To a point but I think once people start losing fans in "play a game" matches the guild ranking will come back into play. Currently you can lose all 5 matches with no fan lose. Imagine if you lost you five matches and lost 5 more when challenged, Ten thousand fans in one day is one hell of a hit. The best guilds will be the ones that can minimise their fan loses while keeping their individual players at a reasonable rank.

But again the top ten will most likely have bought their entire team or been gifted coins from out going team mates. For example 3 weeks ago I could regularly beat Chepstow. Our teams were about even. But I see today he has mainly all lvl 200 players and is sitting in 2nd place. So I'm guessing he's either dug deep into his pockets or Fish gifted him those players by repeatedly giving him coins. Fair play I would have done the same if I could, but it doesn't make him a great player. So in essence the rankings are interesting but not a definitive indicator of someone's skill.

Im glad I'm an optimist and believe that all hope isn't lost. I think the claims of cheating and coins are for those that are needing to still develop tactics but prefer to throw their hands in the air. I know I need to improve tactics and embrace the challenge

For once, we agree

Intresting to hear who you guys think are actually the top 10 players in the game?

I think there are 25 teams regularly in the top 10 and I would also throw a couple guys in from a championship lvl below, such as el and I know one other stays up high but I'm forgetting the name right now. But off the top of my head I know taff, tomix', rhino, bluemoaners, croxton, rucking (fyi my autocorrect changes that word to f*cking so I apologize if I forget to check, not an intentional insult) and a few others always seem to be up there when I'm looking.

And how many of these get there through skill & dedication versus use of MB or are credit card teams?

0 get there via mb, the beauty of the new ranking system. It has greatly reduced the complaints of mb and shows the people that get to the top level but can't beat a guy like me a lvl below probably got there via mb. It is a beautiful counterbalance to mb. The best go up and the phony mb users go down

Point taken re MB, but credit card junkies will love it. So your use of MB in the championship games is phoney then?

People that rely on mb and not skill to move up are phony, yes. And a 205* 10 is marginally better than a 165* 10 with correct attributes. The top of the top have all max players (plenty obtained fairly from the ah) but plenty of others with max players can't cracking the top 50 because they got lazy with strat and ignored it. I hAve played many online games and none of them allow for a person to not pay and become top ranked so easily as a person can in this game. It took 6 months from starting to being regularly in the top 70, no other game could that be accomplished without loads of cash and evendors with loads of cash would take 2 years. I challenge anyone to find a game that money plays a smaller role in.

Scrabble ?