Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015 – Pictogram, Stormtrooper Defined, Ahsoka Fan’s Choice, Golden Wicket, Final Helmet, Rodian Greedo Variant

A relatively slow release day today. I think Wednesday’s tend to be a bit of a breather day, which I’m sure we all appreciate. We also had a couple of sets close today so we should be seeing more new stuff coming soon.

The new Pictogram released today looks very similar to “Falcon on the Run” but describes C3PO and R2-D2’s escape from what I thought was the captured Rebel cruiser. The Pictogram shows the escape pod launching from the Star Destroyer but the Rebel ship would be under it so I could still be correct. This is 8 of 15.

The last Rebels: Defined card before the award is the Stormtrooper. I guess since they’re clones they all have the same ideals and goals? Anyway, it was nice to have a set that rewarded their die hard fans with a free limited count card. I excited to see more “rewards” sets like this in the future.

Today’s Fan’s Choice was between Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano. I feel bad that Qui-Gon has been in the running several times now but is usually up against some stiff competition. Next time, maybe they can put him up against characters like, Skiff Guards, and Sarlacc some other equally uninteresting cards. The obvious winner was Ahsoka Tano, who was awarded with her own Fan’s Choice card. Congrats.

The final Wicket variant predictably came out today. Believe it or not we are only 4 cards in to 14 that will be released before the first Award card and then another 14 before we’re done. The burn out factor is high with this one, though the designs on the whole, are better than the first series.

So today, I received confirmation that each release of the Smuggler’s Den Variant will be unique. Today we were looking for Greedo. By the way, looking back to Queen Amidala we see now that her Gold Variant count is down to about 2800 versus about 3300 for say Mon Mothma (Rebel Leader). That’s a pretty significant drop. Also there are 1,065 Smuggler’s Den Variants of Amidala so it looks like there was a significant amount of gold created from other base cards. Greedo’s number is even fewer, down to around 2700 (probably because less people were caught by surprise today). There are 1077 of the Greedo Smuggler’s Den Variant card.

Finally, the last of the 3 Helmets has arrived and it is the Stormtrooper. It’s actually a pretty cool looking card. I’ve always liked the classic stormtrooper design, but I think I like the look of the First Order troopers even better. What do you guys think?