Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015 – Bounty Skywalker, Dagobah Pictogram, Monochrome Stormtrooper, Journey of Qui-Gon 3, Empire Strikes Back Illustrated

It was a slow day … mostly. I’m going to quickly run through the usual suspects.

New Bounty Tuesdays. Wave 3 – 6 of 10 is Man in Black Luke Skywalker.

A Pictogram today diagramming scenes from Dagobah.  11 of 15.

The next Monochrome insert is the Stormtrooper (yay). This is number 3 of 8.

Journey of Qui-Gon Jinn number Card 3 “Finding a Boy Named Anakin Skywalker.”

Now, the set that caught me by surprise today, the Empire Strikes Back – Illustrated Series 1. How this one works is pretty out there.

• There are 25 total cards in Series 1 with 4 variants: Steel, Blue, Green and Red.
• At launch all 25 Steel Variant cards will be available in the ESB – Illustrated Pack 1 (there’s no Master Pack variant) at 1:1 odds. Each pack you open is guaranteed to have 1 Steel variant, but only for the first 7 days.
• Meanwhile, also in the packs are Blue variants #1-#5. These are limited to 2500 and sold out in about an hour after launch (The set launched at about 6pm PT/9pm ET)
• The Green variant #1-#5 is only available in the Smuggler’s Den. It requires you to surrender 3 Steel variants to get one Green. this should not be a problem, except you only have 48-hours to get it. I’ll talk about this more later.
• The Red variant is only available if you purchase either the 300k, 600k, or 900k credit bundles. Only the 900k credit bundle will give you Red #1-#5. The 600k bundle only gives you #1-#3 and the 300k bundle only gives you #1. Yikes! I can’t wait to see how many #4 & #5s there are vs the others. Should give us a real good look at how much money is being spent on this game. Oh, and you only get the cards if you buy the bundle before tomorrow 6pm PT/9pm ET. Otherwise you miss out on these first 5 cards.

Because of all these variations, there’s some strategy involved here. Let’s assume you’re trying to go for it all. You can buy or trade for Red. If you buy all 25 you’re looking at a $500 bill if they continue to release them 5 inserts at a time. Trading will be a gamble. Although, the first card of any new series usually has a lot of numbers, when there’s no limit, #4 and #5 are wild cars. It’s likely these will be very low and guaranteed to be lower than #1, and #2 & #3. To nab all 25, you’ll be giving up a lot of cards.

Now you’ll most likely have plenty of Steel while you’re chasing Blue. I pulled 39 packs and pulled 7 blues. I traded to complete #1-#5 (I had holes and dupes). Since this set was a surprise to me, I’m hoping it was a surprise to others as well and the first five Blues might be worth more than later Blues down the line. By going for Blue I had more than enough Steel to complete the full 1-25 set plus lots of extras, but not enough extras (especially in #1-#5) to make a Green set. Now the dilemma is do I keep pulling to get more dupes to shred in the Den or trade. I only have 48-hours to try and trade to make up the difference I need. But, I’m not alone.

Right now, I think my strategy is going to be to wait. I can’t make any Greens now, but I don’t want to pull any packs now while there are no Blues (plus the last Widescreen should be coming tomorrow). I already have enough now to make Greens later on, plus I’ll be pulling more Steel when new Blue variants drop. I’m going to hope by the end I’ll have enough Green dupes and there’ll be enough trade activity to trade for Greens I’m missing.