EPTPS: This is gonna be long.
First of all, I must say that I never actually played any Fantsay league, so I have yet to grasp the whole concept of it, however, I made three basic rules regarding my team.
1. Pick two players from each race, so you can easily trade underperformers.
2. Pick six players from different teams so I can gain as many team victory points as possible.
3. Pick players that either
- are able to win a lot of games in a row ( S-class, so to say )
- are almost always in their team's lineup
- fill up with cheap players that are on winning teams and have a positive PL record even though they aren't in the lineup that often
- don't gamble with supposedly strong players that are too expensive and inexperienced
- do not get a strong player from a weak team if you can afford a strong player from a strong team instead
I feel that there are three basic strategies that stand behind most teams.
a) pick 3 top players and fill up with 3 cheap ones
b) pick 2 top players, fill up with medium priced
c) pick only players from the 3-6 point range to have no weakest link.
Obviously method C is a pretty safe bet to end up above average, but also one that probably will give you no chance to win the whole thing, whereas method b is a huge gamble, with people relying heavily on two strong, expensive players and 4 underdogs.
In order to score high, your expensive players must play on a constantly high level, while your cheap players must exceed expectations.
I felt that method a is a good compromise.
Now for the most difficult part, picking players. I will break them down by race and talk a bit about plausible choices from my perspective, going from expensive to medium and finishing up with the cheap picks.
Let's start with Terran, which I guess for most people will be the easiest to pick.
expensive
Leta: Starting out with the strongest, by far most expensive player this season. People picking Leta will most probably go for method b, thus relying completely on Leta winning pretty much every single game.
You have to bet big to win big they say, to me, Leta seemed a couple poins too expensive without being signitficantly more promising than the players in the 7-10 Point range
Mind: right now he seems back in shape, but he's too inconsisten for me. Also plays for one of the weaker teams, thus not worth 10 points in my view.
Flash: Flash is a safe bet if you go for an S-Class terran, he is 4 points cheaper than Leta, having a similarly beastly record, fully capable of an all-kill. Unfortunately, he is the only consistent player in KTF, which means he will most probably not get as many points for team wins as Leta will.
medium
After those two we have a long list of players at 4-6 points, either being inconsistent as hell, unproven, or weak at one matchup. Which means, picking one of these guys will be a gamble. If you want to pick one of these guys, here's my advice:
If you don't plan on picking JD and don't plan on filling your team up with a weak Lecaf Player, go with Hiya or ForGG ( both 6-4 in their last 10 PL games, but Hiya has a 4 win streak right now, so I would favor him)
If you have Lecaf covered elsewhere and still want a medium priced terran, I would suggest FBH or UpMagic (both 7-3 in their last 10), again depending on your other players' teams.
Sea and Light are other viable picks if you don't like FBH and Up, especially with MBC probably ending up giving you more points than estro.
If you want to gamble on possible future star, go with skyhigh. Players I would not recommend are Really, Hwasin and Fantasy, which seem to expensive for their value.
cheap
I will keep this short and simple as there are way too many possible picks, if you wanna go with a cheap terran, pick depending on which team in the top 5 you have not covered elsewhere, try to go with a player that is in a good team rather than a player that plays a lot and loses a lot/is in a weak team. Good picks imo would be:
Lomo for Lecaf, Ruby for MBC, Boxer for SKT, Notice for STX, Propose or Frozean for KHAN (though I would highly suggest you cover KHAN somewhere else)
Next up, the Protoss guys, a little harder than terran, with 6 Dragons and two dark horses at 5 points or more
expensive
Best/Bisu: If you can afford it (if you didn't pick JD, Mind or Leta basically) get at least one of those two. They are both 9-1 in their last ten PL games, and in spite of falling short in the individual leagues, still are among the very best players in the world, which means: They can break streaks; they can go 4-0 easily; they will probably get a lot of points for SKT. Thus making them the perfect choice for a Fantasy Team, especially with the lack of alternatives in the SKT lineup.
Right now I would say Best seems a little sharper, so I will probably pick him myself.
Jangbi/Stork: Both significantly cheaper than the SKT dragons, which means if you want an S-class toss and don't have 9 points to spare, here's your chance.
If you have KHAN covered through FBH or possibly Great, I would suggest choosing the cheaper Free or Kal over one of these, if not, I highly suggest picking Jangbi, who seems as sharp as ever, probably the cheapest of the very top players right now. Stork seems to be in a little slump at the moment, without any indication that he will do better than Free or Kal this season, I would advice you to only pick him if you have no one else from KHAN.
Free/Kal: Both very solid 5 Point picks, if you have the points and need another strong toss, go with either of them. Both are very similar and playing in teams that may or may do not well next season, since the players from STX (Hwasin, July, Calm) and Stars (GGPlay, Zero) are highly unpredictable, even though they all look sharper than during the last couple of months.
Young/SangHo: I wouldn't recommend picking either of these. Young seems to expensive and too unproven to be worth a 5 point gamble, whereas SangHo is too inconsistent, as well as playing in a weaker team.
cheap
within the low value players, I feel the ones worth picking are Pusan for MBC, Much for CJ, TT for KHAN, Horang2 or Spear for OGN, Doctor.K for SKT, sOO or Shuttle for STX, maybe Guemchi for Stars if you feel like gambling
Now onto the most difficult race (even in Fantasy Picking): The Zerg
I believe that the success of your team will be highly dependant on how your Zerg will do. We have a ton of up and comers alongside several old school zergs trying to find their way back to the top (Savior, July, GGPlay, Lux).
expensive
Jaedong: Like Leta, Jaedong is damn expensive. Too expensive for my taste, given his recent results. I don't think he has an edge over the players in the 7-9 point range.
Effort: Effort is doing well, while CJ isn't. As I previously stated, I would rather pick a strong player in a strong team than a strong player in a weak team, so I wouldn't suggest picking him.
July: July, well, he's looking pretty impressive in Proleague these days. He is 9-1 in his last 10 PL games. However, he lost in MSL to Firefist and Doctor.K. If he keeps his current form, he's a bargain for 6 points, but with July you never know.
Great: He's 9-3 in PL, but with a 1-5 record against terran, he seems to be very vulnerable to being sniped. If you have no one else from Samsung, you should consider picking him anyways.
Yarnc: Similar to July, Yarnc definitely LOOKS good right now. He is also likely to give you lots of team points considering he plays with Leta, so I would say right now he's a viable pick if you don't have anyone else from OGN
medium
there are, as I said, a lot of players that are very hard to predict.
Calm to me looks like the best bet for 4 points. If you need an MBC Player, Saint is also viable, but he is only 6-11 vs Zerg.
The other 4 point Zergs all play in supposedly weaker teams such as Star or WeMade.
If you only have 3 points left, you can hope for Luxury making a comeback along with hoping that Flash will win the Ace matches for KTF, all in all doesn't seem worth the risk.
If you need an SKT player, TheZerg seems to be your best bet. Type-b if you don't have OGN players.
cheap
A lot of people will probably fill up their team with one of the 1 or 2 point zergs, hoping their breakthrough.
Viable Picks include Juni from Samsung, Shark or Hyun from MBC, Clay or Hogil from OGN, by.hero from STX and probably a lot more.
And last but not least, we have Savior. Call me nostalgic, but I think that he could be worth a lot more than 2 points, and a lot of people will probably have him in their team, especially after recent events. I haven't decided yet, but if I end up with 5 players, missing only a Zerg and having exactly 2 points left, I will pick him over any other Z without hesitation.
So that's about it, I probably forgot a bunch of players, but most of the ones I left out were on purpose, because I do not feel them worth picking.
Any comments are welcome of course.
I wanted to have the discussion in one place. Oh well.
