manager. We are also stuck with Karen Killer and her $1,200 a month for well over a year. Let her manage your less entertainment minded bad guys and have Mainstream Hernandez manage the good guys.

Hit your first monthly show and boom your promotion levels up.

[StudioStu]

Great tutorial! I had never played MAW before, so after reading this I thought I'd give it a go. I like how small the promotion is as it really lets me get to know my workers.

Can you help me with one thing though? My audience always complains that they expected more angles and interview segments. I'm only doing a 30 minute monthly show right now, and I even did equal segments, 3 matches and 3 angles, and they still complained! It's a traditional fed so I'm not sure what the problem is. Any idea?

[thatoneguy]

You crammed 3 matches and 3 angles in 30 minutes? That's pretty impressive. I'd say tone it down to 2 matches and add 1/2 angles.

[bigcat]

Good question and one I don't know the answer to. I started with hour long shows with 13 minutes of angles, as you want a 20% angle split and it seems going over by a minute helps. I like an hour monthly show to start because if I read the type of fed right, they like very technical matches so running a 30 minute main event as Iron Man or Ultimate submission seems to give good ratings with wrestlers like Champagne Lover who have the stamina to do them.
Usually then I would try to run two other matches and two angles between matches and I don't remember any complaints, but let me try it again and see.

[bigcat]

I tried two one hour long cards.
The first had two fairly short matches, two angles totally 12 minutes and a half hour match between Champagne and Samoan. It seemed to go OK with no negative messages, though it was only D overall.
The second went better with 4 matches and two angles totaling 12 minutes. I got a C- on it, so that might be the way to go. I used four of the wrestlers in a tag team match as well as in singles matches to keep costs down. I didn't get any negative messages.
I wonder if half hour cards just have odd percentages or maybe are effected by the 2 minutes of setup time for each match which would be 6 minutes out of 30 on a three match half hour show?

[DOYS]

I like to play as MAW sometimes. I remember a couple of years ago, I would start a Career with MAW and always go bust. That was when I had absolutely no idea how to work the game succesfully though. Now that I know, I do like to play as MAW from time to time. I like to keep hold of Natural Storm. I always liked those two. I like to pick up Des Davids too.

[StudioStu]

You're right, I switched to one hour shows and 13 minutes of angles, and now I'm consistently getting C ratings. I'm totally taking advantage of Rip's popularity by putting him in at least one angle every show where he is rated on overness, that usually gets a B+. All in all it's going really well, this is probably the most fun I've had with the C-verse.

[bigcat]

I've been thinking about keeping Natural Storm and Mean Machine for a few months to put some of the new guys over. I tend to fall in love with Champagne, because he gives me great matches and I can't afford him and Natural Storm, I don't believe. Thanks for the idea on Des Davids, I'll have to look him up, not sure why I never hired him.

Glad the hour shows are working for you. You managing to not go broke? Great idea on Ripcord. I can't believe I never thought of that!

[StudioStu]

Yeah Rip helps out a bunch. Make sure you put him in the overness angle by himself as anyone else alongside with bring the rating down a bit. So where is your MAW in popularity now?

[praguepride]

Wow, you just gut MAW, don't you.

You don't have to do all those roster cuts to avoid going broke, but you do have to be very very stringent.

The thing is you don't have to fire anyone (except for Jay Fair, I agree he's way overtalented and overpriced for what you need). Just remember that for every Mean Jean you throw in, you'll need to cut costs in other avenues.

You don't have to fire Marv as he's good at the desk, but just don't use him until your finances are more stable. Change out Marv for Rip on your announcing team and that should be pretty good.

Remember, everyone (except for Rip Chord) is on a PPA, so if you don't use them, you don't have to pay them.

Only have short shows and use Rip's amazing stats to bump up grades with angles where he talks ot the crowd or something. Another good idea is to remove all the managers from their talents to save a couple hundred each show.

I wouldn't fire Mean Jean, he's way to useful to let go.

[ProphetX]

Good tips, many of which I think I might take up since I've been running MAW since starting this game.

My roster is huge right now and I have two brands so it probably wouldn't hurt to cut loose some of the dead weight (most of the ones you named except Mean Machine I've been having problems with).

[bigcat]

I was off playing an airline sim, I'm so fickle.

My popularity is only only 34.1 in my home territory as I am still a terrible booker and maybe starting to learn about managing momentum. :P. I'm up to 15.0 in the Tri-State area as I try to move toward a TV deal. Still OK on money at 123,000, but loosing some as I try to get popular in the Tri-State. How is your MAW Stu.

Thanks for the suggestions Prague. A lot of it is my ignorance and I'm starting to agree more about Mean Jean, but a lot of the guys I cut seemed to give me terrible matches relative to the guys I replaced them with. Champagne basically carried the promotion for me with his great selling of babyfaces until I got H Monkey and Champagne and Raphael make a nice tag team.
I think I'm getting marginally better at the game now and could likely move up to E and then D popularity much faster with more understanding of the game, but basically I was so crummy that I had to turn a profit quickly or go bankrupt.

Wow I'm impressed Prophet. Anyone that can get MAW up to needing Brands has my respect.

Lastly thanks for the great game, Mr. Game Designer. Hope my posts haven't cheesed you off too much, I thought it was a Shoot, honest.

[ProphetX]

Well don't thank me too much. I openly admitted to cheating just a bit. I gave myself enough funds so I'd have liquidity and avoid many of the pitfalls I've experienced in these types of games. I also gave myself some popularity to start (put myself at 30 in the midwest, and 15 in the New England area and 15 in one other area nearby but I forget which one it was).

I've had some interesting breaks too. Like finding out about Champange Lover, Jack Gierdroc, Joey Poison, American Buffalo, Marc Speed, etc. So picking them up seriously helped. Engyma was cut from his promotion at one point which was a godsend to me. He was uber expensive to hire on but he's paid dividends and put on some seriously good fights (I had my first b+ fight with him involved).

But I've got my own pitfalls as well: My roster is too big and I have just about all of the original MAW roster still signed as well as at least 30+ free agents that I brought in. So my loyalty to the original crew it messing me up. Most of them are going to have to go. I run two TV shows and because I have too many people my popularity fluxuates a lot and I can't maintain solid ratings in my main territories. And I'm still trying to figure out how to create a good build up for a PPV.

But I'm going alright

[bigcat]

I cheat too, but in my own bizarre ways. I imported all the workers, angles, TV networks, etc... from DOTT. Anyone see a problem I missed... Yes everyone was 60+ years old. I had massively old Rick Flairs, Andre the Giants, etc wrestling for me and then retiring after two months. It was a blast. Then I really cheated a imported the modern mod. Again it was fun. Using all these wrestlers I did manage to get to International and to learn a lot about the game. In retrospect on my advice in the first post, I would still cut the cruiser weights and managers, but I would hang onto some of the hotter wrestlers and try to transfer some of that heat and popularity to my newer imports. Without cheating and bringing in all those wrestlers, I'm sure I would never have made MAW into a player, so I didn't really succeed. That said I loved every minute of my cheating ways and learned a lot for the upcoming (rumor has it) release of a new game in the series and yes I am gonna buy it, so I guess the giving away of 2005 worked on at least one sucke... erm customer.
Thanks to everyone for all the advice and comments.

[praguepride]

That's the beauty of TEW, there's really no such thing as cheating