At the end of the 2017 season, we promised you a brand new season with a brand new fantasy game. A better game. A game run by me.

Now, with less than a week until the new season, you’re probably wondering what the hell happened. Fair enough, too. It turns out that building a brand new fantasy surfing game from the ground up with integrated stats and room to customise gameplay takes time. Too much time for us to have it ready for the start of the 2018 season.

We contacted the WSL and asked them to hold out on the season launch a little longer, but they weren’t interested; apparently we got our application paperwork in too late. They’re really into that sort of thing all of a sudden.

So, if you’ve already jumped over to FSS (http://fantasysurfsessions.com/) and signed up for our amazing-yet-slightly-late game, you can expect the following letter emailed to you in the next 24 hours:

Many thanks for expressing an interest in our new Fantasy Surf game. We’re really excited about what’s coming and hope you will be too.

Sorry we’ve been a bit quiet, but we’re heads down in development at the moment!

We’re not looking to fully launch the game until the 2019 CT season, however we will be looking to test the game throughout the 2018 championship. At this stage, our first release is likely to be around early-April. We’d love it if you’d be keen to be involved in the testing process and will let you know closer to the time when it’ll be ready to play.

Early versions won’t necessarily offer full functionality, but we will be offering prizes for the top teams, so there’s still many great reasons to play during the testing process. It also means you’ll be able to have a say on how the game is developed!

We will be fully integrating all SurfStats databases into our game, giving a much greater depth of analysis of the pro surfers on the Tour. In the meantime, please check out Balyn’s analysis on surf-stats.com

What does all that mean? Mostly that I’ll be plugging along as usual on surf-stats for the next few weeks. Wildcards, injuries, stats, previews, wash-ups etc. will all be hosted here for now.

It also means that, for the time being, you’ll need to sell your souls clicks to either the WSL or Surfer Mag in order to play a full season of fantasy this year.

Don’t pretend you weren’t going to anyway.

Also, you should probably leave your details at FSS if you haven’t already, as we’re looking for discerning fantasy players to help us refine our game into the best possible product. We’ve got some stickers to send you as well.

For now, (and always) thanks for reading. I’ll get the Gold Coast stuff up ASAP.

Balyn