Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is get each of the players on the team to improve in the various skill areas so that they can compete in games more effectively. This is done by practicing weekly and working on specific areas of their game. Improvements from periodic activities comes in two different, but similar ways:
- Specific activities that you choose that level up specific areas: For example, if you choose the dumbbell activity, that levels up batting power, so all of your players will get a little bump to their batting power.
- General practice for the period: All players will raise all skill areas by some amount over the course of a week’s practice. If that amount pushes them over the amount required to get another point/level in that area, then the point total will increase.
Players will improve by other non-practice, non-game means as well, such as consuming items, reading a book, using a piece of equipment like a glove or cleats/spikes, and other events like birthdays.
Selecting and Executing Practices #
You’ll pick practice and other activities from the bottom of the dashboard screen shown above. Normall, practice selections will apply to an entire week, but when there is a set event during a week like a game, you’ll select practices for the period from today until that event, and results will be proportionally scaled to the amount of time in the period. So if there’s a game on Wednesday, the period is two days because there’s a game two days from now, and you’ll see about 2/7ths of the normal progression, and another period will happen between Wednesday and the following Monday with new selections and the other 5/7ths of the progression for the week.)
From left to right, the cards shown above translate to:
Throwing Check
Schedule Review
Glove skills
Practice Swings
Study Hall
Dumbbells
Convenience Store
Above the cards is a short message describing it. The highlighted one says, 「送球チェックをします。スローイング ⬆️ 」, which is really not an improvement over what’s on the card, but if you hit Start/Option, it’ll give you an even better description.
In any given period, you’ll can select three activities (five during special training camps), with varying effects. Select them with X, and once you’ve selected three cards, press X again to execute. Practice cards improve the skills noted.
Non-Practice Activities #
There are a bunch of non-practice cards as well:
- The schedule improvement card makes the activities better, either by making them more effective, canceling any negative effects (the skull icons by the cards), or buffing a card to a positive effect (music note or upward arrow icon).
- The study hall improves players scholarship levels, so they pass their classes and don’t have to stress about remedial classes, and they can have more books and skills applied to them to improve skills.
- The convenience store card lets you visit one of your former players who now works at the convenience store, and it gives you some items, like an energy drink to raise player stamina. Other location cards exist: university, sports store, home improvement store, stadium, etc., with similar benefits relating to the location
- The day-off card cancels practice for the day, raising players’ general stamina, which improves future practices. Playing this card before a practice card in the set of three gives an additional bonus.
- The manager card lets you tell the club manager to clean up the club room (possibly finding an item like a baseball card to give to a player), tend to the grounds (to level it up and make practice more effective), or a couple of other actions.
Card Cost #
The card cost is shown below the card. You can select cards that total equal to or less than the remaining cost for the period (see the top-right section above). Your team will recover a certain cost at the end of the period, less than the total amount, so if you spend all the remaining cost, next period will start with some amount below the max cost. So be careful about how you spend the points and budget a little bit so you don’t run low when you need them.
Selecting the three activity cards will remove them from the collection. Additionally, the remaining card furthest to the left will be discarded. Remaining cards will move to the left and become less costly as well as less effective. New cards will be dealt in from the right.
Card Combinations and Sequences #
Certain sequences and combinations will give a bonus to effectiveness. Two combinations are as follows:
-
The Day Off card followed by any on-field practice card
The day after an off day will provide a bonus to whatever the practice type is. If you want to play the Day Off card and a non-practice card, play them in order properly: 1. Day Off, 2. On-Field Practice, 3. Non-Practice.
Day Off
Take the day off to rest and recover
Dumbbells
Pump some iron and work on your power
Visit the University
Go to the university and see one of your former players -
The Watch Game/Spectate card followed by any on-field practice card
Same bonus. Apparently, watching another game will inspire your players to find more meaning in the practice.
There are several combinations that give non-standard effectiveness besides these, so watch for the game to show you a notification to that effect.
Strategies #
Doubles and Triples #
Two identitcal practice cards will mutually increase each other’s efficiency when executed together. You’ll see a small upward pointing carat/arrow above the cards, and the edges will radiate. If you have two “dash” cards, for example, you can play them both in the same period and get somewhat more than 2x benefit from each. So make sure you play them together for the biggest benefit.
Managing Cost Points #
Be careful spending cost points for the period. If you burn through all of them (i.e., 0 points remaining after executing), you won’t recover back to the max amount, and you’ll start the next period somewhat lower than max cost points. Because the leftmost unselected card is always discarded, you might lose the opportunity to play your doubles, or you might be forced to play a skull card to play a double because you don’t have enough cost points to play something better.
Also, if you have a two pairs in the hand, you can’t play them all in the same period, and you’ll need to make sure that you have enough cost points the next period to do everything you want to do.
When you get to the camp periods (if you don’t make it into the advanced tournaments), you can play five cards instead of three, and if you’re not very careful in managing the points available, you’ll run out and only be able to run three or four cards in that week.
Optimize Cost Point Expenditure #
On the other hand, the higher cost activities yield more attribute improvement for your players, so you also shouldn’t play only 0-1 point cards just to save the cost points. Figure out how many cost points you recover from week to week and unless you really want to play a certain low-cost card, choose a combination of cards that leaves you starting at max cost or max-1 the next period.
Let’s say that the team recovers seven out of nine cost points per period. When starting from max cost points, everything else being equal, I should be spending 6-8 points in a period to maximize the return on the practices and activities. There’s no point in only spending 3 points unless those cards are really the types of cards I wanted to play because the higher cost activities are so much more effective.
Learn the Activity Sequence Bonuses #
Try the card sequences from Card Sequences as well as other sensible combinations to learn what bonuses you can get. Any time you can get a more effective week is a good development week. Any time you play the Day Off card, make the next one a strong practice card.