How to complete SBCs for fewer coins

What an SBC is

An SBC asks for an 11-card squad that meets requirements: minimum rating, chemistry, a number of players from a league, nation or rarity. When you submit, the cards leave your club and you get the reward, which can be a pack, a special card or a player pick.

Because the cards are consumed, the goal is always to use what is already sitting in your club and fill the rest with the cheapest cards on the market.

How the game calculates squad rating

Squad rating is not a plain average. The game adds up the 11 ratings, works out the average and, for every card above that average, adds the difference one more time. The total is rounded and divided by 11, always rounding down.

In practice, one card well above the rest pulls the rating up more than you would expect. Ten 84s and one 90 add up to 930; the average is about 84.5 and the 90 sits about 5.5 above it, so the corrected total becomes 935, which divided by 11 gives 85. Eleven 84s leave the squad at 84.

That is why buying 11 cards of the requested rating is almost never the cheapest route. Mixing a few slightly higher cards with several slightly lower ones usually costs less.

Fodder: which ratings to buy

Fodder is what the community calls cards bought only to spend on SBCs. Price per rating does not rise in a straight line: cards between 76 and 83 tend to sit close to the market minimum, and from 84 upwards each rating point gets much more expensive.

The FCUTeam fodder page shows the cheapest cards at each rating from 82 to 91 on your platform. The rating calculator uses those prices to test combinations and tell you which mix reaches the requested rating for the least, counting the cards you already own.

• Enter the cards you already have and can use in the SBC first.
• Let the calculator fill the rest with the cheapest fodder.
• Check league, nation and chemistry requirements before buying: the calculator only solves the rating.

When an SBC is worth it

Compare the cost of completing the challenge with what the reward is worth on the market. A tradeable player card has a reference price; a pack does not, and the expected value of a pack is almost always below the cost of bought fodder. Packs make more sense when you use cards that were already idle.

On each SBC page FCUTeam shows the estimated cost of every challenge at current prices, community votes and solutions posted by other players. If most people voted that it is not worth it and the cost is high, it is probably better to wait.

Common mistakes

Buying fodder right after a popular SBC drops is usually the most expensive moment: everyone buys the same ratings at the same time. Keeping a small stock of 83 to 86 cards bought on quiet days saves you from paying the peak.

Another mistake is using valuable tradeable cards when there were untradeable cards of the same rating in the club. Untradeables cannot be sold, so they should be the first to go into an SBC.