A Large Collection on the Cheap

Because of the Loot Cards included in each Pack an astute trader can build a great playable collection very cheaply in this game. Cheaper than I'd ever have thought possible. Read on to see how created a collection with 80 Rares, 252 Uncommons, and 461 Common Cards for less than $60.

My Goals

I'm a Strategy Card Game Guy, I've never much gotten into Role Playing, so MMO's never really did anything for me, but trading card games allow you to build a strategy then play it in about 1/2 hour. This has always appealed to me, I first discovered this with Star Chamber, then played Stargate, I decided to give LoN a try when the stand along client came out, but I didn't want to spend a lot of money to get a big collection since I've already pretty much overspent my gaming budget trying to keep up with the two new Stargate sets that came out.

I decided to build the best card playset I could with a modes one booster box investment, approximately $100. I hate to buy packs in any smaller quanity than that as you don't get the booster box discount. But the techniques described in this article will work no matter how few packs you want to purchase.

This approach requires patience and a willing to trade, but it does work and you can build a truely massive playable collection, mostly paid for by the EQ and EQII players who really want those nice loot cards.

Don't Open Your Boosters

The approach I took was very simple, look at what people wanted and buy only that and trade for everything else. It turns out that booster packs are highly sought after by the MMO players looking for loot cards. They don't even want to play LoN, they just want those cool loot cards for their characters. So what happen is they open a booster, and everything but the loot cards is just junk that they try to trade away for more boosters and the chance at a loot card.

The current going rate as of this writing seems to be:

1 Booster = 6 Rares
1 Booster = 50 Uncommons
1 Booster = 250 Commons

If you were to open those same 3 boosters you would get 3 rares, 9 Uncommons, and 33 Commons. That means that what ever you do, and this is important, Don't open your boosters. I know this is counter intuitive, but the best way to build a collection is to never open a single booster, but find someone in the trade room who wants them more than you do, and get as many cards out of them as possible. They seem to have no interest in the game cards at all, the loot is the entire value to them, so you can make a killing by trading.

My Story

A friend of mine mentioned that I should buy nothing but boosters and trade for everything else. I checked out /ptrade and saw I could get the Fighter and Mage Starters for 1 booster each, and the Priest and Scout Starters for 2 boosters each. That was a significant discount and sounded good to me. I decided to buy my standard box of boosters so I now had 36 boosters to play with.

I then immediately picked up the Mage and Fighter starters on /ptrade so I could play the scenarios and start learning the game. I also posted a /ptrade for 3 boosters for both the Priest and Scout Starters. I figured it might go, what the heck. While playing the scenarios, after about 8 hours my trade went and I now had all 4 starters for the cost of 5 boosters out of my box, $13.75. A significant discount from the $39.96 list price for all 4 starters.

After playing the scenarios for a while I started surfing /ptrade to see what was available and found that I could sometimes get 50 Uncommons for 1 booster. I accepted 2 of those, and a couple of trades offering 6 rares for 1 booster.

For my 4 boosters I now had 12 rares and 100 Uncommons, MUCH better than the 4 rares and 12 Uncommons I'd have opening the packs myself.

I decided to try my hand at live trading in the trade lobby and was able to pick up another 12 rares for 2 packs that way.

I quickly realized that the trade interface offers you no way to tell which of the cards you are being offered you already had and how many of them you had. If I wasn't careful I'd end up with many more than 4 of some cards, and none of others, I needed a system. My solution was to download the LoN SpreadSheet, strip off all columns and resort it, you can download my updated version if you'd like. This allows you to mark down by hand what you have of each card, you can then consult your list while trading and collect the right cards.

With my list in hand and all cards I currently owned from the starters and my previous trades marked I dove back into the live trade room. This time I needed to fill out my common and uncommon cards. I needed to find someone with a stack of commons to dump. I announced that I had boosters and was looking for common and uncommon cards. I soon found a willing trader who was only to happy to trade me 250 commons for a booster and uncommons at 50 to 1. I traded two boosters for 300 commons and 40 uncommons to him, he was happy to be rid of stuff that he thought he'd never get boosters for and I was able to fill out the bottom of my collection for a very cheap price.

A found one guy willing to give me 50 rares for 5 boosters, what a great deal! And completed another couple of trades for rares as well.

The Result

It took me about 2 days, and I have yet to actually play a live person to person game. But I'm wildly happy with my success rate. I've traded away 19 boosters and my collection includes 4 opened starter decks and has the following card counts.

80 Rares
252 Uncommons
461 Commons

The distribution is actually better than if I had just opened packs. I have a few cards with more than I need that will have to be traded away, but by and large things are evenly distributed. I have no loot and no foils, but since my goal was to build a playset, and not to collect stuff, that's fine with me.

I still have a long way to go, but to have effectively the cards from over 80 packs and to have only traded away 1/4 of that is outstanding. To bulid a collection this large in Stargate or Star Chamber would have taken me at least 70 or 80 packs of cards. Here I did it with 19.

If you want to try out LoN, and you are on a tight budget this approach is the way to go.