Saturday 25 June 2016

AFL Supercoach

If you've just arrived in Australia, like me, a good way of getting into AFL is to get into its Fantasy League - Supercoach: http://supercoach.heraldsun.com.au/afl/classic/

I came in incredibly naive and so am doing very badly. So, here's an idiot (me) giving my thoughts on how to be competitive. This is not designed to be comprehensive or useful, just stuff I've learnt because I only understood this stuff halfway through the season!

THE RULES
- $10m to pick 30 players
- 8 defenders, 11 midfielders, 3 rucks, 8 forwards
- 22 of your players will play every week, the rest will be on your bench. You also pick 'emergencies' from your bench who will play if players in your team don't play.
- you pick a captain every week, they score double points. You also pick a vice captain who will get double points if your captain doesn't play
- 30 trades a season
- very broadly points are allocated by involvement in the game. It's not number of goals (though that does help).
- you can change your team within a week, however, when they play, they are locked in.

TIPS FOR PICKING YOUR INITIAL TEAM
Note, this is not the best strategy, but it is one which will get you competitive:
- do your research. Look up websites for who the best players.
- pick 10 or so high priced players ($500k+) which websites are recommending. These are 'play 'em and leave 'em'. Spread them across the positions.
- pick 5 or so players that you 'just like the name of' at around $300k - after all, it's your team!
- pick 5 or so mid-priced players which websites are recommending for cash generation (see below).
- the remaining 10 players, make them cheap ($100k-$200k) but also make sure they start in round 1. Or they start in the future, as only 22 make it in your team. It's okay if you have money remaining.
Think about 'Dual Position Players' (I.e. Eligible for more than one position) - this gives you flexibility, as you can only pick a certain number of players in one position.

THE POINT OF YOUR TRADES
- the aim for the first half or so of the season is to make as much money as possible. Your aim is to increase that starting group of 10 high priced players to 15 or so. To do that you are doing a series of 2 trades - one downgrading a player who's just made you lots of money, then using that money to upgrade a mid-priced player to a high priced player. That will use 10 of your trades up to week 10 or so.
- you will also be dealing with your issues i.e. injuries. Expensive players who are injured for a decent length of time are worth downgrading. This will use 5 or so of your trades at the start.
- in the middle of the season there is a series of 'bye rounds'. Lots of teams won't play, but your top 18  will count. You get 3 trades a week to help navigate these, use them if you need to.
- that will leave you with around 6-8 trades left. Use them only if teams rest players for the end of the season.
- look at other teams for ideas if you wish - obviously they're more experienced than you!
- don't worry if a player doesn't get picked - rotation is common. If he's just dropped - that's a problem.

LEAGUES
- you can decide to be put in a head to head league with your mates. Do it, but don't worry about being tactical about it. Just see if you get more points or not.
- it's a 18 team league, top 16 qualify for the finals. Don't worry too much about it, you're just getting started.

THE LOOPHOLES
This is the only frustrating thing about Supercoach. It's fine if teams win because they have better players, but the loopholes are frustrating if you don't know them. Here are the two worth knowing:
1) The Captain Loophole.
Put your Captain as someone good playing late in the week, and your Vice Captain as someone who
is playing early in the week. If your Vice Captain gets 120+ points, change your Captain to someone on your team who isn't playing, then your Captain becomes your Vice Captain.
2) The Bench Loophole
Put someone who isn't playing, but playing NOT EARLY in your team, have someone playing EARLY in the round as an emergency in the position on the bench, and someone playing LATE in the round on the bench as well. If your bench player does well (around 80 points+) do nothing and he will score. If he doesn't do well then bring your other bench person on, and he will get the points, not the bench player,

OVERALL
Have fun! It's great to cheer for certain players.

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