New Team Primer

[bailey]

My rule of thumb: don't do the mission if I can buy the reward for less.
The BAL cards are yesterday's "meta" and coming down in price rapidly, but the cost of the mission is still very high.
Profitable missions: Topps for Mookie Betts, Negro League 1 and 2.

[LeeD]

Originally Posted by Peek

This is a great guide, thank you for posting it's been a lot of help. One question, once you've done all the Live missions, how do you make enough PP to be able to do the other missions such as Build a Lineup? It looks like completing the missions to get the high end BOL cards will be very expensive, maybe upwards of 100k PP in some cases? Would it be cheaper to just buy the topper cards directly from the card store, they seem to go for about 40k each?

The trick is to sell off the live mission toppers. OOTP has helped with this by adding missions to some of them, which raises the prices. Just counting the Gold and Diamond cards, you've got 16 Golds and 31 Diamonds, which are worth 140,000 PP even as quick-sells. That's a lot of points and doesn't even consider that you've surely pulled something worthwhile out of the mission completion packs you've earned.

You have a choice at this point, as you could simply sell all of them and allow your team to kick around Rookie league with a losing record while you build for the future. I can't abide losing, so I've never done that, but it is a viable strategy that maximizes your PP for now. The downside, besides losing a lot of games, is that you won't be pulling in many achievement points if your team is full of 50- and 60- and 70-something live cards with a smattering of Silver toppers.

What you should do is to keep the good Diamonds (and a few Golds) which play well at the lower levels. Those would be Posey, Dick Allen, Stennett, Reese (or Tinker, who plays even better defense), Hojo, one of the left fielders, DiMaggio, Drew, and Chuck Klein, plus Santana, Drysdale, Cone, Carpenter, and Tanana, and a few of the other Gold and Diamond pitchers for the bullpen. This will forego about 70,000 PP in sales but still leave you with a rock-solid Rookie league team and 70,000 or so PP for further mission expenses (and you can sell off the ones you kept as you acquire better cards).

On to BAL. First, you earn packs for buying and locking the starter card (cost 40-80 PP, reward one standard pack) and completing the bronze missions (cost around 1,000 PP, reward one silver pack and another standard pack for locking the silver version card). This is a big net positive in pack value, as you're getting 4,000 PP worth of packs for a little over 1,000 spent (and you also get a lot of cards that are useful in Iron or Bronze tournaments). You might, of course, get the bare minimums in card pulls, but the 24 standard packs and 12 silver packs you open should net at least a few worthwhile cards.

Note that you should be completing these BAL Bronze missions first if at all possible (based on the points you have in hand) because you'll be pulling a lot of the cards you need for live mission completions. Why buy a card if you can pull one out of a reward pack?

Don't worry at this point about the Silver, Gold, and Diamond missions for BAL. Yes, the Diamond missions are still expensive, but there are also better cards at every position than the Perfect versions of the BAL cards. Basically, BAL complete with the Mickey Mantle topper isn't worth completing at this point, although they will give you a decent Gold league team if you have them all. Consider BAL a baseline for having a competitive Gold league team, but it's better to acquire a select few of them, and it's usually better to just buy the toppers in the card shop, as you asked.

Best use of funds after completing Live Series and the BAL Bronze missions (only) is to complete Topps Dream Bracket 1 for Mookie Betts (make sure you buy Bregman as part of that because he's the only card that's worth keeping around beyond the short term) and then search for opportunities in Negro League 1. You'll especially want the WIllie Wells topper for shortstop, but you can also acquire Cool Papa Bell for outfield speedster and Martin Dihigo as a useful rover/super-utility player along the way. Also worth a look are Buck Leonard, Luis Tiant (Sr.), and Smokey Joe Williams. All of these cards are good values now and can contribute as your team moves up the ranks.

edit to add: Forgot about good ol' Ken Caminiti, who you should sell for 20,000+ points as soon as you get him. He would be useful up until about Silver level, but the 20,000 points are more worthwhile. For instance, you could get the 98 Bregman mentioned above for around 12,000, and it's a better card. If you're concerned about eventually completing the Padres History mission, Mike Adams is an actually-useful card to get you the same 150 mission points.

[Peek]

Great stuff, thanks for posting this man, I'm pretty new to the game and this guide has helped me more than anything.

[LeeD]

Went through another new team build last week, being more ruthless than ever in selling Live toppers. The only holdover is Rennie Stennett, who I should probably sell now. As a result, I completed not only the Live set but also Negro League 1 (Wells, Foster, Mendez, Santop, Stearnes, and Buck Leonard), Topps Bunt 1 (Mookie and Bregman), and the entire Baseball Ref series (Hubbell, Mize, Lynn, plus Brecheen, Cozart, and Tommy Harper) during Entry league week. I'm also well on the way to completing Perfect Lolich and Roberts, having purchased some of their low-cost Diamond mission cards to fill out the pitching staff. The only additional help I received were PT+ and two live Perfect pulls which netted another 40,000 PP.

Results are amazing. The Washington Generals are on a 34-game winning streak and have a 76-6 record in Rookie league through the first half. Fred Lynn is at .434 with 24 bombs and 71 RBI. Mize .330/22/90. Hubbell is 17-1, 1.59 ERA. Brecheen is a ridiculous 13-0, 1.19 as fifth starter. Johan Santana, who is normally my best pitcher in Rookie ball, trails the other four with a ghastly 3.11 FIP.

The more things change, the more they stay the same:

Live mission Cardinals are now a pain since there seem to be more ex-Cardinals than Cardinals. Not a biggie, though. Live series is still super-cheap and a big net positive in terms of PP generation. Topps 1 remains de rigueur for Live Series follow-on, snagging Betts and Bregman. The Baseball Ref series is an excellent value as well, as long as you do buy orders for Brecheen and Harper, who are the two best pieces outside the toppers (with the possible exception of Bryan Harvey). Negro Leagues are, of course, very rewarding. Set 1 is now quite easy to complete. I'd stay away from the 99-100 cards and concentrate on quantity at the lower levels since most of them have not aged well (Nip Winters in particular has gone from essential to afterthought since release, and the Perfect trio of Dihigo, Cool Papa, and Heavy Johnson aren't all that useful either).

Up next: probably Negro League 2, but not until I've completed the Gold versions of the BAL set. Now that the Silver cards for BAL have declined in value, it more or less makes sense to complete the Silver missions and then upgrade and lock the Gold cards in exchange for two Silver packs, then look over the Gold missions for opportunities (which get you three Gold packs in exchange for upgrading and locking the Diamond BAL). After that, several of the Diamond missions have become very affordable (although Berkman and Chipper Jones are still not really worth the prices). It can sometimes make sense to complete the mission through Perfect and then sell the topper (I'm looking at you, Eddie Murray).