Guide for New Swoops General Managers

How to get started with learning to play Swoops

Welcome, new Swoops ↗ General Manager and Team Owner. Learning to play Swoops can take some time and reading to understand, but there is an active community to help new general managers/owners in the Swoops Discord and an emerging set of tools and content to help people understand the game.

As of Oct 25, 2023, there is an uncertain future for Swoops.

The user guide for the stats and calculations on this site is at User Guide.

Get Started

You can create a team and get a free player with or without a crypto wallet. Swoops is free to play - create a Swoops team here ↗ - just sign up for an account to start a team, and you'll automatically receive your first Swoopster; that player in on loan to start, but once you earn 1,000 Swooper Points (which come from playing the game and completing in-game challenges like winning games), the player is yours.

Signup

When you signup to create a team, you have the option to sign in using email or sign in using wallet. If you select email, you can either sign up (create a new team) or sign in to your existing, using email or a number of social sign in options.

1. If you create a team using email, the registration process will automatically create a Torus Wallet for you. Torus is a easy to use Ethereum wallet that is linked to your email or social sign in. Once you confirm your Torus wallet, your team will be created in Swoops, and after going through the registration process (the current screenshots from that process are below), you can access your team, see your free player in your roster, and start playing games. You can access your Torus Wallet from inside Swoops to see players, transactions, and balances.
2. If you create a team using wallet, you will have the option to select from a number of different Ethereum wallet options. Just select the one you want to use, and that will link your Ethereum address to your new Swoops team, and after you complete the email registration process, you will see your free player show up in your roster.

Signup screenshots

Building a roster

You can use that free player plus free agents to enter games (whether in 1, 3, or 5 Swoops lobbies), so there's no cost to getting started. You can add to your roster by purchasing players on Opensea and by minting players during the rookie draft before the start of each season.

Playing games

Playing games is easy, and there are a few options:

1. Head-to-Head. When you click on Head-to-Head, that will take you to the Court, where you can view past completed games and enter new games. You can choose from the different lobbies (Max Swoopsters 1, 3, and 5, meaning the max number of Swoops players you can play in the game, and the rest have to be free agents), and for the 5 man lobby, you can choose to either select a game or choose Matchmaker. If you choose to join a game, you will select your players, and then Swoops will match you with the other team that registered for that specific game (you will not know what team it is when you join the game, only after). If you choose Matchmake Me, you pick your 5 players for your lineup, and you enter a queue for Swoops to match you with a team with a similar record, based on your recent games (the goal is to match you with teams with similar winning percentage). Matchmake games are not instant and can take some time to show up as completed.
2. Tournaments. During the season, there are daily tournaments for 1, 3, and 5 lobbies, hosted once a day. Tournaments have registration limits (32 or 64 teams) and are played at set times each day. Registration for a tournament opens at 2 PM EST the prior day (Wednesday's tournaments open on Tuesday), except if you have played a tournament that day, in which case registration opens at 9 PM EST the prior day. Daily tournaments are popular, so can be difficult to register for every day.
3. Cups. Tournaments such as the Swooper Bowl, Global Open, and SOA Cup have a specical schedule and requirements to qualify, pay attention to Swoops schedule and announcements to learn more about them each season.

Learning how Swoops works

In addition to the new user tutorial when you create a new team, there are also a number of tutorials you can read to understand the game deeper:

• Swoops 101: Swoopster Overview for an overview on Swoops
• Swoops 101: Simulator Design to understand how the game engine works
• Swoops 101: Season Schedule for the dates for the current season and when the next season starts
• Swoops Illustrated Player Glossary for an introduction to how player mechanics and player skill ratings work
• NFT Daily with the founder of Swoops on where the game started and how it's evolved.

Get Better

There are a number of posts and tools build by the community to help new (and advanced) general managers/owners play Swoops. Here's a few to start with:

• Swoops Illustrated Player Comparison and Lineup Evaluation. The lineup evaluation tool is great to use to understand how your lineup is performing once you've played a few games, the player comparison tool is great to compare a few players you may be considering to purchase or trade for.
• If you only have one player, that's fine! Swoops has 1, 3, and 5 Swoops lobbies for you to choose to play against teams with 1, 3, or 5 Swoops players, respectively. You can complete your team each game by choosing one of the free agents, and MJ Informatics has a great tool to help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of free agents to help you choose who to play.

There is an active Twitter/X community around Swoops, and a number of general managers/owners have published threads on player and game mechanics. Here are a few to start with:

• Metacourt Miners on True Shooting
• Metacourt Miners on On team fit
• Metacourt Miners on starting lineup decisions and relative value
• Metacourt Miners on context for stats/effect of repetitive skills
• Metacourt Miners on traits v stats
• Metacourt Miners on teammate impact on stats
• Metacourt Miners on evaluating between season changes (positive or negative)
• Metacourt Miners on usage/importance of tracking field goal attempts
• Metacourt Miners on Points Per Possession
• Metacourt Miners on ways to find players
• Metacourt Miners on a final transaction checklist before a buy
• Metacourt Miners on building a defense

I'll add a few observations:

• At the highest levels, star ratings matter, and it requires elite players to win the championships. You can enjoy the game and win games without them, and Swoops is constantly working on providing ways for teams of all levels to compete.
• At the same time, star ratings signify potential future development, not performance today. Your 3 or 4 star rookie might not develop into a star in the future; your 3 or 4 star rookie might lose games to 1 star veterans. Planning and building a team for tomorrow can result in taking losses today, just like the NBA.
• Veteran players matter. Young players are more inconsistent, regardless of star ratings, and teams with more rookies and young players will generally have more variability in team performance on a game to game basis. You can see the win percentage by age at League Average Player
• Fit matters. Building the right blend of players can take time to learn and get right, and simply fitting in a player with better stats might not result in better team performance if their particular skills do not fit with the team. In general I think Swoops rewards balance in teams and balance in player skills.

Have a post for me to add? Email me.