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Everything you need to know about Black Friday in FIFA 21 Ultimate Team
Your complete guide to next big FIFA 21 event, including when it happens, what to expect and how to make coins from it.
Black Friday is upon us, and while that might be bad news for your bank balance, it needn't be bad news for your FIFA 21 Ultimate Team finances.
With a bit of insider knowledge and a few savvy trades, you can come out of the Thanksgiving holiday with coins burning a hole in your virtual back pocket. Here's how.
When is Black Friday in FIFA 21 Ultimate Team?
Black Friday 2020 is on Friday, 27th November, – and that's the same whether you're looking for discount electronics or seasonal activity in FIFA 21 Ultimate Team. Traditionally the festivities begin at 2pm GMT (3pm CET, 9am ET, 6am PT) on Friday and continue into the weekend through "Super Sunday" into Cyber Monday.
What to expect from Black Friday in FUT
You may be able to pick up a player you've been after for a while
© EA
Whereas most FUT promotions feature a special new squad of players to pack, Black Friday is slightly different. We do usually see a "Best of Team of the Week" squad released back into packs, but the focus is more on time-limited sales promotions and SBCs.
Most notably, EA Sports rolls out Lightning Rounds, where the most valuable packs (including Ultimate Packs) with the most exciting reward odds are sold in limited quantities.
Here's a super quick rundown of what to expect, then we'll dive into the detail:
- Lightning Rounds - Limited numbers of high-value packs, sold on the hour every evening until they run out.
- Best of TOTW - The best Team of the Week players of FIFA 21 so far, re-released into packs for a limited time.
- Squad Building Challenges - Flash SBCs released throughout the weekend, plus league upgrades, Flashbacks and Moments.
- Objectives - Unique rewards unlocked by playing the game, including desirable packs and sometimes players.
- Market crash - A byproduct of all this activity is that the market becomes oversupplied, which briefly devalues a lot of cards.
What are Lightning Rounds?
Will you be lucky this Black Friday in FIFA Ultimate Team?
© EA
Lightning Rounds are sales promotions in FIFA 21 Ultimate Team that kick off on a set schedule around big in-game promotions. Traditionally Black Friday is the first time of year we see them. In the past -- and there's no reason to suspect EA will change things up for 2020 -- these have seen valuable items like Ultimate Packs (which cost 2500 FIFA Points) go on sale in limited quantities, encouraging players to snap them up as quickly as possible.
Ultimate Packs are exciting to open, but if you want our advice, you are better off watching content creators burn through thousands of dollars' worth of these packs than buying them yourself. The odds are still against you, and you can make more coins by taking advantage of the market fluctuations Lightning Rounds leave in their wake.
Whether you're watching or cracking packs, look for Lightning Rounds to take place on Friday 27th, Saturday 28th and most likely Sunday 29th as well, starting 6pm GMT and every hour after that until later in the evening.
What is Best of TOTW?
Black Friday may be a good time to get your hands on some amazing players
© EA
Rather than creating specific Black Friday player items, EA usually releases a "Best of Team of the Week" squad of 11 much-hyped TOTW items released in the game cycle so far. Last year's team featured Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappe, Hazard, and more top players.
What to expect from Best of TOTW in FUT 21? Well, the team doesn't always feature the best 11 players judged purely on ratings, and EA usually favours attackers -- last year's squad featured no defenders or goalkeepers -- so if we extrapolate based on that, and this year's meta so far, we can make a few educated guesses. We would definitely expect to see the following cards at the core of Best of TOTW:
- Lionel Messi - 94 - CF
- Robert Lewandowski - 92 - ST
- Sadio Mane - 91 - LW
- Karim Benzema - 90 - CF
- Bruno Fernandes - 89 - CAM
- N'Golo Kante - 89 CDM
- Marcus Rashford - 86 - ST
If EA wants to branch out and include defenders for once, the 90-rated Sergio Ramos and 86 Kyle Walker centre-back would be popular. We wouldn't bet against the popular Wissam Ben Yedder (86, ST) or Timo Werner (86, ST) making the cut either. If we could choose ourselves, we'd also throw in Allan Saint-Maximin (83, LM) and Renato Sanches (82, CM)... but that's probably just us being FUT hipsters.
What SBCs will we see during Black Friday?
The FIFA 21 and FUT content drip never ends
© EA
It wouldn't be a FUT promotion without a slew of SBCs, and this is one of the areas where Black Friday in FIFA 21 Ultimate Team can start to work in your favour. We recommend keeping the web app or mobile companion app handy throughout the Black Friday promotion and checking in every half hour or whenever you can, because EA traditionally runs "Flash SBCs" very frequently across the whole long weekend.
Flash SBCs aren't anything too special on the surface of it, but they are worth paying attention to for a couple of reasons:
- Flash SBCs usually give out packs in exchange for meaningless club fodder, and the cost vs return is usually fairly even, so it's worth completing them on the off-chance you pack something decent. (A word of warning though: EA has developed a real penchant for giving out untradeable packs this year, and these are much less worthwhile than tradeable packs. Consider the value ratio carefully.)
- Flash SBCs sometimes drive up the price of certain innocuous players you likely have in your club. Requirements built around specific nations, leagues or ratings, plus the heavy time pressure, means SBC addicts will pay over the odds to complete them. Look at the requirements, scan your club for things that fit, and check whether the price is rising, then sell into the hype if you can.
League Upgrade SBCs are another feature of the Black Friday promotion. These typically allow you to give up non-rare and rare gold squads in exchange for packs that are weighted exclusively towards specific leagues and even players over a certain rating from that league. Fans sometimes grind these packs to see if they can bag a decent Best of TOTW player. If league upgrades do return, we recommend scrutinising the cost/return ratio closely, because sometimes they look better than they actually prove to be.
Flashback and Player Moments SBCs are usually the final piece of the puzzle. Last year we were offered Flashback Cesc Fabregas, Flashback Mario Balotelli and a Player Moments Morales card, all of which were decent if unspectacular for this stage in the game cycle's power curve. We would expect something similar here. Our usual advice on player SBCs is to avoid them and that stands for Black Friday too. There are usually decent tradeable alternatives to player SBC cards, and when you get bored of a tradeable player you can make some coins back, even if it is slightly less than what you paid. When you get bored of an SBC player, all you can do is stick them in another SBC.
What Objectives can we expect from Black Friday in FUT?
Fulfilling Objectives is a quick way to bolster your team
© EA
Most of our predictions so far are based on the fact EA has a set playbook for Black Friday and hasn't deviated much from it in the last few years. But Objectives is an area where the developer has shown a little flex before, and Objectives has been a big area of change in FIFA 21 generally, so we're curious ourselves to see what happens this year.
In previous years, you were given the opportunity to earn desirable packs through gameplay and to unlock the odd player. We would expect those trends to continue, but also be expanded upon. The unlockable player or players will likely be linked to specific modes in Live FUT Friendlies, which has been the trend in FIFA 21 so far. It's hard to guess the exact conditions, but given the Best of TOTW angle, perhaps TOTW players will be necessary in order to complete these objectives.
Will there be a Black Friday market crash in FUT?
Watch what you spend on Black Friday promotions
© EA
This one we can answer with confidence. Yes, there will be a Black Friday market crash in FUT! How can we be so sure? Because it's pretty much already happened. This year, as in every recent year, the FUT player base starts selling off their squads in anticipation of Black Friday a week or two beforehand, increasing supply of cards and therefore driving down prices. With the exception of the very top end players like Neymar and Mbappe, you can pick any random meta gold card and look at their price recently and the downward trend is clear. So what should you do?
- Buying players to keep - If you have a bunch of coins burning a hole in your pocket and want to build a killer squad, the time to do that is not during Black Friday. Prices will be driven quite low by Lightning Rounds, but you're better off waiting until mid-to-late December when Team of the Year starts to loom. That's when every meta player, including the big ones -- Mbappe, Ronaldo, etc -- falls off a small cliff in value. If you're coin-rich, your buying power on, say, 15th or 25th December may be 1.5x or even 2x what it can be during the Black Friday promotion.
- Buying players to sell - Instead, if you have coins, we recommend sniping players during Lightning Rounds and then selling them when their prices recover. Before Black Friday begins, identify a few meta gold cards and learn their prices. Last year we focused on Eden Hazard, for example. Then wait for the heavier Lightning Rounds (especially Ultimate Packs), and sit on the transfer market in the minutes afterwards searching for them at cheaper prices. The volume of packs being opened means the price of these players can be driven down by as much as 10-20%, which is much more than the 5% transaction tax EA imposes when you sell them. Pick up a few of these, wait for the market to rebound, and you'll be laughing.
- Selling players - The market will recover quite quickly after Lightning Rounds, but it won't recover to pre-Black Friday levels. However, if you're patient, you can expect to see a more substantial recovery in the 3-4 days immediately after Cyber Monday. Just make sure you've shifted any expensive cards within this window, because the decline really sets in thereafter.
So what happens after Black Friday in FUT?
Keep your eye out for top-tier players
© EA
As discussed, the Black Friday market crash has pretty much happened already, but you can expect to see another big dip in mid-December as FUTmas arrives and players start panicking ahead of Team of the Year, which takes place in early January.
If you want our advice, mid-to-late December is a great time to build a team that you want to play with for a couple of months. The period of massive market fluctuations and crashes has pretty much passed by then for most meta players, with the exception of big players like Neymar, who will recover some of their value after TOTY in January, although not all of it. Having one or more of those in your squad can be a good bulwark against declining value elsewhere in the team.
Whether you're trading or cracking packs this Black Friday though, we wish you the best luck imaginable! See you on the market.
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