The Lolesports Fantasy League Week 1
Following up on our draft, we now bring you the results of Week 1 in the Lolesports Fantasy League. What are some of the key takeaways that our fantasy journalists learned? Read more to find out.
Full standings can be found here.
The Results
Match 1
Jack Ho - Dragonslayer Teemo
Finished Week 1 not only with a win but also had the most points in the league. My lowest scoring player was surprisingly my first round pick, Meteos. But in a sense, this bodes well for me that the rest of my team can yield a high quantity of points despite an off week from one of my early draft picks. My primary alternate, Kev1n (81 points), performed as well as my Top lane starter, Dyrus (83 points), so this should give me continued flexibility going into the future. In retrospect, my initial approach to the lolesports fantasy might have been incorrect: Mid and AD Carry seem to be the positions that yield the most points, not Top and Jungle, which I previously surmised. Regardless, I am very satisfied with Jesiz and Tabzz on my team.
Ferguson Mitchell - FergSquad
Good news FergSquad, you've got a killer bot lane pairing in Vasilii and Mor. Bad news: didn't start both of them. Lessons were learned as both sOAZ and Vander laid enormous eggs all over my fantasy hopes, sending me to an early 0-1 deficit. The EU LCS has proven completely unreliable—time to abandon ship! This week, I will be starting a lineup entirely NA featuring Mor and Innox in for the two aforementioned duds from Week 1. Save me LMQ bot lane, you're my only hope!
Match 2
Mattias Lehman - Gustaf's Gentlemen
My strategy of two beefy Mids paid off in Week 1, with Kerp and Shiphtur pulling in a whopping 215 points, more than 40% of my total score. Cloud9 and LemonNation are starting to feel like bad picks, as Cloud9 is currently slumping. However, I trust in the team to regain their composure so I’ll be holding onto those players. It’s a good sign that – even going 2-2 – LemonNation put up reasonable points, coming up basically in the middle for Supports. Just to be safe, I’ve picked up Jree, doubling down on my draft strategy of "all Millenium all the time." I’m also holding onto my Team Dignitas pick for similar reasons. Finally, I’m benching Xaxus – who only got 10 points per game last week – for Quas, who plays EG this week, a team he’s averaged 16 points per game against. Coming into this week, my only weak spot was Top lane, but if Cloud9 continues struggling, and WildTurtle fails to build synergy with Gleeb (who actually matched him in fantasy points last week), I’ll be riding on Shiphtur and Kerp, and hoping they get a penta kill and a quadra kill between them every week.
Josh Augustine - Yordle Ascension
Well, this is awkward. Remember when I bragged about getting "the crazy-strong Fnatic bot lane" with my first two draft picks? Yeah, that didn't work out so well for me in Week 1. Rekkles and YellOwStaR performed okay, but I didn't reach for them to get okay results. On the other side of things, I'm very happy that my two value picks -- Mr RalleZ and Shook -- both performed better than expected. They gave me round-2 numbers for my round-5 picks. I'll happily swap out ZionSpartan for Wickd (my only mistake in roster selection in Week 1) and ride the Alliance wave. If Fnatic steps it up at all, I should have no problem winning this week.
Match 3
Andrew Whitmore - Rainbow Unicorns
Good news! I won! But Week 1 also revealed some horrible weaknesses of my team. I still believe that Cloud9 and CLG will be the top tier North American teams this split, but my lineup is incredibly cannibalistic. If CLG does well, it’s likely they beat other members of my team. The only two Europeans in my current lineup are Cyanide (Jungle) and Genja (Flex), meaning I have some serious trading to do to get my team into top shape. For the upcoming week, only one game conflicts (Cloud 9 vs. LMQ) for my team's score, whereas my opponent has multiple conflicts. If NA stabilizes after a traumatic Week 1, I’m sure to win.
Thomas Watts - Code Monkeys
Lovely opening week for the autodrafted version of the Code Monkeys. Thanks to Darien being...Darien, and Gambit Gaming looking out of sorts in general, the Monkeys went down to Glyceroll's Rainbow Unicorns. The major point to take from Week 1: Gambit players aren't viable starters, and shouldn't be started until they pull themselves together. Unfortunately, Code Monkeys starts two of them. In order to remedy this, I went dangling players for trade bait. We worked out a trade with Trent's team where I got Mimer and Jankos (to potentially replace Darien and Diamond) for IWillDominate and Krepo. Hopefully that should shore up the roster a bit.
Match 4
Kelsey Moser - Diana Fire
I had relatively middle-of-the-road point-getters in Week 1, which proved useful against Trent when Hai performed worse than my auto-drafted xPeke. I learned that Support performance, at least in Xpecial's case, is well-connected with Team performance, and having both Xpecial and Curse in my lineup was costly. Even though Millenium and Dignitas both have tough weeks ahead, I opted to snatch up Millenium before someone else could and took a gamble by replacing Xpecial with KiWiKiD since neither Dignitas or Curse have exceptionally stellar weeks going forward. Other than that, I just got lucky by finishing in the bottom half of the group but still winning my matchup.
Trent Murray - This is My Smurf
My first fantasy week was a lesson in "draft for the season, not the first week." I feel very good about Nyph's performance, and that's about it. Cloud9, ROCCAT, and CLG looked out of sorts in the Super Week, and my fantasy team paid the price. I still hold onto the hope that this roster will be a top contender by the end of the season, but I would like for my players to figure things out sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, Week 2 looks to be pretty rough as well. With all the wisdom that hindsight provides me, I should have drafted my flex sooner. After their loss to Curse, and looking at their Week 2 matchups, Dignitas as a whole makes me very nervous, and Imaqtpie in particular will likely have some tough weeks ahead of him.
