Post Live Mission Torture

professor ape · 06-15-2020, 02:58 PM

Like many of you have already done, I completed the live missions late last week which means that the bulk of my starting team will look very familiar to most of you although I had previously gotten lucky with a few top tier historical cards including a 100 Hughie Jennings at SS.

I forgot who made the suggestion but my plan is to take a breath and let the team play out for two weeks without messing with it. I’m in a Silver league this week and will likely be in a Gold league two weeks from now.

My challenge is that while working from home, I keep my game running on the side to enter tournaments throughout the day. The torture is that I am simply glancing over every half hour or so to make sure that I keep three tournaments running. I am only going to allow myself to check my main team once a day in the evening and am committed to not changing anything when I do. Luckily, the tournaments feed my pack addiction so that I am not tempted to toss away 1000 points at a time but here on Day 1 I am already struggling to not go into my main team to see what they are doing and do a little tinkering.

Is anyone else out there having similar struggles?

IanIachimoe · 06-15-2020, 03:09 PM

yep, same. a couple cards left to complete LIVE. shot through all leagues so far & thinking I have plateaued. rosters looking too similar for my liking. made playoffs in Silver this week, but no promotion. will use this time to re-evaluate.

not really sure where to go from here.

tykond · 06-15-2020, 03:16 PM

I am with you both! Except my kids went back to dayhome today, so I have even more time to look at my screen. If I was getting some results with my tournament teams this may be not be so bad, but I started tinkering for no reason at all and now I can't get out of the second round. Maybe I should just check again to make sure the timer is still running...

Caedus · 06-15-2020, 07:12 PM

This happened to my first team and I decided to selectively sell most of the Live Cards Rewards on my other two teams (keeping most of the pitchers on one, and keeping most of the hitters on the other).

My teams still plateaued, but at least they didn't plateau in Diamond.

eldur00 · 06-15-2020, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by professor ape

Like many of you have already done, I completed the live missions late last week which means that the bulk of my starting team will look very familiar to most of you although I had previously gotten lucky with a few top tier historical cards including a 100 Hughie Jennings at SS.

I forgot who made the suggestion but my plan is to take a breath and let the team play out for two weeks without messing with it. I’m in a Silver league this week and will likely be in a Gold league two weeks from now.

My challenge is that while working from home, I keep my game running on the side to enter tournaments throughout the day. The torture is that I am simply glancing over every half hour or so to make sure that I keep three tournaments running. I am only going to allow myself to check my main team once a day in the evening and am committed to not changing anything when I do. Luckily, the tournaments feed my pack addiction so that I am not tempted to toss away 1000 points at a time but here on Day 1 I am already struggling to not go into my main team to see what they are doing and do a little tinkering.

Is anyone else out there having similar struggles?

I'm kind of the opposite...since everybody has the same rosters or so, it has completely killed my desire to log in and check and care to be honest. I'm having a hard time dealing with all top 10 base stealers in a league being Ichiro, 23 teams having Bagwell, etc.
I miss the previous years' different lineups. I never made it to the top so it wasn't cookie cutter every single week for me.

Orcin · 06-15-2020, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by professor ape

Is anyone else out there having similar struggles?

Yes, I am a compulsive tinkerer and I struggle to keep the team stable for enough time to get a meaningful sample on anything I try. Just know that you aren't the only one with this affliction.

I do share the sentiment about all of teams (including mine) looking alike. I am compelled to move away from the reward cards just to have something different from everyone else. I am also compelled to keep all of the cards that I own in this version, because I sold off cards for upgrades in the previous two versions and ended up regretting it too many times. These goals conflict so I am not sure how to handle that dilemma yet.

abangs · 06-15-2020, 08:30 PM

I reached this point a couple of weeks ago. The tournaments have really helped. I already had serviceable Iron and Bronze teams, and lately I've been working on a Silver team.

I have been focusing mainly on tournaments with packs rewards. It's probably not as smart as just doing PP reward tournaments to save up for Auction House cards, but I like opening packs! (When I was nearing completion of the Live missions, I was almost exclusively completing Bo3 and DoD PP tournaments.) The Bo5 give the best bang for the buck when you can keep track of them during the day. I usually do the Bo7 tournaments at the end of the day; it's a nice surprise to wake up to a couple of your teams having 4+ packs to rip.

In the 2+ weeks since I finished the Live missions, I have probably averaged 40-50 tournament packs per team per week. I have gotten a couple of diamond cards worth (Lives only, sadly) using and 5 Perfects, including 4 Live and 1 Historical. While that sounds like great luck, those were the first 5 Perfects I had pulled all year, so on the whole I've probably had slightly below average luck in that regard. Aside from Mike Trout, the Live Perfects haven't been that great in Gold/Diamond.The one Historical Perfect, Dennis Eckersley, has been pretty solid so far.

professor ape · 06-15-2020, 08:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eldur00

I'm kind of the opposite...since everybody has the same rosters or so, it has completely killed my desire to log in and check and care to be honest. I'm having a hard time dealing with all top 10 base stealers in a league being Ichiro, 23 teams having Bagwell, etc.
I miss the previous years' different lineups. I never made it to the top so it wasn't cookie cutter every single week for me.

I agree that the similarities in teams are a bit much. My whole reason to lay low for a couple of weeks is to see where the weak links are and build up some points so that I can make a significant upgrade or two. Upgrades will also start to make my team a little more unique. Patience is key now that upgrades are going to be expensive. I’m also hoping to get a few lucky pulls from the packs I get through the tournaments.

professor ape · 06-15-2020, 08:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abangs

I reached this point a couple of weeks ago. The tournaments have really helped. I already had serviceable Iron and Bronze teams, and lately I've been working on a Silver team.

I have been focusing mainly on tournaments with packs rewards. It's probably not as smart as just doing PP reward tournaments to save up for Auction House cards, but I like opening packs! (When I was nearing completion of the Live missions, I was almost exclusively completing Bo3 and DoD PP tournaments.) The Bo5 give the best bang for the buck when you can keep track of them during the day. I usually do the Bo7 tournaments at the end of the day; it's a nice surprise to wake up to a couple of your teams having 4+ packs to rip.

In the 2+ weeks since I finished the Live missions, I have probably averaged 40-50 tournament packs per team per week. I have gotten a couple of diamond cards worth (Lives only, sadly) using and 5 Perfects, including 4 Live and 1 Historical. While that sounds like great luck, those were the first 5 Perfects I had pulled all year, so on the whole I've probably had slightly below average luck in that regard. Aside from Mike Trout, the Live Perfects haven't been that great in Gold/Diamond.The one Historical Perfect, Dennis Eckersley, has been pretty solid so far.

The Eck perfect pull is strong.

tykond · 06-16-2020, 12:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abangs

I reached this point a couple of weeks ago. The tournaments have really helped. I already had serviceable Iron and Bronze teams, and lately I've been working on a Silver team.

Why do you build a team for each level? Do you have a preference in tournament level?

Quote:

Originally Posted by abangs

I have been focusing mainly on tournaments with packs rewards. It's probably not as smart as just doing PP reward tournaments to save up for Auction House cards, but I like opening packs! (When I was nearing completion of the Live missions, I was almost exclusively completing Bo3 and DoD PP tournaments.) The Bo5 give the best bang for the buck when you can keep track of them during the day. I usually do the Bo7 tournaments at the end of the day; it's a nice surprise to wake up to a couple of your teams having 4+ packs to rip.

In the 2+ weeks since I finished the Live missions, I have probably averaged 40-50 tournament packs per team per week.

How are you so successful at this? I had a great week a few weeks ago, and maybe I got 20 packs. I was elated. I have been keeping stats and tinkering with lineups and I still don't feel like my success or failure has changed.

abangs · 06-16-2020, 02:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tykond

Why do you build a team for each level? Do you have a preference in tournament level?

I enjoy researching players, crunching numbers, scouring the Auction House, and building teams, so this gives me something to do while I raise PP/rip packs for the main teams. It also prompts me to learn about old timey players like Billy Rogell and Bruce Petway, which satisfies the baseball historian in me.

I also like having the versatility of choosing which types of tournaments I want to join, which prevents me from having to wait for tournaments to fill. For instance, if I only have an Iron tournament team built for each of my 3 teams, and my team A just joined the Iron Bo5 and Bo7 tournaments, I need to wait for them to fill up before my team B can do the same. If I have Silver, Bronze, and Iron tournament teams, I have many more tournaments for my franchises to choose from.

I am also starting to look into the weekly tournaments, which yield some nice cards as prizes. The more levels I can field teams at, the more of those prizes become reachable. I think the more economically rational strategy would be to focus on PP Quick Start tournaments, but it would be fun to win or place in one of the big ones too.

Quote:

How are you so successful at this? I had a great week a few weeks ago, and maybe I got 20 packs. I was elated. I have been keeping stats and tinkering with lineups and I still don't feel like my success or failure has changed.

The shelter in place helps, as I am at home and able to check the tournaments more frequently than if I were at work. If I were at work as usual, I would have won fewer packs simply because I wouldn't have the opportunity to sign up for tournaments as often.

As for my strategy, I gather data to figure out which players perform best in which tournaments. I'm still losing most of my tournaments, but I'm in the money with more than 12.5% of the tournaments, which means that the roster choices have helped (1 out of 8 teams win something in most tournaments). For instance, a quick check of one of my teams indicates that it won packs or PP in 5 out of its last 16 tournaments. Not an amazing win percentage, but much better than a random number generator.

professor ape · 06-16-2020, 08:29 AM

I have to confess that I had a moment of weakness this morning. I set up three tournaments before bed and woke to find that I had won three packs out of them. In the second pack I pulled a 97 Brandon Webb PEAK card. That one is a significant jump from the live Strasburg card that has been struggling a bit as my 5th starter so I couldn’t resist making the switch.
So here are my amended rules for this and next week:
- No purchases in the auction house
- No tinkering with the active roster unless I pull a historical 95+ card

I think I can follow that...until I can’t.

mayday10 · 06-16-2020, 08:47 AM

I agree that tournaments are a nice way to progress and keep engaged after the Live Mission gratification.

The best way is to collect data on the tournaments by either collecting and compiling statistics... and/or just eyeball the best/winning teams and try to model your team and players the same way. This especially holds true below silver.

I found that browsing through the ratings and carefully hand picking and developing my lineup from scratch was not working. "Scouting" to some degree is absolutely necessary. Then you can fine tune to try to get an edge and adjust the team and player strategies.

There is enough variety in tournaments that it will keep you busy for awhile. Jump into TWIPT too (this week is capped).

I have 3 teams, typically, I have each team with an entry in a long-term tournament for better rewards. I won a rare Dick Allen card this week. He mashes. 2 entries go for quick tournaments for packs. I have iron, bronze, and a gold team who are decent. Probably average about 25 packs/team/week. Not great but still fun to open packs and build teams. Meanwhile the "regular" perfect team accumulates PP and possibly some upgrades from the packs

Marleigh · 06-16-2020, 11:14 AM

On my most recent theme team I completed all of the Live missions, played them for a season to earn some extra PP and then sold them all off and bought the team i wanted, you can make decent profits just from doing the Live missions and while they are the most efficient players to use in terms of cost to effectiveness no one is forcing you to use them

professor ape · 06-16-2020, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marleigh

On my most recent theme team I completed all of the Live missions, played them for a season to earn some extra PP and then sold them all off and bought the team i wanted, you can make decent profits just from doing the Live missions and while they are the most efficient players to use in terms of cost to effectiveness no one is forcing you to use them

Cool idea! I’m going to see how I can evolve my team away from the SE cards from the live missions over the coming weeks. My Webb pull this morning felt good and I am going to have fun working the Auction House over time. I know that I am not giving up that Maddux card. He is one of my favorite players ever.

chazzycat · 06-16-2020, 01:31 PM

if anyone is curious, my timeline went something like this:

- Entry pool/week 1: complete live collections. To expedite the process, sell nearly all rewards that don't fit my plan for lefty park factors. Buy a couple pieces that do fit park factors to fill out the roster, like Olerud (sold Bagwell since he's a righty). But try to save most PP for tourney rosters.

- Week 2: Build up bronze & silver tourney teams, start spamming those to start generating income. Main team coasts on SE rewards/park factors.

- Weeks 3-4: Invest all income into my gold tourney team. Main team continues to coast with no investment, but still climbs through the ranks thanks to the power of park factors. Many gold tourney cards fit my park factors and so they can play on the main team as well, so finding that synergy was pretty key.

- May-June: Three competitive tourney rosters (bronze, silver, gold) are now complete. Start spamming 750s and DoDs mercilessly. Win hundreds of tourneys and generate a consistent 5k in income per day.

- With my 35k per week income, start making upgrades to my main team once a week or two. That is how I have moved past the SE cards and upgraded most positions to guys like Evers (50k) Pesky (65k) and Torriente (55k), good values who fit the park factors perfectly.

So that is the story of how I'm now in the diamond playoff picture with an FTP team, without any lucky pulls or even working the markets. Just selling SE cards, spamming tourneys and spending my income efficiently via park factors.

professor ape · 06-16-2020, 01:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chazzycat

if anyone is curious, my timeline went something like this:

- Entry pool/week 1: complete live collections. To expedite the process, sell nearly all rewards that don't fit my plan for lefty park factors. Buy a couple pieces that do fit park factors to fill out the roster, like Olerud (sold Bagwell since he's a righty). But try to save most PP for tourney rosters.

- Week 2: Build up bronze & silver tourney teams, start spamming those to start generating income. Main team coasts on SE rewards/park factors.

- Weeks 3-4: Invest all income into my gold tourney team. Main team continues to coast with no investment, but still climbs through the ranks thanks to the power of park factors. Many gold tourney cards fit my park factors and so they can play on the main team as well, so finding that synergy was pretty key.

- May-June: Three competitive tourney rosters (bronze, silver, gold) are now complete. Start spamming 750s and DoDs mercilessly. Win hundreds of tourneys and generate a consistent 5k in income per day.

- With my 35k per week income, start making upgrades to my main team once a week or two. That is how I have moved past the SE cards and upgraded most positions to guys like Evers (50k) Pesky (65k) and Torriente (55k), good values who fit the park factors perfectly.

So that is the story of how I'm now in the diamond playoff picture with an FTP team, without any lucky pulls or even working the markets. Just selling SE cards, spamming tourneys and spending my income efficiently via park factors.

DANG!!! I just have a solid Bronze tourney team which I keep active in three pack tournaments at a time while I am working, I’m usually getting 4-6 packs a day but get lucky a couple of days a week and land 10+ packs in a day. I sell off most all of the cards to supplement my points which slowly build through my main team but am really looking for those lucky pulls like the Webb one this morning. I’m thinking about putting together a 1875-cap tourney team.

I know it May be sen as quaint, but I am not messing with park factors. I want to see how well I can develop my team without manipulating some crazy park that wouldn’t exist in real life.

BleedBlue · 06-16-2020, 01:58 PM

I found myself having some of the same issues OP has. I stopped looking at the league leaders and All-Star selections as they were the same players over and over. I completed the live missions so I'm also guilty to contributing to this. I was lucky enough to pull a couple of perfect historicals and some diamonds so the team I'm playing is a little different. I got promoted back to Gold for the 2nd time and just decided to use a couple of other cards that I haven't just to change things up a bit as I doubt I'm at the point where I'm going to get promoted this week anyway.

As far as the tournaments, I also tortured myself by looking at the tourney page all the time since I'm working from home still. I decided to just enter tournaments that are hours or days away and not withdraw. This actually worked out as I woke up this morning to find out I won 15 packs in a 128 team bronze tourney. I only tinker with the roster once a day, usually after the games are over. I live on the west coast so it's not too late, probably not an option if you live in the central/eastern time zone. My other 2 teams are just for fun, I just open packs I buy from points collected and selling cards. I don't expect to go very far and that's ok, it's fun just to rip the packs, make roster moves without overthinking it and letting the AI pick the lineups, depth chart and pitching staff once I decide on the roster. It's nice to have other players to follow and not have basically the same team as everyone else in the league, so this works for me.

Lemandria · 06-17-2020, 08:14 AM

I got into a discussion the other night with a guy who simply couldn't believe a Historical team might not want a complete set of locked, Live cards clogging up the rosters.

That's just how ubiquitous and cookie cutter the live missions have made this entire game at a certain level.

So we already discussed the "now what" options in another thread.

If you hold your PP for a bit while you plan your next move, you'll likely have an easier time of it when you do finally get rolling again.

My choice would probably be--choose your strat, sell all the SEs who do not "fit" that strat, and buy the single biggest puzzle piece that *does* fit that strat. Big cash drop on your 'franchise' player.

benderguy1 · 06-17-2020, 09:31 AM

Like many of you, I also just finished the LIVE missions and now have the cookie-cutter team, so it's a transition year for me in Bronze. Removing many of the LIVE players who have done so well for me in Stone and Iron, with only a few hanging on to a roster spot.

McNeil continues to rake while killing me with his glove. It seems his best landing spot is LF where he has a ZR of +1.0, however, that means benching Yaz, Billy Williams, Kiner to play him. Kirby Yates was the Reliever of the Year in my Iron league last year with 46 saves and an ERA of 1.40, WHIP 0.92 and a BABIP of .226, this year he has been taking it on the chin and is now in a mop-up role in the bullpen and probably on his way out after I sell a couple of cards in the AH. Bregman was just exiled to the Reserve Roster after a very unproductive start in Bronze .213/.312/.324/.639 so that I can train SE Cano over at 3B (which is painful). The rest of the bullpen arms that served me well (Osuna, Hendriks and Pressly) -- all gone. Taylor Rogers continues to hold his job with a sparkling start to the 2032 campaign. Guzman in the pen now serving in a set-up role to Aroldis Chapman. Ted Lyons in MR, along with Joe Nathan, who completely blew up in his audition as Closer (0-5 with 4 BS in just over a month). He was one of the SE cards that I was most looking forward to acquiring -- now, not so much.

So I guess now it's either bide time waiting for the team to produce PP or go after it in the tournaments. To date, I have won exactly ZERO points, packs or cards in the Tournaments. I've made it to deciding games in rounds where a win would ensure me at least a single pack, only to be thwarted. I'm trying to track my stats as much as possible, but I just wish there was an easier way to do it. The cut and paste method into Excel is tiresome.

I can see that this is going to get a bit boring as I progress this team to Silver, Gold and possibly Diamond as when I glance at the Gold and Diamond teams, I don't see a whole lot of personality at those levels. Right now, I have a brand new Expansion Rookie team killing it with the Starter pack pulls of DJ Lemahieu, Harry Howell and an upgrade at SP to Tyler Glasnow along with a bunch of Bronze players -- and it's far more interesting to me. So far I've just been taking the points from that team and buying packs looking for quick hit upgrades. The best one so far was RP Robert Gsellman who I installed as the team's closer -- he's killing it with 15 saves and a 1.86 ERA. At least when I look at this team, it's my team, not the team that the game has sort of forced my hand to play.

Maybe I'll sell everything and just build my team around old Mets players -- we may not make it to the far reaches of Diamond and Perfect, but at least it'll be a team that I want to root for.

06-15-2020, 02:58 PM	#1
professor ape All Star Starter Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: The belly of the beast Posts: 1,498	Post Live Mission Torture Like many of you have already done, I completed the live missions late last week which means that the bulk of my starting team will look very familiar to most of you although I had previously gotten lucky with a few top tier historical cards including a 100 Hughie Jennings at SS. I forgot who made the suggestion but my plan is to take a breath and let the team play out for two weeks without messing with it. I’m in a Silver league this week and will likely be in a Gold league two weeks from now. My challenge is that while working from home, I keep my game running on the side to enter tournaments throughout the day. The torture is that I am simply glancing over every half hour or so to make sure that I keep three tournaments running. I am only going to allow myself to check my main team once a day in the evening and am committed to not changing anything when I do. Luckily, the tournaments feed my pack addiction so that I am not tempted to toss away 1000 points at a time but here on Day 1 I am already struggling to not go into my main team to see what they are doing and do a little tinkering. Is anyone else out there having similar struggles? __________________ Last edited by professor ape; 06-15-2020 at 04:02 PM.

06-15-2020, 03:09 PM	#2
IanIachimoe All Star Starter Join Date: May 2014 Location: paper st. Posts: 1,054	yep, same. a couple cards left to complete LIVE. shot through all leagues so far & thinking I have plateaued. rosters looking too similar for my liking. made playoffs in Silver this week, but no promotion. will use this time to re-evaluate. not really sure where to go from here. __________________

06-15-2020, 07:12 PM	#4
Caedus Minors (Single A) Join Date: Mar 2019 Posts: 95	This happened to my first team and I decided to selectively sell most of the Live Cards Rewards on my other two teams (keeping most of the pitchers on one, and keeping most of the hitters on the other). My teams still plateaued, but at least they didn't plateau in Diamond. __________________ Last edited by Caedus; 06-15-2020 at 07:28 PM.

06-15-2020, 08:30 PM	#7
abangs Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2020 Posts: 60	I reached this point a couple of weeks ago. The tournaments have really helped. I already had serviceable Iron and Bronze teams, and lately I've been working on a Silver team. I have been focusing mainly on tournaments with packs rewards. It's probably not as smart as just doing PP reward tournaments to save up for Auction House cards, but I like opening packs! (When I was nearing completion of the Live missions, I was almost exclusively completing Bo3 and DoD PP tournaments.) The Bo5 give the best bang for the buck when you can keep track of them during the day. I usually do the Bo7 tournaments at the end of the day; it's a nice surprise to wake up to a couple of your teams having 4+ packs to rip. In the 2+ weeks since I finished the Live missions, I have probably averaged 40-50 tournament packs per team per week. I have gotten a couple of diamond cards worth (Lives only, sadly) using and 5 Perfects, including 4 Live and 1 Historical. While that sounds like great luck, those were the first 5 Perfects I had pulled all year, so on the whole I've probably had slightly below average luck in that regard. Aside from Mike Trout, the Live Perfects haven't been that great in Gold/Diamond.The one Historical Perfect, Dennis Eckersley, has been pretty solid so far. __________________

06-16-2020, 08:29 AM	#12
professor ape All Star Starter Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: The belly of the beast Posts: 1,498	I have to confess that I had a moment of weakness this morning. I set up three tournaments before bed and woke to find that I had won three packs out of them. In the second pack I pulled a 97 Brandon Webb PEAK card. That one is a significant jump from the live Strasburg card that has been struggling a bit as my 5th starter so I couldn’t resist making the switch. So here are my amended rules for this and next week: - No purchases in the auction house - No tinkering with the active roster unless I pull a historical 95+ card I think I can follow that...until I can’t. __________________

06-15-2020, 03:16 PM	#3
tykond Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: May 2020 Posts: 47	I am with you both! Except my kids went back to dayhome today, so I have even more time to look at my screen. If I was getting some results with my tournament teams this may be not be so bad, but I started tinkering for no reason at all and now I can't get out of the second round. Maybe I should just check again to make sure the timer is still running...

06-16-2020, 08:47 AM	#13
mayday10 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Jan 2020 Posts: 175	I agree that tournaments are a nice way to progress and keep engaged after the Live Mission gratification. The best way is to collect data on the tournaments by either collecting and compiling statistics... and/or just eyeball the best/winning teams and try to model your team and players the same way. This especially holds true below silver. I found that browsing through the ratings and carefully hand picking and developing my lineup from scratch was not working. "Scouting" to some degree is absolutely necessary. Then you can fine tune to try to get an edge and adjust the team and player strategies. There is enough variety in tournaments that it will keep you busy for awhile. Jump into TWIPT too (this week is capped). I have 3 teams, typically, I have each team with an entry in a long-term tournament for better rewards. I won a rare Dick Allen card this week. He mashes. 2 entries go for quick tournaments for packs. I have iron, bronze, and a gold team who are decent. Probably average about 25 packs/team/week. Not great but still fun to open packs and build teams. Meanwhile the "regular" perfect team accumulates PP and possibly some upgrades from the packs __________________

06-16-2020, 11:14 AM	#14
Marleigh All Star Reserve Join Date: Jul 2019 Location: UK Posts: 541	On my most recent theme team I completed all of the Live missions, played them for a season to earn some extra PP and then sold them all off and bought the team i wanted, you can make decent profits just from doing the Live missions and while they are the most efficient players to use in terms of cost to effectiveness no one is forcing you to use them __________________

06-16-2020, 01:31 PM	#16
chazzycat All Star Starter Join Date: Dec 2014 Posts: 1,685	if anyone is curious, my timeline went something like this: - Entry pool/week 1: complete live collections. To expedite the process, sell nearly all rewards that don't fit my plan for lefty park factors. Buy a couple pieces that do fit park factors to fill out the roster, like Olerud (sold Bagwell since he's a righty). But try to save most PP for tourney rosters. - Week 2: Build up bronze & silver tourney teams, start spamming those to start generating income. Main team coasts on SE rewards/park factors. - Weeks 3-4: Invest all income into my gold tourney team. Main team continues to coast with no investment, but still climbs through the ranks thanks to the power of park factors. Many gold tourney cards fit my park factors and so they can play on the main team as well, so finding that synergy was pretty key. - May-June: Three competitive tourney rosters (bronze, silver, gold) are now complete. Start spamming 750s and DoDs mercilessly. Win hundreds of tourneys and generate a consistent 5k in income per day. - With my 35k per week income, start making upgrades to my main team once a week or two. That is how I have moved past the SE cards and upgraded most positions to guys like Evers (50k) Pesky (65k) and Torriente (55k), good values who fit the park factors perfectly. So that is the story of how I'm now in the diamond playoff picture with an FTP team, without any lucky pulls or even working the markets. Just selling SE cards, spamming tourneys and spending my income efficiently via park factors.

06-16-2020, 01:58 PM	#18
BleedBlue Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 85	I found myself having some of the same issues OP has. I stopped looking at the league leaders and All-Star selections as they were the same players over and over. I completed the live missions so I'm also guilty to contributing to this. I was lucky enough to pull a couple of perfect historicals and some diamonds so the team I'm playing is a little different. I got promoted back to Gold for the 2nd time and just decided to use a couple of other cards that I haven't just to change things up a bit as I doubt I'm at the point where I'm going to get promoted this week anyway. As far as the tournaments, I also tortured myself by looking at the tourney page all the time since I'm working from home still. I decided to just enter tournaments that are hours or days away and not withdraw. This actually worked out as I woke up this morning to find out I won 15 packs in a 128 team bronze tourney. I only tinker with the roster once a day, usually after the games are over. I live on the west coast so it's not too late, probably not an option if you live in the central/eastern time zone. My other 2 teams are just for fun, I just open packs I buy from points collected and selling cards. I don't expect to go very far and that's ok, it's fun just to rip the packs, make roster moves without overthinking it and letting the AI pick the lineups, depth chart and pitching staff once I decide on the roster. It's nice to have other players to follow and not have basically the same team as everyone else in the league, so this works for me.

06-17-2020, 08:14 AM	#19
Lemandria All Star Reserve Join Date: Sep 2019 Location: Chicagoland Posts: 702	I got into a discussion the other night with a guy who simply couldn't believe a Historical team might not want a complete set of locked, Live cards clogging up the rosters. That's just how ubiquitous and cookie cutter the live missions have made this entire game at a certain level. So we already discussed the "now what" options in another thread. If you hold your PP for a bit while you plan your next move, you'll likely have an easier time of it when you do finally get rolling again. My choice would probably be--choose your strat, sell all the SEs who do not "fit" that strat, and buy the single biggest puzzle piece that does fit that strat. Big cash drop on your 'franchise' player. __________________ FOTF victim Farewell Last edited by Lemandria; 06-17-2020 at 08:16 AM.

06-17-2020, 09:31 AM	#20
benderguy1 Minors (Single A) Join Date: Aug 2019 Posts: 68	Like many of you, I also just finished the LIVE missions and now have the cookie-cutter team, so it's a transition year for me in Bronze. Removing many of the LIVE players who have done so well for me in Stone and Iron, with only a few hanging on to a roster spot. McNeil continues to rake while killing me with his glove. It seems his best landing spot is LF where he has a ZR of +1.0, however, that means benching Yaz, Billy Williams, Kiner to play him. Kirby Yates was the Reliever of the Year in my Iron league last year with 46 saves and an ERA of 1.40, WHIP 0.92 and a BABIP of .226, this year he has been taking it on the chin and is now in a mop-up role in the bullpen and probably on his way out after I sell a couple of cards in the AH. Bregman was just exiled to the Reserve Roster after a very unproductive start in Bronze .213/.312/.324/.639 so that I can train SE Cano over at 3B (which is painful). The rest of the bullpen arms that served me well (Osuna, Hendriks and Pressly) -- all gone. Taylor Rogers continues to hold his job with a sparkling start to the 2032 campaign. Guzman in the pen now serving in a set-up role to Aroldis Chapman. Ted Lyons in MR, along with Joe Nathan, who completely blew up in his audition as Closer (0-5 with 4 BS in just over a month). He was one of the SE cards that I was most looking forward to acquiring -- now, not so much. So I guess now it's either bide time waiting for the team to produce PP or go after it in the tournaments. To date, I have won exactly ZERO points, packs or cards in the Tournaments. I've made it to deciding games in rounds where a win would ensure me at least a single pack, only to be thwarted. I'm trying to track my stats as much as possible, but I just wish there was an easier way to do it. The cut and paste method into Excel is tiresome. I can see that this is going to get a bit boring as I progress this team to Silver, Gold and possibly Diamond as when I glance at the Gold and Diamond teams, I don't see a whole lot of personality at those levels. Right now, I have a brand new Expansion Rookie team killing it with the Starter pack pulls of DJ Lemahieu, Harry Howell and an upgrade at SP to Tyler Glasnow along with a bunch of Bronze players -- and it's far more interesting to me. So far I've just been taking the points from that team and buying packs looking for quick hit upgrades. The best one so far was RP Robert Gsellman who I installed as the team's closer -- he's killing it with 15 saves and a 1.86 ERA. At least when I look at this team, it's my team, not the team that the game has sort of forced my hand to play. Maybe I'll sell everything and just build my team around old Mets players -- we may not make it to the far reaches of Diamond and Perfect, but at least it'll be a team that I want to root for. __________________ OOTP 21: FTP Team: FTP Theme Team: