For many in the Draft EPL games, auto-subs are like garlic to a vampire. After all, it was our very own Chap One who penned one of our very first articles on this page that focuses on the beauty of live lineup changes, which does somewhat go against auto-subs. However, we're going to delve into what auto-subs are, and how best to use them within the Fantrax platform.
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Auto-Subs on Fantrax
Auto-subs are an extremely useful feature on three occasions, 1. The League in question is based in a country located on the other side of the earth, meaning lineup announcements and kickoff times fall into prime sleeping hours. 2. The league in question has decided to ensure an equal opportunity or lack thereof for all managers to make last minute pickups/lineup changes due to one or more managers' busy matchday schedules. 3. The league in question has decided to decrease the effort necessary to participate by removing the matchday live lineup chasing.
How to Set It Up?
To enable auto-subs the commissioner has to tick the box next to "System auto-substitutes players not playing" under Rosters/Positions. There are 2 ways to set up auto-subs, but I would only recommend using 1 of these. You can decide to sub in the player with the best score on your bench, but as mentioned, I would recommend against this setting, as it enables managers, to "cheat" by deliberately leaving an injured player in their lineup, therefore, enabling themselves to be guaranteed to get the best scorer from the bench.
The setting I would recommend using is "Each manager sets own order", we call this setting ranked auto-subs. This setting works very much like auto subs work in OFPL. The manager sets an order among his subs and the highest-ranked substitute is added to the lineup first to substitute a player of the same position. The system will attempt to substitute the players from the list of players that the manager chose and ranked according to their own decisions, prior to the start of the first match of the gameweek. It will only attempt to substitute players that the manager ranked. For example, if he ranked one player, it would only attempt to use that in the substitution. If the manager did not rank any players, then no auto-substitutions will be made. It is very important to note, that every manager has to manually ranks their auto-subs EVERY WEEK, or else they will not process automatically.
If the tick is on for "auto-substitution uses active empty slots", the system will try to add the player subbed in to any active open slot. Max number of auto-subs should be set to the same number of reserve spots you have available.
Even though, the Ranked auto-sub system is much better than the "Best Scorer Auto-Sub System", it still has its flaws. The same loophole can be exploited as mentioned above because there might be situations when you know full well, that a player, who you ranked 1 has got a huge score and you have a spot open on your team for a streamer. To exploit the loophole, you can leave a non-playing player in your XI to ensure the ranked sub definitely features, whereas, without the knowledge, you most likely would have tried streaming a starter.
To circumvent this, I recommend only using Ranked Auto-subs in leagues where lineups lock prior to the first kickoff of the gameweek. This way there is no possibility to change your lineup with the knowledge of the subs' scores.
To set up lineup lock the commissioner must select "Lineups are locked at a set amount of time before 1st game of the period" under Transactions & Periods/Lineups/Periods.
Auto-subs and lineup lock bring a new and exciting strategy element of all facets of the game, so if you are in a league that fits any of the three types mentioned above, go ahead and give them a try.
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