Fantasy Challenge explained (and the draft version of the same idea)

What Fantasy Challenge is

It is a separate game from Fantasy Premier League, run by the same people from the same account, in which you must select a new squad every gameweek. Nothing carries over: no squad, no transfers to save, no chips. Each gameweek comes with a Challenge that changes the rules for everybody that week, such as a different budget or double points for certain players. You still pick a captain, who scores double, and the points for what happens on the pitch mirror the main game unless the week's challenge says otherwise.

The official description is blunter than most guides: a blank team sheet, a reset budget and a new challenge every gameweek, and everyone taking it on together. That last part is the design. Because everybody plays the same challenge, a week where the budget is unlimited or the squad is six players is the same puzzle for the whole world, which makes the weekly ranking mean something.

How a challenge works

The challenge sets the squad you have to build. The rules give the examples themselves: the budget may be different, certain players may score double, the squad might be six players one week and five the next, and there can be extra composition rules, a minimum or maximum of players with a particular characteristic. The requirements are shown at the top of the team page for that gameweek, and a squad is only entered once it is valid for them. The season opens with five gameweeks of six-a-side, and you can pick up to five players from one club.

What this does to the game is worth understanding before you play. In FPL, the craft is finding value the crowd has missed over months. In Fantasy Challenge, the craft is reading a new rule fast and building the best answer to it in a week. It rewards a different manager, and a lot of people who find the main game a grind find this one a relief.

Transfers, locking and deadlines

There is no single deadline. You can change your team and your captain as often as you like before and during the gameweek, and a player locks only when his club's first match of the gameweek kicks off. Once locked he cannot be moved out or made captain. You can even create a team for a gameweek that is already under way, as long as a valid squad of players whose clubs have not yet played is still possible; the game calls that the final gameweek deadline, and it moves with the fixture list.

Prices mirror the main game, rises and falls included, so your squad value can drift from the challenge budget during the week. Any player you move out is sold at the price you paid, and any change has to leave the squad within budget when you save.

Leagues, the three views, and rank badges

Leagues work the way they do in the main game: create one, share the code, up to 25 private leagues, no limit on teams, and you are entered automatically into the global leagues for the whole game, your country and your club's supporters. What is different is that every league can be read three ways.

After five gameweeks you earn a rank badge that keeps updating with your performance, five stars of progress per badge before promotion to the next one. It is the game's answer to the question every weekly format faces, which is how to feel like you are getting somewhere when every week starts from nothing.

Fantasy Challenge vs FPL

What changed: the squad resets, the rule changes weekly, there are no chips and no saved transfers, and changes are allowed until each player's kick-off. What stayed: a budget, prices that move with the main game, a captain on double points, the same scoring, and a season league for anyone who wants one. So it is FPL with the memory removed and the spreadsheet kept, which is exactly right for the manager who likes building a squad and hates living with it.

Whether the main game itself counts as weekly, and what carries over there, is answered on is FPL weekly? If you want the differences to all three official games laid out, FPL alternatives does that.

The draft version of the same idea