PES 2016. How to start myClub with a bang.

Last week I received my first ever internet pre-order game, Pro Evolution Soccer 2016. Normally this time of year I’m at a supermarket at midnight picking up FIFA but the shambles that was FIFA 15 really didn’t inspire me, whereas PES 2015 did.

I bought PES 2015 in February 2015 (after giving up with FIFA) and started playing its myClub mode. After six months of enjoyment, great players that I could only dream of owning in FIFA and very little in-game frustration, I knew I made the right decision jumping to Konami and away from EA, so far 2016 has not disappointed.

This ‘guide’ will give you an idea of how I started in myClub 16. If you want a year of PES enjoyment you’d be wise considering this ‘guide’ as a potential way to start/keep afloat.

Before we start, there are two types of in game currency, GP (like coins) and stars, (FIFA points).

Much like on FIFA FUT you begin PES myClub with very little. However unlike FIFA there is no player/consumable market. The only way to access players without paying is to play games; each game giving you 1 free scout. That scout then lets you play roulette with a spinning wheel of coloured balls; black, gold, silver, bronze, white. Black being the best.

So let’s say you have 5 scouts, you spin them all and you get 1 of each type of ball. Black balls are the best (80+ overall), gold are second (75-80), silver is third best (65-74) and bronze and white are under 65. Most people who play the game want all the black balls, but there’s a cost trade off.
In PES contracts have a set price, unlike FIFA where you buy them on a marketplace.

Neymar for example might cost you 300GP a match, fine, but if you have 11 players of Neymar’s quality and your team earns 1800GP a game, you’re soon going to run out of GP to play the whole team! You can of course pay for them using real money and the coins system, but I won’t be doing that and any money I put in will be for a manager. Though you don’t need to do that for a while as unlocking tasks gets you loads of coins. Save them.

So that is a basic look at the player economics, to succeed you need to have enough GP to pay for contracts.

But that offers the question, how am I going to afford all my stars contracts in one team? With some planning it’s possible.

I want to give some background to the rules of success –

Players can be trained; you might get a level 1 Neymar. His normal level is 30 but you can train up to level 50. Prices of contracts increase as the player increases his level. So does his ‘cost’ to the manager.

Managers have contracts but also costs,  a cost stat which translates to your teams strength. If your manager can only manage up to 250 costs then you can’t have a team of Neymars whose cost might be 80 each. You need lower rated players. Or a blend of players, I believe they call it a team.

Managers also have contracts, though they can be extended by hitting targets like X amount of points, or you can pay for them with GP or coins. When you get a manager they always come with a generous 25 game contract, renewal is 25 games too.

So with these things in mind you need a manager who can actually afford to manage your team.

This is my manager –

And this is my main online team -

If you look at the team I have high team spirit, 1020 team strength, all the players are low rated silver balls and Ventura who is selected is at level 22 and 71 rated. His maximum at level 30 is 73. He also has a manager cost of 6. He has 46 contracts.
The manager (on the left) can manage costs of 250 but my team spend is only 96.

My team started life at a much lower cost but by playing with them their ‘team strength’ or the players themselves have improved and so now they cost more to manage, as do their individual contracts.
However I planned for that and my manager can probably manage this team even if all players hit level 50.

I have my team but with every game they get more and more expensive, so I pick players I know I can afford.

PES myClub is a long term project and before settling on these players I played around 100 games and spun 100 scout balls to get a team I thought could win games. To do this I played tournaments against the CPU and used an ever rotating bronze/white ball team.
I also developed a second silver ball team that I use for SIM games. Same manager.

But I’ve still not told you about building up GP with minimum effort. Well here’s how I have 300,000GP, over 1200 coins and three really fun main teams. After 7 days. Btw I work full time ;)

Three competitions are your friend, all against the CPU. The ‘Novice Cup’ the ‘Team Spirit Challenge’ and ‘SIM seasons’.
You could go and win each tournament; it’s only 3 games in Novice and Team Spirit. Plus you get a 500GP bonus if you win them. But if you’re just looking to maximise time, team spirit and GP you’ll only play two games of each tournament.

The reason? The third game you actually have to play to win, the first two you only have to play until you score, then pass to your free player and put the pad down.
When you’ve played those two games exit the tournament and start the other one.

So this is what you do, you play those two tournaments religiously with your most useless players got from the free spins. If you score a few with low rated player you will gain you around 1780gp every game, plus a scout.

After 10 games you’ll have around 18000GP and 10 scouts. The next decision is up to you.
You can either renew your crap players contracts or open the 10 scouts. I do a combination of both.

Renewing cheap player’s costs between 350 and 500GP each. If you renew your whole team it will cost you around 5500GP so you’re left with 12500GP profit and 10 scouts. Not a bad return.

Can you guess where I am going with this?
That’s right, play, play, play. If you put the time in you can end up with a major amount of useful GP.

So you’ve now got a lot of GP, you are building up your scouts and you have some great players. Should you spin the best agents for 10000 coins? Well it’s up to you, I haven’t spun one top agent (apart from the Day One specials) and this is the team I have but haven’t played with.

Notice the same manager from earlier cannot afford to manage this team. My team spirit is 99 but when I add Neymar it all becomes too costly. The bench counts toward your final cost.
Notice that Neymar has a cost of 44, whereas Ventura from earlier has a cost of 6. Top players cost a lot more.

Certainly not a bad team, and here is the second ‘team’ that eventually I'll use casually or in SIM games with a view to using players as trainers.

It just needs a few more players, not sure about Chamakh at centre back.

It’s a week since release and I have a whole season ahead to add stars, why waste GP now?

Instead I’ve used my GP on other things.
1. Extra player slots
2. Extra scouting slots
3. Player contracts for players I am committed to playing with/developing

Player slots because you get so many scouts through playing you might as well use them. Scouting slots, because at some point you’ll have too many players and then run out of scouting slots, and contracts because as players levels increase their contract costs go up.

As an example, after my 75 rated level 1 Lampard went to level 2 he cost me an extra 20 coins per contract. Now at level 3 he is costing me 1780 GP to renew and not 1680 GP. I know I’m going to play with him so I put on 50 contracts This will save me GP in the long term.

However this is where planning comes in, shortly after putting the contracts on Lampard I got Renato Augusto, a great AMF.  If I’d have got Iniesta I might not have used Lampard so I’d have wasted all that GP on his contracts. I then understood the importance of being patient.

With this new found knowledge I built an affordable good silver team for online play (the first team), while picking up GP and scouts using a low silver, bronze and white ball team.

Many of the players in my high silver team started at an overall rating below 68 and came with low contract costs. Because of that I increased their contracts to 60.
All in all I spent around 30,000 GP on the silver teams contracts and now I have a team which can play 60 games without needing a contract extension.
For now this will be my main online team and I only need to win 19 games to break even.

A good tip is to put your online teams players on your novice and team spirit teams bench, their team spirit will improve with that manager so if you use him again for the online team they will automatically have high team spirit (chemistry, if you’re coming from FIFA).

So to recap, the ‘farming’ of GP from the novice and team spirit tournament allows you to start building your club. While doing this you build up GP and players from the free scouts and when the time is right you’ll have enough GP to give your top players a lot of contracts.
The maximum contracts you can give is 100 (thanks Geninho from the PESfan forums), so kitting out a top blackball team with 100 contracts will cost anywhere between 200,000 and 350,000GP. You also get a free contract renewal with every winning season, though these can only be used when a player is out of contract.

In PES you’re rewarded for merging your purist love of football and gaming. The game requires planning and thought like a good RPG and like the real game a successful team doesn’t always have to be bought.
This article barely scratches the surface of the game, with training a major aspect of any long term plan. However if you farm and plan at the start you’ll have a great year of PES ahead of you and you’ll wonder why you ever spent your free time trading for cards when you could’ve been playing for greatness.

Update -
Recently I've been SIMing games and moving up the divisions, at division 8 I am gaining 2000GP per win. While you're not guaranteed to win every game it's a good way to farm and use up those players you don't care much for. This season I've won all my games and drawn 2. A nice return.

Also the higher your team the more coins you will get so consider putting your highest rated player on the bench when you farm. If it's a level 4 team you'll get near 2200GP instead of around 1800GP.