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Want to Start Playing Dynasty - Tips? (1 Viewer)

Skoo

Footballguy
Never done dynasty before but would really like to, just hoping for some info on which sites are the best for hosting, and which ways may be the best to join a new league. I already commish a redraft league and probably wouldn't mind starting another, but I'm not sure I have enough friends who interested enough in dynasty to really commit to it.

Any strategy tips would be appreciated as well as I'm a total dynasty noob!

Hope this is in the right place, didn't exactly seem like an Assitant Coach topic.

Thanks for any insight!

 
Any site works fine as long as the scoring rules are relatively simple.  Otherwise there are some more advance sites like Fantrax, or Fleaflicker (only ones I know of) to really customize the scoring.  MFL (myfantasyleague) is the popular choice for people around here but it is a pay to use site.  I host one of my leagues on Yahoo, never had a problem other than draft picks can get confusing.  

The simple thing I do is make a google doc of the league to track things in the offseason.  Trades, draft picks, roster movement, new owners, easy access league rules, stuff like that.  So technically I use 2 sites.  It isn't a hassle though.  

As for playing the actual game of dynasty the longest draft of your life will be the start up draft depending on roster size.  But the strategy emphasizes youth and talent.  I would imagine some early targets in a start up would be Zeke, DJ, OBJ.  Just do your research and emphasize that youth and you'll have a competitive team very likely.  When I did my startup I cancelled out every WR over 30 to draft, and every RB over 28 and I won the championship that year so it worked for me.  Be cautious with that though.  Trading picks for players just know what type of team you are and if you're competitive then don't trade for an avg player or a depth guy probably won't get over the hump.  If you're rebuilding don't get rid of young studs to build around.  Just think it through and a lot of it is common sense.  There's plenty of different ways to set up a league so just know the format and adjust rankings accordingly.  

I honestly don't read much news on other sites and form my own opinions by reading this board, rotoworld news blurbs and watch players.  Haven't found a good dynasty site to rely on for information other than people on this board, so I'm done looking.  

 
At the point now where I want to set up my first dynasty league with some friends here in Scotland. I was wondering if anyone that has experience with Fleaflicker, would be kind enough to help me, as I have a few questions...

Presumably, on this site, dynasty leagues are simply known as 'keeper' and you set the number of keepers to the same as the roster sizes ?

Does it create rookie draft orders in reverse of standings like in real life, or do you just edit that manually at the end of the season ?

Any other tips associated with this site would be much appreciated !

 
My dynasty league has used http://www.fleaflicker.com/nfl since 2007. 

  • It is free
  • It has been reliable
  • It is highly customizable (as mentioned by Zyphros above)


Regarding tips, begin here: http://dynastytheory.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-link-to-all-my-writings.html

I am in the process of putting together a master list of my dynasty resources, but it is not complete, and I don't have the current version with me.  I'll add more later if helpful.


Hey Bugg, perhaps you are the man to ask ? Going off my previous post, as to how you set up your rookie/free agent draft options, so its not snake but is done in reverse order of standings

 
My FleaFlicker dynasties are 12 team, with 6 teams in the playoffs. FleaFlicker assigns rookie picks 1-6 to the bottom 6 teams by inverse of standings. Picks 11 and 12 go to the teams in the championship. Picks 7-10 are awarded to the remaining playoff teams based on regular season record.

There have been instances where team A beat team B in the playoffs but got an earlier pick because team B had a better regular season record.

 
Hey Bugg, perhaps you are the man to ask ? Going off my previous post, as to how you set up your rookie/free agent draft options, so its not snake but is done in reverse order of standings
Yes straight draft like the NFL does it, not snake for rookie draft.

 
The starup draft should be snake or 3RR like a redraft league. Some people will insist auction is the only way to go.

 
If you take over an orphan team in an existing league, be careful of other owners trying to take advantage of you. The biggest thing I see with new owners is undervaluing rookie picks. It takes a couple years of giving up round 1 rookie picks for middling players before they realize how valuable they can be. I would make it your policy to not trade away any first round rookie picks in the first couple of years, especially if you take over a weak team. Get a feel for things first.

 
The starup draft should be snake or 3RR like a redraft league. Some people will insist auction is the only way to go.
This.  If you are starting a dynasty league the only option is an auction.  I say this because the point of a dynasty league is to put together your dream team and carry this for many years.  Since this is the purpose it is only right that every team has an equal opportunity to start their franchise around the player of their choice.  If you do a snake draft you are generally left to the luck of the draw to get the player you want. 

I have found the best way is to do a hybrid auction/snake draft.   We auctioned a starting lineup's worth of players (15) and then continued with a snake draft (40 man rosters with IDP) to fill out the roster.  The snake order was based on who had the most money left after acquiring their 15 auction players.  This adds another layer of strategy to the draft in how you want to organize your auction.

In addition we then used the winning bids to set the salary for each player for their contracts moving forward.  Draft picks salaries were assigned based on round taken.  This worked very well. 

 
If you take over an orphan team in an existing league, be careful of other owners trying to take advantage of you. The biggest thing I see with new owners is undervaluing rookie picks. It takes a couple years of giving up round 1 rookie picks for middling players before they realize how valuable they can be. I would make it your policy to not trade away any first round rookie picks in the first couple of years, especially if you take over a weak team. Get a feel for things first.
Yep, pay close attention to which year the picks in the trade offer are in especially if you didn't specify in negotiations.

 
Been playing Dynasty FF since 2000, experience has taught me plenty of lessons I'd teach the 2000 version of myself if I was just starting up today:

For your first Dynasty League experience, especially if you're playing for money, I'd strongly recommend joining a start-up. I like the idea of one's first League being one you see develop/have a hand in developing, from the ground up. Back when I got started, it seems like this was the only way to join one, as Dynasty was in it's nascent stages. I was invited to join a start-up that already had the structure in place, so my first 'League Activity' was the initial Player Disbursement (Draft), everything else had already been decided by the Founder. FWIW, he had done a great job with this. I think now that it would have been even more fun to have had a hand in that, but I don't regret how things worked out because I was lucky enough to join a League with a strong Founder.

The following year, I and another member founded a League that I continue to run to this day, still going strong. We based it largely upon the League we started in, but tweaked it to our preferences. The structure of the original League was very well thought out, and provided us a tremendous framework to build on. We've continued to tweak over the years, and while the League is very different than the original, if you peel back the onion, you'd recognize the skeleton as a close relative of the original League.

I also strongly recommend (echoing Gally's post above) starting/joining a start-up that plans to use an Auction as it's initial Player Disbursement. That was the first rule we put in place when we started our own League, the year following joining the start-up that disbursed players using a traditional Draft. We strongly felt one of the keys to encouraging Owners who were also largely new to the format, to invest long-term into their Teams - if they had as much of a hand as possible into crafting their initial Rosters/incorporating their own personal philosophy into building their own unique Team that reflected them personally. We started with 14 Teams, eventually expanded to 16, and going into our 17th Season, still have 8 of our original 14 Owners on board.

I only play in money Leagues; it's just how I'm wired - I just can't invest that much time/energy/effort in anything without there being a financial risk/reward being the carrot, so keep that in mind when I say that, especially with a start-up, as much as it might be an ideal that the League is going to continue in perpetuity, you never know how these things are going to play out. With that in mind, I'd recommend building/managing a Team right out of the gate that's designed to 'win now, win often' - bankroll as much as much real cash as you can right away. I've read that most Leagues. like small businesses, fail in the first few years after start-up. By winning early, you not only maximize profit through the riskiest time for the League, you can finance developing a consistent contender by already having several Season's worth of Entry Fees paid in the form of 'House Money', so you can go about doing it the right way, without the pressure of filling a financial hole you're digging right from the start. One of the reasons people quit is because 3 or so years in, they're now out '$x', and they start doing the math of figuring how much they have to win to get back to the break-even point, much less be in the black, and that starts adding pressure to their decision making process, and the League starts becoming less 'fun' and more 'work', and they opt out rather than seeing it through. I didn't go into our initial Auction with winning Year 1 in mind, I just opted to buy Players I knew more about, and let the other Owners spend on Rookies, or younger players with shallow resumes...but I wound up winning Year 1, and Final 4 in Year 2, which effectively paid for Years 1+2, plus almost 6 more years of Entry Fees right out of the gate. While that didn't necessarily translate to consistent, continued success, it did translate to a plenty of fun. By nature, I'm personally prone to riskier behavior when playing with House Money, and I explored several strategies I might otherwise not have employed (to varying degrees of success/failure), had I been focused more on backfilling a financial hole. Having that freedom, and exploring those strategies improved me as a Player, tremendously, and I'm still 'in the black' over the life of the League, albeit following a pattern of win/suck/contend/repeat, rather than consistently doing one or the other, more often than not. I've certainly had the opportunity to consistently win, but with plenty of 'real' money winnings, I'm finding it more fun to take chances/experiment with strategies, ideas, harebrained schemes, etc...

 
My main tip is to be realistic with your team. You are either a real contender or playing for next season. Its the guys who try and do both or waffle back and forth that run into problems. If im in a startup that i feel is going to last awhile i usually toss the first year. Trade for a core of a few young studs and accumulate future draft picks from the teams who think they're contenders. Hold those picks until the draft when the fever hits and then keep the choice ones unless i get a great offer and sell off the others. Either for proven players or higher future picks. Ive been in more leagues than i can count where ive gone from doormat to superpower in the span of a year or two. Everyone thinks they're gonna dominate year one, its the best time to get future picks on the cheap. Only things in fantasy you can guarnatee will increase in value over the course of the year. 

 

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