It's that time again (i.e., the second Live Update has hit), so I'm establishing a tradition by doing a primer on team creation for the second year in a row. Why is June important? The flurry over Live series has subsided. Prices have stabilized. Lots of new cards have been added due to the usual spate of injuries and flops by Major League players. Live Series is now easy to complete. No more spending 5000 PP on Gold cards or 1500 on Silvers. In fact, you can complete most teams' Live Series without even purchasing Gold or Silver cards. It's Irons and Bronzes for the majority of teams.
First, create your team and open the Starter packs plus any bonus packs from previous PT participation. Do this on Monday morning in order to maximize your time in the Entry Pool. Welcome to PT. This is your rock-bottom team, usually filled with Live irons and bronzes, a couple of Silvers, maybe a Gold or Diamond. You have 1000 PP to spend, which isn't much.
So, how do you get from here to there?
1. Sell off those silvers, golds, and diamonds right away. You're in Entry Pool, and nothing that happens this week matters (except achievement points and login packs, of course). In fact, the statistics won't even carry over to regular league play when it starts next Monday. You want to maximize your PP in order to complete missions and buy cards you'll otherwise want on your league roster.
Prime Directive for Perfect Team: always remember that this week's shiny new card will in all likelihood be worthless for league play two or three months from now. That's the model, and it benefits you if you're starting now, three months behind most of the other players and teams. They're sitting on a lot of "killer cards" that aren't so killer three months in. In some cases, they're selling those cards now for a lot less than they paid for them. Also good for you if they're part of missions you need to complete.
2. Get to work on Live series. Once your team starts playing, you're in for a few thousand easy achievement points for first win, first home run, first quality start, etc. Use these, plus your free 1000, plus whatever you raised from selling silver, gold, and diamond cards, to attack the missions. Start with the easiest ones first. Sort your missions by completion percentage, then find the easiest and quickest ones to complete through Live Level 1 (Washington, the White Sox, and Colorado are obvious choices, and you can pretty much run the actual league standings in reverse order to determine which missions will have the lowest cost).
Once you complete your first Live 1 mission, open the card pack immediately. A lot of the cards you'll need to complete Live Series will come out of the packs you're opening, so open them as soon as you get them. Work through the list from worst to first. Also, sell the card reward in the auction house. With a few exceptions (the divisional toppers like Chase Utley), these guys aren't worth keeping long-term, and the proceeds will fund completion of Live series plus future missions. If you realize later on that you sold a card you want or need, it's not difficult to reacquire it. Live Series rewards are common currency.
Also be aware that some of the Pack Rewards missions contain Live cards. It's worthwhile to go through this list and acquire any Iron or Bronze lives that will help complete these missions. That way, you're getting two missions out of each card.
3. Once you've completed Live Series 1, move on to Series 2. It's best to complete these by division, as the division toppers here are generally worth keeping, especially if you're planning on running the Live Series toppers as the backbone of your league team (see below). You should be able to complete Series 2 with PP to spare, especially if you're selling off the less worthwhile toppers (like Nap Lajoie) as you go. Once again, open all packs as soon as you acquire them. You'll be hitting more duplicates now (which you should sell), but at least a few of the cards pulled should help with completing Live Series.
4. You're now done with Live Series, and you have a choice to make. There are effectively three paths forward at this point:
a) Run the Live Series toppers as your team. This is the lowest-priced option and allows you to save points for mission sets that come out or are fleshed out later. This year's version of Live toppers is better than in years past and will give you a quality team through the lower levels of PT. They also have high team chemistry and are well-balanced by position...except that the pitching is a little weak. If you choose this option then you might want to investigate the Monthly Stars missions to obtain Pujols and Kirby Yates. Both of these are Mission Rewards cards and are quite good. They will easily fit into this strategy.
b) Go after Future Legends. This will require selling many of the Live Series toppers, as the mission set is pricey (but worthwhile). The top four divisional sets are NL East-Central-West and AL Central. Complete these and you'll add Andrew Painter and Jackson Jobe (two of the absolute best starting pitchers in the set), plus Cade Horton (useful) and Ethan Salas (excellent catcher). The other two are AL West (Harry Ford, catcher platoon mate for Salas and utility player extraordinaire) and AL East (Jasson Dominquez, not very useful). The advantage of this option is that your pitching staff has the potential to be dominant. You'll also be well on the way to adding Jackson Holliday as your third baseman (don't play him at short, and don't displace Chase "Demigod" Utley at second base). A lot of the historical Perfects needed to complete this set should also find a spot on your roster. The disadvantage is that your team chemistry will be low, which is a matter of ongoing debate.
c) Go after Negro Leagues. This set is also quite good, although there aren't enough top-level players unless you spend (significantly) more than is required to complete the set as is. The advantage to this strategy is astronomically-good team chemistry (the devs fixed their team chemistry a bit too well) even if you flesh it out with a half-dozen other players, lots of hitting, lots of bunting and base running, and great front-end pitching (if you acquire all four of the Perfects). You'll also be in line for extra rewards once Negro Leagues 2 comes out.
5. This is, of course, the self-funding primer for FTP. If you're willing to spend real cash on Perfect Points then you can pursue all options at once and have the best of all worlds (but you still play Chase "Demigod" Utley at second base, just like everyone else). Either way, you should have a good team on a more level playing field.
*the math
Here's how you raise points to tackle missions beyond Live Series.
1. Ruthlessly sell off any Mission Rewards you won't be using on your new league team. This will net you between 120 and 160K points.
2. Get those free packs! Assuming that you get 7 Twitch packs per day during the week out of the theoretical maximum of 10, you'll have 49 packs. Add the 7 you'll get from daily login. Add the 74 packs you'll get from completing Live Series. Add 35 packs from the easy Pack Rewards missions (the ones that can be completed with Iron and Bronze cards and the occasional Silver, many of which you'll acquire through pack pulls anyway). All told, you'll acquire about 1000 cards through pulls from Twitch drops and reward packs. Based on sale value, this will net you 110K with average luck. YMMV, but average pack luck will get you north of 100K in sale value.
3. Thump your opponents in Rookie league. Winning 120+ games in league is nice, but what's really nice is that you'll pull in about 65K from achievements along the way. Get pitching or hitting Triple Crown and it's even better.
4. 120K + 110K + 65K = 395K. Current L10 to complete the top four Future Legends missions (FL1+2 NL East, NL Central, NL West, and AL Central) is under 300K. It's a little more if you splurge on a few Perfects like Sam McDowell, Abner Dalrymple, and Tony Oliva. Congratulations. If you've gone this route then you now have Painter, Jobe, Horton, and Salas. Your roster can look like this 13 days in:
Ca- Salas / Campanella
1B- Helton / Martinez
2B- Utley
3B- Wagner
SS- Ripken
LF- Dalrymple / DiMaggio
CF- Erstad
RF- Oliva / Kaline
DH- Griffey
SP- Painter
SP- Jobe
SP- McDowell
SP- Kluber
SP- Horton
Good luck with those card pulls!
