How to Play FPL Draft – A Beginner’s Guide

Fantasy Premier League Draft is free to play and runs parallel with old-school FPL. If you’re already registered for the long-running FPL game, you can also immediately get involved with Draft.

Draft uses exactly the same scoring system as FPL with only one exception: there are no captains or vice-captains.

There are also no chips or Wildcards.

For the uninitiated or those needing a refresher on the rules, here’s a brief guide on how to play the game.

How to Play

Joining a League/The Draft

The first step is to create or join a league. Private leagues can include up to 16 managers, although the game itself states that eight is the recommended number. Eight, indeed, is the limit for public leagues (although four or six managers are also permitted) – you can enter those with random members of the FPL Draft community.

Like the traditional FPL game, leagues can run in the classic form or in the head-to-head format.

The key selling point of Draft is that each 15-man squad within a private/public league is unique, so only one team in each league can, for example, own Harry Kane or Mohamed Salah.

The draft system used is described as a “snake draft”, where managers take it in turns to select players until a squad is complete over 15 rounds. An example four-team league would follow this pattern at the draft pick stage:

Round 1: Team A, Team B, Team C, Team D
Round 2: Team D, Team C, Team B, Team A

Unlike the traditional FPL format, there are no budgets or player prices – so there is plenty of room for premium assets.

League administrators can set a draft date and time for private leagues, while public league drafts begin 30 minutes after the first team joins. Everything will need to be sorted before the Gameweek 1 deadline on August 11th, however.

Fantasy managers can build a watchlist before the draft, and this can act both as a shortlist of players you are coveting and also a list to govern your automatic picks should you be “away from keyboard”.

There is also the opportunity to take part in a mock draft, allowing you to experience the draft process before doing one for real.

Transactions

Transfers, or “transactions” as they are known in Draft, are made in three ways: Fantasy managers can make “waiver requests”, dip into the free agent pool or trade with another manager in their mini-league.

After the draft has completed, you can trade players with other managers in your league – depending on how it has been configured. Your league administrator can allow no trades, all trades unvetted or trades that need administrator/other managers’ approval.

The waivers, meanwhile, operate like transfer requests from managers who propose both the unattached player they want and the player being swapped out. A weekly deadline is set for waivers to take place and, when that is reached, they operate a lot like the draft.

Indeed, before the season starts, managers get their first waiver requests granted in the reverse order of the draft. So if you went last in the draft in Round 1, you will be the first to get your waiver request processed. However, once you have succeeded with a waiver, you then go to the back of the queue.

Things change when the season starts, with the waivers granted in reverse order of the league table. So if you’re bottom of your private/public league, your waiver will be granted first to give you the best opportunity to strengthen your team.

Inter-manager trade offers can be made each Gameweek until the waiver deadline passes. If trades in your league require approval, then the trade deadline will be 24 hours before the waiver deadline.

Players that are free agents become available once all the waiver requests and manager trades are made. These consist of players remaining in the pool and players that were released by other managers in the previous Gameweek.

Managers can draw from the free agent pool 24 hours before the Gameweek deadline and it’s on a first-come, first-served basis.

Fantasy Premier League have also published an FAQ and a list of rules on the Draft game, should further help be needed.