Shawn Siegele dives into the extreme dynasty strategy that builds a juggernaut even when you take on an orphan in ultra-competitive leagues.
Few formats are as wild and crazy as deep superflex dynasty leagues and the RV TriFlex leagues are a perfect example. We’ve been focusing on startup and rookie tactics recently in the Dynasty Workshop, but today we’ve taken a brief diversion into the true wild west of dynasty: developmental leagues.
Frequent readers know that my approach is to build the Permanent Championship Window, an opening created by a strategy I call Perpetual Reloading. But PR can be accomplished with a variety of tactics. You can trade in aggressively during the startup with exclusively young star players as your targets. This creates a win-now squad that’s insulated against dramatic trade value loss. In many cases you can even play these stars and then trade them at a premium later. You can also use variations of Ryan McDowell’s Productive Struggle and trade down aggressively in the startup, setting yourself up for an unbeatable juggernaut in the medium term.
We cover all of this and more in the dynasty workshop, an ongoing series of lessons throughout the year.
The 2022 Dynasty Workshop
- Trading Down in a Startup Draft Is Like Having a Superpower
- How to Manipulate a Rookie Draft
- Rookie Draft Trade Tactics: A Perpetual Motion Machine That Prints Money
- Blockbuster Trades – Keep the Permanent Championship Window Open
- Round 1 Tactics Will Determine Your Fate for Years
- The Importance of Building Future Year Pick Depth
- Maintaining Your Flexibility to Win in Year 1 . . . or Benefit from Losing
- Player Valuations and Philosophy
- Optimal Lineup Construction and When to Pivot
- Putting the Lessons Together for a Win Now/Win Later Juggernaut
We’ve got some really cool features coming up looking at tactics that Pat Kerrane and I are employing in a startup, but today’s lesson focuses on two topics that dovetail nicely from a big-picture perspective: orphans and devy leagues.
In previous lessons we’ve broken down how to build some pretty insane squads, but my wildest team currently resides in the Kitchen Sink 3 league. Even if you’re not playing in Ryan’s official KS leagues, I strongly encourage you to consider leagues with a similar style: auction, contract, development dynasty (devy), and more. My current KS3 squad offers a good example of how including devy will both help your prospect evaluation acumen and improve interest in your league for potential orphan managers.
For those jumping into devy startups this summer, Travis May has two-round projections for each of the next three rookie drafts.
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