Top current Huddle to pull for Crosstrade
Most players in Huddle have gone into hiding or save credits in the offseason mode so traffic is down BUT there are a couple of things still being chased. Legends Marathons Avoid LIMITED. Guaranteed packs=no trade value Brave the Elements, Archives, Legends, Signature, Splash **RIVALRIES** these are the choke point for the weekly marathons as they have TWO cards to collect each Friday and most players will be skint. Save your credits and throw at any of these and you have good Crosstrade potential but if you can pull Rivalries they will be beating down your door. Other than that you might want to consider saving up, Stadium club is coming soon and the set is likely to be a monster and it is a VERY highly regarded set coming to Digital. People are going to be going wild for these and anything you can pull when they hit will be hot crosstrade bait! My journey through the season taught me a lot about the ins and outs of Huddle. Learning is fun so here are some random things I picked up on the way. Top 6 things I learned about Huddle Homers can be a pain Homers are the players who are completely loyal to their team. They are single minded in their devotion to that team and will try to break your set in a heartbeat if it has a player from their team on it. One of the biggest contributing factors to the low completion rate of Huddle sets with awards is the Homer factor. They can be impossible to trade within app because often if you look for a counter, every single other card in their stack is their beloved team’s players. Homers can be gold The same factors that make them a giant pain to trade within app on Huddle makes them GREAT for crosstraders. They will overpay through the nose from other apps to get their guys. Skate has no Steelers. Boring. Slam has no Steelers. Worthless. Bunt has no Steelers. I hate it. TWD has no Steelers. Oh wait, they have Zombie Steelers. I need those…… Some of the traders are straight up assholes As bad as some traders are on SWCT and some of the other apps, Huddle traders within the app are second only to Kick in my experience in sheer horribleness. No matter how specific you are about what you are offering and what you are seeking you will get these totally random offers that make no sense, quite often trying to break a set you have award ready or completed with award. Offering a haystack of garbage for a 5-10 count card is routine. Trades you look at and either laugh at or get mad about. And these aren't noob mistake trades I'm talking about. These are traders with 1000+ trades. They KNOW they are being assholes, they just do not care (because they are assholes). If you have a locked card, they will send 1:1s asking if you can unlock it so they can make an offer on it. If you agree to do so, see above. They will send a horrible offer that makes you want to stick fondue forks in their eyes. They are some of the most honorable crosstraders you will find I have trouble jibing this one with a lot of what is above but I found crosstrading with Huddle players incredibly easy and was really surprised at how honest and downright nice they were to trade with and I traded a LOT over the course of the season. I had a number of times where they accepted first without even having to talk about who would. When the offer was good they’d accept without a quibble. Very chill. Contests can be a lot of fun It is time consuming but once you get the hang of it, it can be kind of exciting to play the contests along with the games, trying to get all the scoring plays in when there are 5-6 games going at once can be a blast when you are hitting on all cylinders and the app is behaving itself. Breaking the tape on a top 50 win is a rush and it’s fun to see those instant awards minutes after the game has ended. The contest feeds are also where you will see some of the funniest banter and trash talking between the respective teams Homers. Fun stuff. Contest prize cards are practically worthless (except to homers) Contest cards seem to be perceived as completely worthless in app as they are basically free. The only market for them seems to be folks who just missed the slot on a player they wanted trying to trade up or as kickers in other trades to Homers. I accumulated a monster pile of award cards but since I have no home team to root for (The Jaguars? Uh, no.) they don’t mean much to me and apparently most people in the app agree with my assessment. Offering them in trades even with low counts and signatures will most often get you a decline unless you include them as kickers.
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The NFL season wrapped up in grand fashion with a riveting final game that literally came down to the wire and beyond as the Patriots overcame a 25 point deficit to win in the first overtime in Super Bowl history. Behind the headlines a lesser known battle was being fought in the Huddle app as the highly regarded Bishop_Eli overcame a 60,000 point deficit to win Huddle’s Playoff Challenge. It’s a weeks long cumulative series of contests where players pit their best scoring cards against each other in real time that requires a major commitment of time and resources to even come close. Bishop_Eli’s final score took the win by less than 400 points.
Now that things have settled down He was kind enough to take some time and reflect on it all. First off Congratulations! That was a tight finish for the Playoff challenge. What was your Super Bowl Sunday like in terms of the emotion as the game progressed? Super Bowl Sunday was a mixed bag as far as my emotions went. On the one hand I was fired up for the contest, but more for it to be over than the prospect of winning. I have a wife and kid and play fantasy etc. and usually like to spend Sundays with friends and family enjoying the games. These contests don't allow for that to play at the highest level, so in some respects I was just happy knowing it was almost over! Going into the game I was 60k behind "Dupes4Dupes", and I had been tracking his boost collection so knew it would be a tall task to overcome that hole. I did have a substantial advantage at a few spots though and early on those guys made some big plays like Deion Jones for Atlanta, as I opened up a bit of a lead in the premium contest I realized it was possible to catch him in overall as well. At that point my palms started sweating, the looks from my wife got more sidewise and I basically stopped watching the game all together. In order to play all the plays I need to keep open Gamecast to see who made each official tackle, and reloading those means no eyes on the TV. As the game finished up I was frustrated because I didn't pay as much attention to the free contest and that almost cost me in the overall, I wrapped up the premium fairly early and was fired up about that and was able to watch the finish of the game, which was nice as it ended up being in my opinion the best Super Bowl of all time. All that being said, when the game finished the overall leaderboard still showed me behind by about 10k points... it wasn't until 5-6 min after the game that they updated the last White TD and I realized I won! My wife game me a hug, I didn't fall asleep for hours and it was all worth it. Were you rooting for either team or did you not have a “dog in the fight”? I didn't have a dog in the fight, I'm a Dolphins fan though so by default I root against the Pats, it's not life and death for me though so I was happy to see a good game more than anything. I saw a fair amount of trash talking in the Feeds for the Championship Weekend games. Some of it was kind of harsh or maybe I’m just a big wuss. Is that all in fun in Huddle? For those that weren't on the premium contest boards for the AFC championship game, a little background on what happened. I was leading the entire contest and then at the end of the game Ben Roethlisburger threw a TD pass to a player without base cards (WR's score more than QBs so if you have a full page of WR and QBs its almost always better to play the WR) and user T44JRA who had a boatload of top Ben boosts passed me to win the contest, top prize was 2 1/1 Tom Brady sigs. In my admitted stupidity I took to the boards to complain about it, knowing full well that a couple things would happen. 1. No one cares, or wants to hear people at the top complain. And, 2. I was the only person that knew "Dupes4Dupes" gave T44JRA the majority of those boosts for the sole purpose of beating me, so my complaints would fall on deaf ears. As for the how and why behind this, again a bit of a story there. The how I knew was simple, I'm a bit of a nerd when I set my mind to these things and at the start of the playoffs I had decided to make a serious run at first place. I figured it would be best to track where I was as far as boosts go so I made a spread sheet of every player that had a "playoff base" boost released during the postseason. You can play 11 of the same player at once so my spreadsheet listed all the boosts 10x and up, the number I had at each and my goal was to get 11 of each of those players. I made this during conference championship week because that's when the started releasing 1/1 awards, and I knew T44 and Dupes would be my main competition so I recorded not just my own but their boosts as well. So it was a simple matter of looking at their inventory during the game and seeing all of the top boosts of Dupes gone in the 4th quarter and shifted over to T44. This is not unique to huddle, I know people do this on Bunt and UFC as well and I'm sure on skate... people collude to have one guy win, especially if they're out of the contest themselves. In this case T44 and myself were about 100k points ahead of Dupes and he had know chance of catching us so he gave his boosts to T44 to help him win. In and of itself I wouldn't have a problem with this, one friend helping another. The reason I took to the boards, and to be clear I shouldn't have, is that all of us have a bit of a history. Those guys are a part of a private trade/chat group for all of these games. One of the leaders of that group has a problem with me, simple as that. He has sent me a number of trades in game, all one sided, usually I just decline, but recently I declined with a comment along the lines of "how do you have a 5 star rating when you always send trades like this." He apparently is a lurker on the SWCT boards and saw me posting for help with contests and took issue with that. In the trade chat he said he doesn't like me begging and was going to make it his mission to see I lose in the contests. I have a friend in their chat group who informed me of this, and sent me screen shots of this guy posting to the group (60 or so people) to give all their huddle to T44 and Dupes and to take me out because I'm an ass. "Fuck that guy, anyone can win but him" I believe were the words. I had never personally had an issue with T44 or Dupes so I reached out to them before the championship games and let them know, no hard feelings but I was aware of what this guy was saying about me. This is why I was a little more stung that usual about the collusion, when in actuality it was probably just one guy out of contention helping his friend, on the plus side it motivated the hell out of me to grind for higher boosts for the Super Bowl and was indirectly responsible for my win, so it's not all bad! Moral of the story, don't complain on anonymous chat boards or games, people will tear you up with no context and little remorse. Also, a PSA, Topps doesn't care, I brought the collusion to their attention, provided screen shots of the inventory movement and they said "We can't comment on what is done to others accounts", so if this happens to you, you're SOL. Ouch. Kind of makes the win doubly sweet I guess! How big was Crosstrading for you in terms of resources for the game throughout the season, I understand you made some fairly painful sacrifices in SWCT particularly. Crosstrading was the only reason I was able to complete, simple as that. And, not just Topps apps, I made trades on Quidd, Gridiron, Dunk, Puppy and Kitten Cards as well. The two things that helped on those was finding people that would basically pull just for me, I've made some friends on each game and was pulling whatever they needed, I started this months ago so I was able to have a number of people save millions of coins over the months. In the end Star Wars accounted for my most notable cross trades as I already had a big collection there. I could name at least 20 people that I traded full sets to for huge amounts of coins... things like Nightbrothers set, Reflections, S1 vintages/wv, full sets of GM, shred, elegant weapons, premiere etc. Had it not been for cross trading and the relationships I made through the game and places like Reddit it would not have been possible. What was your focus this year in Huddle, were you also collecting sets for awards or mainly focusing on boosts for contests? My main focus this year was boosts, but I think Huddle did a great job with their sets especially marathons, and you've seen the other apps follow a similar 5 week/award format. That allowed me to collect a few sets I thought looked good... silver sigs, silver limited, splash and a few waves of archives and rising stars. On top of that there were some really nice sets like Inception that I couldn't pass up, a lot of those same people that helped me with the final playoff push in contests also helped with pulling sets like Inception, I finished the full gold base set which was a 40 card 55cc set. As you've seen people don't go for sets like they do in Star Wars so it's nice finishing sets like that knowing you'll end up with a very low cc award. For instance I finished purple bowman sigs and ended up getting 3 2cc award cards including a Dak Prescott, overall that wasn't too difficult of a set to complete and I got a card I could get $50 for, if I sold cards of course :). Also during the season there is no incentive for finishing higher than top 25 in any contest and that's not too hard to do with minimal work, so I could focus on sets during the season. So after taking the biggest win in the game this year are you going to go for it again next year? Dynasty? Finally, 1% chance I do it next year! The only way I would is if they have a similar postseason setup but with fantasy style contests. The unlimited play just take too much time away from family and I have no desire to do that again. Thanks again for taking a few minutes and May the Force be with You! Opinions vary but these are my top 5 favorites from this season’s offerings on Topps Huddle for the 2016-2017 season.
Top 5 Finest 3 Waves of fun. Top players on an exciting dynamic designed set, great action photographs and chase levels for whatever you are into. Legends cards for the old school fans, relics and a wide array of signatures. A solid design and look throughout. I’ll be pecking away at completing the sigs from this set for a while. Very nice signature awards for the base sets gave a very strong incentive to chase! Fast delivery of the first two waves awards then a bit of a gap on wave three awards. Signature Series 2017 This could have been my number one overall as I collected more of these in so many different variants throughout the season than anything in the app. The frame design lent itself to a number of uses both in the Marathon as well as various events like Thanksgiving, Christmas and into the playoffs in a Red vs Blue scheme for AFC and NFC respectively and into the mack daddy realms of the Platinum 1/1s. They also featured a bunch of Legends sigs with this design and they all look amazing. Tip of the hat to a design that was a true workhorse but still had enough flair to not get boring. Gypsy Queen I didn’t love these at first and the size of the set in two waves was daunting to say the least but it’s a perennial favorite in both Huddle and Bunt and features variety of players past and present side by side in a style that just fits. Another unified card design that looks great on the sheet and a fast chase to very nice awards. I tried to resist but they won me over and drew me in. Topps Now Although the base cards encompass a set that is absolutely enormous and there were no awards the photography and the moments captured in the set really tell the story of the 2016-17 season in a compelling way and the easy odds and easy trading at drops make them incredibly attractive and just fun to do. And the Signature and Relics and their various rare variants made them some of the most interesting cards in the app week to week. Even though I did not collect all the base on these it was impossible for me to resist cracking a few packs every week and they even managed to get my wallet out a few times too. Retro Originals and Then One thing I think that Topps Jer in conjunction with Topps Digital’s Designers did absolutely right was the incredible retro sets this year that not only honored the history of the NFL but also more importantly broke the Year to Year mold of Huddle as an app. In the past it has seemed that very few Huddle players care very much about cards from the previous year and tend to try and dump them off on new players for today’s hot stuff. One aspect of that is of course the year to year value of cards as tools for scoring points in the contests which renders cards basically obsolete as soon as the season ends and the following season is basically a reset of the arms race for contests each week where the most well equipped users with current players at their disposal will prevail. These retro sets like Originals and Superbowl Then I feel will have value to collectors beyond this season. Having come from the Star Wars Card Trader there is an understanding of a collector’s mentality at play here that if their guess is right will serve to grow the app by giving more lasting value to the players from year to year. That is by no means a sure thing but I feel they have made a very smart move. And yeah, I’m new to the app. I don’t know everything but it’s easy to look back at the last few years’ worth in All Cards and see the incredible difference between those cards and what was offered this year. This was a breakout year for this app and if they can maintain the balance they have achieved this year then many of the cards from this year are likely to be every bit as sought after by Huddle Players next year as cards like Vintage and Nightbrothers are in Star Wars Card Trader. An amazing finish to an amazing season! And what a freaking Super Bowl! Incredible football game! Cubs win! Cubs Win!
I might have drank too much last night. For a noob scrub I think I did pretty respectable coming in at #31 in the Playoff Challenge. Some gave all they had for much higher but I’m happy where I ended up and most important I had a lot of fun with Huddle this football season and I learned a LOT. Looking forward to my Topps Mini Helmet to join the other junk on my desk! In addition to the surprising comeback to win by the Pats, well known and well regarded Bishop_Eli managed to overcome a 100k point deficit going into the Super Bowl to scrape out the win by only 380 points. That is a RAZOR thin margin in a contest that encompassed the entirety of the post season and he did not do it alone! A final push of support from folks in the SWCT Reddit and some major sacrificial cross trading on his part resulted in the arsenal of boosts he needed to take the win. Even then it requires absolute second by second diligence and making every single possible move during the course of the game to take that kind of win and I can only imagine the stress that characterized his Super Bowl vs the party that most people were having just watching the game and drinking mad brew dogs. His closest competitor might be regretting something as small as a bathroom break or ill timed phone call today. A great many folks were literally pulling for Bishop_Eli on the final day of the season and many were incredibly generous to me as well. MP3PO dropped a TON of saved coins and pretty much gave it all away to Bishop_Eli in boosts and to me in a pile of Signatures that made it impossible for me NOT to go for the Super Bowl “Then” signature set. It was a late night of hard trading after the game but happy to report I completed the set of 21 which is insane! I stumbled across the goal line for the award this afternoon at 3:30! It is by far the craziest thing I took on this season and I'm still kind of in shock that I made it. The award came in at 16 which is on par with the recent Original mini sets. Kind of surprising actually! I really need some sleep after a crazy fun weekend and a late night. I hope to recap my season on Huddle later in the week! In other News, Slam. Damn Slam. Just….damn. They brought the Fire then dropped it into a puddle with a botched Award. Lemme splain. They issued a nice set in three variants of a popular set that runs in the Sports apps called Fire. Three variants, OE Red, 1000cc Blue and Bundle Purple. 9 cards to collect for a Signature award of Becky Lynch. Well without warning today they just issued the award. Then said oops and said well we’ll reopen the award deadline for February 12th. So yeah. If you’ve got an alt, enjoy that second sig. And if you’ve been scrapping and saving and pulling and trading to try to complete the set, enjoy that high card count on that award. SMH. Huddle has gotten REALLY quiet, like creepy quiet. Like creepy clown lurking in the bushes quiet.
Topps has been throwing out all kinds of bait to try to sap the will and in some cases has managed to siphon off some coins but for the most part the few folks still there are really really focused on the Super Bowl contests and ignoring even the shiniest glitteriest baubles. It’s amusing in some ways to see Topps Jer roll out some of his same playbook from SWCT circa winter 2015 with stuff like the rainbow of boost variants and even going back to the old chestnut of the Spectrums, or in this case Rainbow boosts. These featured a number of still active and a raft of inactives but are still being sought after by the homers because they are locked at 18 card count each. Original keeps trudging along but hopefully this will be the last drop. They stumbled badly with a change in the way they did awards in one of the set leaving a number of people out of the race barely before it started. The award was handed out 36 hours after the set dropped and LONG before they had sold through in packs. It was incredibly stupid that the one time Topps handed out an award quickly it seemed specifically designed to screw over the players. Hey, speaking of awards (another Pulitzer worthy segue) they STILL have not handed out the wave three or Overall awards for any of the Marathons in Huddle. Today is the end of the waiting and it should be exciting as award after award drops to see where the counts came in on the overalls. Oh well, at least Huddle hasn’t found a way to make every damn award with Yoda. Yet. The Mini Marathon from last week must have been at least a moderate success as it has continued into another week's worth. Many seemed to be caught off guard (even though it was in the first transmission on these) about Friday’s Rivalries marathon being in the mix as these are TWO cards that drop with 1:30 odds on the same day. I saw a number of comments alluding to people bailing out so it should be interesting to see where these awards come in numbers wise. The Steve Young/Troy Aikman awards sold out at 170 and 180 and based on completion rates in the past I would not be surprised to see the award count in the 50 count range or less. It was a real vanilla nut tap. They also dumped out another batch of Allen and Ginter, a set I just don’t care for but at least they had free daily cards to collect so that’s something to do. They also crapped out more Mood cards, another set I just do not like the look of. I was bored and threw at a couple bundles for the sigs then flip flopped them around for something to do. And last but not least the Super Bowl cards started to trickle out with a batch of Super Bowl base that are nice looking and easy at 1:5 odd and come with 12x boosts of only Super Bowl players. Sadly no award for a rather large set and 12x is kind of meh in a market saturated with higher boosts of the big players and with everyone knowing there will be MUCH higher as the boosts go to plaid this weekend! See you at the Super Bowl! I won’t actually be at the actual Super Bowl but I plan to sit really close to the TV when Lady Gaga is on and jump around like an idiot. |
Gregg Keefer
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