With my brother's bday coming early july i am already on the lookout for a new gift.
However few things interest him and i want to avoid another videogame (i give him plenty of those for Christmas). Or more Anime stuff.
So i decided on an other traditional gift... a big box of trading cards.

I've gone over several potential series. But i'd like to avoid doing something where one needs to buy a box or three ever 3-4 months just to complete the collection partially. That's what made us stop with L5R among others. This line does seem to have the advantage you pick a 'subseries' and collect that one. My brother is a big fan of Soulcalibur so that seemed a good startpoint. So a few questions:

1) I presume atm starting with Soulcalibur IV is best given that it's depicted as a new 'base' set? Are there only 2 starters for it? Siegfried and Nightmare? (not that i mind they're 2 of our favourites) How easily does one pull the rares in such a set? If i buy one boosterbox roughly how many rares would i have pulled on average?

2) How many SCIII sets and starters were there? Atm there only seem to be 2 sets still available.

3) Some cardgames have 'foundation' cards in their early sets. Cards that although not that 'special' are pretty much the essential basics. Would you say that's the case with this game or can be competitive or at least fluidly playing efficient decks be made from just one 'gameseries'?

4) My brother's favourite character is Mitsurugi. Is there a set or starter that has him?

5) Is decktheming easy and doable? Namely lots of cards related to one char in a deck?

6) On a sidenote. How easily/prominent is Bison in the SF sets?

Thanks!

Darthvegeta800 said:

1) SCIV and Shadowar are the new base sets, the orginal Base sets for this current block are Domination(SF) and Cutting edge(SNK) There are 4 starters for each set, for SCIV(Siegfried, Ivy, Nightmare & Cervantes) and for SW(Zi Mei, Astrid, Yi-Shan and Ragnar) Rares are usually pulled in half of the box sometimes more you should out of 24 packs come up with somewhere between 12-18 rares[with or without a godpack].

2) There have been 6: Soulcalibur III, Tale of Swords[rotated] and Souls[rotated], Soul Arena[rotated], Blades of Fury[rotated], Higher Calibur[rotated] and Flash of the Blades[standard legal].

3) Not really, though sometimes you may have to at a later date go back to an older set as some cards start to interact with eachother very well for a good combo you might want. You can be competitive with just a mono brand deck in tournaments, but they usualy are best for just casual play or to teach newer players.

4) Mitsurugi has 5 versions, 2 in SCIII, 2 in Soul Arena and 1 Promo version, sadly all are rotated, but he may be coming out in the next SCIV set, no one knows the final roster yet for that set though so just hope and he may be there. For Legacy though he is a good character on any version.

5) If by deck themeing you mean build around a character's support, ever since Set 10 yeah it's HIGHLY doable and FFG has stated they will try to do that from here on out to help save people money having to go out and get lots of power cards just to make a decient deck.

6) Bison has 3 legal versions in the game and are all very good in their own right, it just depends on the playstyle you chose, as to their prominence, Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li are more highly prominent right now due to Capcom's agreement with FFG (you might have to listen to the podcasts to understand what i mean).

hope that helps ya.

N.J.

NJ didn't mention that there is a legal Mitsurugi. He's in Flash of the Blades, and I really think he's underrated.

To expand on the rares in a boosterbox, there are 4 rarities; Ultra-rare, Rare, Uncommon, and Common (Also Promo, but im not including that as it doesn't come in a box).

you should always get one foiled card in a pack (Rare or Ultra-rare), as well as ~2-3 uncommons, the rest common. The ultra-rare:rare ratio is around 1:3 this set, if i recall correctly, or something around that. Sometimes you'll get a "godpack" which is supposed to have an ultra-rare and the rest rares, which is something like an average of one in every two boxes, at least from my experience.

So expect a minimum of 24 foiled rares or ultrarares in a booster box.

MarcoPulleaux said:

you mean this:

yeah K' 2.o i try to ignore that he exists... meh

N.J.

Thanks for all the feedback.
I noticed in a newer thread that SC will have trouble being distributed in Europe?

Darthvegeta800 said:

That was a rumor that was dispelled by a poster later in the same thread.

Distribution is just fine.