Gouwe gozer: I agree - I only stay in teams that I'm a captain... so when team tournaments come up, I will sometimes join the team and just hope that I'm not put into a tournament with a time control I can not play... and then remove myself from that team. A solution (lots of work for Fencer) would be if each person could choose the types of tournaments they can be put into to. Since there is a lot of different options a tournament can be ran with, there would be a lot of option a person can choose - by default everything turned on like it is now - but for example, I don't play red/green dot games so I would remove those so I could not be put into those... and same with anything less then 3 days. And of course if that happened, the team captains & Big Bosses would have to be able to see those also so they know why they can't get someone signed up. Of course as I said, my simple solution right now is just remove myself from any team that I don't captain. (Plus I've also tried to make clear for those that I do captain that I would not sign anyone up for anything with red dots and/or less then 3 days and/or without vacation days without first asking each person.... but I know many captains who will just sign up everyone to anything without thinking.)

Another idea might be whenever a fellowship challenge is signed up, the tournament stays in a "waiting" status for 24 hours before starting. During this time, each player chosen for the tournament on each side is left a message allowing them to STOP the tournament. If any ONE player does not want to play, the game challenge goes back and the captains can then choose other players if needed and start it back up. If someone just does not reply within 24 hours, the tournament just starts (like it does now.)

Fencer: The reason I could think that a team might not have a captain is if the BIG BOSS does not play that certain game type, and none of the players want to be captain, so having the BIG BOSS be able to sign up a team could be helpful in those situations.