Madden Ultimate Team (MUT) is back as the deepest game mode in Madden NFL ’21. There will be some significant updates from last year’s version of MUT, but the biggest news is that Team Diamonds cards are going to be back, and live at Madden NFL 21’s launch on August 28. There is also a new Ability Cap, which lets players assign up to five upgrades on a single player. A redesign to player cards and new Master and Level Master cards were announced as well.
The core game ideas of Madden Ultimate Team will stay the same within Madden NFL 21, and the Auction House layout will be similar to previous entries. Buying packs, upgrading players, and challenging opponents to games are the core attractions to this game mode. The exciting part involves finding the special cards. Each year of Madden delivers a new Level Master card. This card is obtained at level 7 and grows with the Ultimate Team level. This year’s card is Andre Johnson, the Houston Texans WR. He’s joined by Sam Mills, a Saints LB who is this year’s MUT Master card. The MUT Master card starts at 75 OVR, and grows after completing challenges such as scoring a TD or getting sacks.
The Ability Cap feature will allow players more customization when assigning upgrades to players. In Madden ’20 up to three players on each side of the ball could have active abilities such as Escape Artist, which help the QB scramble. With the Ability Cap in Madden ’21 each ability will take up ability points. That means that players can have as many active abilities as their budget allows for, with no hard cap on how many players can be upgraded. As of right now, the cap is 10 ability points per team, but there are plans for expanding that during events later in the season. A player is allowed up to five ability slots as their rating grows: a tier 3 spot is earned at 80 OVR, and a tier 2 slot at 85. At 90 a tier 1 ability slot becomes available, and two more are unlocked at 98 and 99 OVR.
How Madden NFL 21’s MUT Changed
Madden ’21 will release with four captains who the player will be able to obtain early on in the Ultimate Team journey, similar to the captains in Madden ’20. Eddie George, Ed McCaffery, La’Roi Golover and Aeneas Williams are the options, but there are 32 versions of each player, one for each NFL Franchise. Players can only field one captain at a time, but will be able to exchange them at any time, similar to Madden ’20.
With Team Diamonds cards coming back, each NFL franchise gets to add one more player to the shuffle. By completing each team’s respective Team Diamond set, players unlock one NFL legend who hasn’t been around Madden for a while. Unlockable players include Takeo Spikes for the Bengals, Drew Bennett for the Titans, and Roddy White for the Falcons. Obtaining all the Team Diamond sets will unlock a special Barry Sanders Team Diamonds Master card, which is currently the most powerful card in the game. Barry is rated at 93 OVR, which is four points higher than any other Team Diamond card. Last year’s Team Diamond master card was Night Train Lane, whose card finished at 98 OVR, so the Sanders card from Madden ’21 is sure to be valuable.
Most excitingly, Madden NFL ’21 promises to be cross-gen compatible and progress will carry over. Players can be assured that there’s plenty of ways to get new cards in Madden NFL 21‘s Ultimate Team mode, and some of the strongest cards haven’t even been announced yet.
