Everyone rejoice! Baseball is back!

Tomorrow the regular season starts, and with it, another season of Topps Bunt. Yesterday, among the feeding frenzy around the release of the first signature, the contests were also made live for Sunday.

There were 3 contests that were launched, one that uses fantasy style scoring and two that are more traditional Bunt contests. Now that we have an idea how some of the contests are going to be set up, ill walk you through what the best approach is.

Daily Fantasy Style

Cost: 5000
Plays: 1
Eligibility: All
Top Prize: Purple Boosts
Playability: MUST PLAY

Whenever you see a DFS style contest, its in your best interest to play. They are easy to setup, easy to participate in, and they dont require much effort. For tomorrow, the slate is pretty small, so its a lot of different choices for six teams worth of players.

If you have the pitchers or hitters for the contest in blue, orange or higher, play those based on the likelihood that they will produce positive points. Hitters that are going to strike out a lot will hurt. Players that get on base a lot will get you positive points, and all you need is 100 to get your coins back.

For pitchers, its all about recognizing that they are not going to go the full game they usually would go on opening day. Six innings is a common first outing of the year, just getting them into the swing of things. Hitters will be going much more closer to full speed, so they arent a bad play.

In terms of playing along, you only have one mulligan and you should definitely use it. If you play a pitcher and he is getting rocked, take him out. If you see someone looks great at the plate, switch them in. Other than the one card you can switch, your lineup is locked.

NOTE: confirm all your cards in your lineup will be playing before hitting save. If you hit save and they arent playing, you dont get to take them out.

Free For All Contest (Bunt Style)

Cost: Free
Plays: Unlimited
Top Prize: 25k
Playability: MUST PLAY

This is literally the best deal of the day. Free contest and a huge prize just for scoring 100 points. This is literally the “intro to Bunt” contest, and you should play even if you are a Bunt veteran. Placing higher in contests gets you XP, and getting XP will get you access to better contests, more prizes and rewards for the levels.

This contests will feature all the cards for the teams playing and if you want to score, you will need to switch as the games go along. All three should be nationally televised, and that means you will get a great opportunity to see how far the live TV feed will be ahead of the Bunt API feed. If the TV is only a few seconds ahead of the scoring, its going to be a much different year for playing points. Much less time to switch in guys and much shorter time to avoid negative points.

If it is like it was in previous years, it should be at least a play or two ahead, which is great for switching in guys who make big scoring plays or do something that will get negative points.

NOTE: If you have guys in your lineup and the points havent hit the app API yet, you need to wait. Keep hitting refresh until the points accumulate. If a player is not in your starting lineup when the points hit, you will not get the points.

WS Rematch (Special Contest)

Cost: 2500
Plays: Unlimited
Top Prize: Value Pack
Playability: HIGH

This will be the first “special type” contest of the year, and will be limited to just Royals and Mets. This will also be your first experience playing two contests at once, as the free for all will be going at the same time.

You will need to make all switches on both contests almost at the same time, so make sure that you go through and switch both lineups with each scoring play. All you have to do is score over 100 points to get the prize, but you will not get your coins back.

Being that a base value pack is 15k, paying 2500 for one isnt a bad idea at all. Similarly, the XP for the contest will be worth playing for as well. The only reason I say this isnt a must play is because you need to have Royals and Mets or you cant do anything in this setup.

When the full slate kicks in on Monday, look for a bunch more types of contests to play. As we see with these, its as much about reading through the rules ahead of time as anything, so that is of the utmost importnace. Shoot me a message on Twitter if you have more questions I didnt cover.