Strategy guide from this Reddit post:
My favorite promo of the year is here - Ultimate Freeze! EA has done a decent job of trying to explain the three different areas of the promo, but there is a lot going on here so I wanted to provide a guide on what I think is the best way to use your promo stamina and resources so that you can hopefully come away with a 93-overall Freeze Master of your choice.
There's four main types of resources:
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decorations, which are used to decorate the christmas tree (to overly complicate things, there are three different types of decorations - more on that later)
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snowballs, which are used to build different Season 4 and Ultimate Freeze players
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wrapping paper, which is used to build small presents
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cookies, which can be used either for presents or to reduce the cost of Season 4 players
Players are built with a combination of snowballs and cookies:
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an 82+ Season 4 player requires four snowballs (one of each type) and 100 cookies
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an 87+ Season 4 player requires four 82+ Season 4 players and five snowballs
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an 89+ Ultimate Freeze player requires two 87+ Season 4 players and twenty snowballs
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a 93-overall Freeze Master requires thirty snowballs, fifteen 82+ Season 4 players, and four specific Ultimate Freeze players (a specific 89, 90, 91, and 92-overall)
Side note: because each 93-overall Freeze Master requires specific players, and the 89+ overall Ultimate Freeze set gives you a random player, you will likely not get the players you need when completing the sets, and will need to go to the auction house to sell them and buy the right ones instead. EA - if you read this - please stop doing this shit. It is so aggravating to grind out resources for literally days to complete a set, just to get a player you can't use, and need to toss on the AH to then buy the one you wanted. Please, please, going forward, make similar master sets just require any of the 89s, 90s, 91s, and 92s... each set would cost the exact same and this wouldn't be so frustrating.
That means that to build your 93-overall Freeze Master, you need: 338 snowballs and 4,700 cookies.
Here's the general plan on how to get there, and get some bonus stuff along the way:
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Hit the slopes every day, and run through the four free events on the left side of the promo splash screen. If your team is at least a 90-overall, you'll come away with twenty wrapping paper and 300 cookies every day. Over the course of the nine-day event, that will mean you'll get 180 wrapping paper and 2,700 cookies. If you aren't at 90-overall yet, you'll just get a smaller number of cookies - but it shouldn't be too big a deal.
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You'll want to complete the tree topper set that rewards you with one pristine ice (for Marvin Harrison, Deacon Jones, or the still-to-be-revealed third Season 4 Grand Master) and five large presents. To do this you need 125 decorations. If you click on the icon inside the cabin (the bottom-center of the splash screen), you'll have a choice of three decoration blitz events: one for each of the three types of decorations (ornaments, lights, and tinsel). Only play these blitz events once every four hours (for a first-win bonus of an extra decoration). You'll need to play these a total of around fifty times over the nine days to get all of the decorations that you need - which will use up 1,250 of your promo stamina. Since the ornament blitz gives out more decorations than either the light or tinsel blitz, stop doing the light and tinsel blitzes after you've finished their sets, and just focus on ornaments.
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In addition to the decoration blitzes, the cabin also has a "Gather Around" event that is available every day during the promo from 8:00 p.m. ET to 8:00 a.m. ET. It costs twenty-five promo stamina and rewards you with a single small present. Do this every day; you'll get nine small presents for only 225 promo stamina.
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And that just leaves the actual players and the two different fort events on the right side of the splash screen. There are two forts: the red fort (which rewards items needed for QB Tim Tebow and WR Randy Moss); and the blue fort (which rewards items needed for S Sean Taylor and DT William Perry). Each play costs forty promo stamina and rewards you with two snowballs (one for each of the masters associated with that fort) and twenty-five cookies. In addition, every twelve hours you can get a "victory flag" item for your first win in each fort - which means you can get a total of thirty-six victory flags over the entire event if you hit every first win in both forts. You'll be spending all of your remaining promo stamina on these fort events.
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After taking out the 1,250 promo stamina you used on decorations and 225 promo stamina you used on the Gather Around present events, you'll generate enough promo stamina to play the fort events seventy-one more times over the promo. Try to balance out between red and blue events, so you get a roughly equal amount of each type of snowball. This will get you a minimum of 142 snowballs and 1,775 cookies.
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You'll also be able to turn in thirty victory flags for sixty more snowballs by completing the "Snow Fort Mastery" set. This set can only be completed six times in total, so don't worry if you miss a victory flag every now and then - so long as you get thirty out of the maximum thirty-six available, you'll be fine. That brings your snowball tally up to 202 (remember, you need 338).
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To get the rest of the snowballs that you need, you'll have to play the fort events an extra sixty-eight times (likely a bit less than this since there is a small chance to get bonus snowballs on every play - but as always I assume your luck is like mine, and that will never happen). That will take an additional 2,720 promo stamina, which you can get by spending 7,000 gems over the course of the promo (as always, spending gems on promo stamina twice a day is much, much better than spending gems on packs in the store). If gems are tight and you have your heart set on one of these 93-overall players, you could get away with only spending 3,500 gems over the event IF you skip steps 2 and 3 above (meaning you won't decorate the tree at all, giving up a ton of presents and a pristine ice).
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With all those snowballs and cookies collected, you just need to make the players now. You'll build a total of forty-seven 82+ Season 4 players, putting fifteen in your 93-overall Freeze Master and using the other thirty-six to make eight 87+ Season 4 players. You'll then use those 87+ Season 4 players to make four 89+ Ultimate Freeze players. As noted above, this set is random, and you'll very likely not get the players you need to complete your specific master. But EA has made the next set far too expensive (requiring two 87+ Season 4 players and two 89+ Ultimate Freeze players) - so the best plan is to simply sell the players you don't need on the AH and buy back the ones that you do. If you get unlucky and end up building four 89-overall players, you'll have to use some of your coins to cover the difference for the higher overall players. Yes, this is a horrible design.
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Don't do the set that allows you to trade 500 cookies for a random present - at least not yet. You will likely have cookies left over at the end of the promo and can do that set then, but you don't want to run out of cookies too soon and be screwed just for another small present.
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As you collect small presents, remember that you can trade in eight of them to get a large present (and you can trade in eight large presents for a giant present). If you've done everything above, you'll end up with around forty-seven small presents and five large presents - meaning that you can trade all of that up to leave you with a giant present for christmas morning!
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Follow all of this and for the cost of 7,000 gems (and likely some coins on the AH to swap out the Ultimate Freeze players), you'll come away with:
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a 93-overall Freeze Master of your choice
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two pristine ice (for Harrison, Jones, or the next Season 4 Grand Master)
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one giant present, two large presents, and one small present
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