NCS 5/18/10- SHINY!

Woot! I swear I'll have a mini-vid about Primes and Legends later, but for now, shiny! :D

Shiny: Ur Doin it Rite, Pokeymanz.

Although many hail Magic: the Gathering as the paragon of card games, it is not particularly shiny. It has exactly one (1) style of foil used for a lot of rarities. Like Pokemon, it has a full parallel set in shiny foil. Foil does not determine rarity or playability; generally, this is a wise mindset to have when it comes it card games.

Pokemon, however, takes the cake when it comes to doing shiny things right. Not only does it have a variety of creative uses for foil, when it does create premiums, they are usually pretty balanced.

To clarify, a "premium" in this case is a rarity beyond common, uncommon, rare, and foil. Currently, Pokemon has 5 different rarities: common, uncommon, rare, foil, Prime, and Legend. The two premiums have been bolded for convenience. The "reverse holo" rarity encompasses, and parallels, all rarities except premiums.

Now, some people would say that, holy crap, THOSE rarities are too much. Clearly they have not played Yu-Gi-Oh!, which has several rarities that can only be pulled after spending HUNDREDS of dollars on packs. Even scaling does not keep people from pulling crap. Pokemon is tame by comparison.

For starters, the foil ratios are not insane. Although the odds are not listed on the pack, I have personally found them to be 1 foil per about every 3 packs. These usually average about a dollar or two on eBay- slightly more for better holos. If it's not that good, there is probably someone, somewhere, who will want it in their binder. It is very easy to trade up after just a few packs.

Making this job easier are the parallel holos (also called 'reverse holos,' 'parallel rares,' and various other names) inserted into every pack. This can be a common, uncommon, rare, or even foil. It's this one-per-pack rarity that gives us Primes in HG/SS sets, Arceus in the Arceus set, and holofoil Unowns in EX: Unseen Forces.

Thanks to this system, there are many ways to pull two rares per pack. A regular PH adds a dollar or so. A rare/foil, usually a little bit more or less. Sometimes, the regular rares are worth more than their shiny counterparts; this is something you have to look up on eBay, i.e. do not guess at tournament events. Different people will trade for shiny versions of cards that are already in their decks, leaving ample opportunities for collectors and players to trade alike. (Note that this is NOT how things work in YGO; often, the shinier Konami makes something, the better it is in the game. This creates a gap, not synthesis, between collectors and players. It pits them against each other!)

The best part is that PokePremiums are good and useful in-game, but not broken. For those of you unfamiliar with CCG lingo, "broken" refers to something so good in play that the game is not balanced, and, by extension, not fun.

For example, the recent "Ho-Oh Legend" card is awesome in every regard. The art is stunning, the card is actually good (remember base set Charizard and how it kinda sucked? Nintendo fixed that), and you do not need to spend your life savings to get it.

There is a very good, cool reason why you do not need to break the bank to acquire this shiny birdie: Ho-Oh (and every Legend card) is split into two parts. Both parts need to be played at once in game, which balances the card nicely. It also means that players do not need 4 of each piece of Ho-Oh; since each card is named "Ho-Oh Legend," and a deck can only contain any 4 cards of the same name, realistically only 2 of each piece is needed. If a player using said Ho-Oh managed to get a 3rd top part, that person could trade it off for something more useful. There's enough Ho-Oh to go around, even with its rarity.

That is how a rare card SHOULD be: Shiny and pretty enough to retain its value, but also semi-useful in the game.

So, what happens when certain premiums - in this case, Primes - get reprinted? Nintendo did something smart: The tin promos have alternative artwork. This allows the pack-printed Primes to retain their value while, once again, evening the playing field. Good work!

I swear, there'll be a video for showing the Premium Rares (and how they work) whenever I get a complete set of Legends. *Still stuck with just pieces.*

I Wish I Knew How to Quit Yu.

Yes, this is another reminder as to why Konami is not getting any more of my money. YGO is notorious for being expensive and poorly-managed, yet somehow keeps a steady player base going. This is what a good dealer of crack, cardboard or otherwise, does to make money - have repeat customers and make it really, really hard to quit.

There are a number of reasons that people quit. YGO is a really freakin' expensive game that only cares about the players when the company is suffering. The amount of rarities is staggering, and there are few if any good commons to make trading up easier. Nearly all of the good cards are Super or higher these days (and back in the old days...but more on that in another entry).

Another reason is the tournament scene. YGO has always been a 'broken' game; at most, there have been 3-4 decent, game-winning decks. At worst, there has been one "Cookie Cutter" deck that never failed to cut through every other theme. If a theme cannot win, then it just isn't fun. Many themes do not stand a snowball's chance in Hell.

This is, of course, because Konami barely tries to make themes playable. It doesn't matter if they play well or not. What matters, primarily, is that they go with the anime. That way, at least the kiddies will buy packs.

By and large, the little kids keep the game ticking. There are shows designed to show how awesome YGO is. Regardless of whether the kids play the game or not, they want the cards. Parents, being parents, will buy them. As long as Konami is making money, the vicious cycle will continue.

The anime is like a defibrillator for the game. If it, the kids, or the players need a jolt to keep the franchise alive, the anime will almost certainly provide. This applies to old and new players alike; nostalgia goggles, anyone? Remember Mai's Amazoness cards? Yeah, Konami made more of those...ten years later. Nice timing.

I guess flipping Konami the bird was one of the better ways to make the announcement final. Maybe they'll get the idea that they're screwing themselves over.

5-13 NCS: I FINALLY Flipped Konami the Bird.

Behold! I not only pulled something shiny, but flipped Konami the bird afterward! *Insert Final Fantasy victory music here.* Yeah, I was tempted to get that 5.99 Crossroads of Chaos 3-pack, but I'd probably get a junk foil anyways. You know, even though it had a really good vibe...

...It was 5.99 for a reason.

NCS 4/15 + I Have A Dream...

Yeah, it took me a while to post this. Sorry about that; I've been under a lot of stress lately. One of my favorite teachers has left my college (NUUUUU MILLER-SENSEI! At least she's getting paid more), and finals are next week. Don't worry, though; I have a few article ideas in mind, and just realized that I have a dream alongside writing books:

I want to rip The Zone a new one by opening my own shop specializing in Eastern merchandise. Electronics, trading cards, anime, manga, the works. I'm sure that somebody has thought of it, but I have found an amazing site that sells AWESOME gizmos (light-up, waterproof keyboards, BLING jump drives, etc.) in bulk, customized, and so forth. It's all based in China, and could VERY well be a sweet business endeavor...

...unless there's some horrible catch.

Care to Play a Little Othello?

No, I don't mean the Shakespeare play. I mean the board game in which pieces change from black to white and back. This happens in card games far too often.

Nearly every monster-based card game has some set in which a few cards from previous sets 'go dark.' For Pokemon, the first set of this sort was the Team Rocket expansion (which came after Fossil); for Yu-Gi-Oh!, Phantom Darkness (although one could argue about Pandora/Arkana's variant Dark Magician). Digimon had a slew of type and color variations from the get-go - MetalGreymon was originally a Virus type.

So, why do companies do this?

There are a number of reasons. The most prominent one is that everyone, at some point and on some level, wants to see heroes go dark. That was why Toei/Bandai changed MetalGreymon's typing to begin with; in the anime, Virus-Type had been almost equated with evil. MetalGreymon's lost identity as a Virus-Type later made a cameo in Season 2. When there are stark 'good' and 'evil' sides, as there are in many of the series that Japanese card games are based off of, there's always a question of what would happen if the protagonist turned to the dark side a la Star Wars.

Unfortunately, this can be cumbersome in card games. For example, in the Team Rocket set mentioned above, one could only evolve Dark Charmeleon into Dark Charizard, Dark Wartortle into Dark Blastoise, and so on. A similar thing happened with Gym Leader and Team Aqua/Magma Pokemon.

Oh, how Gen III abused its ability to make things with more than one type.

Many Team A/M Pokemon were, you guessed it, cross-typed. They were often Dark/Whatever they usually were. If nothing else, they no longer had 'dark' in their names, and had more evolutionary options. I realize that Dark-Type wasn't around when the TR set was released; Nintendo updated that idea in "Team Rocket Returns" using actual Dark-typing, as well as slipping 'Dark' in the name. There was also an outlying Dark Celebi in EX: Hidden Legends.

OK, whatever. Using Dark like that is understandable, right?

Enter Delta Species. The idea behind it was that some scientists in the Holon region (which is not accessible in-game) were trying to locate Mew via electromagnetic waves. This caused mutations in the Pokemon of the surrounding area - namely, type changes.

Game-wise, this was done to make sure that relatively underpopulated types - Fire, Electric, and Steel - got more coverage. Delta Pokemon retained all other attributes of their former types - that is, a fire-type Pikachu (that did not exist, but as a hypothetical example) would still be weak to Fighting as opposed to being weak to Water. It would make a mono-Fire deck a bit harder to counter. Smart idea.

While the Pokemon Company meant well, they really could have done more with the whole 'Delta Species' concept. For example, there was a Grass-Type Dragonair; wouldn't it have been sweet to see a green Dragonair using Razor Leaf? Wait a sec- Dragonair don't come in green.

That's the thing that made Delta Species suck: They diversified the attacks well enough, but did not do so with the art. Black, Dark-type Shiny Charizard was a good move; they also made a Fire-Type Gyarados to coincide with its alternate red coloration. They were already breaking the rules with Delta Species. Why did they not go one step farther and change colors as well? It would have been interesting, challenging, and engaging to see, say, a Milotic using a Fire attack.

While this may seem like an unwise move on Pokemon's part, Yu-Gi-Oh! is the master of atrocities when it comes to giving creatures alternate forms. Othello is no exception to this rule.

Dark is one of the strongest types in the game. It has been since the days of the very first set, "Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon." Despite the set's name, back in those days, everyone was running Fiend/Spellcaster decks (called F/S Beatdown) with Blue-Eyes splashed in if present at all. It only got stronger when Chaos came around (removing 1 Light and 1 Dark Monster for a 3000/2500 BEAST -> Mokey Mokey + Skull Servant = GG). If anything, all other types were unbalanced in comparison.

Then "Phantom Darkness" came out. Then, everything else REALLY became weaker than Dark-Types.

In Phantom Darkness, the super-strong "Dark Boss" monsters were released, along with powerful support cards like "Allure of Darkness." These cards were not just good- they were AMAZING examples of type support done right. For example, Dark Armed Dragon required exactly 3 Dark Monsters in the Graveyard to be Special Summoned. Once on the field, it could wreak havoc with its amazing 2800 ATK and monster-destroying power. It stuck to its grits as a 'retrained' Dark Armed Dragon Lv7, bearing similar stats and abilities. The other Dark Bosses generally followed suit (with the exception of Dark Simurgh, who outshines its non-Dark counterpart in every way EXCEPT stats).

If Dark-Types had really needed the help, this would have been welcomed. Atlantis ("A Legendary Ocean"...up yours, 4Kids) and Daedalus were much-needed Water-Type support. Dark already had a plethora of things making it good. It did not need the help that nearly every other element did.

So, why did Konami do that? For the same reason they do everything: "Because it's cool." Never use Invader Zim logic in the real world. You'll make money, but it will not have a pretty effect on the metagame.

Told You So.

I hate to be a bitch about my own opinions, but some movie critics just confirmed my thought about dragons losing their edge:



Also, for the record, Clash of the Titans did indeed suck balls. I think I lost brain cells watching it. X.x