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After recently bringing you some beginner’s guides to Sorare, we’ve sent one of our in-house team, Geoff, on his own journey into the card-collecting world.

Here he writes about his first experiences with the platform.

• READ MORE: What is Sorare? The ultimate Sorare beginner’s guide
• READ MORE: The beginner’s guide to Sorare cards
• READ MORE: Everything you need to know about Sorare tournaments

With the FPL season well underway and my rank hovering around 1,000,000, I recently did what I often do when I’m not happy with my FPL performance – I started playing a new Fantasy game.

Sorare has long been on my list of games to try; the format is interesting, using players from multiple leagues creates variety, and some trusted Fantasy friends have been playing for a few years and promised to point me in the right direction.

Sorare, the card-based game with Gameweekly deadlines, allows managers to pick from their collection to enter weekly competitions, attempting to outscore other Sorare managers.

Sorare is free to play, and has a separate game mode where you buy cards and compete against others who have purchased cards.

There are prizes available for those who do well in a given week in both the free and paid versions, with cards and cash (in the form of ETH, a cryptocurrency) on offer.

I was at first unsure about the blockchain/crypto element of Sorare but I picked it up quickly.
Over the course of a few articles, I’ll be sharing my experience as a complete newcomer to Sorare. I’ll provide any tips I come across to get set up, talk through my evolving strategy, and share my successes.

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Set up and intro

At its core, Sorare managers are tasked with picking the best player cards they own and entering them into tournaments.

Managers can acquire five kinds of cards: Common, Limited, Rare, Super Rare, Unique. These cards allow managers to enter different types of tournaments, at different levels and with different prizes. Common cards are free, allowing users to play for free. All tiers above Common cards are purchased using a digital Sorare wallet.

Following the steps to login [link?] I created my account, made an initial deposit, and flipped through the tabs to get to know the site. I used previous Fantasy Football Scout articles to ensure I picked things up quickly [link?].

The setup was painless and straightforward, something I appreciated as I wanted to get in right away and set up a team.

Additionally, users are given a number of ‘Daily Drops’ which can be claimed after logging in every day. These proved useful for me, with players like Sadio Mane coming into my collection, along with a surprising trio of Burnley players in Josh Cullen, Taylor Harwood-Bellis, and Bailey Peacock-Farrell.
After collecting a few cards I navigated to the Play tab, where I found upcoming tournaments and registered a team of Common players in a league appropriately called ‘Casual’.

With a firm personal favourite player in Mane, I’d begun my journey.

Going deeper

One tip I heard from experienced Sorare managers was to go for ‘Rare’ cards to play in ‘All-Star Rare’.
Basically, Rare cards are red, whilst Common are grey, Limited are yellow, Super Rare are blue, and Unique are black.

Following this advice, I started looking for red Rare cards, and found that ‘All-Star’ is just the name of a tournament, like the ‘Casual’ tournament I’d already entered.

Playing All-Star Rare, I was told, was good because managers don’t only compete with other managers – they can also win if their players perform well, regardless of how they performed in relation to other Sorare managers’ players.

Not feeling I had an edge on other managers, two ways to win sounded good to me.

I spread my initial Rare player picks across a few leagues, focusing on some players I knew well. Chris Smalling at Roma, Erlend Reitan from Rosenberg, and Victor Wanyama from CF Montreal. Lukasz Fabianksi was my lone Premier League Rare player.

Picking Smalling as my captain, I registered my team and hoped my players would come through for me.

LOOKING AHEAD

That was two Gameweeks ago, and I have a few more cards now. I’ve entered a few more tournaments this weekend and am starting to feel confident that my strategy is coming together.

In my next article in a few weeks’ time, I’ll review how my players have performed, and report on my lessons learned.

For now, I’m excited to have Sorare to look forward to every weekend, in addition to my middling FPL season.

I’ll hope for a strong Chris Smalling captaincy performance, and along with 80% of FPL managers, I’ll hope for Erling Haaland captaincy returns.

TRY SORARE TODAY

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