What will you do when you first get FM12? - My checklist

Less than a week and counting the days until FM12 is released! But what will you do first? Here's a list of the things I might do come midnight 21st October!

Editor.

I love the editor, and to make my game as realistic as possible, I might load up the editor (and latest patch), make some essential changes to player and staff movements that the game might not have. I also like to do some housekeeping when it comes to club and competition names. So I'll rename the essential competitions like The Barclays Premier League, Bundesliga, Champions League and so on.



But I'll also change the names of some clubs to ones I like to see on the game (this doesn't mean Chelsea become the Blue Scum). To all the top French clubs I'll make their names shorter as I find the longer names ugly, so for instance LOSC Lille Métropole becomes just simply, Lille and OM becomes Marseilles. Also I'll change R.Madrid to Real Madrid, A.C. Milan to Milan, FC Bayern to Bayern Munich and many others. Watch this space for a database with all these changes soon.

Graphics.
 
Maybe the first thing will be the graphics. I'll find up-to-date graphics packs, download and add to the ones in my FM11 folders. I'll copy and paste those (many courtesy of FM-Base and sortitoutsi) from FM11 to the FM12 folders and of course un-tick the "Use Skin Cache" button in preferences . This ensures I have all the badges, player pictures, kits and everything else to make my game look as slick as possible.

Licences

I hate it when I start a game, do all the pre-season stuff and then I realise the German national teams are 'greyed out', meaning no current players can be selected. So one of the first things I'll do is DELETE the files: Fake.lnc (this file disables the German national team and player faces for the French and Dutch national teams) and nleague.lnc (This file gives fake names to the Japanese teams, for instance Grampus Eight are Nagoya Stolz. It also disables the South Korean, Chinese & Japanese national teams).

They'll be in the data folders of FM12 - Program Files\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2012\data\db\1200\lnc\all

Start up a game with the club I support.

When first loading the game, many will flock to the team you support in real life and take them on. I'm a QPR fan so I'd take look at the squad page, review each player and staff and sell those I deem to be deadwood (so long Borrowdale, Hall and Pellican!).

Editor, again.

I've said I love the editor, I'll say it again, I love it. So I might just spend hours of my life recreating and making better some of the fantastic leagues from FM11. I made the Basque Country playable and had a league structure. I also created a New Zealand league with the Wellington Phoenix's second team participating. What will be next in my editing world?

In the game

Once I start a career game, be it lower league or in the prem, always first on my list is to scroll through the free transfers available. For my conference side I'm looking for those journeymen available for small wages, those internationals from random Caribbean and African countries or youngsters released from top-division sides. For my top division club I'm looking for youngsters with potential or I'll try and snap up the likes of (SPOILER) Marco Materazzi - aged but still class.

What will you do when you first get home with or download FM12?