Thursday, Sept 3, 2015 – Force Friday is here: New SWCT feature and The Force Awakens pack

As most things SWCT, things happen on East coast time so luckily here on the other coast even though it was technically only 9pm, Happy Force Friday.  Yay, we made it, through all the hype and anticipation. If I wasn’t so broke already from buying packs I might be lined up at a store somewhere. I guess I’ll just have to be content with my lucky haul from SDCC this year.

First order of business: today we saw the next Vintage card drop. According to my notes, it’s the 6th card in Wave 3, called “The Bounty Hunters.” I lucked out and pulled 2 this week. It almost makes up for coming away empty handed last week.

We have a new Pictogram that’s called “Falcon on the Run.” It’s a fun card that prominently features a Star Destroyer and a tiny Millennium Falcon and Slave 1. I decided to trade for this one because I thought it was cool, I’m not sold on the series though. I don’t know that the free gold card, while tempting, is enough to get me to spend credits on this regularly. I need someone to convince me otherwise.

The next Street Art 2 card is another Luke card this time featuring him suited up for flight duty. I prefer this series to the first one. There’s more action to the Series 2 artwork. An interesting note that I’m sorry I didn’t notice until today. Beginning with Street 2 Chewie, odds for Blue and Red went from 1:50 and 1:100 respectively, to 1:40 and 1:80. I also noticed that the pull count for the Green for Han and Vader were drastically lower than previous greens. For the 48-hour period the counts are less than 1/2 of what previous Greens were.

A new Rebels:Defined card featuring Hera was released. I may have been just me but for some reason even after refreshing numerous times, the transmission didn’t drop until after the 2-hour free Master Access window has closed so no free pull from me this time.

Classic Arts 2 Royal Guard Gold dropped. This is going to be a hot card. Under 1,000 pulled. Astute readers will note the odds changed from 1:40 to 1:50!

New app update for Force Friday! Lot’s have changed some good, some not so good. But, I’m sure anything that isn’t quite working the way it should will be fixed soon. Loving the updated launch screen with added Ep. 7 details.

There is now something on the home screen called Smuggler’s Den. Apparently it will show up when there are special app only trades (i.e. you’re trading with the app not a real person or special Topps account). Currently available trades included upgrading most base cards up a level. For example, 20 Yellows will give you a Gold. I think this is actually a great (but expensive) way to get those base cards you are missing without the hassle of finding trading partners on the Fan Feed. What’s interesting about this bit of alchemy is you can trade your Whites all the way up into Gold.

5 Whites = 1 Blue, 5 Blue = 1 Red, 10 Red = 1 Yellow, 20 Yellow = 1 Gold.

If my math is right then 5000 Whites = 1 Gold

I think another interesting side effect will happen traders in the Fan Feed who try and trade up cards. The de facto trade rate has been 9:1 (9 Whites = 1 Blue, etc.) for as long as I can remember. I can see that changing now for Blues and Reds. Why trade for more than 5:1 if you can upgrade them yourself. Yellows and Gold will most likely hold steady. Also, I see a definite benefit to hoarding now, especially with unpopular characters. I was able to gather at least 2500 White Mas Amedda cards in a few days of working the Fan Feed. I can foresee a time when instead of hoarding whites to determine who gets their name on a monument, we’ll see it turn into a Gold standard instead.

Finally, the specially pack that everyone knew was going to drop was the Force Awakens Pack. There are 8 new designs and I think they are beautiful. This is a set I will definitely want to collect. I pulled a BB-8 tonight before I finished off my credits for the day. I’ll get another chance in a few hours.