Battle Pack 2 Round 2 and Star Pack

There have been a few updates which I wanted to share with you.

Star Pack 2

First up is the announcement that 2014 will have another Star pack, because SP1 was a huge success [/sarcasm]. The new one will contain another few US-only cards from manga's and Jump.

But in reality, it's only the less good cards we see reprinted in here, together with a bunch of random reprints of less good cards. So don't expect reprints of cards like Big Eye or Quasar dragon in here. I think we would be very lucky if even Blackship of Corn would make it here.

Cards I expect to see a reprint: Troposphere, Blackwing Gram the Shining Star, Kachi Kochi Dragon, Infernity General and maybe Zubaba General. None of the big names, thus.

Battle Pack 2 Round 2

It was confirmed a while ago that Battle Pack would get a re-launch next year, with a special variant made for booster drafts. But since this week, more details were made available.

This re-release will be available from January 17th and will be a box with both 6 packs of the original Battle Pack 2 and 1 16-card pack from a card pool of 98 "new" cards.

The principle of the new draft will go as follows:

1. Each player receives and opens a box of BP2 Round 2.
2. You staple the packs as follows: 3 BP2 packs, the new cards pack and then 3 more BP2 packs.
3. You open the 3 BP2 packs and look at the 15 cards.
4. Pick 1 card you desire the most and hand the rest over to the player to the left of you.
5. You will receive the same amount of cards from the player on your right.
6. Repeat the previous two steps until all cards are chosen.
7. Open the Round 2 pack and take out the Ultra Rare card. That one is yours. You have 6 Super Rare cards and 9 commons remaining.
8. Pick 1 card you desire and pass the rest to your right.
9. You receive the same amount of cards from the player on your left side.
10. Repeat previous 2 steps until all cards are chosen.
11. Then open the other set of 3 BP2 packs and repeat the same process as with the first three packs.
12. At the end you have 1 Ultra Rare card (more on that below) and 45 other cards. With this you can create a 40-card deck.
13. Now you can play with these assembled decks! Have fun!

Damn' Ultra rares

End of last week, Tewart revealed the reason why that Ultra Rare is not included in the drafting and why you don't use it in your deck. The 5 ultra rares are highly wanted reprints. See his explanation on the following link: https://yugiohblog.konami.com/articles/?p=5687

The reprinted highly wanted cards are:

• Fog King
• High Priestess of Prophecy
• Dragunity Knight - Vajrayana
• Number 11: Big Eye
• Safe Zone

Afterword

Personally, I like this re-release. I've always been a fan of booster drafts. The cover already reveals interesting monsters like Goryu, General Raiho and Chow Len and Tewart mentioned some cards that may (or may not) be in the pack.

And the Ultra Rares just turned this pack into something highly wanted. Four of the five cards have indeed become highly wanted cards (safe Fog King). Guess they'll be easier to obtain now.

On a side-note: This week, the OCG releases Legacy of the Valiant. The first spoilers are being leaked over the net. I'll give my "cards to look forward to". But all in all, it looks like there are some amazing cards in there.

Until next time, V out.

Tick tock...

Until half of February, when the next forbidden and limited list will appear in V-Jump (presumably end of next week), the Yugi-news has been kind of slow.

I've been looking around for a few news facts and came up with the following:

Kevin Tewart Reveals what we should expect from the star Pack

In a post on pojo, Tewart revealed that NOTHING in the Star pack would influence the secondary market in the US and is mostly aimed at non-US territories (hence the old/false rumor it was going to be a Europe-only release). He also said that the pack will not be available in big amounts in the US, because all the cards are "easily" available.

Basically that means that the star pack will mostly focus on the reprints of Jump cards. So all those cards in my previous post that could make the pack a bit interesting? Forget about those, they're probably not going to be in there :-(

Content Onslaught of the Fire Kings Revealed

In Europe, the first Fire Kings Structure Deck have been received, together with the decklist. Changes are:

• We do NOT get Jurrac Velo & Jurrac Guaiba.
• We do not get Chain Destruction.
• We get Neo Flamvell Sabre (eeeew), Royal Firestorm Guards (actually works with the deck) and Call of the Haunted (not bad) instead.

I know many fans will be pissed about the face Guaiba isn't in the Structure Deck. But (as Tewart confirmed on Pojo) that's mostly because Guaiba doesn't really work with the other cards in the structure deck.

Zexal tin reveals its cover monsters. Is it real?

God, let's hope it's not real. let's hope it's just a well-made Photoshop. Because of this picture. Giga Brilliant might be nice, but eeeeew, gagaga magician? And Ultra Gagagabolt? That HAS to be fake, right? Right? (*looks uncertain*).

Konami is SLOW with their updates

If you follow the product page of Yugioh, you might have noticed that in the last few months, they're slow in their updates. The so-called "update" of Cosmo Blazer only appeared on the day of the first Sneak peeks (was supposed to be shortly after new Year), and the structure deck page has only been updated this week (also a little late). This has been going on for a while now and has gone so far that in a few cases the European page has become faster than the US version (and that is saying A LOT).

While I was skimming through Pojo on some interesting news, I noticed a post of Tewart that he realizes they're behind schedule on product information and they're "working to fix that".

Let's hope so, because we still have nothing for the Star Pack, the Zexal Tin, the Special Edition of CBLZ, Hidden Arsenal 7 nor the upcoming Starter Deck.

Franken becomes Zombiestein

Kinda missed this one during all the news updates last week. The English name for No. 22: Franken has been revealed. It's now oficially: Number 22: Zombiestein. Release of this card is in Zexal Manga Volume 3, in sale June 4th.

Wind elemental Lord

Its name is Windrose, the Elemental Lord. Has been thoroughly discussed on other blogs and youtube. It's basically Harpie's Feather Duster in Monster Form and it's a Winged Beast.

And that's about itt. All in all, no big revelations in the past few weeks.

One final note. I notice that High Priestess' price is going higher and higher, ever since the revelation of Final Judgment of Prophecy. Europ sites still state prices of 65€ onward, but tcgplayer stores go close to 100$. Interesting trend, to say the least.

Until next time, V out.

Star Pack - Or the Zexal anime produces bad cards

After The 2.5 tin, Cosmo Blazer and The FIRE Structure deck, the first new release (that still hasn't been officially announced btw) is the Star Pack.

The pack will be low-budget (1$ per pack or so), will contain 2 common cards and 1 starfoil card, from a 50-card cardpool.

38/50 cards will be from the first 20 episodes of Zexal, while the others are from the older generations. The pack also includes 7 reprints of Jump / Manga promo's.

God, why?

Not many people are looking forward to it, because of a few reasons:

• The Zexal Tin comes out a week later and has new cards, this consists of reprints only (at this point at least, you never know with lolkonami).
• Safe the few interesting Jump/Manga Promo reprints for legal issues, the announced cards are... not that great (to say it in a nice way).
• And honestly, 38/50 cards reprinted from the 20 first episodes of the anime? Eeeew...

But let's not be all negative. In an attempt to get the best possible out of this pack, I started analyzing what actually could be in the pack that would make people want to buy this.

Step 1: ALL anime cards are bad... or not all of them?

I started analyzing the cards from the announced 20 first episodes. And while most cards used in the show plain suck, there are a few exceptions which could make for a nicer pack. These are the following:

• Wonder Wand
• Black Ray Lancer
• Blade Armor Ninja
• Number 12: Crimson Shadow Armor Ninja
• Number 11: Big Eye
• Number 16: Shock Master (though unlikely, due to the tin reprint last year)
• Number 96: Dark Mist
• Number C39: Utopia Ray
• And let's not forget the much reprinted Leviathan Dragon and Utopia, Lord of Reprints.

So if the above mentioned cards would be in the star pack, this might get a little more interesting. A reprint of Big Eye would be much welcomed by many players, since the card is spiking above 40$ right now.

Want to steal monsters? It'll cost you 40$!

Step 2: Jump & Manga promo cards

There are 12 other cards, right? Including 7 legality reprints. So, let's guess which ones:

• Elemental HERO Escuridao (already confirmed)
• Meklord Emperor Wisel (already confirmed)
• Arkana Force EX - The Light Ruler (already confirmed)
• Barbaroid, the Ultimate Battle machine
• Kachi Kochi Dragon
• Seven Swords Warrior
• Dark Magician (the Jump version)
• Shooting Quasar Dragon
• The Supremacy Sun
• Slifer the Sky Dragon
• Superdreadnaught Rail Cannon Gustav Max
• Troposphere

Gustav Max seems a bit too soon and I honestly don't want Quasar to be a common/Starfoil card in this pack, the card is too "boss" for that.

The last 5 cards?

Outside of the 7 Jump/manga promo reprints, there are 5 other cards from the "previous" generations. I don't really have an idea for those cards, but it might be one of the following:

• Reprints of cards that weren't in any of the Legendary Collections, like E-Hero Nova Master, a HERO lives or the Masked HERO's.
• Reprint of 5D's cards that require a first reprint, like Metaion the Timelord or Mystic Piper.

Afterword

There's actually plenty of room to make this set interesting, if Konami would put the right cards in here. I'm sure many people would be interested in a reprint of Big Eye or Blade Armor Ninja, E-Hero Escuridao or Nova Master, or even Mystic Piper or Merklord Emperor Wisel. Let's just wait until Konami announces what they'll actually put in the darn pack.

Until next time, V out.