Fantasy football is an evolving game. While many like playing in a traditional snake redraft league, the game is growing and branching out in new ways. One of the newer fantasy football formats is vampire leagues. Unlike every other form of fantasy football, vampire leagues pit one team against all the others in the ultimate roster-building challenge.
If you’ve never played in a vampire league, you should give it a try. However, don’t do it blindly. Let’s dive into what a vampire league is, how to set it up, how to draft in one, league suggestions and more.
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Vampire League Fantasy Football Draft Strategy
What is a Vampire League?
Vampire leagues have a unique setup that is drastically different from all other season-long fantasy football formats. One team is called the vampires, while the remaining teams are called slayers or non-vampires. The vampire team doesn’t participate in the fantasy draft, while the remaining teams draft as usual.
Once the draft is over, the vampire fills their roster with players from the waiver wire. While the vampire team is at a massive disadvantage, they can improve over the year. Some vampire leagues will allow the slayer teams to add players off the waiver wire throughout the season.
Others only allow the vampire team to make additions off the waiver wire after the draft. The reason for only letting the vampire team make waiver-wire moves is that they didn’t get to participate in the draft, meaning the only way they can easily improve their roster is through waivers.
However, the best balance is to give the vampire team the first waiver claim each week and allow other teams to make moves after the vampire. Fantasy commissioners should put that rule into place if they don’t have deep benches.
If you want to create a league and only allow the vampire access to the waiver wire, make sure every team has enough bench spots to account for bye weeks and prepare for injuries at every position.
Every week, you have your typical head-to-head matchups. In a 12-team league, five matchups will be between two slayer teams. However, the vampire matchup is one everyone will watch. If the vampire team wins the matchup, they can steal a player from the slayer’s team to add to their roster.
In exchange, the vampire team gives the slayer a player (typically their worst).
TL;DR: If you lose to the vampire team, you will be forced to trade your best player to the vampire for their worst. Losing sucks, but seeing your best player get traded for waiver-wire trash only adds salt to the wound.
How to Set Up a Vampire League
Typically, you have a 10- or 12-team league, but you can set up a league with fewer teams. However, that will help whoever the vampire is.
Ideally, you have an eight- or 14-team league. In a 14-team league, every slayer will face the vampire team once, with one team facing them twice. The way to avoid the unfair advantage of facing the vampire team twice is to start the fantasy playoffs in Week 14 despite the bye week issues.
Another way to avoid that problem is to exclude Week 1 and play the season from Week 2 through Week 14, so everyone faces the vampire only once. Similarly, you can play in an eight-team league, which means the vampire will face every slayer team twice during the season.
Once the playoffs start, you treat the league like a typical redraft league with head-to-head matchups. The vampire team is no longer allowed to steal players from their opponent, should they make the playoffs. While some leagues might allow the vampire to continue stealing players during the fantasy playoffs, that gives them a massive advantage in winning the league.
When the vampire defeats a slayer team, they can have any player off the slayer’s roster in exchange for their worst player. Some leagues will require both players to play the same position for fairness.
This is more significant if you play in a Superflex vampire league, as stealing a quarterback without giving one back can have a massive competitive impact. You can also require that the player the vampire sends back was in their weekly lineup for the matchup, but that’s not a rule I agree with.
Lastly, the vampire needs to select which player from the slayer’s roster they want before the waiver wire process on Tuesday, especially if your league allows the slayer teams to add players. This allows everyone in the league to prepare for the upcoming week’s matchups following the vampire’s victory and the forced player trade.
How Does a Vampire League Draft Work?
You can set up a vampire league on just about any fantasy football platform if the commissioner is willing to put in the legwork to manually make roster moves.
I find that Sleeper is the best fantasy football platform for all leagues, especially vampire ones. The reason is that the interface is commissioner-friendly, allowing commissioners to lock in waiver-wire moves and swap players on and off the vampire’s team with ease.
Furthermore, Sleeper has several retired players on their draft board. This allows the vampire team to select retired players during their turn in the draft to drop afterward for waiver-wire players. Plus, it’s always nice to have a roster led by Tom Brady, even if only for an hour.
Aside from the vampire team selecting all retired players, the slayers draft like a normal snake draft. While it isn’t significant, placing the vampire in the last draft slot will make things easier for the slayer teams to draft.
Fantasy commissioners can build the starting lineup however they want. My vampire leagues have a starting lineup of one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, a tight end, two FLEX spots and a Superflex slot if it is 10 teams or fewer. The number of bench spots will change drastically if the slayer teams can make waiver-wire moves during the season.
If they can’t, you should have a deeper bench to allow them to prepare for bye weeks and injuries. If they can, you want a shallower bench. Furthermore, the scoring system has no more impact on a vampire league than any other form of redraft league. You can have a simple PPR league or a scoring system as complex as the Scott Fish Bowl’s craziest years.
Other Vampire League Suggestions & Ideas
Protected Players
There isn’t a prototypical way to run a vampire league. However, that’s part of what makes them so fun. Some leagues allow slayer teams to protect one player from their roster during their matchup against the vampire.
That player must be their first or second-round draft pick, healthy and in their starting lineup for the matchup. While that protects the slayer team from a bad break in the weekly matchup, bad breaks are part of fantasy football. Therefore, it’s not a rule I use in my vampire leagues.
Separate Waiver Wires
Another option commissioners can add to their vampire league is two separate waiver-wire systems. This will require extra work by the commissioner, but it is a nice twist if you want the vampire and slayer teams to both have access to players off the waiver wire, but not equal access. The vampire will be granted one or two players before all slayer teams have access to the player pool.
Once the vampire tells the commissioner which player(s) they want, the commissioner puts them on the vampire’s roster. That would typically need to happen on Tuesday, allowing the slayers to go through a typical free-agent acquisition budget (FAAB) process on Wednesday.
This allows all the slayers an equal shot at any free agent every week while giving the vampires a chance to improve their team first. The commissioner will need to manually set the vampire’s FAAB to $0 before the season starts to guarantee they don’t add players off waivers with the slayers.
Selecting the Vampire
Fantasy players love coming up with ways to set the draft order. That same fun should be applied to determining the vampire. Whether you want to have an NFL Scouting Combine of your own to determine the draft order or simply use a random generator, have fun with picking out which team is the vampire and which are slayers.
Some fantasy players might welcome the challenge of being the vampire. If you have multiple players who want to be the vampire, turn the competition into picking your draft slot, with the last spot in the draft order automatically belonging to the vampire. Fantasy commissioners can get creative in determining vampires, but should always include themselves in the mix for that role.
Multiple Vampires?
While it isn’t typical, fantasy commissioners can set up a league with two vampires. The commissioner could set up the schedule to ensure the vampires don’t face each other during the regular season, but it is not necessary.
Fantasy commissioners could also set up two divisions, with each having a vampire, and then the top two, three or four teams from each division get into the fantasy playoffs, whether a vampire or slayer team. Don’t be afraid to test this idea out in a vampire league if you are a commissioner.
Double the Reward
This idea hasn’t been mentioned in the fantasy football world as far as I know, but it’s something I’ve considered adding to my leagues to add more chaos to the mix. If the vampire team wins their matchup, they not only swap players with the slayer they defeated but also with the lowest-scoring team from the week.
The twist adds a similar element to guillotine leagues (which are extremely fun to play in) and puts the entire league on edge for the Monday Night Football game.
Even if you are a slayer not facing the vampire, you could end up losing a player from your roster. Like a guillotine league, you don’t want to be the lowest-scoring team any week. Just be thankful you only lost one player and aren’t booted from the league.
Year-Over-Year Management
Like a typical snake redraft league, you can swap out fantasy players during the offseason in a vampire league without an issue. However, one thing I include in my vampire leagues is a reward for the vampire. If they win the league, they can’t be the vampire the following season.
Furthermore, they can select any draft slot they want when it’s time to renew the league for the new year. After that, the remaining teams pick their draft slots and select a new vampire according to how the commissioner sets up the league.
Vampire League Draft/In-Season Strategies
Hopefully, fantasy players love the idea of playing in a vampire league and want to join one for the upcoming season. However, drafting in a vampire league is drastically different than a typical snake redraft league, even if you are one of the slayers.
How the waiver wire works for slayer teams will play a massive role in how they should draft their team. Similarly, it will have a significant impact on how the vampire team manages their team during the year. There are several draft and in-season strategies for playing in a vampire league. However, the only one that fantasy players shouldn’t use is “winging it” and hoping for the best.
Be sure to check out this FantasyPros article on how to dominate your vampire league with draft and in-season strategies.
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Mike Fanelli is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @Mike_NFL2.