It’s becoming a tradition for me – downloading the updated version of Topps Bunt for the upcoming MLB season.
Bunt is generally the same this season as in prior years with two major additions – the card exchange, and experience points. Experience points are a great addition to the app – you get them for pretty much everything you do in the app, including playing in contests, logging in every day, and opening packs. Every time you level up, you get bonuses like free packs – and free packs are always awesome. Also, some contests will only be available for users of certain levels, which will help divide more and less experienced users to create a more even playing field.
The card exchange is a new feature I haven’t used yet, but the gist of it is essentially this – you trade in lower parallel versions of cards and equipment cards (available in their own packs as well as the normal base packs) for a higher parallel version of the same player. Each player has ten (yes, *ten*) parallels, and seven of those parallels can be acquired through the card exchange.
A blue parallel requires five blue equipment cards, and five each of the white, green, and red parallels of the player you want. An orange parallel requires five orange equipment cards, and just two of the blue parallels. A teal parallel requires five teal equipment cards, and two orange parallels. You get the picture by now. Each parallel scores differently in the contests, and if you’re starting to get a backlog of a certain player’s cards in one parallel, you can get rid of some of those extras to get higher scoring cards you don’t have.
As mentioned earlier, contests are also back. Some are free. Some cost coins. Some have a limited amount of moves you can make. Some are limitless. Some limit the players you can use. Some have a restricted set of teams. The best part about contests, in my opinion, is that you can choose when you want to play. If there’s a day or a week you’re too busy or just not feeling it, you can not play and you won’t lose anything.
You can get coins, which are used to play in contests and buy packs, by logging into the app every day or by using actual money to by bundles. Like most mobile games, you can play and have fun without spending any money, but kicking in cash lets you do more. Like with physical card collecting, things can spiral out of control if you have an addictive personality.
All in all, it seems like Bunt’s taken another step in the right direction for 2016, though pulling inserts (which look cool, though only some score higher than the regular base cards of the players featured) is still very difficult – but isn’t that what you expect anyway?
You can download Bunt for both iOS from the App Store and for Android from the Google Play store.
