Its like going to a movie on opening night and receiving a little piece of film you can use as a bookmark. Then learning that one in a hundred theaters had a member of the cast and/or crew show up and give out free shirts and tickets to give to other friends to see the movie.
...
Anyone who went to the prerelease for the helvault should have walked away with this going "wow, I really loved being able to play magic!" Not: "Awh, I didn't get a $50 bill but the other guy did!"
Here's a question for ya'll: Did any of you out there complaining actually win your local event?
I absolutely adored the Helvault. The package was really cool!
The d20s were perfect for my playgroup since the shop had a ton of extras and no one else at the prerelease wanted them. So my group got to take home like 4 per person. We always need more spindowns since we play big EDH games.
The large cards are cool too since we use those for a variant version of limited-commander.
Let's compare games, guys! From best to worst promos:
Legend of the Five Rings:
*2 playsets of promos for each player every event
*Custom cards you get to partially design (either flavor or mechanically) for winning storyline events that happen 4-6 times a year. These usually come with neat swag like certificates or even props like swords.
*Booster pack wrappers/Starter Deck tabs can be turned in for free rares from the current set (and other promotional)
*Card inserts (i.e. tokens) can be turned in for full art/foreign versions of staple cards (or rares of your choice from the current expansion).
*Free specially designed cards for donating to charities.
*Past Promotions include a complete expansion (playset) for free (The Imperial *Gift for their 15th anniversary), free promotionals that don't even require tournament participation, free packs/promos for helping demonstrate the game to newer players, free (good) decks for new players, and PDFs of future sets when printings get delayed that your allowed to print out and use in your decks.
*TL;DR: Tons of free cards, mailings, exclusives, alt-art (including actual full art with no text sans title); almost all the promos are "rares" (or alt art). They even give away niftythings like sleeves, shirts, swords and deck-boxes in exchange for old booster wrappers or random pack inserts.
Magic: The Gathering:
*Free tokens, dice, planeswalker loyalty counters, life-counters, boxes, M&Ms and oversized cards at various events.
*Free gameday, pre-release, release, GP, gateway league and FNM cards.
*Arch-Enemy/Planescape Schemes/Planes.
*Comic Book and Target-exclusive insert cards.
*Free packs of alternate art basic land if you live in Japan or Europe.
*Video Game promos.
*Oversized vintage card (one per year)
*Uncut sheets (usually convention exclusive)
*Convention exclusive alternate foiling promos.
*Judge Promos
*(Now retired) Tri-yearly MPR mailings with occasional special promotions like the Hypnotic Specter.
*Playmats at GPs
*TL;DR: Almost all alternate art of cards that range from uncommon to rare, many of which aren't played in any deck; but some are. The strongest cards tend to be exclusives like Judge and GP Promos.
Yu-Gi-Oh!
*****ty movie promos that are always big bombs with too many drawbacks to be playable with ****ty variants of other support cards. Recently they took this away and made movie packs that you had to pay money for; which failed spectacularly.
*Shonen Jump promos from the manga or magazine that are either niche playable or, once a year, extremely playable that tend to get ripped from the books/magazines in the store.
*Shonen Jump subscription promos exclusive to north america that tend to be ultimate rare game enders that define the future meta of the game and become $80 cards anyone in NA can get for $30.
*Pre-release/Release promos that have recently been mostly super-rares from the set that no one wanted in the first place. Always one promo per player with no extra swag.
*Playmats at large tournaments (only for the winners).
*Top 2 or Top 4 at large tournaments get a single card that gets released to the masses 6 months later and before then can be sold for hundreds since there are so few.
*Tournament packs
*Duel Terminal cards
*TL;DR: Almost all of their promos require you win a major event or spend money on a product so ****ty that the only people who buy it get for the promotional card itself; the cards range from junk to 'key component to make this type of deck actually work', making those archtypes suffer and die upon release which inadvertantly causes Konami to assume players just don't like the archtype and causes the company to abandon that type of deck. Occasionally there will be a $100+ promo that only gets printed as a promo...but it'll just be sold back and forth until some unlucky SoB finds themselves with the card amongst a market flooded with them when it gets reprinted as a common.
Most Games:
In most other tabletop games promos are reserved for conventions and as part of special deals i.e. preorders, art-books and for tournament prize support. Shipping stuff to player's doors and giving stuff to local shops to give out to their players is just reserved for extremely niche events since its so expensive to coordinate.
The physical helvault itself is an amazing piece of packaging that I'll be bringing to my packaging design class at my design school next week so we can dissect it and look at how brilliant it was. That was the best part of the prerelease to me. Screw the contents of the vault: the package itself was great!
We've had black/white angels in the past. A fallen angel/angel traitor to the demons would make sense. Or a zombie angel. That might revolutionize the entire zombie industry [/OOTS].
I bet if we permanently cement a post in this thread asking how long it'll take the time will go by faster despite the fact its been repeated numerous times on every page in the thread when the event starts!
Complaining about it is going to help too!
((But seriously: If we get just one keyword out of this I'll be happy.))
Random note: In Kaalia she supports all the above cards I mentioned and Bend or Break, Boom or Bust, Desolation Angel, Decree of Annihilation (Cycle), Jokulhaups, IMpending Disaster, Jaya Ballard (ultimate), Myojin of Infinite Rage, Obliterate, Ruination and Worldslayer
And I'm not including creature removal (mass), unless its repeatable, for obvious reasons.
http://imgur.com/i7w9w
...
Anyone who went to the prerelease for the helvault should have walked away with this going "wow, I really loved being able to play magic!" Not: "Awh, I didn't get a $50 bill but the other guy did!"
Here's a question for ya'll: Did any of you out there complaining actually win your local event?
The d20s were perfect for my playgroup since the shop had a ton of extras and no one else at the prerelease wanted them. So my group got to take home like 4 per person. We always need more spindowns since we play big EDH games.
The large cards are cool too since we use those for a variant version of limited-commander.
Legend of the Five Rings:
*2 playsets of promos for each player every event
*Custom cards you get to partially design (either flavor or mechanically) for winning storyline events that happen 4-6 times a year. These usually come with neat swag like certificates or even props like swords.
*Booster pack wrappers/Starter Deck tabs can be turned in for free rares from the current set (and other promotional)
*Card inserts (i.e. tokens) can be turned in for full art/foreign versions of staple cards (or rares of your choice from the current expansion).
*Free specially designed cards for donating to charities.
*Past Promotions include a complete expansion (playset) for free (The Imperial *Gift for their 15th anniversary), free promotionals that don't even require tournament participation, free packs/promos for helping demonstrate the game to newer players, free (good) decks for new players, and PDFs of future sets when printings get delayed that your allowed to print out and use in your decks.
*TL;DR: Tons of free cards, mailings, exclusives, alt-art (including actual full art with no text sans title); almost all the promos are "rares" (or alt art). They even give away niftythings like sleeves, shirts, swords and deck-boxes in exchange for old booster wrappers or random pack inserts.
Magic: The Gathering:
*Free tokens, dice, planeswalker loyalty counters, life-counters, boxes, M&Ms and oversized cards at various events.
*Free gameday, pre-release, release, GP, gateway league and FNM cards.
*Arch-Enemy/Planescape Schemes/Planes.
*Comic Book and Target-exclusive insert cards.
*Free packs of alternate art basic land if you live in Japan or Europe.
*Video Game promos.
*Oversized vintage card (one per year)
*Uncut sheets (usually convention exclusive)
*Convention exclusive alternate foiling promos.
*Judge Promos
*(Now retired) Tri-yearly MPR mailings with occasional special promotions like the Hypnotic Specter.
*Playmats at GPs
*TL;DR: Almost all alternate art of cards that range from uncommon to rare, many of which aren't played in any deck; but some are. The strongest cards tend to be exclusives like Judge and GP Promos.
Yu-Gi-Oh!
*****ty movie promos that are always big bombs with too many drawbacks to be playable with ****ty variants of other support cards. Recently they took this away and made movie packs that you had to pay money for; which failed spectacularly.
*Shonen Jump promos from the manga or magazine that are either niche playable or, once a year, extremely playable that tend to get ripped from the books/magazines in the store.
*Shonen Jump subscription promos exclusive to north america that tend to be ultimate rare game enders that define the future meta of the game and become $80 cards anyone in NA can get for $30.
*Pre-release/Release promos that have recently been mostly super-rares from the set that no one wanted in the first place. Always one promo per player with no extra swag.
*Playmats at large tournaments (only for the winners).
*Top 2 or Top 4 at large tournaments get a single card that gets released to the masses 6 months later and before then can be sold for hundreds since there are so few.
*Tournament packs
*Duel Terminal cards
*TL;DR: Almost all of their promos require you win a major event or spend money on a product so ****ty that the only people who buy it get for the promotional card itself; the cards range from junk to 'key component to make this type of deck actually work', making those archtypes suffer and die upon release which inadvertantly causes Konami to assume players just don't like the archtype and causes the company to abandon that type of deck. Occasionally there will be a $100+ promo that only gets printed as a promo...but it'll just be sold back and forth until some unlucky SoB finds themselves with the card amongst a market flooded with them when it gets reprinted as a common.
Most Games:
In most other tabletop games promos are reserved for conventions and as part of special deals i.e. preorders, art-books and for tournament prize support. Shipping stuff to player's doors and giving stuff to local shops to give out to their players is just reserved for extremely niche events since its so expensive to coordinate.
Turn 1: Extract
Turn 2: Manipulate Fate/Foresight (if you didn't Extract on Turn one)
Turn 3: Foodchain
Turn 4: Infinite mana!
I like that magical christmas land. Only requires two cards in (the foodchain and the tutor) in a blue deck.
4 Manipulate Fate
4 Extract
4 Foresight
4 Misdirection
That being said: How does this work with Looter effects if you have no cards in hand? Can you cast it before/after its discarded?
Complaining about it is going to help too!
((But seriously: If we get just one keyword out of this I'll be happy.))
And I'm not including creature removal (mass), unless its repeatable, for obvious reasons.