Pay for the career. Win with the season.
Spin the same era board as a normal draft, then build that sport’s calibrated Salary rosterunder its own calibrated cap. A player’s estimated market price comes from career reputation—not the season rating—so a famous name can be an overpay and the right year can be a steal.
Estimated market values are game estimates, not reported contracts, official cap hits, or real-money stakes.
Why every sport gets its own cap
A Football roster, a Baseball lineup, and a Basketball Starting Five do not share the same number of seats or market shape. Each sport therefore owns a separately calibrated dollar scale and cap while the rules stay consistent: one estimated career value per player, one season’s facts per card, and one deterministic season result.
What happened to Budget Squad?
Salary-Cap Draft is now the one public value-building game. Old Budget Squad results, shares, and issued boards remain valid; fresh entries lead here so there is one clear cap mode instead of two overlapping products.
Questions about the cap
What is a salary-cap draft?
The same era board as a normal draft, except every player carries an estimated price and the finished roster has to come in under one cap. Each pick is a choice between a name you already rate and a season that actually delivers, and the two are rarely priced the same.
Is the cap a budget to spend or a limit to stay under?
A limit, and the difference matters more than anything else here. Nothing rewards using it up: a roster that comes in well under the cap and plays better beats one that spends almost all of it and plays worse, because the cap only decides whether a roster is legal. Money left unspent costs you nothing.
Why does the same player cost the same in every season?
Because the price is set by career reputation, and the season is no part of it. Someone famous across a decade carries that price whether the spin deals their best year or an ordinary one — which is the whole mode: identical money buys wildly different results depending on which season you take.
Does the biggest name always play the best?
Frequently not, and that gap is where the mode is won. A short peak nobody built a reputation on is priced like the modest career around it, while fifteen steady years command a fee every time — including in the seasons that were merely fine.
Can I get stuck unable to fill a seat?
No, and it is guarded rather than merely unlikely. Every signing the board allows leaves at least one exact way to fill every remaining seat under the cap, so a draft can be badly judged but never impossible. An option that would strand you is disabled before you can reach it.
What decides the result once the roster is locked?
The seasons, not the spending. The same deterministic simulation the other modes use runs the schedule against the roster you built. The cap governed which players you were allowed to assemble; past that point it has no say in anything.
Are these real player salaries?
No — they are estimated values built for this game. The scale is calibrated separately for each sport so that rosters of very different shapes can be compared, which real figures spanning a century of sport could never do.
Which sports have a Salary-Cap board?
11, each with its own cap and its own calibrated market roster — a full lineup where that market was fitted for one, a starting five where it was not. Prices and caps are not comparable between them, and are not meant to be.
Does it cost anything or need an account?
Neither. It runs in the browser, your rosters stay on the device you built them on, and no part of it involves real money — the dollar figures are game units and nothing else.