DraftKings Diary | Buys, Sells, and What to Look for on DraftKings Reignmakers for Week 17
In the DraftKings Diary, each week Lucky Trader's Jason Rouslin will walk through his buys, sells, and team lookahead to give you insights from an experienced DraftKings Reignmakers player.
Check out Jason's full portfolio with the Lucky Trader Reignmakers Portfolio Tool.
There are just two weeks left in the regular season as the first-ever season of Draftkings Reignmakers winds down. But, not without some excitement, as DraftKings announced the future utility plans of the cards over the past week. DK will offer 100K in weekly prizes to 2022 cards during the 2023 season and there will be a craft and burn function, which will allow holders to burn 2022 cards in exchange for 2023 cards. There will be more on that to come once the playoffs begin.
There are more than one million dollars in prizes for the DK Reignmakers game each week until the end of the season, including the playoffs, so, let’s dig into my playbook for Week 17 and beyond.
Week 16 Diary
If you missed last week's article, where I discussed my strategy up to this point in the season, check it out here. Interested in seeing what makes up the 1,500+ NFT card collection? Check it out here!
Week 16 Top Lineup Strategy/Tier & Contest
Contest: ELITE | Monday Night Showdown
Lineup:
- Captain: Austin Ekeler
- Flex: Keenan Allen
- Flex: Los Angeles Chargers Defense
- Flex: Michael Pittman
Total Points: 88.51, 3rd
Like most playing this game, winning a slate is always my goal. After a few decent lineups and a few bad decisions for the Main Slates this week, the Monday Showdown slate provided my portfolio with a solid setup. I shifted an Ashton Dulin card for a Derwin James ELITE, spending just $20 on the swap. That was the plan all week, as I expected San Diego to come out extremely motivated and also, finally, healthy, with almost all of their star players back in action. Because Reignmakers only allows one SuperStar per lineup, I chose Austin Ekeler in almost every spot I could pair him up with the most optimal lineups, starting at the ELITE tier and down.
The game flow was absolutely ideal for my setup, with Ekeler scoring rushing touchdowns and Keenan Allen (whose ELITE card I’ve had for a while now) dominating the targets, catches, and yards. At the same time, the defense overwhelmed Nick Foles.
Michael Pittman’s last few drives pushed the lineup into first place by five DKFPs. However, unfortunately, even with the No. 1 edition of Pittman and No. 3 edition of James, the lineup failed to win the cumulative serial number tie-breaker, losing by four to the second-place team and 14 to the first-place team.
It was a huge gut punch, especially since I looked at upgrading the Ekeler edition about a month ago. That decision would have cost me around $150 at the time and would have yielded another $4,000 return on this slate. Oh well.
The only other finish of note was the 50th-place finish in the ELITE contest on Sunday.
The week yielded just shy of $2,500 or 12.5 percent return on investment. If I average an 8 percent return over the next two weeks, my portfolio will be at a breakeven heading into the playoffs. If I can maintain an ROI of 8 percent a week for the rest of the season, including the playoffs, I will have profited just north of 30 percent for the season.
Week 16 Buys & Sells
Ever faded a player for the whole year despite his fantastic performance, only to finally roster him and have him throw up a dud? Well, that has been the case with myself and Christian McCaffrey this year. Also, as was mentioned in last week’s article, I added a few Trevor Lawrence RARE cards, and with the win, Jacksonville is in a prime position to make the playoffs.
With the future utility announcement, I’ve decided to hold off on selling any more cards until we learn more about the craft and burn function.
Week 17 Lookahead
Week 17 has five notable Reignmakers slates:
- Slate #1: Tennessee vs. Dallas
- Slate #2: Deep Roster
- Slate #3: Main Slate (13 Games)
- Slate #4: Pittsburgh vs. Baltimore
- Slate #5: Buffalo vs. Cincy
Week 17 Targets & Strategy
The week starts with a solid matchup between Dallas and Tennessee. If Dallas wins the last two games and gets lots of help from Philly and Minnesota, they could end up as the No. 1 seed in the NFC. On Tennessee’s side, however, the game actually doesn’t matter. They are set to face Jacksonville in Week 18, and a win or a loss here won’t have any impact on that game. A win next week would give them the same, or a better record, then Jacksonville and Tennessee would hold the second tie-breaker with a better divisional record. It’s possible that Tennessee sits some of their starters because of this, maybe even star RB Derrick Henry. If that’s the case, a Dallas defense stack with one Tennessee player like Treylon Burks could end up as the optimal build.
Now, onto the Main Slate, which provides the only chance to win 100K this week on Reignmakers. There are 13 games, providing the biggest Main Slate since the beginning of the season. Patrick Mahomes becomes incredibly valuable on the slate, as counterparts Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, and Jalen Hurts are not or likely not part of the slate, with the latter still nursing an injured shoulder. Mahomes and Justin Fields will probably be the primary targets for the quarterback position. Only one other SuperStar is not part of the slate, the aforementioned Henry, leaving five running backs and three wide receivers with SuperStar status available. That should lead to a wide range of builds and strategies this week.
Looking into the slate a bit further, almost every team that is in the playoffs or playoff contention still has something to play for, even the Los Angeles Chargers. With a pair of wins to close out the season, the Chargers could climb to the No. 5 seed in the AFC. That would put them up against either Jacksonville or Tennessee rather than facing one of Cincy, Buffalo, or Kansas City if they were the six-seed (or worse).
The Main Slate is missing stars CeeDee Lamb, Stefon Diggs, and Ja’Marr Chase, the highest-owned wide receivers at every level above RARE since Chase returned from injury. It mixes up the WR position quite a bit, and while Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jaylen Waddle, and Travis Kelce remain fantastic options at the WR/T position, we need a few more to rely on.
I’ll be targeting Keenan Allen, Chris Godwin, Christian Kirk, Mike Williams, DK Metcalf, Jakobi Meyers, and Garrett Wilson. Each has a high ceiling, and all of their teams have at least a chance to make the playoffs or are already in. The running back position has almost all of the top non-SuperStar candidates outside of Tony Pollard and Joe Mixon. Josh Jacobs, Kenneth Walker, Rhamondre Stevenson, Dalvin Cook, and a few more should all be a big part of lineup builds this week.
For the final two Showdown slates, one strategy I’ll be using is playing Ja’Marr Chase and Stefon Diggs in a Deep Roster contest. My portfolio holds two RARE cards of each and doesn’t have enough ELITE cards between the two teams to field both of them in an ELITE showdown lineup. So to get the most equity out of them, I’ll be using them in a Deep Roster lineup with optimal builds around them and possibly one of the two SuperStar quarterbacks playing in this game.
I’ll use the same strategy, using the RARE cards of Tee Higgins, Diggs or Gabriel Davis in another ELITE Deep Roster lineup. In this scenario, I’d only run just one optimal lineup for them instead of two for the Monday Showdown slate. The nice thing is, if none of the Deep Roster ELITE teams are in contention come Monday night, I can always go back to running two lineups in the Showdown contest and filling the players’ expected spots in the Deep Roster format with other players from this game. The most important thing is to ensure that each lineup is built for the optimal late-swap strategy, using players from this game in the flex position so any card, including kickers, can be placed there.
That’s it for now! Good luck in Week 17 with all your DraftKings Reignmakers lineups!
