Heading into the 2023/24 European season I’m putting my strategy thoughts down on paper to focus my plans. It’ll be reviewing my strategy through the season to see whether I’m on track or whether I need to adjust. My strategy for Cap 220 Limited is inspired from the Soraredata Limited Time Only podcast. It’s well worth listening to if your looking to get into Sorare with a small budget!

The discussion on the podcast took place a few weeks ago, before the new seasons roadmap was released. The changes to the Capped Mode competitions have changed the picture a little bit as they encourage a more stable gallery to make the most of collection and card XP bonuses.

However, I think it may still be possible to compete for prizes in Cap 220 without having to invest in a sizeable gallery. There’s a chance I could be proved very wrong with this assumption, so I’m going to be paying close attention to this experiment over the course of the season.

If you haven’t signed up to Sorare and fancy giving it a go, sign up via this referral link and earn a free limited card when you collect five cards via New Card Auctions.

The Plan

I’m going to be playing Cap 220 Limited as an equivalent to Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) competitions by moving in and out of cards regularly. This will (hopefully) allow me to enter a competitive line-up each week. With the option to use a common goalkeeper in the limited competition, it should be possible to build competitive line-ups without needing a big budget.

The other benefit to playing Limited Cap 220 is the huge amount of liquidity in the market compared to the rarer scarcities. With so many cards on the market, it’s easy to buy cards at a fair market value and to move your own cards on. There’s also various market makers that can be used to get rid of players if interest is low.

I am going to start this plan with a £30 (about 0.02 ETH) budget and see how long I can make that last for. With this size of budget I should have some wiggle room to build for a week whilst selling cards that were used the week before. Still, it may make sense to grab players that have a couple of good games in a row to increase flexibility with the rest of the budget.

With the plan being to use common Goalkeeper cards, I’m going to start implementing this strategy once the Premier League starts in game week 397. Because of the limited budget, I will be focusing on the weekend game weeks despite the possibility of goalkeepers playing in European competitions. The bigger schedule of games should give me a better chance at finding some good players that fit in the budget.

What Scores are we Targeting?

The changes upcoming for the 2023/24 season make it difficult to project exactly what we’ll need to score for prizes this season. There is now a full set of bonuses and a 20% captain bonus to be applied to the cards which will obviously increase scores significantly. We can draw some conclusions about what kind of raw scores we need to hit, but the effects of collection bonus and fitness score are a bit of an unknown.

Looking at the scores from last season, we can see that we could have won a card with less than 300 points in every weekend game week. In fact, less than 290 points would have got you a card in 12 of 17 game weeks. So a raw score of 60 points a player would have guaranteed us a card, whilst 58 points a player would have got us there more often than not.

In terms of winning the entire tournament, we would need to have scored over 400 points in 12 of 17 game weeks. In other words, to average a raw 80+ points per player. Obviously, expecting to manage this in any game week is very optimistic!

With a 300 point target in mind, we’re looking for 60 a player which can obviously be achieved with decisives from every player. However, finding 4 outfielders with a strong chance of a decisive that also fit in the stack might be a bit ambitious. Four consistent and predictable decisive scorers will likely end up priced out of a Cap 220 line-up.

From the goalkeeper, it’s simple – we’re looking for a clean sheet. Preferably from a lower cost player that can give us more cap flexibility for the outfielders.

For forwards it’s also pretty simple, we’re looking for a goal or assist to hit the 60 point marks. Typically forwards that can put up strong AA scores are highly sought after and will be too expensive to purchase for this experiment. Centre forwards playing against much weaker sides, are likely to be the favoured player profile for this strategy.

The midfielders and defenders get a bit more interesting to scout. We can look for decisives, especially with midfielders, but there’s also the potential to target more predictable AA scoring. In particular looking for those players that can put up big AA scorers in favourable match-ups – especially at home.

Targets for the Season

Before the changes to Capped Mode scoring I was a lot more confident that this strategy could work. How the Fitness Bonus will change when you bring a card in (will it reset to a full 10% regardless) and how many managers will focus on big collection scores are both big questions currently unanswered. I’m expecting I will have a smaller average bonus with this approach, and that may kill any chance of a podium.

I think this strategy can still be competitive for cards – especially if I can get the captain right. But, I will look be paying close attention to the points needed for a card and the total score bonuses that are being applied.

My goal with this strategy is to make a 100% return on investment by the end of the season – so £30 of profit. I will assess this by including card profit/loss, the amount earned from any rewards I sell and the value of any cards I still hold at the end of the season.

I’m going to check in on my progress with a blog post on a monthly basis. Assuming, I still have budget to trade in and out of cards with I’ll reassess whether to continue with the plan in January. If you’re interested in the seeing the line-ups on a weekly basis follow @thinkingfantasy on Twitter!