Analyzing My Year So Far...

[HRBaker]

As an FTP player and with 13 seasons behind us, it becomes obvious how much effort (and how much luck) we have each put into our teams.

This year, I've put in less effort than past years - and gotten far less luck on pack pulls - and it shows.

All three of my teams have bounced between Silver and Bronze for the last 6 seasons (although Baltimore has won 2 OL Titles during that stretch.

I've given up on Perfect Draft. I haven't been able to figure out the key to drafting a successful combination (won only once). I've played numerous Bronze level tournaments, and land one here and there, but then my bad pack luck insures the 5 or 10 packs I get are cannon fodder.

I've also collected packs from watching Twitch as much as possible, but again - my pack luck fails me there too.

The one area I should try, but haven't done much so far, is completing Missions. I really don't have a feel whether doing that at this stage would be helpful or not (my teams are mostly Diamond rosters and I earn (on average) about 10,000 - 12,000 PPs per season).

One thing is sure - if I continue as I have, I'll probably still be in the Silver-Bronze-maze 13 weeks from now too.

I have to agree with Stanley, the early seasons with all those Iron and Bronze cards are a lot more fun than once you get to an all-Diamond roster.

[professor ape]

Working from home I have been able to keep enough of an eye on my tournament team to keep it in three tournaments through most of the day. GO has taken that up a notch as I can quickly check every hour or so when we are out. Without a steady flow of tournament packs ai would be in the same situation as you. It is a lottery with the packs but you can’t win if you don’t play. If you hit that big card to sell off then that can change everything quickly. Missions do help as there are a bunch which are not hard to complete and give decent pack and/or card rewards.

[TwanLX2000]

The biggest obstacle with FTP is trying not to dabble in too many strategies that spend PP, particularly if you end up meeting none of the goals of any of those strategies. I did the bronze/silver flipflop through most of last season, and I determined before this year started that I wouldn't spend PP on packs, and would focus my energies on tournaments and missions that would gather resources without much cost.

For me, it's about collecting low cost resources (a lot, if not all the irons and bronzes in my case) that might show up on collections. When collections populate that include these cards, I'm usually most of the way to the goal, sometimes all. Even though I'm not trying to complete all the BIL collections, because it's too broad and expensive a goal, I'm earning packs on the lower collections to expand my inventory for more PP and collection resources to sell. The end game is to continue building upward while selling off the pieces that are "above" my current needs to fuel the ones at my level.

It's required a lot of time and patience, but it seems the most sustainable way to continue growing, although I'll probably cap out at diamond, simply because there's only so much I can do with what I earn.

[abangs]

I am an FTPer too.

This year, after completing the Live Missions, I started investing in the cheapest non-live cards I could get in the auction house, making my way through the irons and bronzes fairly quickly.

It helped me build my bronze tournament team for quick Bo5 and Bo7 tournaments. My bronze team isn't great, as I don't use any live cards because I don't want to have to deal with the monthly re-evaluation of who's no longer eligible and who's no longer useful, but it is a good enough squad to get me a steady stream of packs and the occasional 10-pack bonanza.

Grabbing the bronzes and irons also helped me complete the lowest BaL missions, which got me more packs. I have completed all of the Bronze BaL missions, more than half of the Silver ones, and almost half of the Gold ones. I have completed only 5 total BaL Perfect missions among 3 teams. They're not a priority right now unless I get very close to finishing them through packs, in which case I'll then spend the PP on them.

After getting all of the irons and bronzes, I started buying the cheapest non-live silvers I could. I got about half of them when Team Missions #1 came out, which, along with the non-live golds I'd picked up in packs, enabled me to complete about 90% of the missions instantly.

I only sell live cards and historical card duplicates that currently have missions. When the Team Missions came out, the value of a bunch of my stockpiled non-live cards in those Team Missions shot up, so I put them on the auction block and made some nice PP. Completing some of the Name Game missions also helped generate cards to sell. I used the PP to finish the remaining Team Missions.

Now I'm back to purchasing the cheapest non-live cards possible. I'm at about 75-80% complete on the silver non-lives. The % increase has slowed down due to the increased cost of silver cards since the Team Missions and Future Legends missions came out, plus the fact that I already bought up the lower hanging fruit of the cheapest silvers. More and more non-live gold cards are popping up on the auction house at cheaper prices than the silvers. My hope is that whenever the next big event (Team Mission #2?) comes out, I'll have built up enough of an inventory to be able to complete some of the new missions instantly and sell off any non-live duplicates that are part of the new missions.

All 3 of my teams have been bouncing back and forth between Gold and Diamond leagues for several seasons.