Strategy · 6 min read
Roster construction and correlation
Why stacking teammates raises both your ceiling and your floor, and where the team limit bites.
Correlation is the point of a team limit
Players on the same roster score together: a dominant map inflates every teammate at once. That is exactly why we cap a lineup at three players from any one team — without it, a lineup would collapse into a single position on one team’s day, which is not a selection problem worth solving.
Two-plus-two-plus-one
A common shape is two players from each of two teams you expect to win, plus one from a third. It keeps the upside of correlation while leaving a slot that can differentiate you from the field.
Anti-correlation is usually a mistake
Rostering players on both sides of the same match means their kills and deaths partly cancel. In a large field that produces a lineup that is hard to lose badly with and impossible to win with.
Field size changes the answer
In a 50/50 the goal is a high floor, so lean toward stable output and expected map counts. In a guaranteed prize pool with a top-heavy grid, the goal is a ceiling, and that requires accepting variance in construction.
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Setting a ceiling on entries before the slate rather than during it.