NFTdraft – Intro
Last year, when the NFTdraft season 1 came out, I had a very vague idea about football and the NFL. Sure, I’ve heard about quarterbacks, and I knew what the game looked like, but the roles of the wider receiver, running back, kicker, and tight end, had no meaning to me (cut me some slack here, I’m from the EU).
NFTdraft changed it all for me. I’ve bought a few packs, unpacked them, and started learning about the game.
By the first season’s end, I had my favorite team, players, and even coach. Why? Not only because the NFT DRAFT offered substantial rewards, but because I fell in love with the game.
Rewards helped of course, and because of them, I’ve started looking into details like pairing the best offense/weakest defense teams for the day, which QB1 is likely not to play, and even the weather.
The NFTdraft team boosts with the claim that over $110,000 was awarded from the free-to-enter tournaments in 2021 alone!
All that I can say is that’s probably correct, as I’ve won a small part of it, consistently during season 1.
Now, as the new season of the NFL is so close again, I’m finding myself looking forward to the game, as much as to the possibility to rank high on the leaderboard, and winning some WAX again!
And if I could do it, so can you.
Bring on season 2! Let the football begin!
Basics about the NFTdraft project
The fantasy football concept is probably something you are well aware of. NFTdraft saw the opportunity to combine it with the NFT-s possibilities, and ended with something marvelous.
But they didn’t just copy fantasy football rules and slap them on web3/crypto market. No, they’ve added their own and added new depth to the game.
Here are some important rules of the NFTdraft game:
- Users have a max of 130 points to spend on creating their team
- A high-end card costs 20 points, low-end 3 points
- You can choose lineups with up to two QB-s (1 is required)
- Users must enter one of the following: Defense, Defense+Kicker, or Kicker (2 Defense, or 2 Defense+Kicker – limit per team)
- With season 2, there’s a requirement of at least 1 S2 card per team
- Multiple free-to-enter tournaments, including weekly Main Event. All of them with rewards
- 20% of pack sale revenue goes to the weekly tournaments prizes fund
- on week one NFTdraft will award $10,000
How To start?
If you are a new player coming in, say hi to the NFTdrafter – Raiders on the NFTdraft discord, and he or someone else there will point you in the right direction.
Let’s say you are new to the NFL in general, there’s an excellent guide (written by the creative director for HBO Max) that can help you a lot.
I’ll assume that you already have a wax wallet. If not, head over to https://wallet.wax.io and create one for free.
Step two, get your hands on some card NFT-s, you can do it on the NFTdraft website shop page for the packs, or on the secondary markets if you prefer a particular player/position/season card.
You will need at least 10 players/positions to start with. Mandatory 1 QB and 1 defense, kicker, or def+kicker. The other 8 cards can be whatever, with a maximum of 2 QBs, maximum of 2 defense, kicker, or def+kicker.
Stay between 90-130 points (each card costs a predefined amount of points), and you can enter up to 50 teams for free in each tournament. Of course, to do so you will need a minimum of 500 cards, as the one you used before cannot be used in another tournament in the same week.
That’s valid for free tournaments, but there are also sponsored tournaments, where you can enter for a small fee. And in it, you can use a card endlessly during a week and you can enter an infinite number of times.
If you end up with a rare card you think it will do well next week, you might enter it in sponsored tournaments to increase your chances for a solid payday.
Upcoming Sale and the packs
As the first week’s guaranteed prize fund is $10,000, you can be sure that I’ll be aiming for my slice of it.
That means I have to take advantage to stock up on missing positions, and the best way to do it is on the upcoming sale.
Packs will be heavily discounted (for example Captain pack will be reduced from 175$ to 135$), and I’m gonna stock up. More players = more teams = more WAX.
The first sale for season 2 is already over, and on August 29th we’ll have the last discounted sale for S2. Then regular season pack prices kick on September 8th, and the season is underway.
All the packs can be bought with a credit card or with WAX. That’s convenient.
Probabilities:
- Common: 8 cards
- QB: 1 card
- DF / DF+K: 1 card
Probabilities:
- Common: 94.78%
- Standout: 4.73%
- Team Captain: 0.5%
Probabilities:
- Common: 94.78%
- Standout: 4.7%
- Team Captain: 0.47%
- MVP: 0.05%
- GOAT: 0.005%
Probabilities:
- Common: 94.78%
- Standout: 4.7%
- Team Captain: 0.47%
- MVP: 0.05%
- GOAT: 0.005%
As you can see, Full team packs and Roster packs have no chance of getting players of higher rarity, NFTdraft packs and Captain packs do.
Although pulling out an MVP or GOAT player will not guarantee you win, they will increase your chances by giving you a few extra points. Most of the time that’s all that you need, a point over the competition can increase your earnings considerably.
Season one vs Season Two
You might ask what’s the difference between season 1 and season 2 cards?
Well, obviously season 1 cards were first. You can say for OG players, and because of it, the team promised they will not lose value over time.
Does that mean that all of the S1 cards are better (in terms of value/cost) than all of their S2 counterparts? Definitely not!
There are a couple of S2 cards, from each team, that are currently better than their S1 counterparts.
You can find more information about the difference between the S1 and S2 cards on the NFTdraft discord in deep dive-convos-channel.
As you can see from the image – KC WR #1, RB #1, and WR #2 are better in S2 variants. They cost less to field, and that means that you can add more higher-value cards to the 130 points team.
That being said, most of the cards from the S1 are generally better.
It is worth mentioning that sole Kickers and some other cards are removed from the game (Kickers can still be played together with defense).
The first image is KC WR #1 and it costs 20 points to play, the second one is the same player from season 2 which cost 16 pts to play. That is huge.
Another benefit of S2 cards, at the moment, the rules are you need at least one per team.
You can find a lot of useful information and strategies in the NFTdraft 101 section on their website. Here’s a citation about the importance of rarities:
NFTdraft: How Important Is Rarity?
Hello Fantasy Football experts! It’s time to once again curl up in front of the fire, pour yourself a glass of scotch, and read the sweet, sweet ramblings of 2ManyTDs. This is a good one, because now that you know about the basics of Fantasy Football, we get to dip our toes into the warm waters of NFTdraft goodness. Let’s talk rarity.
As you may or may not know, there are 512 different cards – each corresponding with a team and a position (example: Tampa Bay WR #2, Dallas QB #1, etc). But for each of those cards, there are 5 different versions (or rarities) of them. Here is the breakdown of each card:
For Each Card/Position – there are:
- 20,000 Commons
- 1,000 Standouts
- 100 Team Captains
- 10 MVPs
- 1 GOAT
That means there are 21,111 of each card. So the chances you can find a Tom Brady card (Tampa Bay QB #1) is pretty high. Hell, with 20k commons running around, you may have multiples of it. But there is only ONE GOAT Tampa Bay QB #1. That means there are only 512 GOAT cards TOTAL in the game – and not only are the rarer cards worth a lot on the market, they also help your lineup each and every week. Here are the scoring bonuses for each rarity:
- Common cards earn nothing – you just get to play them
- Standout cards earn a 1% scoring bonus
- Team Captain cards earn a 2% scoring bonus
- MVP cards earn a 3% scoring bonus, and cost one point less to play
- GOAT cards earn a 5% scoring bonus, and cost two points less to play
So that is all well and dandy… but I hear you asking “Oh, magical fantasy math wizard, should I always play my Standouts? Even over a better Common card?” And I respond “Where is that voice coming from?!? Get out of my head! But yes, I am about to go over that.”
Standouts and Team Captains:
YES! You opened a pack and got a Team Captain! Beware all you other players, my… TE #3 Team Captain (?) is going to bring me all the gold shillings! Well… simmer down.
Look, I know that’s an exaggeration, but let’s look at the math and you can see it’s not far off. Say a player gets 25 Fantasy Points (ftpts). That’s great for ANY position. You are happy with your QB, RB, WR, TE, whoever, AND you have them as a Team Captain with a scoring bonus! That means they ACTUALLY get 25.5 points. BWOMP BWOMP. That is the equivalent of a QB throwing an extra 12.5 yards. Yawn.
TL;DR – play the best card you can, regardless of whether it is common, standout, or team captain. The only time these bonuses will really come into play would be if you and someone else have the same lineup in a tournament. Think of it as a tiebreaker, but not the central focus of your lineup.
MVP and GOATS:
I LOVE THIS MECHANIC. I know I constantly talk about how intelligent, smart, and attractive the team behind this project is (how’s that raise coming NFTdrafter?) but I honestly think this is the best part. Not only do you get an increase in Bonus Points (3% and 5% respectively) but it actually costs LESS to play that card. So not only do they get more points, they allow you to upgrade another position by a point or 2 – and that is a MAJOR difference maker.
Say, a GOAT gets you 25 points. They actually get you 26.25 points AND allow you to upgrade your 18 POINT COST Detroit RB #1 (the 16th ranked RB in Week 1) to 20 POINT COST Carolina RB #1 (the #1 ranked RB). That is massive.
So there you have it. GOATS are the GOAT. MVPs make a solid difference as well. But don’t base your lineup based around what Team Captain or Standouts you have. Just get that extra bonus if you are lucky enough to want to play that card, regardless of rarity.
***All rules are subject to change.
My way
What I’d recommend is an approach similar to mine. If you are looking to enter NFTdraft, get a few packs (as your budget allows), open them, hope for a good pull, and fill the gaps from the secondary market.
Speaking of good pulls, if the gods smile on you and you pull out a GOAT. The cheapest one listed on the AH goes for 5000 WAX, and there are only 2 listed for sale.
Another benefit of the top rarities (MVP-s and GOAT-s) is the cost to play a card in your fantasy team. This NY Green RB #1 goes for 12 pts, a common one costs 14 pts. 2 pts are saved there if you use it, and on top of that GOAT cards earn a 5% scoring bonus (MVP 3%, Team captains 2%, Standout 1%).
Believe me, it adds up, and 1 point, in the end, can make a big difference.
For season 1, I’ve acquired about 250 cards. Mostly from the NFTdraft packs. That’s not a very big number, but it was enough for me to play 5-10 teams each week. Unfortunately, I haven’t been lucky enough to score the GOAT or the MVP, but I’ll try to get one this season.
You may ask why didn’t I play all 25 teams (250/10)? In an ideal situation, I could, but as the NFTdraft is a fantasy game with a set of rules in place, I couldn’t.
And even if there are no rules for it, there’s no point in putting together teams with no chance of winning. For example a lot of WR #5, QB #2 which is not likely to play, etc.
You need a balanced team, a few heavy ones (15-20 pts cost), a few high-value middle positions you estimate will score big (10-15), and fill the rest with sub-10 cost positions. And if you’d like to compete with multiple teams to increase your chance of winning – you’ll need a lot of cards.
At least that was my way, each player has his strategy. If you think you have a superior strategy, by all means, do it! And I’ll see you on the leaderboards.
Blending
If you got a few packs, there’s a solid chance you’ll get more duplicates than you can use, and NFTdraft has you covered. After all, this is an NFT web3 game, of course there’s blending available!
A current recipe for blending is 3 -> 1. Combine any three identical cards and get a new version, one rarity higher.
Interview with the team
I’ve asked the investor and community manager NFTdrafter – Raiders (if you visit their discord, you’ll find him online each day, willing to help), and he was kind enough to answer them promptly.
1. Can you briefly introduce yourself, which is your role in the NFTdraft?
–NFTdrafter – Raiders:
I’m the investor and community manager. The owners and founders are doxxed. Jason is into dev work and uninterested in community aspects and Brent handles all interviews and such but is in Dubai atm.https://nftdraft.io/the-team/
2. Why NFL?
NFL because we are all big fans. Basketball will be live this year, then fantasy racing with cards 1-100 that can be used in Nascar, Formula 1, or Formula E.
3. You’ve switched development teams after the S1, are you happy with a new one?
-NFTdrafter – Raiders:
Yes. We tried to go with a local shop. They had no blockchain experience and that led to foundational issues with the code. Our new dev team is DetroitLedger.Tech. They have founding members who wrote much of the code used for WAX. They identified last year’s issue with one review of the code and we are very excited to get this year underway.
4. Which part of your work do you like the most??
-NFTdrafter – Raiders:
Growing the community. I netted over $100k in 2021 from believing in projects like Splinterland and TheSandbox. NFTdraft is designed to reward our members in the same fashion. I feel confident everyone who joins in the first 2-3 years will reap huge rewards (I joined SL season three and turned $1500 of spending over 9 months into 55k cashed out and a collection that remains worth 30k).
Every new person, in my mind, is someone who’s life is going to improve for having believed in us. Plus, NFTdraft is the most fun I have online, so it’s great no matter what the future brings.
5. Will each new season have its own design for cards?
-NFTdrafter – Raiders:
Yes.
6. What is your plan about season card longevity (except S1), what would you recommend how often should they be replaced?
-NFTdrafter – Raiders:
The way our point degradation system works, after one year, some cards will need to be replaced. The most desired cards should remain smart and valuable plays for 5-6 years. Blending them up will add 1-2 years of use, so it will depend on the player, but value will remain for a long time.
7. Where do you see NFTdraft in 2 years?
–NFTdrafter – Raiders:
I see us as the second largest Fantasy football company online. We will be the largest project on WAX and one of the largest projects in the Web 3.0 space.
8. Anything else you’d like to say?
-NFTdrafter – Raiders:
That people should join. Even if unfamiliar with American football. NFTdraft is so fun and so superior to every other fantasy game out there, it is worth spending the 4-6 weeks learning the ropes on blind faith. Something to note, our NFTs are the only ones I’m aware of that held their value from July of 2021 to July of 2022. They actually gained 200% value, and this is just the beginning.
Many thanks to NFTdrafter – Raiders for taking the time to answer my questions! The team will design each season differently, it’s clear they are willing to put in the effort. Will you support it by getting packs and playing?
If you’d like to ask the team something else, leave the comment below, or ask them yourself on discord.
Making an informed decision – to invest or to skip some project, is the best way to prosper.
Providing you with useful information, the information you can act on is something I enjoy doing myself.
Conclusion – NFTdraft, is it worth going in now?
Update, May 2023
A season has passed, and it was plagued with issues. The development team did a very poor job of troubleshooting the issues.
They have switched the dev team again, and we’ll see what the new season brings. Honestly, I’m wondering about the owner’s funds for this project, especially when the community confidence in the team plummeted.
A high-risk project!
The NFTdraft game and the next season of the NFL are at our doorstep, and it feels like ages from the last time the NFL was on. Suffice it to say I’m very excited about both!
If you love NFL and fantasy sports, and you think you are good enough to score some WAX from it, you would not want to miss this!
As with any other NFT project I’ve reviewed on Tested goods, I’ve been playing NFTdraft for a while, and this project is here to stay.
Furthermore, NFTdraft is evolving. For this season there is a new NFT card design, and the tournament part of the website UI will be different from the last season.
The team revealed a little part of the new UI, but not enough for me to cover it at this point.
As the NFTdraft line goes ‘The Future of Fantasy Sports’, and as the p2e on web3 is the future of gaming, I tend to agree with them. They are on to something, and it will not stop with the NFL alone. But that’s another story.
NFTdraft pros:
- NFL & fantasy sport – do I need to say more?!
- Awesome prize fund
- The excitement of building and fielding YOUR NFL team
- You are NEVER late to enter, there’s no palpable advantage to OG-s
- Continuous development
- Community involvement
NFTdraft cons:
- As with all WAX projects atm, the player base is decent, but it could be bigger
- NFTdraft had its share of development issues in the past, we’ll see how season 2 will start
Let me repeat, I was not into NFL before NFTdraft. But wherever money is involved, you’ll soon find an incentive to learn new things. And I loved it!
Give it a chance, DYOR, and you’ll find out why NFtdraft is an innovative depth-chart-based fantasy football game!
And if you do, say hi to me in Discord. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll let you beat me on the leaderboards. 😉
The Giveaway
Here’s another giveaway for my readers. And the NFTdraft team (thank you NFTdrafter – Raiders), provided us with 5 promo packs!
This is becoming a tradition on Tested Goods, so stay tuned.
P.s. feel free to check my previous articles, maybe there’s another giveaway still going on.
Prizes:
5 Promo packs
5x
The rules:
-write, in the comments below, why you like the NFTdraft game, or why would you like to start playing it.
-the best answers (deemed by me, at a random time) will win the NFT-s (one each).
*To be eligible for the prizes, you have to be a member of the Tested goods discord, at the time of announcing winners.
I’ll announce the winner’s list here (at a random time), and if you don’t get back to me within 48h, I’ll select someone else instead (make sure to check if you’ve been selected).
Winners:
-TBA
Videos about the NFTdraft
Here are a few YouTube videos which may help you understand the game better.
I’ve dabbled in fantasy sports but never seriously. I’ve always wanted to, and now that there is a blockchain version I am willing to give it a shot.
That’s the spirit!
You are active here and I’ll reward it again.
Reply with the wam so that I don’t send it someone else by mistake. 😀
This is one of the best ways to get the mainstream audience into NFTs!!! It’s part of something that they already love and do already pay money for, only this way, they are able to join the NFT side of it too, thanks to NFTdraft!
Hi teddy, I completely agree with you.
As you are on testedgoods discord, congrats, you’ve won a promo pack!
Please respond with your wam within next 48h.
Thanks!