I'm using the same strategy, I'm accumulating 10,000 "little guys" because I only need one to hit 10bucks!! Or 2 to hit 5bucks.
I do similar research, first checking to see which exchanges they're available (I look for the Asian markets) and then scouring the website for the team and what there product/tech/idea is. I've done okay so far in my picks: Nxt and Syscoin I got at about .06 and .08, they're now between .16 and .18.
I bought 1,000 Bitbay and It's now .03 (woowoo), Bitbay is a blockchain type E-bay concept. I already have some Nem, it's at .16 now and that one may or may not do anything. Like you say this is gambling $$$$.
(if you find others are interested in this strategy maybe we could get a sub-group of small-cap coin buyers. As for Lisk I bought at 1 buck, it is doing kits using Java , not solidity and there are tons of people that know java, it hit 4 in a frenzy but didn't retrace back to 1.00 from one month ago. I'm adding to that too.