Having covered Player Card Scarcity and Player Auctions in Part 1 & 2, I’m going to complete this initial review of Sorare by discussing Gameplay.
SO5 is the first game created by Sorare that beta-testers have been playing over the last couple of months. SO5 is best described as a Fantasy Football style game where the players in your team(s) get points for actions they make in real-life games.
Today, I’ll show you how to compose your team(s), explain the different tournaments and prizes, tell you how your players score points and then talk over strategies that can help you progress from a Beginner to Intermediate gamer!
Gameplay Basics
To compete in a Sorare SO5 Tournament:
- Compose an eligible team of 5 players
- Select your Captain
- Validate your team before the Tournament deadline
Composing Your Team
When you are logged into your account, click on the ‘Gaming Arena’ tab and you will either see the details of the latest tournament deadline and ‘Compose a Team’ button OR a list containing your team(s) with the message ‘All games have been played. Results will be updated as soon as Opta stats are complete.’
Let’s assume you can see a new Tournament deadline and you are ready to enter a team when you click ‘Compose a Team’ you’ll be faced with a click and drop screen where your chosen players get put into your preferred formation.
Your SO5 team must contain a Goalkeeper, Defender, Midfielder and a Forward and your 5th player must be any other outfield player.
To complete your team submission, decide on a Captain* by clicking the star next to their card and then press the ‘Validate’ button at the bottom of the screen. If you are creating multiple teams you may like to edit your team name to make it more memorable or funny!
*Your Captain will receive +1.0 to their Bonus Multiplier which can be very decisive in Tournaments — so choose wisely!
Tournaments & Prizes
The Gaming Arena offers both weekly and monthly tournaments for each card scarcity allowing you to enter the tournament(s) that best match the player cards you own.
Current SO5 Tournaments
To win the most prestigious tournament you will need to finish top of the ‘All Star’ Leaderboard. There are no entry restrictions to this tournament ~ you can field any 5 players, however, to stand a realistic chance of winning, you will almost certainly need to have a team comprising of Unique and Super Rare player cards.
After All-Star comes the Super Rare League which as you might guess is open to teams that include at least 1 Super Rare in their line-up (no Uniques allowed) and then finally, a Rare League where your team must consist of exactly 5 Rare Player Cards.
Sorare is expected to continuously increase the number of tournaments in-line with the growth of its users, with new tournaments offering a wide choice of eligibility criteria. (e.g. Tournament for Player Cards of a particular nationality / Tournaments for different age brackets; U21’s, over 30’s etc.)
SO5 Prizes
Part of the Sorare philosophy is that they want to balance the distribution of the games scarcest player cards. This means that certain cards can only be won via tournaments as opposed to always just going to the highest bidder at auction.
To date, a Unique card (free choice by winner) has been the main prize for finishing top of the Monthly All-Star Leaderboard and Super Rare cards have been awarded to the weekly winners of the other tournament categories.
The market value of the prizes encourages competitive gameplay and varying strategies. Unique cards have all sold between 1 ETH & 4.35 ETH, with Super Rares ranging from 0.10 ETH up to 1.05 ETH.
In recent weeks we have seen the introduction of tournaments that offer ETH and Player Card Prizes to the winners. These have been cleverly combined with pre-tournament auctions that contain the player cards from the teams involved so that you can build or strengthen your line-ups before the entry deadline.
Gameplay Scoring
To win SO5 Tournaments and Prizes, you’ll need to have players that score you points — so, how do players score you points?!
Point Scoring Actions
- General (all positions): Minutes Played, Yellow Card, Red Card, Fouls Won, Fouls Committed
- Goalkeepers: Goals, Goal Save, Penalty Kick Saved, Goal Allowed, Clean Sheet, Single Goal Match
- Defenders: Goals, Assists, Clean Sheet, Single Goal Match, Blocked Shots, Clearances, Pass Completed, Tackles, Penalty Kick Missed
- Midfielders: Goals, Assists, Shots on Target, Pass Completed, Penalty Kick Missed, Clean Sheet, Single Goal Match
- Forwards: Goals, Assists, Shots on Target, Pass Completed, Penalty Kick Missed
How are the Player/Team Scores Calculated?
Opta Sports (a leading international sports analytics company based in the United Kingdom) provide Sorare with a bespoke data feed for the licensed players and teams in their database.
Tournament data is confirmed and published in the Gaming Arena approximately 72 hours after the final game(s) have finished, with email notifications prompting you to check your team results when they are in!
Gameplay Strategies
As SO5 tournaments cater for both casual and experienced gamers, it’s probably best to first identify what type of gamer you are!
New Player
If you are new to the game, then I would suggest entering a Rare Tournament first.
Rare player cards are always available at auction on the lead up to tournament deadlines and relatively inexpensive to purchase. Whilst you will find other users that have similar player cards with slightly larger multipliers (because of their XP levels) the total point range of Rare player cards is narrower than you will find on Super Rares and Uniques and as a result, you can compete for prizes in your first week!
The Rare Tournaments are often decided by the smallest of margins with the winner often being the one who selected the right captain in amongst their heaviest scorers. If you are buying players from fellow users, it is worth factoring in the cards current XP level as the extra levels may also make a big difference when the final scores are calculated.
Intermediate Player
If you’ve successfully entered any SO5 Tournament before, I’m going to put you in the Intermediate category!
By now you’d have had the chance to get a feel for the other scarcities of tournaments and you might be considering one or more of the following:
- Improving your Rare card options
- Starting a Super Rare team
- Starting a Unique team
Improving your Rare Card Options
If you only have 5 Rare player cards in your collection and have aspirations to compete at the top of the Rare Leaderboards you are going to have to rely on luck for them to all play and score the points you will need.
By now, you’ve probably already identified a shortlist of new players you’d like to own and you might be looking to improve your chances in the next Rare tournament by submitting 2 teams. Increasing the number and quality of your Rare card options will allow you to replace injured and suspended players and if you have the right balance of positions, you can still build up their XP in your reserve team.
Starting a Super Rare or Unique team
If the attraction of owning scarcer player cards and competing at a higher level excites you, then you may quickly find yourself scouting Super Rare or Unique player cards.
There are approximately 200 Super Rare cards in circulation and they tend to be on the most popular players (either by global reputation or perceived in-game potential). In a traditional auction week there will be 10 new Super Rare cards available to purchase and the transfer market regularly offers the opportunity to buy from other users listings.
It is probably prudent to set yourself a reasonable time period to acquire a full team of 5 Super Rares, however, if you lack patience and have the budget, you can build an SO5 Super Rare team in a couple of days!
Your ability to start a Unique team will be more down to picking your moments in the weekly auctions or your ability to negotiate with existing owners. Uniques tend to be the cards that users attach themselves to either because of their initial cost or the time to indirect cost of acquiring (normally via monthly tournaments).
With that said, the potential upside to owning a Unique can be enormous. One great performance by the right Unique player card can earn you enough points to win a Tournament! (as witnessed this season by Hans Vanaken, Guillermo Ochoa and Victor Osimhen)
Gameplay Summary
Entering tournaments will instantly become second nature and as the current gameplay purposely has limitations during the beta-phase a modest collection of 25–30 mixed scarcity cards will enable you to compete in all of the main SO5 tournaments.
As more clubs and leagues are signed-up to the platform, gamers will be faced with more challenging decisions (as well as much more competition) and only then will an ‘Advanced’ category be created!
Amongst the beta-testers, there is a growing core of intermediate gamers and to fast-track yourself to compete with them and be ready for when Sorare launches publicly later this year, I’d recommend you use the summer months to learn the ropes and get yourself recognised in the communities.
A new ‘Media League’ tournament is set to start in June and I’ll document this in more detail in my next post.
If you want to discuss anything related to Sorare Gameplay, I’d encourage you to post in our Discord Community where you can gain a number of different opinions to help you make better-informed decisions.
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