What is Fantasy Top and How to Play to Win

Level 2 - Value Investor

Welcome Avatar! Today we have an overview of one of the popular Dapps on Blast called Fantasy Top (Source). This is entirely a guest post made by Brad at Wolfeypackey (Link).

For our usual disclaimer, since this is on the free side of the website, it means there is real risk when playing these social/fantasy games. There is no guarantee of profit.

On that note, it is probably the most popular game/activity on Blast right now and deserves a full explainer. Handing it over to Brad.

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Part 1: Why Should You Listen to Me?

I started playing in the beta period back in February and immediately thought that not only was this a really fun game but it was the first time in crypto I’ve played a fun game at all, so I farmed it aggressively. It doesn’t require any crypto knowledge/experience to play, but it does require the ability to get some funds to blast and to your fantasy top wallet.

My “Main Competition” performance has currently placed me in the top 60 in fan points and top 50 in gold from Fantasy top. Here are my latest Main results which yielded a total of 0.275 eth, 17 cards (~.12 eth with a floor price of 0.007 eth), 724 gold and 143k fan points. These results can be done weekly with my current cards.

I’ve also done well in Tactics, finishing #1 overall in one of the 10 tactics I’ve entered (out of ~3500 entries) and #4 in another. I’m up around 73% having invested ~$10k and profiting around $7.3k total. So, I’ve put my money where my mouth is and I’ve learned some winning strategies.

Part 2: So, What is FantasyTop?

Think of Fantasy Top as basically a DFS/Fantasy sports for Twitter accounts instead of professional athletes. It’s built on crypto but it’s not inherently crypto native. There are two forms of competition currently, “Main Tournaments” and “Tactics”. And there are many ways to be paid as a player and as a hero (the twitter account card you are using if lucky enough to become one).

Main Tournaments consist of collecting (buying) cards and forming the highest scoring 5 card deck possible. The score of each account is determined by the account’s recent Twitter performance. The algorithm is a black box, but we know this score is a mix of the views/likes/retweets/quote tweets/comments associated with each card.

Scores get a boost based on the rarity of the card: 1) Rare = 1.5x Common; 2) Epic = 2x Common; 3) Legendary = 2.5x Common

You can level up your cards by burning five of a kind or buy them on the marketplace. There’s also a star rating system that impacts card inflation—higher-performing heroes get fewer cards minted, and vice versa. 2 star cards will have the highest inflation (and lowest recent scores) and 7 stars will have the lowest (and highest recent scores).

Recently, the main tournaments have started on Mondays and ended on Thursdays with scores building during that timeframe only. Within each main are four different leagues – Elite, Gold, Silver, and Bronze – each with different constraints to guide players with different budgets/strategies. The Elite league has no star/rarity cap. Going back to my earlier comment, this is the “pay to play” tier for the most part. But, there are definitely opportunities to get good rewards with common cards.

I got Ansem after burning 2 floor commons, and I got Free, Newsy, and Cbb in pack mints from tournament rewards. Based Dom was a huge miss, many cheap 2 star floor commons would have scored higher. So, even though I “paid” very little for this deck (about 0 actually since most were from rewards), I “made” 0.014 eth (assuming 2 floor cards at 0.007 eth each) in winnings, which is ~0.7 eth annualized (not counting the gold/fan points) on almost 0 investment. Even if you went to buy all these cards, you would have spent around 0.45 eth which is a 56% return on investment.

• Elite leagues have no star cap or rarity caps.

• Gold has recently had a max of 2 Epics with a 26 stars cap,

• Silver has had a max of 3 rares and a 22 stars cap, and

• Bronze is all Commons with a cap of 18 stars.

My top scoring deck in Bronze cost about 0.45 eth to build (I mostly bought this set of 5) and made me 0.09 eth, which is 4.6 eth annualized, a 10x return. Here is a list (shout out to 0xthemolt again) of the top scoring Bronze decks with their prices right before the Main started:

Mixing these constraints creates very unique strategies at each level as you design your portfolios.

Tactics Competitions offer an even lower barrier to entry and even have free entries available weekly. The design here is different. You don’t need to invest/buy any cards. You buy a tactic ticket for $20 and then the game begins. You’ll have 5 minutes to pick a lineup of 5 cards out of a randomly generated sample of 18 heroes with a 24 star cap (rarity doesn’t play a role here). The tactic will start in a day or so and only last 24 hours, which again makes things interesting. Like in the main tournaments, there is a lot of opportunity to use data to set yourself up best to win here.

Why is it Fun?

Like any trading card game, the strategies and opportunities for alpha are endless. Paying attention and being familiar with the twitter accounts in the game is the priority. Anticipating scoring changes and knowing which accounts are going to be more involved or not that upcoming week is key. Here are some examples all in the last week:

• DCF GOD announced late Sunday that he will not be tweeting much in the upcoming main starting the next morning. That was your signal to buy since he was 6 stars at the time and this signaled a likely 2 star future, which is highly valuable in the star capped leagues. His floor price 2.5x in a few days. Or you will be able to flip his card before the next main starts as this becomes a crowded trade.

• CBB0FE, a Blast whale, announced he will become much more active. He was already decently valuable but very erratic, with performances ranging from top 5 to bottom 5 many times. Since he had the potential of top 5 scoring performances, signaling that he will become more consistent was huge. His card 5x over the course of a week. Again, an opportunity to flip or hold and get value out of either option.

• Makesy – announced weeks ago he will be on vacation for a week. Similar example to DCF GOD above where the play is to accumulate prior to him becoming a highly valuable low star card when he returned. His price only 2x because he turned out to be a 3 star.

Tools

There are many tools to help follow all the activity. For one, there is Fantasy Sheets (made by @0xthemolt) which is a great free option to better keep an eye on trends and recent performance of heroes with far better metrics than what is on the FantasyTop website. I use a few different metrics from this in both my Main and Tactics strategies. There is also huddle.wtf which is a chat room for holders of heroes, so some heroes will give their personal alpha there. You should also try to find telegram groups to crowdsource some of this stuff as everybody is watching their own heroes more than others.

Alpha

For both main tournaments and tactics, this is really a game of optimization with a few constraints. The biggest variable that is difficult to predict is the score of the hero but once you have a system for getting that prediction, it’s as simple as plugging the data into a Solver and finding the top scoring decks.

Here is a loom video I created outlining the process for setting up the Solver which will help set it up for the first time and get used to the tool. (source)

In this video, I demonstrate how to set up a solver for Fantasy Sheets, a resource created by TheMolt. I show how to organize hero data, stars, and scores to create a solver that maximizes score within set constraints. I explain the process step by step, highlighting the key elements needed for the solver. No action is requested from the viewers, but the video provides valuable insights into optimizing hero selection for tournaments. (source)

And here is another loom video I created to show you what I use and how to optimize Tactic decks as fast as possible.

Library | Loom - 22 August 2024 (source)

In this video, I analyze the tactics for a fantasy sports competition where the top 32% make money, with the first-place prize being $15,000. I go through the process of selecting players based on their recent performance and potential. No specific action is requested from viewers, but the analysis provides insights into making strategic decisions for success in the competition. (source)

For tactics, since you start with a random 18 out of ~180 heroes to select from, you will have to submit a large number of tactic decks to ensure you at least get dealt a possibly high scoring hand from the start. You will be able to pick the top deck in the random selection, so it is important to make sure you are shown a potential top hand. If you only do a few, there’s a high chance you have zero possible combination to score you a winning deck.

There is also a degen/gambling aspect to this game which can be very fun/rewarding. Have 2 bad low scoring commons? You can “burn” them for a random card. Sure, you’re most likely going to get another bad common, but there is a chance you get a much better Common, or even an upgraded rarity card. This is, for the most part, a total gamble of course but if you’re paying attention, you can act when the inflation metrics change as stars reset. For example, the game recently introduced a feature to remove inactive heroes. Some players anticipated the heros who were eventually voted out (with cards replaced with another) and bought or at least held them accordingly in hopes of getting a better card.

In this vote, 5 were removed and 10 were added to the game. The 10 added were mostly very solid heros, so this change shifted some of the previously top scoring heros down slightly since the scoring is all relative. These big changes to the hero population meant burning cards gave you better than normal odds of minting a good hero (since 5 bad common results were removed, 10 were added, and top scoring cards became more prevalent) and this sparked a lot of excitement in the game.

You can also buy a pack of 5 cards but this is still the most EV- thing you can do.

Conclusion

Fantasy Top is NOT a free farm but there are plenty of opportunities to start playing now and winning eth/gold/fan points.

Also, it’s actually super fun because of all these evolving opportunities, the ability to degen some (but this is mostly EV-), and because of how unique it is.

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BTB Note

As stated this is entirely written by Brad at Wolfeypackey (Link). Based on how seriously he has taken it, it’s no surprise that he’s well into the green.

If you’re interested in crypto/tech investing we suggest signing up and staying on top of new things that come out every week, month or year!

Stay Toon’d!

Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous group of Ex-Wall Street Tech Bankers and software engineers who moved into affiliate marketing and e-commerce.

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