Friday, September 11, 2015 – I AM Ends, Credit deals, Pictogram, Introducing Monochrome, Smuggler’s Den Variants, Connections, Journey of Qui-Gon Jinn, and Lando (Billy Dee)

I forgot to mention the 3rd Smuggler’s Den Variant, Boba Fett, yesterday. There’s another one today, this time a creature, the Varactyl. People are still going crazy over trading Yellow and Golds too which I think is even more fun than actually being able to shred a Gold to get the Variant. This may or may not be an unintended consequence, not unlike when they released the Golden Tickets. There’s a new Smuggler’s Den Variants checklist up in the checklists section of the site.

Also, yesterday there was a credit deal where if you bought a $5.00 – 20,000 credit pack, you would get 5 free base packs today. You got a free Darth Sidious Series 2 Base Pack (30,000CR), Boba Fett Base Pack (5,000CR and a chance at a free Connections card), a Mace Windu Pack (1,000CR), Asajj Ventress Base Pack (3,000CR), and a Darth Maul pack that contains Red and Yellow base cards only (I forget the credit value). It turned out to be a pretty good deal for me because I ended up with 2 Golds from the Sidious Pack.

When I logged this morning there was a transmission titled, “Something is coming…”, Winter maybe? I doubt that’s what they meant. No it was a card with Lando Calrissian on it (he’s been getting some extra love lately) and a box below his portrait. I’m assuming the thing that is coming goes in that obviously empty box. Some were speculating it was a relic card, which if you knew what that was, would not make much sense (I had to look it up). In the physical world, the Star Wars relic cards came with them an actually piece or fur or material that was used as a prop in the actual movie. For example a lock of Ewok fur or a piece of sail from Jabba’s sail barge. Unless you can redeem the virtual card for a physical one, having a virtual relics seems kind of lame. The other guess was a signature card. Which to me seems more plausible, but again, the physical cards had actual signatures on them. Virtual cards with virtual signatures seems pretty worthless. We’re supposed to find out tomorrow at 1PM ET.

Today’s Pictogram card is “Stay on Target.” 9th in the series out of 15.

Today’s Connection is Jabba/Boba. This is the 5th in the marathon chase.

Finally, two more new sets were released to day. Monochrome and Journey of Qui-Gon Jinn.

It looks like Monochrome will be just like it sounds. Monochrome drawings of TFA characters. The first one is BB-8 which is kind of cool looking, especially in colors. Looks like TOPPS is once again rewarding their Master Access players by offering the Gray variant of this with 1:1 odds for free for 3 hours before offering it to the gen. pop.

It’s funny (ha ha and strange). I was just having a discussion with GoKarma about how Qui-Gon has been up for Fan’s Choice at least 4 times (I think I wrote about it the other day too) and he never seems to win. Well, Qui-Gon fans, time to break out the champagne, looks like your boy has got his own series. Call the Journey of Qui-Gon Jinn, the transmission really tries to sell you on why he deserves his own set.

“It was Qui-Gon who found Anakin Skywalker on Tatooine and who believed that this boy was the Chosen One. His belief was part of his undoing, struck down by Darth Maul before seeing Skywalker’s training through.”

GoKarma, made some good points rebutting this argument though,via text

“Qui-Gon fuck up and we going on a journey that he fuck up on. If he left Anakin on Tattooine (sic) all Jedi would not be dead and the emperor would not be the emperor. LOL he screw everyone. The logical person in me say he fuck up and the fanboy in my is pulling that stupid pack.”

I have to admit, he’s got a great point and I’ve never really thought of it that way. Qui-Gon things Anakin is the chosen one to bring balance to the force, but if you think about it, it was out of balance on the side of the Light Side. In that case, Anakin’s real purpose was to give power to the Dark Side and Qui-Gon may have had it right, just not the way he thought and the meter kind of swung all the way around to the other side too far. I’m sure a lot of other smarter people than I have argued this before. I’m just catching on. What do you think?

Oh, and by the way, I Am has quietly ended and left the Cantina.