With the launch of a draft version of Fantasy Premier League confirmed this week, The Scout addresses your burning questions.
Q: What is FPL Draft?
The Scout: A brand new twist on Fantasy Premier League, FPL Draft is free to play and will complement the regular game.
You can take on your friends in private leagues made up of 2-16 managers or enter public leagues with strangers of up to eight managers.
Your squad must be made up of 15 players, consisting of two goalkeepers, five defenders, five midfielders and three forwards.
Each Premier League player can only be in one league squad.
A draft will take place with managers taking it in turns to make their player selections.
Q: Sounds exciting but, just to clarify, there are now two games for FPL fans?
The Scout: Yes, there are now two games to play.
1) The original Fantasy Premier League game with a £100m budget, which will launch in the week commencing 10 July.
2) The new FPL Draft game that will launch in the week commencing 17 July.
You can enter squads in both games, and they are both free to play.
Q: What size league works best?
The Scout: With each squad in a league unique, we have found that up to eight teams is the optimum size for a private league.
Public leagues will all consist of eight teams.
Q: Is there a squad budget?
The Scout: Player prices are not featured in FPL Draft.
A squad is selected through the draft process, with the order of picks deciding selection.
Q: How does the draft work?
The Scout: Before the draft process begins, a random order is generated which will "snake" from round to round of picks until all squads in a league are completed.
In a “snake draft” the pick order is reversed each round, for example:
Round 1: Team A, Team B, Team C, Team D.
Round 2: Team D, Team C, Team B, Team A.
Q: Do I gain an advantage by picking first?
The Scout: No, not at all. You might get your top-priority player in the first round but, when you come to pick again, as the last manager in round 2, you may find your other main targets have been selected.
In this way, the draft ensures all managers have the opportunity to choose competitive and balanced squads.
Q: When will the draft take place?
The Scout: The administrator of a private league can decide the date and time of the draft. This must be completed before the Gameweek 1 deadline at 6.45pm on 11 August, 2017.
In a public league, the draft will take place around 24 hours after the first team joins.
Q: What if I cannot make the draft?
The Scout: Before the draft, each manager can create a Watchlist of players, listed in priority order, representing their top targets for each position.
If you are absent for the duration or for any part of the draft, the Watchlist is used to automatically make selections on your behalf.
If no Watchlist is selected, draft ranks are used to prioritise automatic selections.
Each player in the game is given a draft rank based on their total FPL points last season and/or their potential for points in 2017/18.
Q: How does my team score points?
The Scout says: Players collect points in the same way as in the traditional Fantasy Premier League game.
There is one exception: an FPL draft squad does not have a captain or vice-captain.
Q: How do I make transfers?
The Scout: After the draft, managers can make changes to their squads in two ways.
They can submit a “waiver request” for a new player or make a direct transfer from the free agents pool.
There are no direct transfers between managers.
Q: What is a free agent?
The Scout: A free agent is a player not selected in the draft. These players can be swapped into squads 24 hours before the Gameweek deadline during the Free Agency mode.
New players added to the game, or players released by other managers, do not immediately become free agents.
Initially, they can only be signed through a waiver request.
Q: What are waivers?
The Scout: Similar to the draft process; a waiver ensures all managers get the chance to pick up new signings or players released by other managers.
You make a waiver request when proposing to swap a player in your squad with an unselected player in the same position.
These requests are processed 24 hours before the Gameweek deadline.
Any number of waiver requests can be made, if you make more than one, they will need to be prioritised.
Q: How do waivers work?
The Scout: A round of waivers runs once a week.
On the waiver deadline, a process will look through all the requests and make the transfers.
The lowest-ranked team will get their first waiver choice.
Before the season starts the waiver order will be the reverse of the draft order.
Once a waiver request is successful, the team in question will move to the end of the waiver queue for that Gameweek.
After waivers are processed, free agency mode will be active until the Gameweek deadline.
