Diamond Dynasty - Headliners Set 30 Ryan Howard, New Event

In addition to the new Battle Royale Program, we also got to Headliners Set 30 today, and SDS dropped a new event. Headliners Set 30 Prime Ryan Howard and the 1st Half Firecrackers Event will be some of the final content we get before the big All-Star Game drop, so let’s cover it real quick below.

1st Half Firecrackers Event

• Any players
• Max team overall of 93
• 3-inning games
• Difficulty: All-Star
• Free entries (as always)

I’m always clear that I don’t like events with zero restrictions. While events can sometimes feel stale due to people figuring out what team fits into the current event restrictions, the ones with no restrictions still more or less become that as well. That said, I do get why SDS does this near the end of a program so people have another way to farm some XP before the turnover. So with that in mind, I will be using the event that way to clean up some leftover missions and such before the All-Star Game Program.

Rewards

• 1 win – The Show pack, 500 XP
• 3 wins – 2,000 stubs
• 5 wins – Rewind Events pack, 1,500 XP
• 7 wins – Milestone Garret Anderson

This card actually looks relatively usable off the bench, but it’s rough out there for an outfielder who doesn’t have decent speed to go with diamond defense at this point. The bright side is this is a Milestone card, and we can still use plenty more of those right now for current and future collections.

• 10 wins – Headliners Set 27 pack (x2), 2,000 XP
• 13 wins – The Show pack (x3)
• 15 wins – Future Stars Aaron Ashby, 2,000 XP

At a glance, it seems like this card should be solid but nothing that breaks into someone’s top-end rotation for now. Since Bobby Miller and Randy Johnson basically own the meta for now, everyone else is sort of just down to personal preference from there. I have used Ashby before and liked him, and this is not a terrible pitch mix. He also has 101 H/9 and good control on everything but the 4-seam fastball, so he might be workable.

• 18 wins – Ballin’ Is A Habit pack
• 20 wins – Rewind Events pack, 2,500 XP
• 25 wins – 2,500 XP, Always Intense 1 pack
• 30 wins – 2,500 XP, Always Intense 2 pack

Headliners Set 30 Prime Ryan Howard

Yikes, this card is…bad? The maxed out power against RHP is nice and all, but I suspect this means Prime Ryan Howard will not be the last Howard we get. I would expect a 99 version to come out (most likely a Signature Series card) because Howard had one of the more dominant 5-year runs of the past 20 years. I mean, look, it’s a usable card, but at 1B you need to reach a different level and this card does not do that. You’re basically punting defense and fielding for hitting with most cards at the position, and so Howard’s stats simply do not line up with other elite options out there right now (and they’re not 97 overall either).

The odds on Headliners packs to pull a diamond are 1:10 (as always), albeit that diamond might not be Prime Ryan Howard. In addition, this year you can buy one pack of the Headliners choice pack, which gives you 1:3 odds of pulling a 90+ overall diamond (and of course costs more stubs).