How to PlayFantasy Football
Everything you need to know for the Forest Hills League — drafting, strategy, building your roster, how points work, playing week to week, and working the waiver wire.
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Drafting
Drafting is the hardest — and sometimes most nerve-wracking — part of fantasy football. Your draft position is randomly assigned by the system one hour before the draft begins.
Time on the Clock
If you already know your pick, go early. Otherwise the computer auto-selects for you when time runs out. By the later rounds, once your starters and most of your bench are set, it's completely fine to let auto-pick take over.
The Snake Order
Creating Your Team
Your roster has 9 starting positions — active when you play another team — plus 6 open bench spots.
Starting Lineup (9)
Bench & Injured Reserve
All 6 bench spots are yours to fill however you like. Injured Reserve is an additional slot on top of those 6 — it only opens up for a player who's genuinely hurt.
Who to Pick Up?
Who to pick up first is important — it could make or break your season. While all starting positions are needed, some are more important than others, based on the amount of potential points a position can score. We'll get into the point system later, but a position like the RB has the potential to score at least 9 to 22 points a game, compared to the Kicker position, which averages 3 to 10. So in the next section, we'll talk about strategy.
Draft Strategies
So who do you pick first? That's up to you, and it depends a lot on your draft position. If you're picking early in round one, take the best player available — especially the best running backs or wide receivers on the board.
For the last several years, the winning approach has been prioritizing RBs and WRs in the first couple of rounds. A true WR1 or RB1 is hard to find, and not every team runs its offense the same way.
Round-by-Round Blueprint
Take the top running back or wide receiver on your board, regardless of position need. These are the players who separate winning teams from the pack.
Keep taking the best RB/WR value on the board. This is also the window where the elite, top-tier quarterbacks typically come off the board if you want one early. By the end of Round 5, you should have both starting RB spots and both starting WR spots filled.
Round out your lineup — tight end, your flex piece, and a mid-tier quarterback here if you passed on the elite tier earlier.
Build depth at RB/WR, take a breakout candidate flier, or grab a lower-tier backup QB if you still need one.
This is when you handcuff your top running backs' primary backups — not any earlier. Kicker and defense are almost always the very last picks, since both are easy to stream off waivers all season.
Draft Philosophies to Live By
Things to Avoid
How Does My Team Score?
Players score from passing, rushing, receiving, and kicking — and lose points from turnovers. Defenses score by shutting the other team down.
The QB is the only position with passing, rushing, and receiving.
Passing Points
Points Lost
A passing TD is only worth 4 — less than a rushing/receiving TD's 6 — because the QB already has more ways to score than anyone else, including running it in himself for the full 6.
QB, RB, WR, and TE all share this scoring for rushing & receiving.
Rushing Points
Receiving Points
Points Lost
Starting Points on Defense
Your defense starts every game with 25 points. As the opponent scores, that total drains.
Bonus Points
Kicking Points
Kickers score on extra points and field goals — longer kicks are worth more.
Bonus Points
On top of everything else, big individual games trigger extra milestone bonuses.
Passing Milestones
Rushing Milestones
Receiving Milestones
Playing
Set your lineup before the first real game of the week — usually Thursday Night Football, though some weeks add games on other nights.
Lineup Lock
swap freely
that slot locks
locked in
Before You Lock In, Check For…
Especially watch bye weeks — a player on bye scores zero no matter what.
Then just watch the games and have fun.
Waiver Wires
Throughout the season you can pick up free agents and drop players — that's claiming someone off waivers. The wire opens after the first full week of games.