Very true, Utopia is in a spot where saving money and then acquiring talent towards the end can completely change the playoff landscape.
Most of the teams in the playoffs won't be well rounded, they're likely to have ID, or OD, or O-flow, etc deficiencies. Or two of them. Buying talent to attack their weaknesses seems worthwhile. I don't know if my league is doing that (doubt it), but I'm sure there's going to be a lot of upsets where the #1 won't make it in. Which means it's going to be reeeaaally hard for a non-#1 seed to promote without making the Finals.
And I fall more into a different, equally vulnerable category of no real dramatic holes but no real winning advantage either, and certainly there's not enough time to train up what I have to have that kind of advantage. I think the teams that have pretty good balance and add a few difference makers late are definitely in the drivers' seat, which is unfortunate for me since I doubt I'll do that.
But my path to promotion is simple; I just need to stay in second, let Jelme stay in first, and make sure we both win our first round games and convince him to throw the conference finals so we both promote. It's a perfect solution, at least for me, which is really all that matters.
