While the June SOTG caused a lot of discussion around bannings (and July even more) there was one announcement in there that seems to have been simply accepted as sad but necessary. I am talking about the new print runs having no foils from now on.

As a self confessed lover of shiny things this was a pretty big stick as far as I’m concerned. It is however a decision that has been made and it won’t stop me from playing the game. However I was thinking about what FFG could do to lighten the loss of foils from the game and thought that since they were not being foiled rares and ultra rares shouldn’t cost FFG anymore to make than commons and uncommons. Thus why not increase the number of “god packs” to a guaranteed one per box instead of the current ratio?

This will not only encourage people to buy more boxes (since you will be sure of getting 33 rares instead of only 24) but it should increase the availability of ultra rares for trade and resale. Since FFG has no stake in the secondary market the lower prices there will not lose them money and cheeper cards could encourage more new players to start the game who will hopefully buy packs. It does however mean less uncommons per box which given the goodness that is some uncommons in this game maybe an issue.

What do others think? Am I the only one that cares about foils? Would doing something like this help? Would it cost too much (I now nothing of costs for this type of thing if someone does feel free to enlighten me)? Please stick to helpful suggestions about this or other ways FFG could lighten the loss of foils rather than simply turning this into complaining about no foils as that decision has already been made.

Imomon said:

Just a heads up - there is actually a cost to the godpacks - specifically coalating them. IF I recall correctly (and I reserve the right to be corrected) - god packs aren't a machine sort where they are randomly placed into the boxes. From what I remember they are manually placed in the boxes. (By the company doing the printing) <This is based on my experience with another company that used Quebecor, which to the best of my knowledge is not who FFG uses.>

As it is, Hotpacks are already occuring at a frequency of one every second box, and I have seen a single box with two hotpacks.

Changing the ratio depending on the contract they have with the printer, may impact the cost of the print run.

They have increased the number of UR's per box, and from what I recall with Set 12, they have also increased the number of uncommons per box.

Tekken will be the first set that is booster only under the coalation method. Before asking for a change, I wouldn't mind seeing how it currently looks without mucking with it further.

While I like shiny - I'm also very scottish - I'm willing to sacrifice shiny to avoid another price hike. Plus I've been playing Jyhad/V:TES since 1994, so I'm used to playing a game without shinys. Personally I've felt that shiny was almost done too much in UFS, and was no longer special. I'd rather that shiny be held off and used to make special cards special, rather then the norm.

To be honest - I don't think anyone is _happy_ that shiny is gone. However they accept that it is what it is, and hopefully the market picks up later this year, early next year, and allows foily to become the norm again.

Antigoth said:

Shiny being reserved for reprints I would dig immensely. It will definitely cut down on the shininess, and allow for them to be special as well.

I agree, i would like to see how the new composition of boxes looks before messing with it, but I also wouldnt mind getting a godpack everytime i broke down and bought 24 packs especially with the solid logic behind it. Dropping the price of singles sounds pretty awesome to me.

I think a big reason is the major messup the printers did with the last couple of sets which equates to loss in capital?

1. Miscuts- For the past few sets there have been quite a few miscuts in cards
2. Messed up Packs- I personally had 2 messed up packs in soul caliber in one box. I called them and they replaced the packs (loss in product? and shipping costs)
One had a reprint of Mark of the Beast, the other had a Test Print. Great i get more uncommons, however i got another Eissere Drossel (only need 1 ever) I've also heard of packs not containing the actual (promised) amount in the pack, (i.e: Only having 8-9 cards. more replacements?)

Im sure if they are using the same printer for all their games this adds up quite a bit over all their games. Maybe they could've kept the foils if they were a bit more vigilant and yell at the printers some.

Hayamachop said:

For what it's worth - Eissere Drossel is quite the popular card overhere with 2-3 being run in various folks decks. It's a really fantastic underrated card.

Additionally my understanding is that the printer used on the last set was a brand new printer.

Antigoth said:

Then they better get that old one they used back in the day back.

I noticed when I was cracking my boxes some packs would have 11 cards and others 9. One had as many as 13 in it. I think the box came out to 240 cards and the packs averaged out to 10, but if I was just buying packs i'd have been a little pissed to get a pack missing uncommons.

Hayamachop said:

Not so much - because there were more problems with that printer then there was with this one.

From the previous printer we were comped entier boxes because the coalation was so bad.

I remember my SNK02 box had foil cards with baseball players "shadowed" on them. Complete with stats! Was so wierd I never sent em in to get replaced. Never know when you'd have to know Ken Griffy's batting avg:)

Shiny... I remember my Mirror Coat Mitsurugi deck. I think there was not a single card in it that wasn't foily. Games where won, and opponents where blinded.

I am not at all against shiny cards getting the boot. I am positive I am not the only one who is just a little annoyed with the "foil curl" effect. Besides, it would make it very easy to pick promos out of a pile if they kept their foil treatment. I would also have less cards to flatten under books.

I really think shiny cards should be reserved for either something special or optional.

Example: Raw Deal's foils were all the "ultra rare" cards and some promos (until later with the Rumble Packs) and it was always meant the card was rarer than normal.

Magic has an entire foil parallel set, and I know some players that despise foils and others love them and actively seek them out. It is a win/win situation as if you hate foils, you don't have to have them in your deck, but if you love them, you can search your favorite cards in foil form.

Other games do fine without foils, Call Of Cthulhu, A Game Of Thrones, Vampire/Jyhad, and to be perfectly honest, some of the foils in UFS recently have been horrendous to read due to the poor foiling process used on those cards.

If it keeps costs down, I don't care if there are foils or not in the end, as long as it doesn't impact the gameplay itself.

I am teh Magpie and will miss shiny stuff. Kinda like the Barbarian on the old Gauntlet game who could heard crying "OOHH SHINY STUFF!!!" in a bad Arnie voice.

Sigh..RIP shinys.