How to Set Up Your Waiver Wire In Guillotine Leagues™
How do you set your waiver wire in Guillotine Leagues™? Here's a quick tutorial
Your Guillotine Leagues™ experience should be a full, pure, unadulterated joyride. knowing how to set your waivers will help keep it that way.
Guillotine Leagues™ runs on a FAAB system—each team begins the season with $1,000. To place a claim, managers must submit a bid of at least $0. Since this is a blind bidding format, no team can see the amount others have bid on a player until after waivers are processed.
The Basics
For public leagues, there will be three FAAB runs: Wednesdays at 3:00 PM ET; Thursdays at 3:00 PM ET; and Sundays at 11:00 AM ET.
In private leagues, there is one FAAB run: Wednesdays at 3:00 PM ET.
The bidding opens up after Week 1 results are finalized (which may vary, slightly, week-to-week depending on processing and things beyond our control).
IMPORTANT NOTE: There are no "first-come, first-serve" free agent pickups in public leagues. All players must be acquired through the FAAB bidding system.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: In private leagues your commish has to enable the First-Come-First-Serve (FCFS) option for that element of player acquisition. If this setting is active, the league will have only one blind bidding period each week, on Wednesday at 3:00 PM ET. After that window closes, all remaining free agents become available on an FCFS basis beginning at 7:00 PM ET that same evening. FCFS adds are allowed until each player's game time kicks off for the week.
In FAAB bidding, a player is awarded to the team that submits the highest amount. In the event of a tie, the following criteria will be used:
- The player is awarded to the team with the lowest total season-to-date points.
- If a tie still remains, the tiebreaker proceeds to the starting lineup: the team whose lowest-scoring starting player that week had the fewest points will win the bid. If necessary, this comparison continues down the lineup—second-lowest scorer, third-lowest, and so on.
- If a tie still persists, the team with the lower original draft position wins the bid. Once a tiebreaker is used to award a player, the winning team is moved to the end of the tiebreaker priority list for the rest of the week to allow other teams a chance to win future ties.
The FAQ
Q: In years past, when I submitted my bids, the game would automatically and immovably put the higher dollar bid up top as my primary one. Is that still the case?
A. No. If you want to bid $3 on Patrick Mahomes and then make your second bid $44 on J.J. McCarthy, that is the order in which they will be processed.
Q. Are there still conditional bids?
A. No. If you want to try to add a QB and you want three backup bids, you will have to put three bids in (dropping the same player), in the order you want them to process.
Q. You bastards.
A. In the form of a question, please!
Q. You bastards...?
A. We are not! A new feature this year is the "duplicate bid" option, which is a one-click solution to quickening the "backup bidding" process. Click it, edit your pickup and dollar amount, and then re-order to your heart's content. This takes considerably less time than the conditional bidding process from before.
Q. AH! Brilliant. What else do I need to know?
A. Moving players up and down is a lot easier -- we now have drag and drop functionality.
Q. And what else??
A. A newsletter dedicated to Guillotine Leagues™ three times a week.
Q. And...
A. And a podcast/YouTube show 2x a week led by Paul Charchian, with a live version hosted by Chris Allen starting when the season starts to answer all your questions.
Q. I think this answers everything for now, right?
A. I mean this is FAAB bidding, right? It's kind of par for the course at this point?
Q: I see how you bolded yourself there because you asked a question, too. That's clever.
A. I try. OH WAIT ONE MORE THING!! We have a ton of advice on waiv -- you know what? Let me get out of this format here ...
One More Thing
We have a ton of advice on waivers and strategy coming this season—there will be a column just about Guillotine Leagues™ waiver wires every week, along with sleepers, a mailbag, bye-week strategy, and more.
For immediate advice, though, check out our Draft Kit, created by the founder of Guillotine Leagues™, Paul Charchian.