Up..down..up..down...up...down

[chazzycat]

The tournament grind is important for F2P players, but I don't actually think it's the single most important thing. I learned this lesson last year the hard way...I won more tournaments than anyone else in the game universe. And yet failed to reach perfect.

"One lucky rip to power through all the missions" is not going to happen for everyone. It's not going to happen for MOST players. It takes a ton of packs just to hit a historical diamond or perfect, and then, even the vast majority of those aren't worth a whole ton. It really is like banking on winning the lottery. And yes, you put yourself in position to be lucky by opening as many packs as possible. But you can never ensure that kind of game-changing pull.

But there are ways to ensure your success that don't rely on luck, and it mostly comes down to playing the markets. Buying & selling things at the right time can have a huge impact on your trajectory.

For example, remember when FH1 missions came out? And everyone just rushed to lock their expensive BAL cards for 2 diamond packs? And then the FH1 cards settled at extremely low prices compared to the BALs? The players who saw this coming and sold their BALs and just bought the FH1 card, made out like bandits. We're talking hundreds of thousands of PP, far more impact than 99% of pulls.

This wasn't the easiest thing to predict, so I wouldn't fault anyone for locking their BALs (I did most of them) but I'm just using it as good example of how powerful the markets and collection stuff can be if you're smart about it.

In terms of lower hanging fruit, at least F2P players should be holding any historical non-mission cards until missions drop. And probably be more proactive than that - buying any historical cards that pop up at decent prices BEFORE the collections hit. Buying your silvers at 600-700 instead of 5k-10k each makes a massive difference. And that's just if you buy them for your own collection purposes, nevermind the profits available if you scoop up multiple duplicates.

Probably the most important lesson for F2Pers to learn is that if you spend most of your income on upgrading your team in the short term, you're going to find yourself fighting against the tide. The majority of cards you buy are deflationary assets - they will go down in price over time. So each upgrade is a losing proposition on its face, and you'll need to maintain more & more pulls as the upgrades get more & more expensive over the year.

The two categories of cards that won't go down in value, are cards in future missions (covered above) and live cards that might go up to the next tier. Live speculation is another very viable route to profits for F2P teams. Personally I'm well over a million PP this game cycle, probably around 1.5. This was accomplished by data analysis, not luck.

Yes you can get to diamond, maybe even perfect from luck, I'm not saying it's impossible. A handful are bound to pull it off every year. But the F2P teams that I have seen over the past couple years actually persist in perfect, consistently make perfect playoffs, and win perfect championships, have utilized the market-based approach to turn themselves into whales, and not relied on pack pulls. If you want to take it to the next level, this is the way.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by chazzycat

For example, remember when FH1 missions came out? And everyone just rushed to lock their expensive BAL cards for 2 diamond packs? And then the FH1 cards settled at extremely low prices compared to the BALs? The players who saw this coming and sold their BALs and just bought the FH1 card, made out like bandits. We're talking hundreds of thousands of PP, far more impact than 99% of pulls.

This wasn't the easiest thing to predict, so I wouldn't fault anyone for locking their BALs (I did most of them) but I'm just using it as good example of how powerful the markets and collection stuff can be if you're smart about it.

So, to quantify....

The L10 of FH1 cards is 1,022,000

The L10 of BAL 100 cards is after tax 2,716,000

so those 60 diamond packs cost me almost 1.7 million points

BUT, wait...
There's more

You could also have sold ALL live mission reward cards and Team Mission #1 cards. .......


You would have lots of points and a team toiling in gold waiting until most of the content program drops then swoop in with your whale roll and buy what you need late in the game cycle when prices are low.

[RufioBobsled]

Originally Posted by professor ape

As a F2P guy, it’s all about the tournament grind. Being able to readily keep three tournaments active at all times through GO while working is a huge help.

Is there any advice you'd have for someone who wants to get into the tournament grind in order to collect more packs? Is it specific cards I'd want for those tournaments or more of a general strategy like high contact, high avoid k?

My PT fluctuates between doing well in Gold and getting killed in Diamond, and I'd like to get better cards to help with that, but I find myself getting overwhelmed on where to start with the tournaments. I've done okay in Perfect Drafts, but with the regular tourneys I'm not even sure where to begin.

[Hertston]

Originally Posted by RufioBobsled

Is there any advice you'd have for someone who wants to get into the tournament grind in order to collect more packs? Is it specific cards I'd want for those tournaments or more of a general strategy like high contact, high avoid k?

You'll find that in practice those two amount to pretty much the same thing, hence those cards can be very expensive particularly if they have good defence as well. Contact and avoid k own power in tourneys; excessively so IMHO particularly as there too few pitchers in the same classes with both the movement and other skills to counter it, again IMHO.

I've done okay in Perfect Drafts, but with the regular tourneys I'm not even sure where to begin.

I'm the exact reverse. I'm happy enough with my regular tourney performance, but can't get anywhere in Perfect Drafts to save my life. Somehow, I can never manage to get a sufficiently balanced team 😥 .