Chasing the Dream

How much fun can you have for $250?

• General admission to Disney World, 3 hamburgers, and a Goofy hat
• Dinner for you and your chums from locals at the Golden Corral
• Sbyke P-20 Scooter Skateboard Bike Hybrid
• The Best of Spiderman autographed by Stan Lee

OR

• A complete playset of Artifacts cards

Konami seems to have returned to their policy of driving up demand for their product by limiting the release of certain cards. The promised revolution that was heralded by The Dragons of Legend has been quickly quelled by Primal Origins.  Say what you want about Soul Charge, at least we all had access to it! The same does not seem to apply to the present booster pack.  

Despite the Anjelly’s propensity to induce poverty and diabetes, there are no real “chase” cards in Primal Origins.   Instead we have a collection of very good archetypal cards that need to be acquired in groups to be useful.  Konami has replaced “chase cards” with “chase sets”.  This quality makes purchase decisions difficult.  Most archetypes only spend a few months at the top to the Yugioh charts. After their moment of glory is done, the Forbidden & Limited list trims them down and dumps them into the tier-two bin.  Your one-of, pricey card is not nearly as vulnerable to obsolescence as an entire archetype.  

Chase cards, on the other hand, are valued because they are flexible and generic.  They are tech cards that can be slotted into a variety of decks. As a result, players are more willing to invest larger sums of money.  Consider my most expensive single card purchase to date.  I bought a Draccosack for $65 and subsequently have detached materials, summoned tokens, and popped cards about 40 times. In other words, I have paid $1.63 for each pop.  While this might seem exorbitant to some, I remain confident that this card’s work is not done.  I’m not sure if the same applies to a playset of Artifact Ignitions with the shadow of the Shadoll’s looming in the background.

Chase cards eventually make their way into the hands of the general public through reprints.  Many of us are willing to pass on the latest duel-crushing secret rare knowing that reprints are inevitable.  How long do you need to wait?  The table below lists some of the most popular chase cards of the past seven years.  On average, this wait was about 1.3 years. The reprint engine doesn't apply to chase sets.  I can't imagine the Artifacts will be repackaged as a tin 14 months from now. Unlike chase cards, it's now or never.    

At this point, I am not particularly bullish on the pack. Though the Artifact engine can be combined with a number of archetypes, I can’t really bring myself to shell out the money needed for the set.  Chronomaly Artifacts took the OCG by storm, but that deck has been eclipsed by several others.  Instead, I’ll be saving my money for the next chase set coming this summer …

… or maybe I’ll pick up an Exciton Knight instead.