AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Finished building my



EDH deck. Really excited to try it out!

So, my shop won't be carrying Vaguard when the have Kaijudo and Monsuno shit. Just fuck. Walmart here in cheyenne only sells BOOSTERS daisies.

Next time I get to a Zellers/Walmart, I'm gonna look into some Poky Mans.
I'll have to see what they have and then research them for the best cool stuff/useless stuff ratio.

For B/W series sets, you'll get this general ratio:

Non-EX sets:

1 Holofoil per 3-6 booster packs (seems to vary by set, especially for ones that are holo-heavy)
1 Full Art per 18 booster packs

EX sets:

1 Holofoil per 3-6 booster packs
1 EX per 18 booster packs
1 Full art EX per 36 booster packs
1 Shiny per 108 booster packs.

Now, buying in stores can alter the ratio quite a bit. There's always the chance that someone has scaled the packs before they buy, and if that's the case, chances are, you're going to get nothing but useless rares.

The best ratios come from SEALED booster boxes. These come straight from the factory and can't be tampered with.

Also, they're cheaper per pack than buying retail, and there's a much better chance of beating the odds (though, you can also get shafted a bit on a rare occasion) as opposed to trying retail.

if you want to buy retail, usually tins or multiple pack blisters are the best. THey're much harder to weigh and are more likely to have rare stuff than the individual ones, just by virtue of not being messed with.

Been into the card game for A Game of Thrones lately.
It is one of the balanced games I've ever played, not to mention its based on one of the coolest book series ever.

We got some M13 cards at Pike Place yesterday and Riku got an awesometastic Serra Avatar.
I mean look how cool that looks!

the toys r us I work at got the new magic theme decks and omg there's talrand I wanna touch it with my cheddar

only because I use his deck in the magic 2013 video game

but the theme deck is water/fire what is up with THAT

It's reminding you Ravnica is back in October and Izzet will be best guild

WHAT GOING TO BE BACK WHEN WITH THE BOROS AND THE LIGHTNIING HELIX AND THE RALLY THE WHAT?!

Edit: Upon further reseach I find that Boros is NOT one of the initial 5 guilds.

FUCKING DROPPED

I never thought about people scaling packs...

I usually like going for tins/special hogwash collections anyways.
They usually give me a specific guaranteed foil or three that are usually not too bad.

It's not terribly widespread, though with Pokemon coming back recently, it's becoming more of a problem, mostly because people who get hosed by scalers end up scaling themselves to try to "fairly" get back the cards they deserve, which only means someone else is getting hosed by them.

The big problem is that you don't know whether the place you're going to will have scalers, sometimes the signs will be obvious (daring scalers will take them out of the cardboard to get a more accurate reading, or will even get into tins), but mostly, scalers know how to not leave a trail leading back to them. Plus, if you buy up the other packs, then more product will come in faster resulting in more stuff appearing for them to scale.

And then there are businesses that do scaling (a lot of them are places that sell individual cards along with sealed product), which recently have been getting reported from the inside which results in them no longer being able to distribute.

It's a bit sad that this is being done.

The biggest scam to look out for are cheap bundles of boosters on online stores/Ebay. If you find 36 packs for $60, chances are they'll be "loose", which means they've picked the packs they wanted out and want to profit off of selling you the scraps. Some will be upfront about it, others hide the fact (one on a forum got butthurt when they sold their packs and the person wound up with a very rare card because they weighed wrong. They demanded they return that card to them immediately. Fun times were had.). If it's too good of a deal, don't trust it.

But anyways, booster boxes, tins, collector's boxes, promo packs, etc. are fine to buy pretty much always.

That's pretty gaddamn intense.

But I don't think anybody that works at Walmart would have the time/drive to scale things, and people would look pretty daisies suspicious wandering aboot with a sensitive-booty scale in a department store.

Besides, I'm not looking for rare cards to sell or anything.
I just like to play the game.

BUT THAT GARDEVOIR IS SO GOOOOOOOD.

EVA-01 keeps fucking my shit with her Umbreon/Dark Claw combo.

Just got a 2013 core set pack aaaaaaaand...
fuck yeah, rare is a dual land.
FUCK YEAH, DUAL LAND IS OF COLORS I USE

Ahaha... yeah. There are guides to this shit man, like, "foolproof" things to do to get away with this stuff.

Walmarts and targets are actually "easy" to do this in. Best strategies involve pairs, and if you know the store well enough, you can find a place to scale them without high traffic or with cameras being seen. People smuggle the scales in purses/messenger bags, and set it in the bottom of the cart, they pile boosters into the cart, and go about scaling them. Some take notes, this way if they get caught they can play it off as homework (some even have fake homework assignments printed out to show them).

It's a very interesting phenomenon to me, because of how meticulous and careful these schemes are in how to get the job done. The only thing that compares is how big eBay sellers deal with the card market (They keep the price constant. If anyone undersells them, they buy them out, giving them a monopoly on the price and more product to sell. It's an enforced, stable economy in that sense). It's just odd how this stuff goes down.

I in no way condone scaling, but I can't deny that it isn't interesting the level of dedication that expert scalers have, or their system of how to do it (including when/how often to hit up stores).



Dark Claw is a wonderful terrible thing.