A New Way to Play Madden NFL 16: Draft Champions Ranked

If you follow sports games long enough, you learn to manage your expectations a little bit. There are usually at least a couple patches, but large scale updates are almost unheard of. That's what makes this week's rather huge Madden NFL 16 update so surprising - it actually brings with it a couple major pieces of new content. 

The biggest of them by far is Draft Champions Ranked, which takes Madden NFL 16's Hearthstone-like arena mode and brings it more in line with the version found in FIFA. You have to pay now - the three tickets you require to enter cost 9000 MUT coins - but the rewards are much larger. They are as follows: 

6 Wins: 1 Legends Pack, 15-Quicksell pack, 7 DC Badges

5 Wins: 1 All-Pro Pack, 10-Quicksell pack, 5 DC Badges

4 Wins: 1 Pro Pack, 7-Quicksell pack, 4 DC Badges

3 Wins: 1 Pro Pack, 5-Quicksell pack, 3 DC Badges

2 Wins: 1 Pro Pack, 1 Rookie Pack, 2 DC Badges

1 Wins: 1 Pro Pack, 1 Rookie Pack, DC Badge

0 Wins: 1 Pro Pack, 1 Rookie Pack

For non-Ultimate Team players, this won't mean much. But for those of us who are invested in the mode (sigh), it's a big deal. While Draft Champions was pretty fun to start, it grew stale more quickly than it should have, in part because the rewards just weren't worth the two hours or so it took to finish a full run.

Many of the best Draft Champions rewards could be purchased straight off the Auction House for a relatively minimal investment. With Draft Champions Ranked, six wins earns you not just seven badges but the potential for a really good pack. Just an average Legends Pack is good for a minimum of 20,000 to 25,000 madden coins, with the potential for much greater profits if you happen to pull an actual Legends player. And if you're not good enough to max out your win count, there's still a chance you'll pull something really great from a Pro Pack, though it's much more rare.