06 / FAQ
Questions,
answered straight.
What is Move The Chains?
A free season-long salary-cap NFL fantasy game. You build a 12-player roster against a $100 in-game salary cap, manage it across 17 weeks with weekly moves, a captain pick, and 3 audibles, and climb 1 global leaderboard. Most points wins. No head-to-head matchups, no playoffs, no bracket luck.
How is it different from redraft or best ball?
There's no draft against your league and no weekly opponent. Everyone picks from the same player pool under the same cap, so nobody wins because they lucked into the 1.01. Unlike best ball, you're hands-on every week: set your lineup, crown a captain, work the Wire. If you're a tinkerer, this is your format.
What does my lineup look like?
You hold 12 players and start 9 each week: 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, and 3 FLEX (RB, WR, or TE). The other 3 sit on your bench, which is all-flex, so a backup QB is optional. Those 3 FLEX spots are where you'll do most of your agonizing every week.
Where do player prices come from?
Not from me, and not from a commissioner. Every price is built from 3 public draft-market sources, weighted equally, blended into 1 ranking and converted to a price. Prices start at a $4.0 floor and have no ceiling. Everyone sees the same board and pays the same price, so you and I could open the season with the identical roster. From there they float: a player a lot of managers are adding goes up $0.2 on Tuesday, a player being dropped goes down $0.2. The whole method is public at mtcfantasy.com/pricing/method, sources and all.
Won't everyone end up with the same roster?
Partly, and that's the format working. The obvious guys will be widely owned, the same as anywhere everyone can have anyone. What separates you is when you got there and who you captain. Every move past your free ones costs 10 points, so chasing last week's breakout is a real bill and not a free click. Dropping a player who has gone up only returns half his gain, so churn costs you cap space too. Players lock at their own team's kickoff, so the manager who moved Thursday morning and the one who moved Sunday night made different bets on the same week. And 2 rosters holding the same 12 players can still finish a week a long way apart on the captain pick alone. Nobody has played a season of this yet, so how much it really converges is the thing I most want to watch.
Is it really free?
Yes, actually free. The $100 is your in-game budget for building your roster, not a buy-in. No credit card, no entry fee, no "free trial" ambush in October.
Is there any prize money?
No. No prize pool, no sponsor money, no payout at the end of the season. There are no big sponsors behind this. It's one person building it. What you win is the top line of a leaderboard everyone can see, and 17 weeks of receipts proving you were right.
How does scoring work?
Full PPR, with a TE premium: 1 point per reception for RB and WR, 1.5 for TE. Passing scores 1 point per 25 yards, 4 per TD, -2 per INT. Rushing and receiving score 1 point per 10 yards and 6 per TD. Your captain counts double.
What are audibles?
3 once-per-season plays. Rebuild gives you 1 week of unlimited free moves that stick. Trick Play gives you 1 week of unlimited moves that revert on their own. Superstar triples your captain instead of doubling. You only get 1 of each all season, so don't torch them in September because you're mad about Week 2.
Can I change my roster after I draft it?
Freely, and for longer than you'd expect. From the moment you draft until the Tuesday morning after Week 1, you can rewrite all 12 picks as many times as you like on the draft page, and it costs you nothing. The one rule is the same one that governs the rest of the season: a player locks when his own team kicks off, so once he has played he stays in your squad and nobody else can buy him. Everyone still to play is yours to swap. That means a Wednesday-night injury or a Sunday inactive is something you can react to in your first week without spending anything. From that Tuesday on, The Wire opens and changes cost a free move or a 10-point hit like everybody else's.
When do players lock each week?
At their own team's kickoff. There's no single weekly deadline: a Thursday player locks Thursday, a Monday player is movable until Monday night. So when a surprise inactive drops 90 minutes before kickoff, you can actually do something about it instead of just yelling at your phone.
What happens if a starter is out or on a bye?
Auto-sub covers you. Set your 9 starters and rank your 3 bench players before Saturday. If a starter is ruled out or is on a bye, the highest-ranked eligible bench player slides into that slot. One catch: if that player is your captain, the captain bonus does not carry over, so crown a captain who plays.
What if I want more moves than that in a week?
You get 2 free moves a week and can bank up to 2, so a quiet week leaves you 4 to spend the next one. Going past your free moves costs a 10-point hit. Sometimes the upgrade pays for itself in 2 weeks. Sometimes you're panic-dropping a good player after 1 bad game. You'll find out which kind of manager you are.
How are ties broken?
First tiebreaker is total captain points, then fewest hits taken, then account age as the final fallback. No coin flips, no "most points in Week 17," nothing you'd have to explain twice at a bar.
When does it start?
The NFL season starts September 9, but MTC starts 2 weeks before that, when prices drop. On August 26 every player price is calculated and released publicly, and the game opens for you to draft. This is not a beta and there is no invite: sign up and you are in for Season 01. Week 1 kicks off September 9, and the leaderboard is scored every Tuesday through 17 weeks. Miss the start and you can still join in any week that is left, at that week's prices, but the weeks before you arrive score 0 for you and there is no catching that up.