EPT
So, Fantasy Proleague. Basically a 'fantasy' league for Proleague, a Starcraft 2 team league that started with Broodwar, it is a top priority for the participating teams as it was the only Broodwar team league that had any semblance of being a 'sport'. In the same way that you would gather to watch a football or rugby match, Proleague represented that for Broodwar, as the central way of determining who the best 'team' was in the scene. Individual leagues were all well and good, but that only showcased one person's talents, and perhaps his team's preparation - Proleague represented the entire team working together to meticulously prepare strategies to defeat the other team.
Now, Fantasy leagues in sports, as I understand it, basically allow you to play the role of a 'team owner', but one that can pick and choose their 'best team... Their, 'fantasy' team, if you will. I'm not sure how it would really work in football or something, but it seems a lot easier in eSports and Starcraft 2, since you have individuals playing in a sequence, rather than an entire team on the field at once. But I'm digressing. So FPL is quite simple, at it's core. You have 6 players and a team that make up your 'fantasy team'. These guys get you your points and you want them to win! But, there's a catch - on the other side, you also have to pick 3 players that make up your 'anti-team'. These players are out to get you and take your points away! That is basically the gist of Fantasy Proleague, but here is where it gets interesting - you can't just pick the best players and team for your fantasy team and the worst players for the anti-team, that would be way too easy. Every player and team is assigned a point value, based off their past performances in broadcasted matches, as well as how the admins feel the player is doing (if there isn't much data). So you need to fit a total of 6 players and a team, within 30 points. With the anti-team, you need to have your 3 players hit a minimum of 15 points.
Once you have your team, you are locked in for the whole week, and you have to watch as up to 8 matches are played during the week. Afterwards, trading is opened up, and you can then trade players that might not have done so well for lesser players that may pick up a couple of points, or a player that was doing really well for a player that you think might do better next week. This goes on for about four weeks, and then that round is over. After that, a winner is declared for that round, and everything is reset and prepared for the next round. For this year's Proleague, there will be a total of 7 rounds, and then the Playoffs, which don't get a Fantasy Proleague round, since it no longer is a league, but a bracket.
So, now that explanation is out of the way, we can finally talk about how badly I'm doing! Here is my team from last round, the first round that kicked off Proleague. As you can see I got completely mauled by sHy, who turned out to be a beastly Protoss. It was a learning experience though, as I realized my mistakes and tried not to make them in this current round. One thing I forgot to mention, was the format of the team league. So usually Proleague follows a set format: A set of 6 Best of 1s between 6 different players from each team, on a pre-determined map pool, and finally an 'Ace' match, if the scores are tied at the end of the 6 matches. That was the format for round 1, and will be the format for rounds 3,4,6 and 7. However, for rounds 2 and 5, they decided to mix it up with another popular format, the 'All-kill' format, which basically has two players start the match, and the winner of that set keeps playing, until he gets defeated or racks up four wins for his team. Each format has it's pros and cons, with the more traditional proleague format demanding a more well-rounded team, but the 'all-kill' style allowing for one player to completely dominate and shutdown an entire team's roster.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BqEML.jpg?1)
How does this apply to you though? You might even say it takes a lot of work to maintain and look up player's stats and lineups. You would be half-right, it does take some work to look up players and be up to date with their values, but really, most of the work is at the start of the round, and a bit at the end of each week, when trading opens. By simply creating a team, either based off what your head is telling you, or what your heart believes - it gives you a stake in almost each match. When a player you have on your team comes out, or wins a match, you cheer for him with all your heart to continue the streak and get you more points. When an anti-teamer comes out - a silent, brooding hate creeps upon you, and for the next 30 minutes you wish for nothing but for that player to lose and perform abysmally, and when that happens, you instantly perk up and are happy. That might sound a bit twisted and wrong, especially if you pick anti-teams based off simply performance and not who you really dislike as a player, because it causes an irrational dislike for the player that can easily carry forward past proleague, into other tournaments. But I think that's part of the fun, and allows someone who isn't really in tune with the KeSPA players to really dive in easily, even if it might seem a bit artificial or materialistic. I also think if you have a few friends or have a forum, it can really spawn a fun rivalry between the group, and create a good sense of community between the FPLers.
So for round 1, I went into it not expecting much, and decided to try and play to my heart and a few educated guesses. I went with Samsung KHAN, and picked Jangbi as my anchor, he was my 'captain' and I wouldn't be able to trade him no matter what the circumstances were. I then went with some of my other favorite KeSPA players, such as Fantasy, ZerO and Bbyong. Because I picked the point-heavy Fantasy, I had to close out my last two picks with really cheap players, ones that were worth 1 or 2 points. So I originally went with Shine and Thorzain. I won't go week by week, but it was safe to say that although my trio of Fantasy, ZerO and Bbyong ended up doing fairly well in terms of points, it was completely negated by sHy's breakout performance and Samsung KHAN's abysmal one. It was a painful lesson, and one I won't forget too soon - which is why when the second round was around the corner, I was ready and began planning.
Because round 2 was a new format, there was another chance for me to screw up and possibly make another big blunder, but I was determined to try and be as calculated as possible. For my new team, I went with my strong trio of Bbyong, Fantasy and ZerO once again - and chose SKT T1 as my new team. I originally had Jangbi in as well, but opted to pick up SoO, as it was too big of a risk to waste a space on a possible under-performing Samsung once again. To round out the team, I went back to Thorzain, who picked up a win after I had traded him, and Flying, under a few recommendations that he was an underrated player. For my anti-team, I went for an all protoss group, starring Jaehoon/Argo, Trap and Stork. I felt Trap and Stork were both solid picks with only Argo being a possible upset, as Team 8 was relatively understaffed and he would almost certainly be used if they were on their back foot. I was confident that it would not be a repeat of sHy, though.
The following pictures are from week two, the first being the score that I had on the 14th, before the last day of matches for week 2, and the second one being the updated score as it currently stands. As you can see, Jaehoon decided to win a few games, taking out Fantasy and finishing off SKT1 in the last day of week 2. This put me, for the first time in a bad position because prior to this, I was slowly slipping down the ranks, but was still in a good spot in terms of my groups. However this put me in second place in Tunks, and 6th in the NeoGAF group! I'm in a bit of a predicament going into week 3, as I cannot really trade Jaehoon for anyone else, feasibly. I still believe the wins were somewhat of a fluke and I'm not willing to trade up for someone like herO or P7GAB.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BD6dn.jpg?1)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/sjpKj.jpg?1)
I will definitely wait for the lineups to be posted though, before I make any decisions. I have a few possible options though, but a lot of them are pretty wild and risky, like double trading Thorzain and Flying so I can pick up Bbatta, since Flying is my only Protoss - I'd have to trade Thorzain for a 1 point Protoss and Flying can be replaced by Bbatta. ZerO for Stats or Stephano is also very plausible, as is SoO for Revival - as all three have shown good promise lately. As I said, it will all depend on the starters, if someone I can grab is on a starter and ZerO/SoO aren't, then I might pull the trigger and grab them and hope for a good few points, since as it stands ZerO and SoO are minor players in the grand scheme of their team. I had one possibility pre-update, which was trading SKT for CJ, but once the scores updated there is no way that would have been possible.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my small post about Fantasy Proleague! Round 2 is about half way through, with week 3 starting this Saturday, so it's a weird time to post this, but I wanted to give people a heads up to start preparing for Round 3, as well as tell the world about my current predicament. Thanks for reading!
Wunder is an eSports writer and reporter, you can follow him @joonjoewong where you can see him rage at his anti-team in all caps. Or Protoss.
