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Yep! I always focus on eras and created a chat room just for breeders looking to start an era 14 line. Here's the link, if you're interested:

https://www.huntandjump.com/buddy_chat.php?chatid=1273

If you want to work towards the era leaderboards, perfect foundation lines always have an advantage because they have a head start over exceptionals. But exceptionals can contribute when the next era starts.

Sounds like a great idea. I've been toying with breeding the fantasy out of some of my shatterskull line so I can really go in on color clubs but maybe I should just start from scratch I've got enough horses wiithout fantasy in my pastures to make the switch without too much of a hit to my carefully culled pastures. I'm a bit worried about having enough of my regular lines but maybe after a few months I can look at my passing foals and I judge if an era 15 color line would be viable. It be a fun challenge to see if I could wrangle some mushrooms and DFPs out of my other lines.

I don't have plt or chn yet but if you throw alot of fantasy together it's better my horses usually qualify 3-4 of the fantasy clubs

Sorry if this is a little long, but here's the system for starting a new era line that I've sorta developed over the years (and I'd stick to it more if I weren't so swayed by new fantasy genes!). It's certainly not the only way, especially if you have a premium upgrade (for using eggs) and now that there's maxing. But if you have only a basic upgrade, as I did when I started my era 11 line and up until the past couple months, this has been the most affordable and efficient and fun method for me that actually makes good progress each generation.

1. Right away when the new era starts (Dec or June) start filling a 100-acre pasture with new era foundation rescue mares (or perfect foundation herd helper mares) that as closely as possible fit what you want to breed for. I just look for the basics here, usually not expecting any fancy genes. Mostly just the base coat I want (red-based or black-based) and no genes that I absolutely don't want. (Tip: Bookmark the search with your parameters and check it after every auction day.) And make sure the mares are all of the new era!

2. In the meanwhile, while your mares are accumulating pasture days, look to get your hands on two new era breeding age stallions of your favorite perfect foundation herd helper (GMTable optional, see step 3). This depends entirely on what color you want to breed for, but non-exceptional rank specials are great because they are perfect foundations and can have some nice genes. Just make sure they both complement the mares you're collecting. (Also optional, try to create them from herd helpers yourself rather than buy them so that you're the breeder in case you ever accidentally alter them. I've never accidentally done this, but why take chances.)

3. Optional. Put some fun, non-fantasy genes on your stallions! New eras always coincide with the holiday and summer anniversary events and gene sales, so you'll pretty much always have a chance to put whatever fancy genes you want on your new boys and still use them within the same month. Here's a list of non-fantasy "fancy" genes that won't disqualify your horse from the era clubs: satin, sooty+, pangare+, mushroom, splash M, belton spotting, gray reduction, jewel box, any of the white spottings, snowdrop, sunshine, snowflake varnish, appaloosa spot regulator, gulastra plume, kit promoters 1&2, dun factor promoters 1&2, tiger eyes 1&2. (Please, somebody let me know if I missed any!)

4. Breed your horses the same month as the era change if you can possibly manage it. Not missing this first breeding season can make a big difference later. When your mares have accumulated at least 15 pasture days, put your stallions in and breed the pasture. More pasture days are always better, every day of boost counts, so if you can make yourself wait, breed your pasture early in the day on the 27th and get the foals out immediately so you don't forget and they get deleted. If you have extra mares you were able to get that didn't fit in your pasture, you can go ahead and pull straws from your boys and AI breed them anytime before (as long as you're done GMTing the studs.) (Optional: If your GMT studs aren't ready yet and you need another month to finish them, get a couple perfect foundation stallions that fit your basic breeding goals and breed your pasture anyway. That way you'll have good 2G mares ready to breed when your next month's colts out of your GMT boys are ready. It'll also start getting your mares enough foals to qualify for the leaderboard.)

5. Now sort your foals. Make sure to check your inbox for the best in pasture email and label that foal in some way. If it happens to be a mare, consider GMTing it to a stallion. It's important to know as soon as possible in a new line which your very best 2G stallion is. It'll decrease your line's chances of getting on the leaderboards later if you breed a bunch of 3Gs that aren't actually out of your best stallion. (Optional: If you know you'll want to max one or two, don't run the foals through testing yet! Paper them all first and (if their color genetics are all pretty much the same) pick from the Cs and Yellows to max. Then see if the Bs and Reds can get though BA or SBA on their own merit. I figure it's better to spend a little extra on papering than using extra GMTs to unalter.)

6. Repeat breeding your perfect foundation pasture at least until your first 2Gs are breeding age. You can use your 2G studs a month earlier than your mares, so maybe use them to add some new genes to an older line, or better yet breed to same era foundations just to make some show horses. As long as the foals are same era, the stallion will qualify for the leaderboard. The next month, your even-bred foals will take over the top 10 spots in his average and the uneven foals won't drag him down.

7. When your 2G mares are 3 yo, get them in a pasture to start accumulating pasture days and make sure your 2G studs have any GMT work you wanted to do on them finished. Though, you might want to start saving GMTs for gender swapping or adding missing genes or maxing horses in the higher generations. Usually it's not worth doing too much GMT work on 2Gs, except maybe maxing or gender swapping one or two.

8. Repeat the breeding and foal sorting steps for the 2Gs and beyond. When it comes to improvement over each generation, my own rule of thumb is: start with perfect foundations, 2Gs must be B or Red (superior to ExPro is a huge bonus, almost a requirement for my studs), 3Gs must be A or Blue, 4Gs must be A or Blue and superior to parent, and 5Gs must be Star or Gold (and superior to parent is a bonus). After that, just comparison test superior to parent.

And that's it! It gets a little trickier each generation when you have to do more comparison testing and you might have very few superior horses to carry on the line. At that point it might be worth getting a premium upgrade so you can switch to using eggs. Even if it's just a single month, it can give your line a nice boost in population when it might be getting kinda narrow. I developed this method with my era 11 line and have had pretty good placement on the leaderboard (I think) and I'm starting right out doing this with my era 14 line and pretty happy with it so far. :)

@CLynnRose this is incredible. Thank you so much for explaining that so thoroughly. That should go in the wiki or in its own post, honestly.

I am going to be explicitly experimenting with uneven breeding to try and maximize my leaderboard presence. I can give the tip that more foals = more better when it comes to getting to the top of an LB with hundreds of identical quality horses like a new era LB.

There is no max. 500 straws can be pulled at one time but you could breed 1000 foals from him in a season if you really wanted too. But foals from 30 days of pasture bonus are better than foals from straws. But law of large numbers. If you breed enough foals you will eventually get 10 perfect foals no mater what. It would take a LOT of foals to do that though. Once second gens start hitting the boards though things start to change.

Like many others, this isn't something I'd payed attention to before. But I'd like to give it a go. Not sure if I should start now, or wait till June.

Here's something I'm not sure I picked up during this conversation:
Why is it better to start with C/Yellow foundations?

@clynnrose that makes my brain hurt.. but i believe you

I did consider it, I just deleted that part to not make it too complicated and also because I wasn't certain of my facts. Though, I think, even in the points earned by foundations category, exceptionals won't get ahead until the original foundations have died out, if they were shown consistently. And I think bootstrapped horses out of C/Yellow lines can still compete easily against exceptional bred 2Gs, at least for a while.

Bootstrapped horses do not count for the second-gen category.

They don't? But I read this on the wiki: "Points Earned by 2nd Gen Horses: The best leaderboard to aim for when bootstrap breeding."

Ammit, can you explain this a little more?

"Exctioals come into their out for the foundation and second-gen LB categories when the era is more mature."

Do you just mean that once an era is past the initial jockeying for first position that some of the newer 1st and 2nd gens have more of a chance?

@lecobb, "exceptionals come into their own" i believe is what Ammit meant

I have all my fantasy horses which are exempt from the Era LB's, so I started breeding some more non fantasy lines, simply to have some fun on the new LB's. It's great as you can see where you are at compared to everyone else in the new era, and we all start from the same level playing field. Definitely recommend giving it a go