We can recall the anger like it was yesterday. Go back to the AFL Fixture launch and we see “Opening Round” or Round 0. For AFL Fantasy season-long stalwarts, the language was not pretty. Shorten rounds and byes are not fantasy friendly. For those who are trying to figure if their prized selection is playing in that round, it is a nightmare. But for Daily Fantasy AFL on Draftstars, it is a match made in heaven!
If you have never heard of Draftstars before, the site is for Daily Fantasy Sports. Those season long fantasy competitions forementioned such as AFL Fantasy, Supercoach and Dream Team take all season and the majority drop away by the time the first snowflakes fall on Mt. Buller. But Draftstars contests are just a one-day fantasy format, perfect for drafting a new team and riding with your players for a single game or throughout the day. To play you need to construct a line-up of players within a $100,000 salary cap and then once the game is underway, you score fantasy points for your line-up from the players statistics. These statistics are updated live so you can see where you stand on the contest’s leaderboard. If your team puts together a very good performance, then your paid entry can yield a handsome return!
Draftstars cater for a variety of contests that suits everyone’s budget with contest fees starting at $0.50 per entry all the way up to $150 per entry if you like to play with the “High Rollers”. The site also can create custom contests between your friends so you can really cheer on your players and getting bragging rights on your fantasy knowledge.
The scoring format is the same as the official AFL Fantasy game, so if you are used to that format then it will be easy to follow.
Building an AFL Daily Draftstars team for any contest is quite simple if you keep to these six principles:
Select your Ruckman first – Since there are only a couple of players to choose from as your Ruck, then make that selection first. You don’t want to make a beautiful looking team and realise you do not have enough money in your salary cap to roster a Ruck. Do this first.
Dual Positions Players are popular – With 9 roster spots and 4 positions, there is overlap for players who push forward or roam back. Thus, Draftstars give these players a dual position. Players love rostering a MID/FWD as a Forward and love to live dangerously when they roster a 2nd Ruck who has FWD status.
Decide on a line-up build strategy – Having a salary cap means you cannot just pick the 9 best players and win. In season long fantasy, the best coaches load their teams at the start of the year with premiums and rookies. The Rookies play and their salary increases over the season. That is no different here, you can build teams with 3-4 expensive players and fill the rest of your roster with cheaper low salary players. This is known as ‘Stars and Scrubs’. If the Scrubs go well and the Stars do what they are supposed to do, then your line-up has a lot of potential. However, the scrubs tend to score what they normally do, and that is not much at all. Other players look to build a team that is quite middle of the road. Not picking the players who are the most expensive and not picking the bottom of the barrel players either. This is called a ‘balanced’ approach. These players look to extract value from players who look to be under-priced from bad recent form. Each strategy has its pros and cons.
You do not have to spend all your salary cap in Tournaments – You have rostered your final player and you see you have over $1,000 left in your salary cap. To you it may look wrong but do not change it! Our minds are trained to extract all the value you can from an item. Playing fantasy is no different. You may have enough money in your salary cap to go from Hugh McCluggage to Lachie Neale who is $1,000 more. 98 people out of 100 will automatically change from McCluggage to Neale because they have the funds and Neale won himself a Brownlow Medal in 2023. In these large field tournaments having “salary on the table” makes your line-up unique and gives you leverage. You’re playing to win the large first place prize, not to share it with ten of your closest friends! If McCluggage scores simply 1 more fantasy point than Neale, you have achieved leverage.
Have a sneaky play– Think of a player that no one would like to play in their teams. Players who have injury clouds, or simply haven’t seen the Sherrin in the past couple of weeks. Having a rostered player who will be low owned can make or break your team. If you are playing in a tournament with 1,000+ in entries. If your sneaky goes above and beyond on their expectations for fantasy, then your line-up has the potential to be at the very top and no one else will have him in their lineups.
Build to your narrative – There are variety of factors that you can think of. Most are obvious, others take a bit of research. What is the over/under total for the game? Is the weather good enough for high scoring or a tackle fest? Do teams love to build through chip/mark from Half Back. Think about how the game might play out and roster players for that narrative.
