Since trading has been brisk for the Call of Cthulhu CCG, I’ve decided to accept the inevitable consequence of my collector’s nature and try to complete a set of the first edition, including all the promotional cards I can find.
Ten years ago (wow, has it really been that long?) when I first started playing CCGs, I had no interest in building a complete set of any of the games that I played. For one, I was playing Magic: The Gathering during the heady days of Revised Edition through Alliances, and such an undertaking required more money than I had. But then I stopped playing Magic and started playing other games. My friends did the same.
That’s when the trouble started.
When my friend Dan was about to move to Vancouver and embark on his brilliant career, he invited a bunch of friends over to his parents’ house for a night of gaming. (This was one of the few nights when I stayed up for 24 hours on a non-Ben-related matter [grin]). We played some board games, some card games and a hotseat game of Heroes of Might and Magic.
During the wee hours of the morning, Dan said he was getting rid of his Middle-Earth and Netrunner cards. These were my games of choice at the time, so I was eager to negotiate the deal. In one fell swoop, I more than doubled my collection.
That’s when I decided to see, just out of curiosity, how close I was to building complete sets. I didn’t have any full sets, but I was close enough to keep trying. And so I did. That’s how I started.
And once I started, I learned that there are varying degrees of completeness. Sure, I can download an official checklist and make sure I have one copy of each card on that list, but what about promotional cards? What about variant printings, with off-centered or inverted art? What about reprints with updated card text? (Alderac is famous for this tactic – they call it the “Most Recent Printing” rule. If a card proves to be too powerful, they reprint it with new text in a later set, and all copies of the card are to be played as if they were printed with the new text.) What about ultra-rares and chase cards? What about foreign languages? What about demo decks and mail-in exclusives?
The quest for a complete CCG set can be as fruitless – or fruitful – as you choose. I’ve tended to simple rules for considering a set complete, but not always. I’ve tended to stick to the checklist and, if possible, the promos.
During my various sales and purchases of sets over eBay, I’ve once purchased a set that included all the associated promo cards for the game, which more than tripled the value of my purchase; and twice I’ve had customers complain that my sets weren’t complete enough – either I didn’t include the promo cards, or I didn’t include all the misprints.
Just last month, I saw somebody sell a set of Balrog expansion cards from the Middle-Earth CCG, including all the grey-bordered reprint cards, for an astronomical sum. I used those grey-bordered cards to level furniture, because they were reprints of commons, but those cards made all the difference in the bidding war.
Thinking about the process of trading for the twenty-odd cards I’m missing from Call of Cthulhu started me thinking about what I have in my other sets, what I’m missing, and how far I’m willing to go.
7th Sea
I’ve got complete sets of every expansion, except for the reprinted commons and uncommons from the last set: Syrneth Secret. I have all the promotional cards and all the foil reprints, save two: “Captain Bonnie McGee” and “The Hurricane”, which are reprinted from the Scarlet Sails expansion.
There’s one oddity in the Fate’s Debt expansion. The checklist claims that there is a common card called “Headhunters” to be found, but, after going through a couple of booster boxes and a box of starters, I haven’t found one. Messages sent to fan sites and mailing lists haven’t turned up any news. I do know that this expansion included a sweepstakes with special prize cards to be found and redeemed for things like T-shirts and posters. Perhaps “Headhunters” was swapped out of the printing signature to make room for the prize cards.
No, I don’t have any of the prize cards, either.
I’ve also got two demo decks for the game, featuring different card art and rules text. I have the decks for the Brotherhood of the Coast and for the Crimson Rogers. I’d love to know if other demo decks exist.
Buffy
I have a complete set of all expansions of the Buffy CCG thanks to one thing: the redemption program. Every booster pack and starter deck has a redemption symbol worth 5 or 25 points, and, when the game was supported by the manufacturer, those points could be redeemed for promotional cards and non-foil versions of ultra-rares. When the game stopped being supported entirely, the manufacturer offered a couple of generous final redemption offers that included all the promo card variants.
Very nice!
Doomtown
I’m still working on this set. I’m missing one card from the Reaping of Souls expansion, and 3 cards from the Eye for an Eye expansion, and most of the rares from the Mouth of Hell set. This last set is going to be a real bear to collect, because it was famously under-printed. Booster boxes, if you can find them, sell for at least the listed price (no discounts here!) and the starter decks only contain one rare each instead of the more traditional three. Not terribly helpful or economical.
There are also a series of promotional cards that were made available for in-store leagues: Outfit cards with the outfit symbol printed on the back are the real prizes to be found. I also remember a couple of Doomtown comic books being produced, and I believe that promo cards could be found therein, but I don’t have any confirmation.
So, for Doomtown, I watch eBay, and wait.
Initial D
After Buffy closed down, I vowed not to collect a new (as opposed to defunct) CCG ever again. That resolve lasted exactly until the moment I discovered the most elusive ultra-rare in a booster box of Initial D: the Trueno 86 DVD card.
Yup, it’s one of those business-card sized DVDs, and it contains a short clip of the Initial D cartoon. What’s more, the card can also be used in play, should you want.
Well, I figured that once I had the ultra-rare card, the rest of the cards would be easy to find. So, I fell off the wagon.
I’m missing two promo cards for this set. These cards were released in the first two DVD collections of the cartoon. However, the cartoon is famously bad, so I don’t yet know if my desire for a complete promo set warrants the purchase of two DVDs of shows that I have no intention of watching.
Legend of the Burning Sands
I completed this set thanks to one enormous eBay sale, and two years of diligent trading.
The large eBay sale gave me most of the cards in the set and all the promo cards, including Strongholds with the faction symbol on the back. I even had extras, which have served as much-needed trade bait for the other cards.
I spent two years trying to complete the set of the last expansion, Awakenings. Specifically, I was trying to find two cards. Fortunately, I had a pretty good trading partner in California. We had a series of successful trades, and, when he came across the two cards I needed, he immediately thought of me.
Of course, once I finalized the deal, I found out that my friend Francois had one of the cards in one of his unplayed decks. Oh well!
Middle-Earth
This was the first set I completed. It’s also the most incomplete set I own, because of the variety of reprinted and foreign language cards.
There’s a set of nine German promo cards that are not available in any other language. Those I have. The other languages have reprinted promo cards with alternate art and alternate text. Those I don’t have.
My set of the Wizards base set combines the limited and unlimited versions of the cards, so that set is technically incomplete. Making matters more interesting is the much-maligned card “The Great Ship”, which has gone through three different text versions during different print runs of the game. The card was far more powerful than the designers intended, so it’s constantly being updated.
Netrunner
This was the second set I ever completed, and it was by far the easiest. The only promo cards were distributed as a promotional set for the final expansion.
That last expansion, Classic was actually a test run. The manufacturer has a full expansion’s worth of unreleased card designs sitting in the vault. That expansion was dropped from the production schedule when sales slipped. However, a couple of years later, the fan base was still strong, so the manufacturer took a third of the cards, packaged them under the misleading title of Classic, which suggested a “best of” series of cards, no brand-new cards, and put them out for sale. Demand was strong, but not strong enough.
Star Trek (Skybox)
This set is complete, right down to the weirdest promo card I’ve ever seen: There’s a version of the Chekhov crew card that grants an extra stats bonus if the card is autographed by Walter Koenig.
I guess the set will be well and truly complete if I have both autographed and un-autographed versions of the Chekhov card.
Warlord
I have a complete set of the revised Campaign Edition base set thanks to some good fortune. To promote the new base set, Alderac released a “Box of Greed” set – a box of rare cards. When a customer bought a booster pack, they were entitled to pull a rare from the Box of Greed, effectively giving the player two rares for the price of one. The contents of the Box of Greed were the rares from one of two print sheets.
I ended up with two complementary Boxes of Greed, and so had a leg up on building the set.
I also have a binder set of all the demo and Overlord promotional decks, but the number of actual promo cards released are too many to track down….let alone the Dragonlords and, the jewels in the crown, the single-printed Medusan Lords. The only way to get one, is to beat the current holder, and that’s no easy feat.
There are many more expansions to Warlord than just Campaign: 14 in all, unless I miss my count. At least one, Southern Kingdoms, is horribly under-printed. I don’t think I’ll be trying to complete those sets any time soon. Or at all.
X-Files
Completing a set of the X-Files is complicated by those pesky laws of supply and demand.
First, there are the promotional decks given out at the Gen Con gaming convention, which contain cards unused in the main set. Impossible to find.
Then there’s the second edition, titled The Truth is Out There: it’s exactly the same as the basic set, except that the ten ultra-rares are different and 20 or 30 rare cards are different. I once had a full set of those cards, but I ended up selling that particular edition for extra cash.
Why have I not bought another copy of the set? For the same reason that I don’t have the last five promo cards: supply and demand. When the manufacturer stopped production of the game, they sold all the warehouse stock to a single distributor. That distributor sells the cards online at fixed prices. The five new promo cards range in price from $10 to $55, and the prices haven’t gone down in the past five years. The distributor also sells complete sets for about $90, which is more than I’m interested in paying.
There are also rumours about pewter versions of the Mulder and Scully agent cards that were to be sold as part of a collector’s kit. I scoffed at those rumours until I saw one of the prototype cards for sale on eBay last month. The asking price had too many zeroes. Yowsers!
What’s Left
I have three sizable playsets of games for which I have no complete set: Harry Potter, Mythos and Shadowrun. The Mythos and Shadowrun sets I sold on eBay last year, and I have a version of seller’s remorse. I kinda wish I could have those sets back. Maybe I’ll keep my eyes peeled for a deal.