By the letter of the rules this upgrade is not that great since you might not get to use a Star Player drafted. I'm inclined to rule that the Star Player should get the benefit of freebooter by removing a player and reshuffling, but still be placed on the top of the deck.

I agree, this card is confusing. We have people that think both ways. It comes down to the interpretation of the star player actually being a freebooter from this card or not. One way to interpret the card is to say the star player becomes a freebooter and you treat it as such, which is still powerful since you get to remove a weak player. The other way to interpret it is to use the freebooter ability and remove one team member from the deck and reshuffle then add the non freebooter to the top of the deck.

I'm inclined to go with the second interpretation.

it never crossed my mind before. i assumed it became a freebooter and that was that. you have me thinking now :/

Shuffling the star players into the deck offsets the benefit of gaining multiple star players in a single turn. At best, all other players are only guaranteed one star player in their next hand. I think it's a big advantage if you are guaranteed multiple star players in your next hand.

If you want a house rule, I suggest that the player may designate a single star player to place on top and shuffle the rest into the deck as normal.

Any coach that gains multiple non-freebooter star players in a round puts them on top of the player deck for the next round. With freebooters it is possible to never draw them because they are shuffled into the player deck.

My understanding of page 15 was that players collect all their improvements from all matchups and then the select a single star player (and one team upgrade and one staff upgrade) from this pool. The extra improvements are discarded and returned to their original decks.

Looking at it again it seems that a player selects one per matchup, not per week. Is this correct? If so, I better understand your argument.

okorz001 said:

You can keep one upgrade of EACH type per PAYOUT zone on a highlight. so if your sideline 1 a single star player.. and you win the middle for 2 star players. Then you'd draw the 1st one and keep it for the sideline... then draw 2 more and pick one of them to keep for the middle.

Unless they're divided by a slash.. in which case you pick one before drawing.

The Finn said:

Oh wow, that's much better than I thought!

For example, if you win 3 matchups and all 3 had a star player payout in the team zone payout AND the central payout, you get a total of 6 star players that round. If you could actually win all 3 and the opposing team was tossed from all 3 with no players, and all we just star player payouts, you get 9 star players.