18 | January | 2026 | The Ancient Gaming Noob

Here we are at the third week of the 2026 league and… there is not much going on.

Fantasy Critic League – Like Fantasy Football, but for Video Games

I mean, sure, we had the draft in week one, then a flurry of bids last week. But there are no scores yet. The league remains in a 13-way tie.

That, however, will change next week. Week four will see some titles launch and presumably some scores on the board.

I say presumably because Ultimate Sheep Raccoon, a pick of mine from last season, shipped on December 9th and still doesn’t have enough reviews for it to generate a score. I think that is the only example of that so far… but it happened!

So all we have this week is updates and bids… and there weren’t any updates at all from the league.

We did, however, get a leak that indicated the launch date for Forza Horizon 6, which was my top pick for the 2026 league. I looked back and saw that all of the past versions hit around 90 on overall scores, so it seemed like a good bet. The only problem was that it did not have a released date yet. You kind of want to use your first pick on something that will actually launch.

Forza Horizon 6

Still, I was pretty sure it was going to happen, so I went with it anyway. And this past week we found out via an inadvertent leak that the game is set to launch on May 19, 2026. So I am feeling pretty good about that.

But the main thing for the week was bid. We had a lot of titles in play come Thursday evening.

Week 3 Bids

A reminder that you can see the bid list once it goes live on the league page. It also gets announced by the Discord bot in the Fantasy Critic League Channel on the TAGN server. And, once bids are announced, you can put in your own bid on anything that is in play.

This is how the bids played out when the results were listed on Saturday night.

Bids
- Coffee Talk Tokyo
  - Won by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm) with a bid of $1
  - Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)’s bid of $1 did not succeed: Bid lost on tiebreakers.
- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV
  - Won by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais) with a bid of $1
- Scott Pilgrim EX
  - Won by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn) with a bid of $1
- Marathon
  - Won by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais) with a bid of $1
- Order of the Sinking Star
  - Won by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn) with a bid of $1
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake
  - Won by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais) with a bid of $1
- At Fate’s End
  - Won by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn) with a bid of $1
- Splatoon Raiders
  - Won by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais) with a bid of $1
- Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic
  - Won by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr) with a bid of $14 (🎯 Counter Pick)
- Masters of Albion
  - Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)’s bid of $5 did not succeed:
  - Game is no longer eligible: That game is not eligible because the Planned for Early Access tag has been banned

First, it looks like a lot of people are on board with my one dollar bid strategy. I guess if you really want something, two dollars might need to be in your head.

I will admit that I threw in my one dollar bid just to see what would happen. If I am only in for a dollar it isn’t that important to me. I am trying to conserve my budget for something big.

Anyway, most people got what they bid on.

Fun times with Coffee Talk Tokyo, where we learned there is a tie breaker mechanism if there bids of the same amount.

I am not sure what happened with Masters of Albion, but I didn’t fiddle with the tag bans so “Planned for Early Access” must be banned by default. If somebody really wants me to allow that tag I’ll do it. (You can do complicated leagues where slots have specific tag requirements, like “new franchise.” I am not sure I am up for that level of challenge.)

Otherwise Shawn and Pallais were big on bids this week, with Pallais becoming the first in the league with a full roster of nine titles, though they still need a counter pick.

And then there is Corr, first to get in a counter pick, betting against Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic. A bold move there early in the season, though looking at its league stats, it is being grabbed as a counter pick elsewhere.

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic
- Drafted or picked up in 1.1% of leagues where it is eligible.
- Average Draft Position: 17.3
- Hype Factor: 0.9
- Peak Hype Factor: 4.6
- Projected Points: ~-1.4
- Counter Picked in 65% of leagues where it is published.

We’ll have to see how that shapes up.

A reminder though, that once chosen, you cannot drop a counter pick… but, also, if you fail to pick a counter pick the empty slot will cost you negative 15 points. Even the worst pick from last season was less of a hit than that.

So while we do not have scores yet, this is what the scoreboard looks like.

Week 3 Scores

You can see what the projections are currently, how many titles people are expecting, and their remaining budget.

That leaves us looking forward to the coming week when we will get some scores on the board at last. Here are the dates for the first ten titles out of the gate.