Gemp-LotR Merchant explained - Q&A

[hsiale]

Remember that this was not the only change made when currency was introduced.

Back then sealed league participation was free and you could get 18 guaranteed booster packs out of it every 28 days (series were 7 days long).

With current system (assuming participating only in sealed league) you:
- pay 50 gold for a 36 days long league (1,39 a day, 39 during 28 days),
- earn 50 gold a week, 200 during 28 days.
This means during 28 days you get 161 extra gold. This does not allow to buy those 18 packs you could get in the old system, but is not far. During a calendar year you get 25 packs less this way if you buy boosters all the time. On the other hand you get to choose what sets you buy. And, with number of people participating in sealed leagues now you get better prizes than the old system gave you (I got a lot more for 2nd place in last TTT Sealed than for winning first ever FotR sealed a year ago).

[janjetina]

I'm a new guy, so I don't know the details and I would appreciate if you could clarify this for me.

Were those 18 boosters awarded in addition to the sealed product? And was the sealed product 1 starter and 3 booster packs per series, making the total at 4 starters and 12 booster packs, or was it something different?

[Raelag]

Well I think that is normal that when someone started on the start year 2012 and another started in the middle of the same year, the first one MUST have and advantage and that is good and absolutely normal!! So I dont agree with restarting all collections.. I think that maybe merchant needed an improvement but this change since last week isnt what admins wanted to..

Also I am very dissapointed because my prize from collectors league (which I should obtain in 2 days )is very very devaulated..

Sealed events are very cool to get some boostert to be ready for collectors leagues but it takes a time.. I loved that.. Now I have a play set from FOTR, almost Towers and the next would be Kings.. But it took 2 days and I liked much more when after few months I was able to build up two collectors decks.. That was better..

[hsiale]

I'm a new guy, so I don't know the details and I would appreciate if you could clarify this for me.

Were those 18 boosters awarded in addition to the sealed product? And was the sealed product 1 starter and 3 booster packs per series, making the total at 4 starters and 12 booster packs, or was it something different?

Sealed league gave you 3 starters (with rare cards removed*) and 18 boosters to build your deck. This was divided amongst the 4 series exactly the way it is now (starter+6 packs, starter+3 packs, starter+3 packs, 6 packs in series 1, 2, 3 and 4). The only difference was that you could keep those cards. So you got extra 18 boosters, but no cash. Overall difference is really small.

*BoHD and EoF starters contained the fixed rares. This caused those rares drop in value as everyone had them. So no big difference because of those cards. And other starter deck cards are rarely worth a lot.

[janjetina]

There is still the value of starters to account for. Though most cards in them are worthless, they do form a starting point to construct a deck, and the only way to obtain certain useful premium (fixed) cards (Boromir from ROTEL, Gandalf from MOM and Moving This Way come to mind), and their selling price is 25 gold per starter.

So, the difference is 19 gold + 3 starter decks per month in favour of older players.

A semi-serious suggestion: you could make an 'all-foil' collector's league. That would keep the collector aspect alive.

Anyway, the prices seem to have settled.

[Raelag]

On first series 1-10 the prices are settled but there are few exeptions, like goblin armory, hides, small hope...

All foil collectors leagues is way different from colletors league, cause to have 4 foil Goblin Armory is very difficult even with the foil option..

Still IMHO the best sollution is to get all collections to the state before this armagedon

[hsiale]

The prices are definitely still not settled. For example Morgul Brute is going up and already very high. And some cards are going up still being low, so we will see their problem in a few days.

Lacking tools to research the market properly, I don't see the big picture. But in the RotK set I looked at a lot recently still around 30 rares are out of stock. I just bought 80 packs and sold all rares there, it didn't help a lot.

The problem is that this market has no people living off it, who will put enough work to stabilize it. Noone monitors the prices 24/7 to take the profit whenever a big chance comes. Especially as taking such chances requires investment and most people don't have resurces required.

I think a bot account, given some 20.000 gold starting money, looking at the market 24/7 and investing into boosters every time expected return of investment (on selling singles to merchant) is more than 150% (so expected sell price of 1 rare, 3 uncommons and 7 commons is 15 gold or more) would fix the problem, still living a healthy margin of profit for people willing to do small scale market stabilizing by buying boosters (boosters are random, to have them attractive compared to singles they need to be a bit more profitable on average).

[bokizg]

Market actually looks and reacts much better now then before. By saying this I mean at least regarding prices of most key rares.   Sure we used the system at the start but now it seems that it will settle as people stopped chasing gold or cards. I'm not sure how this at end plays on collectors leagues by players having wanted decks, but everyone had choice to boost up his collection or not. If someone didn't want to take this speedy way, he could just stay idle last 2 days. Number of friends here didn't actually care about merchant frenzy as they rather play sealed or casual, or they want to build their collection regardless of collectors league.

[Nitsuj]

On Monday, mid-afternoon, I noticed that Goblin Armory was buying at 2100 G.  I sold my two copies and got about 4000G.

I then went and bought probably 700 packs of FoTR, selling off any rares beyond 4.  I only pulled 2 Goblin Armories, but finished at about 4800G.  Mind you, my FoTR collection was pretty light when I started.  I had a lot of the good Uruk Hai stuff, and a decent start on rainbow stuff.  But that was it.  I had 0 PATHS, 1 SoSF, 1 Greenleaf, 1 Gandalf, 3 Savageries, 2 Goblin Swarms, 0 Glamdrings, 0 Last Alliance.  But after a couple hours, I had a complete play set, and was up 800G.

I then went into RoTK, which I had next to nothing of, except a few pieces here and there for an Elf and Men deck.  I started buying packs, and when I got down to $2200 G, I was getting nervous that my engine was going to be broken.  But then I started opening my 5th or 6th copy of a gazillion good cards.  Yesterday I ended the mid-afternoon with a nearly complete playset of RoTK, and about $3800G in my coffers.  If it wasn't Christmas Eve and Christmas day, I could have kept going on this as I was still netting about 300G buying 50 packs at a time, but I wanted to spend some time with the family rather than doing 4 mouse clicks per booster. (buy, confirm, open, confirm).

I then built up my MoM and RoEL playsets, getting 4 of all the power cards.  Ending at about $3400.

I then moved into TTT, which I had a pretty decent collection in.  I bought in until I got 4 Desert Lords, and 4 Easterling Captains.  I ended up with only 1 Ugluk I think, but I got out of TTT pack buying, because the power rares were too far and in-between.  Although, I did get a foil Desert Lord, which I sold for 500G

I then hit SoG and MD, again starting with next to nothing, and got pretty close to complete playsets out those, with about 1000G left.

So, last night, I'm looking over my collection, and the merchent, and the only really hard to get rares that I need are mostly in Reflections - so I made my first real mistake and started bulk buying reflections.  I didn't do too good there, as R+'s are just too hard to get, and stopped ending at 600G altogether.

Now, I could get back into my collection, and start selling off cards that I really don't need 4 copies of that are going good, like Eomer, Queen of Elves and Men, Greenleaf, Choke Aragorn, Cirdan, Aragorn's bow, etc and probably generate back up to $1,400 and could restart the engine and chase after sets like EoF or BoHD, which I didn't really touch because there are not enough power rares to keep the engines going in those two sets (all though EoF is getting close).

I could get behind a full reset of collections, as I'm surely not the only player who built more or less a complete playset over the past 2 days.  But then again, when I think back to playing in the day, I remember playing against the best decks, so I'm sort of torn on this one.  But I did what I did because I didn't want to be the odd man out, I assumed that many of the regular players were going to do what I did, and I wanted to keep up in the arms race.

I'd miss my collection before this card windfall, as I had good cards to build good decks from sets 1 through 7, and two decent MB decks - but I'm not sure what Marcin's best option here is to keep the "My Cards" leagues from just being "All Cards" leagues.

[Nitsuj]

By the way, if there is a full reset, I suggest we open up with a Collector's league in Fellowship Block (all 3 expansions legal from week one, make it a 3 week league).  It'd be more or less a sealed league, and we can all start building our collections.

Any full reset though should probably have some notice, so we can all communicate to friends who stopped coming to Gemp, so they can get in on the ground floor.

[Raelag]

The full restart is very bad choice.. Because people who played here about 2 years will lost all what they built up for the long time.. That is not a sollution... On the other hand turn things on what were before two weeks would change only few things.. Only new players who have in two days made a full set will be angry but still I think its not fair that the new player should be fully geared as the old player who spent on gemp much more time...

[Raelag]

Also the fact that for settling down the price of Morgul Brute will result to the state that other cards will have just a funny small prices...

[bokizg]

What is it to you that other people loose cards but you don't? Wouldn't you like to play collector's league against competitive decks and players rather then wining against weak decks or struggle to get games in for the week?

 

[Raelag]

Well I think that is very bad sollution to ruin players their colletcions! (I mean CoS, hsiale...) Also I think that collectors leagues worked normaly.. But now almost everyone has a full sets.. Do you mean that this is fair? Someone build it very long time and another comes and gets it? That is not good... Trust me.. I have now almost full sets 1,4,7 and its very easy to get all other sets... I had about 300 rares before this new merchant.. Now i have about 2000... That is not the way i think collector should be

[Raelag]

That is the main contrast!!! It takes 8 months to get 300 rares.. But only two DAYS to get the rest of 1700... It is not fair..

Everyone can click on computer to buy and sell cards/packs.. But It took a lot of time to me to get a some good rares for 3-5 decks... Now I can build everything.. And I am just dissapointed that the player who joined today can have a same collection as me ... Thats why I love to turn it to the state before this new merchant, because I spent many hours in sealed leagues to get a few good rares and now I see that was pointless..