Soccer fans on mobile can rejoice, as there’s a new game for iOS and Android devices that’s specifically made for the mobile experience, and made by one of the leading names in video gaming for the past several decades. Konami’s PES Card Collection is a card battler/collectible card game where you will be collecting cards of the world’s best association soccer players, effectively coming up with the “ultimate team,” all apologies to the folks at EA Sports and the FIFA series. Aside from collecting cards of real-life players like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and countless others, you can train your players, choose the right tactics for your squad, and play in single player mode against the game’s AI, or in PvP mode against another human manager. Matches play out in 3D, which means you will actually be able to see the goals take place as they happen. There’s also Elevens Match mode, where you can field your top player and team up with 10 other human managers and their own top guys.
Card battlers are always among the more complex games in the mobile gaming space, and when you’re talking about a game that has real-life players from numerous soccer teams around the world, it can get too overwhelming for the first-timer. If that sounds like you, then we invite you to read on and check out our PES Card Collection strategy guide for beginners and intermediate players. Ready to score some goals and win some games? We feel you, but read our tips first if you’re needing an extra edge!
1. Tactics Are Important
At the end of the day, there is no best or worst tactic in PES Card Collection. All of them have their own advantages and disadvantages, but when push comes to shove, your choice of tactics in this game will be important when it comes to choosing the ones that suit your players the best. That would mean choosing tactics that put your top players in their best positions, thereby increasing your team power and giving you a better chance to win.
Changing tactics is easy — just go to Team Management, tap on the edit button, and choose from the list of tactics, tapping the one you want to select for your team. Again, it’s important to take into account the tactics that will serve your players the best. Take an especially close look at the Penalty Taker, which should ideally be your best shooter, and the players taking your Free Kicks and Corner Kicks, meaning the ones with the best TEQ stats.
2. Alternate Single Player And PvP
When playing PES Card Collection, you want to focus on single player mode and PvP on top of all the other game modes. It takes quite some time for new GP and BP to be generated, and with that in mind, you can alternate between single player mode, which requires GP, and PvP mode, which requires BP. The good thing about GP matches is that the game allows you to fast forward them and complete them much faster. BP matches, on the other hand, are slower and take longer to complete, and working on them after your single player matches is the best way, we’d say, to make the most out of your energy gains.
3. The Other Game Modes Shouldn’t Be Ignored
There are other game modes as well that you should be working on in PES Card Collection, namely Skill Match, Elevens Match, and Training Match. The first two modes are good ways to improve the stats of your players and win new goodies. Meanwhile, the latter mode will reward you with special items that you can use to train your players quickly. So while the heart of the game is in single player and PvP, you also have to play the other game modes so you’re always ensured of a regular stream of special items, and ensured that your players are in the best possible shape ahead of a match.
4. Play Your Star Players Most Of The Time
This should go without saying, but for the benefit of discussing this tip in depth, we should advise you that it’s always best that you focus on playing your rarer players with high star values. These are the real game-changers you want to prioritize, and you will be needing them anyway when you play Elevens matches. Work on these rarer players when upgrading and training them, and prioritize them ahead of your weaker, more common players.
Speaking of common players, you will unlock your fair share of them as you keep on playing the game, but over time, you will find yourself adding more rare players to the mix. As you can see, there really isn’t much sense in upgrading players you won’t really be needing after all — wait for the rare players to arrive before investing a lot of money into a common player!
5. Earn More Coins By Selling Common Players
What would be the use for one-star players if you can’t plausibly make them better as you progress through the game? It’s easy — these players are better off getting sold. Even two- or three-star players are worth selling if they won’t even be included in your reserves team. Training existing players costs money, with the cost of training increasing progressively as players get rarer, so you don’t want any useless players in your team taking up space — sell them so that you can get something out of them.
6. Other Tips For Lower-Star Players
You already know that you can sell your lower-rarity players in order to get some coins for training. So what else can you do to those common players instead of having them rot away on your roster?
One thing you can do is to use common players to train your starters. But take note that the operative word here is “can,” and not “should.” Sacrificing your commons in order to trade the rares is best done in PES Card Collection once you’ve been playing the game for quite some time. As you have training items for your players, it’s ultimately better to use those items rather than sacrificing players. The costs are going to turn out the same anyway, so you wouldn’t really want to spend both money and players for the sake of training. Playing matches and using special items is always, at least at first, the best way to go about this.
As for a definite “don’t” when it comes to dealing with common players, you should never, ever fuse identical players. While the good thing about fusion is that it gives players extra bonuses, they won’t be worth it, say, if you’re fusing two one-star players, as the resulting player still won’t be good enough to cut it in your starting lineup. Save fusion for the heavy hitters and you’ll be in good shape.
7. Card Packs Offer Better Value
You can buy new cards in PES Card Collection, but the best way to do this would be to buy card packs. This is a good move because you’ll get one extra draw — take note that in the pack system, everything is random, so think of that extra draw as a bonus chance in case you keep coming up with duds with your regular draws! And as a bonus tip of sorts, you should also be on the lookout for those special events. These event are another good place to go if you want to get better, rarer players for your team, and to get them with more bang for your buck, may it be common or premium currency.
8. How To Complete More Goals In PvP
Lastly, let’s take a look at PvP mode one more time, and answer a question a lot of you might have been wondering about. How can you achieve more goals in this game mode? For starters, the “goals” we’re talking about here aren’t literal goals on the soccer field, but rather quests or objectives that gift you with rewards for completion.
Changing your tactic could be just what you need to bail yourself out of a tight situation in some cases. For instance, one goal will ask you to score with anyone who doesn’t play forward — a defender or a midfielder, in other words. What you can do here is to choose a tactic that features extra midfielders, or an attacking midfielder or two, with only one forward in both options. Your forward will still be the first option when it comes to scoring, but there will also be a greater chance that your attacking midfielders will pick up the slack and take some shots at the net during the match.
So with that said, always be wary of the goals in PvP mode, and think out of the box — all it could take is a simple change in tactic, or a small change to an existing one, in order to achieve the goal.