It can be quite daunting frustrating starting your Ultimate Team.  You want to make sure you make the right choices.  Mistakes can be costly and you don’t want to waste the precious few coins that you have.  Ultimate Team aficionado, Will Burgess, talks us through his best way to start an Ultimate Team.

Ultimate Team Starting Tips

When you start playing Ultimate Team, you start with no coins and usually a full team of bronze players, however if you are lucky you may get a silver player.  For a better start I always restart my team till I get that silver player.  If this means deleting my team and restarting 10 times, then I will.  That silver player can be the difference in a game and help you buy an all important gold  player.

Once you have played your first game you should have around 400-550 coins if you won and 300-400 if you lost.  This is a key part of silver player…  If you did well enough to earn yourself 550 coins you could discard the silver played and have enough coins to get a rare gold striker which will really help you to get those goals and with more goals comes more coins!

However if you wish to play another game and get around 1000 coins then that is also a great option.  Personally I always try to get the gold player as early as I can.  If you lost the game then you can still pick up a gold player for 350 coins on bid and 400 on bin.

Strikers Win Coins

As bad as it may sound I always try to go for a fast gold striker as soon as I can.  These players can be found anywhere, from any league but typically I look for at least 85 pace on the card.  If you have an idea in your head for what type of team you want, ignore it for your first buy and just go with the fastest striker you can buy with the coins you have.  Also ignore the formation.  You can easily sell the player on when you have no use for him anymore.

Once I have my gold player I go straight into online game play as I personally find it a lot easier and a lot more coin efficient than playing single player.  Single player still works just you will not get as many coins as if you won or even participated in an online game.

The best thing about online games is that with a 1.00+ DNF that you can still get 500+ coins if you lose and near 1000 if you win.

Maximise Coins From Games

In the game you want to try and focus on a few things:

Not conceding as you lose some coins for not keeping a clean sheet but also every goal you let in you lose more coins.

You want to aim to score 5 goals, no less and no more.  Going over wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen but you do not get more coins for scoring 28 goals that if you simply scored 5!

Once you have 5 goals try and keep the ball a lot and get as many shots on target as possible to maximise the amount of coins you get.

Start Building Your Team

The idea is to slowly build your team one at a time.  Work on getting a striker you are comfortable with first.  Making sure you are scoring goals with him and whoever you can.  Knowing your gold striker will be the most reliable you will want to pass him the ball a lot and let him shoot.

A key thing which a lot of people forget about is that bronzes can still shoot from outside the box and finish well.  The amount of times I have scored montage worthy goals with my full bronze team is unbelievable.  They can still shoot so don’t be scared.

After getting my first striker, I then like to get a CM or a CAM.  Preferably I play 4-1-2-1-2 when I first make a team then switch formation when I have a decent team and the coins to do so. It depends what team I am building but I will usually switch to a 4-3-2-1.

The best thing about playing a 4-1-2-1-2 at the start compared to any other formation is when you need it you have 5 defenders and 3 attackers going forward.

I tend to get my CAM with great passing and okay shooting or great passing and good pace (75+) for a CAM, someone like Stéphane Sessègnon.  He plays for Sunderland.  He can pass the ball but also make those runs and can shoot like a beast!

When choosing a CAM because of usually having more coins at your disposal try to get you CAM in the league/team/nationality of the team you are trying to build.

After my CAM I tend to go for a goal keeper as you may have noticed your goalie letting in easy shots or fumbling shots that you know a gold goalkeeper would have saved.  Even if my goalie is worth 350 coins, as long as he is gold I do not care as the change from a bronze to a gold goalkeeper can make the difference in a game.

Then it’s up to you what you do now…  Could go for another striker or a CB  just try to get the players you need to make the team you want.  Chemistry is important, by around a 3-4 star team you want around 70 chemistry.  Managers are not too important at the early stage but when you start hitting your 4 star teams think about getting one just for the chemistry boost.

Final Thought

The final thing I would say is NEVER quit your games!  22-0 down?  Don’t worry.  If you get to the stage of fuming just put your controller down and leave the room with you still in the game.  Come back in 10 minutes and the game should have done, you may have lost 70-0 but you will still have your DNF intact and will have earned 300+ coins.  If you lose your DNF and it is very hard for you to earn those coins.

Thanks, Will