Starting a Ninja Warrior fantasy league

If you’re an avid sports fan like me, you may have participated in a fantasy football or fantasy baseball league at some point in the past. Inspired by those games, Ninja super fans may want to try out an American Ninja Warrior Fantasy league so that they can root on their favorite stars with that extra fervor. It’s a great way to not only get more invested in the show, but also more invested in the athletes who make it a success.

One of the biggest fantasy leagues out there comes from ANWFantasy.com. On this site, you can enter a league by picking a set of five ninjas who you think will conquer the most obstacles. Because filming is already underway, you won’t be able to enter the grand prize fantasy competition, but you can still enter the general pool. Or, if you prefer, you can use some of ANWFantasy’s league concepts and add a few twists of your own to have a fun time playing along at home.

Want to become a commissioner of your own Ninja fantasy league? Here’s what you will need:

Gather a Group of Players

Ryan Tuttle/NBC

Talk to some of your friends and family and recruit them to play along. With more people involved, that means more excitement, better trash talk and a bigger season finale episode party to see who comes out on top! If you aren’t a ninja super fan, don’t worry. There’s lots of different ways to set up a league so that even someone who is completely new to the show can play along (more on this shortly). Plus, there are a ton of resources available to help you study including ANWFantasy, Sasukepedia, Ninja Podcasts and of course, right here on ANW Nation!

Draft Your Favorite Ninjas

Once you have the opponents in the league set (and hopefully a sweet league name to go with it), it’s time to pick your teams. If you are an American Ninja Warrior veteran, then you may want to draft teams before any episode airs as you can compile a long list of names in advance. However, if you have some rookies playing with you, it may be a good idea to draft after all the city qualifying episodes are complete. This way, your newbies can learn something about the season’s competitors. And even those hard core fans in your group may find a sleeper pick rookie to snag for their team.

Decide on Scoring

There’s a lot of different ways to value the results posted by your ninjas. A simple way to keeps score would be to count the number of buzzers your team hits during the course of the show. A league could also be scored based on how many obstacles your ninjas complete. Maybe you only care about who is the “last ninja standing” and the winning team is whoever picked the correct ninja to make it the farthest during the season. You could set up this league similar to an eliminator pool. There are a variety of exciting ways to set up your league that will keep you on the edge of your seat each week.

Make sure you and your league members are comfortable with the rules. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box about possible ways to score, but keep in mind that you may be the one stuck doing the scorekeeping!

Figure Out Who is Hosting the Vegas Finale Pizza Party

Eddy Chen/NBC

After a full season of researching, scoring and celebrating, it only makes sense to finish off the season with an awesome pizza party! Get together with the other members of your league, grab your favorite foods and watch to see who will end up the champion on the show and-perhaps more importantly-in your newly created fantasy league!