Get Off My Lawn is a series of articles from guest contributor Ben “ObiWein” Weiner. Players from our generation are a lot more common than you might think.
Jumping back into collectible card games after nearly twenty years has been a blast. One big change, however, has been the increase in card rarities and variants.
The first collectible card games had a relatively simple rarity system of Common, Uncommon, and Rare. Fifteen cards in a pack; One Rare, three Uncommon, and then Common cards to fill out the booster. Some of the early expansions did not actually even have rare cards at all but rather different levels of uncommon.
Those three basic rarities still exist of course in Star Wars: Unlimited. Then, throw Legendary onto the pile. Now in every handful of packs you get a Legendary instead of a Rare. Ok, no problem. Easy to comprehend that one.
Then we’ve got foils. Foils being the shiny, glistening counterparts to the normal cards. I do remember other older card games first starting to have foils and they used to “Pringle” up a bit then too. In SWU, that brings us to eight total rarities between the three basic ones, adding legendary and then a foil version of each.
The rabbit hole goes deeper with Hyperspace. Each card has a corresponding borderless Hyperspace version where the artwork extends to the edge of the card instead of being constrained by the card frame. Plus, then foil versions of the Hyperspace variants. Now we’re up to sixteen total different rarities.
Of course, that’s not enough. Let’s add on Showcase Leaders. These are alternate artwork, borderless, foil, special versions of the leaders that look pretty darn cool and yet are functionally exactly the same. The discrepancy in pricing is phenomenal from nearly free at the low end to hundreds of dollars for the showcase versions.
Simple enough. I think I’ve got it. Oh wait, there are some versions that don’t exist. R2-D2 is a special rarity that comes in the two player starter, not in normal boosters, and has a hyperspace version in the organized play packs, but then is missing any foil versions. General Veers also comes in the organized play packs however unlike being an uncommon in the standard boosters, he’s instead a rare, has different artwork in the two different packs, plus he has a foil version of each. Multiple others have this different play pack treatment as well.
I truly feel bad for those folks out there that have tried to put together master sets with one of every version of every card. I’m sure many have done it already, but oh boy what an undertaking.
Collecting used to be much easier to do, and certainly easier to explain.
At least we don’t have to worry about white bordered cards… yet. Get off my lawn.
Ben is a technology professional by day. He has been an avid gamer for 40 plus years spanning everything from Dungeons and Dragons, board games, and through multiple past and present collectible card games. His non-gaming spare time is spent with his family and playing guitar. Warning: Do not play Jenga for money with this person.
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