Diamond Dynasty Team Affinity Season 1 Chapter 2 Breakdown: Rewards, Strategy, Best Players and More

Team Affinity Season 1 Chapter 2’s drop on Friday in MLB The Show 24 represents the largest wave of new content in Diamond Dynasty since launch. And though none of the 30 new 93 OVR cards — one for each MLB team — are the highest-rated or even best at their positions, players who can grind through TAS1C2 quickly and efficiently are going to level up their teams considerably.

Here’s why — and how — to do that.

Team Affinity Season 1 Chapter 2 Structure

Team Affinity is, as has now been the case for a few years, a program that runs parallel to and is about as content-rich as the Seasonal XP path in Diamond Dynasty. The primary differences between the two are that the Season 1 XP path does not have specific objectives or missions that allow players to progress and that there are six distinct XP paths in Team Affinity, one for each division.

But that means that while grinding the six separate paths must be done mostly individually and more intentionally, it also allows for far swifter progress than the designed-to-be-a-slog Seasonal path.

And the rewards for Team Affinity that are attainable in a day or even a few hours of efficient play in DD far outpace what players will get from the Season 1 XP path until deep into its higher tiers — with some of those rewards including bumps of Season 1 XP.

Each TAS1C2 reward path awards 2,000 Stubs, 3,250 Season 1 XP, 13 The Show packs, three Ballin’ is a Habit packs, one choice pack allowing players to pick a 90 OVR Rare round version of the Seoul Series or Spring Breakout packs previously released, one Millionaire pack, and five packs each containing a choice of one of the five 93 OVR TAS1C2 Bosses in each division. 

Multiply that by the six paths, and the 12,000 Stubs, 19,500 Season 1 XP, 78 (!) Show packs, 18 Ballin’ is a Habit packs, six Seoul Series/Spring Breakout choice packs, six Millionaire packs, and 30 93 OVR cards looks like a significant haul of rewards, if one much heavier on packs than Stubs/XP. 

(And, yes, there are cosmetic unlockables — team-specific universal profile icons — that pad out the reward paths a bit. Would replacing those with Stubs or XP and making all cosmetics purely purchasable or pullable be better? Maybe.)

Tackling the TAS1C2 Grind

But which of those players are must-gets as soon as possible, and most useful for jump-starting your Team Affinity grind? To answer this, we have to delve into the tasks that give players literally dozens of ways to earn Team Affinity XP.

Those ways are best divided into just two buckets: Exchanges and gameplay. The former is easy to explain: Players can exchange vouchers earned through Mini Seasons, Conquest, and Showdown for TA XP, or turn in players for the same. Considering that 10 vouchers gets 28,000 TA XP while exchanging 150,000 Exchange Value of players — roughly a 91 OVR plus an 87 OVR and an 84 OVR … which maps almost perfectly onto the Battle Royale rewards from this portion of Season 1 — gets 30,000 TA XP, players really are much better off doing some grinding than casting off surplus cards, unless they have truly formidable collections already.

The gameplay side allows players to earn TA XP through playing in specific modes, with opportunities to earn more by taking on harder challenges. Most of these will be familiar as returning missions from Team Affinity Season 1 Chapter 1, like accruing RBI, total bases, and strikeouts with players from each division or tallying hits and Ks with the Team Affinity Bosses.

But there have been several changes to the structure of this specific TAS1C2 drop’s missions. Most important for many is likely the removal of standard lower-difficulty Moments and the introduction of a single Extreme Moment for each division that turns earning TA XP for a single scenario from am exercise in attrition on a lower difficulty to one in achievement on a higher one.

Those Moments are as follows for each division:

• AL East: Hit one HR in one plate appearance with Jasson Dominguez on Hall of Fame

• AL Central: Pitch a complete game with 11 strikeouts and no more than three runs allowed with Justin Verlander on Hall of Fame

• AL West: Hit two home runs in a game with Mitch Garver on Hall of Fame

• NL East: Tally three extra-base hits in one game with Eddie Mathews on Hall of Fame

• NL Central: Get on base four times in one game with Michael Busch on Hall of Fame

• NL West: Get three saves and seven strikeouts without allowing a run in three consecutive bases-loaded opportunities on All-Star

If you hit well on Hall of Fame, smacking a single homer or two is a fairly simple proposition. If you are a better pitcher, and can stand the possible resets, throwing a complete game or just three innings of lights-out ball is also at least straightforward, though having to get seven strikeouts in nine outs is threading a needle. But rapping three extra-base hits and compiling four times on base can both be tough tasks even on lower difficulties, and even with cards as good as the Mathews and Busch, those seem like time sinks.

Oh, and those Moments award just 10,000 TA XP each, and aren’t repeatable. Consider that 30 Ks with a division’s pitchers yields the same amount of XP, can be done on any difficulty in any single-player mode in DD, and IS repeatable, and you might decide to eschew these Extreme Moments entirely.

And if you’re going to try something hard to get TA progress quickly, the Extreme Showdown seems like a better bet. While you will have to pull out of some substantial holes against excellent pitchers — including in the final Showdown against Rob Dibble on Hall of Fame — you can at least make use of and try out many of the TA players in that context, and can use whatever tried-and-true Showdown strategies to make the effort easier.

More importantly, though, the Extreme Showdown yields 20,000 TA XP for ALL of the reward paths, making a single completion equivalent to 10 percent progress in every path in one fell swoop. If your Showdown skills are up to the task, that’s a great use of your time.

If that seems daunting, there is also a standard Showdown for TAS1C2 that yields the usual vouchers for completion. And for most players, that Showdown is likely to be the hardest task they try in the Team Affinity grind. So maximizing return on time and effort invested will be paramount.

The best way of doing that is simply stacking a team with players from one division, and probably from single teams, to make consistent progress. For offline players, getting strikeouts is generally more efficient than getting total bases or RBI — consider that the 40 total bases needed for that mission is 10 homers — and can be done with the Bosses from each reward path and in Conquest or Mini Seasons as a way of doubling or tripling up on progress. While players can also play nine-inning games against the CPU to earn larger blocks of stats or Parallel XP, that does tend to turn the grind into something more like drudgery.

That slight weight toward pitching prowess as the main path to mission progress also means that some of the divisions are going to be more difficult to approach than others. The AL East does not have a pitcher among its Bosses, making the double-dip on Ks impossible, and the NL Central has just Rob Dibble, a reliever, among its Bosses, making a Kerry Wood-style onslaught against Rookie difficulty something that could only be done with Dibble’s tank on empty after a few innings. The NL West, on the other hand, features Rockies starter Chase Dollander and Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen, and so you could conceivably rack up IP, XP, and Ks with just those two, Jansen relieving Dollander.

Given that, it probably makes some sense to weight your pitchers toward divisions that have them and your batters toward the divisions that don’t.

It also makes a lot of sense to focus efforts on unlocking at least one Boss from each division immediately, because they can help earn TA XP in multiple missions at once in ways that other players cannot. And with one of the repeatable Parallel XP missions allowing for progress from Bosses from both Chapter 1 and 2, making sure that Giancarlo Stanton or Ivan Rodriguez is still in your lineup will help speed things up.

The Best TAS1C2 Cards in Each Division

But which of these 93 OVR cards are the true prizes of Team Affinity Season 1 Chapter 2? And are any of them truly elite?

Here are our picks for the best in each division.

AL East: Yankees CF Jasson Dominguez

The AL East’s TAS1C2 crop is somewhat tough to assess, as all five cards are from the Pipeline series and thus have similar profiles as budding stars who are newer to Diamond Dynasty. But the highest-profile of them, Yankees super-prospect Dominguez, has great pop against righties (102 Power), is a switch-hitter, qualifies for the Buxton boost and has excellent defense and very good speed to go with his bat.

100+ stats: Dominguez’s 102 Power Vs. Righties; Xavier Isaac’s 104 Power Vs. Righties; Orelvis Martinez’s 104 Power Vs. Lefties

AL Central: Tigers RHP/SP Justin Verlander

It is tempting to give this status to either slap hitter extraordinaire Steven Kwan or new and interesting Noah Schultz, whose card bears a lot of similarities to Randy Johnson thanks to his 99 Break slider and 6’9” stature. But Verlander is tried and true and his edges in control compared to Schultz make him slightly easier to use.

100+ stats: Kwan’s 112/105/115 Contact Vs. R/L/Clutch; Verlander’s 103 Stamina and 101 Pitching Clutch; Alex Gordon’s 102 Clutch; Emmanuel Rodriguez’s 103 Discipline.

AL West: Rangers C Mitch Garver

The AL West is a mess in real life, but this quintet of players might be the best of this drop, with each one having some compelling skills. Astros fireballer J.R. Richard has Outlier on his fastball and 110 Hits Per 9; Daniel Vogelbach’s Mariners-era card will pound righties with 116 Power; Jacob Wilson gives A’s fans a bright light with 105+ numbers in both Contacts and Clutch; Tim Salmon has the unusual 107 Contact Vs. Righties and 105 Power Vs. Lefties that has defined his cards.

But Mitch Garver’s simply the best-hitting catcher in the game, and that makes him valuable over other options at a position in a way that none of the other options in this pack can match.

100+ stats: Garver’s 105/112 Power R/L; Vogelbach’s 116 Power R and 125 Discipline; Wilson’s 105/105/108 Contact R/L and Clutch; Salmon’s 107 Contact R, 105 Power L, and 114 Discipline; Richard’s 100 Stamina and 110 H/9.

NL East: Braves 3B Eddie Mathews

Mathews cards have been sort of unspectacularly excellent for so long in DD that it’s hard to get excited for them, but his swing is superb and his batting stats outside of bunting are all 85 or better, with 109 Power Against Lefties as a lefty bat and SEVEN quirks bolstering him substantially.

The rest of the division? Two quirks total, both belonging to Joey Meneses.

100+ stats: Mathews’s 109 Power L and 105 Discipline; Mick Abel’s 103 Stamina; Meneses’s 104 Contact L and 100 Clutch.

NL Central: RHP/CP Rob Dibble

If the AL West doesn’t have the best collection of cards in this drop, the NL Central does. Michael Busch, Greg Vaughn, and Josh Bell can all mash, Joe Torre is a fantastic contact hitter with catcher eligibility and six Quirks, and Dibble is, well, Dibble.

Dibble’s violent Outlier-enhanced heater paired with his slider and cutter is likely to be the best solution to that problem for a while. Expect to see him on essentially every team in online play.

100+ stats: Dibble’s 118 H/9, 109 K/9, 125 Pitching Clutch (and 99 Velocity/Break); Busch’s 103 Power R; Vaughn’s 112/102 Power R/L; Bell’s 101 Power R; Torre’s 114/122 Contact R/L and 125 Clutch.

NL West: Giants CF Chili Davis

It would be easy to pick Jansen here, as his cutter, 108 H/9, and 125 Pitching Clutch will make him about as potent as Dibble. But with three other current players in the mix, it’s the Davis that stands out, with switch-hitting and 125 Clutch that helps atone for some lesser stats against lefties and Quirks — including the combo of Dead Red and Breaking Ball Hitter that covers him against both fastballs and breaking balls — to up his performance.

100+ stats: Davis’s 122 Contact R and 125 Clutch; Jansen’s 108 H/9, 100 K/9, and 125 Pitching Clutch; Chase Dollander’s 101 K/9; Wil Myers’s 100 Power R.