Feb 4, 2012
If you’ve ever tried sealed pack play with normal booster packs, you’ve probably encountered some problems. You might sit with a hand full of Tribute monsters you can’t play. Or you might have a hand full of weenies that get wrecked by your opponent’s nigh-undefeatable 1500 ATK “monstrosity”. Maybe you got a bunch of cards that require specific other cards to play, but you didn’t pull those other cards, so you can’t use anything. Maybe you don’t have any Spell or Trap removal – or maybe you have no effects that can destroy monsters.
All of these issues are easily dealt with in constructed play, where you have your own customized Deck assembled from the cards in your collection. But when you’re only playing with the cards from new packs, the game suddenly becomes very different.
Battle packs are designed to eliminate all of those problems, by carefully controlling which cards you will get from the packs you open. That way, you can experience all of the excitement and fun of sealed pack play, but without the problems that can arise when using normal packs. Each battle pack is engineered so that every one of its 5 card slots has a specific kind of card. It’s the first Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG pack ever made that’s designed specifically for sealed pack play.
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Here’s how it works:
The entire set is made up of 220 cards. Each pack contains 5 cards. To make the pack construction a little easier to understand, we’ve organized the card numbers for the set based on which slot they take up in the pack. (Put your math caps on, because this might seem a little complicated at first.)
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CARD SLOT 1 will always contain 1 card from cards 001-055 (a 55 card pool).
Card Slot 1’s card mix includes many of the most powerful cards in the set – the cards that will really make an impact when played. It stretches from Witch of the Black Forest (card 001) toDark Bribe (card 055) and includes cards like Skull Archfiend of Lightning, Dark Magician of Chaos, most of the various Monarchs, Obelisk the Tormentor, Tour Guide From the Underworld, Raigeki, and Metal Reflect Slime.
All 8 Xyz Monsters in this set are also in the Card Slot 1 card pool. So if you get an Xyz Monster, it will be in place of one of the other ‘power cards’ that take up this slot. (Unless you get an Xyz Monster in Card Slot 5 – but more about that later.) Around 36% of packs will have an Xyz Monster in this card slot.
All of the Card Slot 1 cards are Rare cards. The title is either glossy black ink, or glossy white ink – a variant style of card title that is similar to the colored titles on Duelist League prize cards.
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CARD SLOT 2 will always contain 1 card from cards 056-110 (another 55-card pool).
Most of these cards either destroy monsters, Spells, or Traps, or else alter the outcome of a battle. But Spells and Traps with other effects can also be found here. This pool covers everything from Greenkappa (card 056) to Liberty at Last! (card 110), and is pretty diverse, including cards like the almighty Penguin Soldier, Axe of Despair, Ante, Forbidden Lance,Reckless Greed, Half or Nothing, and Power Frame.
All cards in Card Slot 2 are common cards.
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CARD SLOT 3 will always contain 1 card from cards 111-170 (a 60-card pool).
These are your higher-ATK monsters, and range from Luster Dragon (card 111) to Wind-Up Warrior (card 170), including Vampire Lord, Toon Gemini Elf, Guardian Sphinx, Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, The Tricky, Doomcaliber Knight, Card Trooper, Ancient Gear Knight,Arcana Force XIV – Temperance, Backup Warrior, Power Giant, and Gogogo Golem.
All cards in Card Slot 3 are common cards.
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CARD SLOT 4 will always contain 1 card from cards 171-220 (a 50-card pool that rounds out the set of 220).
These are lower-ATK monsters that are included for their utility, and range from Giant Soldier of Stone (card 171) to Psi-Blocker (card 220), and includes cards like Muka Muka, Makyura the Destructor, Stealth Bird, Night Assailant, Drillroid, Cyber Valley, Fabled Raven, Naturia Strawberry, and Gagaga Magician.
All cards in Card Slot 4 are common cards.
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Finally, there’s CARD SLOT 5.
This is your wild card slot. The card in this spot could be any of the 220 cards in the set, and there’s a flat 1-in-220 chance of getting any specific card in this spot. It is possible (but unlikely) to get 2 copies of the same card because of this – one copy in its regular slot, and then a special copy of that card in the wild card slot.
All cards in Card Slot 5 are special, shiny cards, similar to Duel Terminal cards.
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The Big Picture
The main thing you should take away from this is that your packs don’t have 5 cards from a 220 card set. They contain 1 card from Pool 1, another from Pool 2, another from Pool 3, another from Pool 4, and 1 wild card from any Pool.
Because the cards in each card slot are restricted to exact card Pools, you’re guaranteed to have a nice mix of removal effects, power boosts, and high/low Level monsters for your Deck. This eliminates all of the pitfalls that can cause issues when trying sealed pack with normal boosters.
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That’s a lot of info to take in for one day, so we’ll leave it there for now. In the future, you can expect us to cover topics like:
- Our rules for what cards could be included.
- What your spread of cards will look like when you open 10 packs to build a sealed pack Deck.
- Your odds of seeing any specific card on the table in a pod of 4 or 8 players participating in the same sealed pack activity.
- The amount of Spells and Traps that will be floating around.
- How and why the 8 Xyz Monsters in the set were chosen.
- Using the number of cards to control gameplay (or, “Why you’re more than 5 times more likely to see Pearl than Adreus.”
If you have specific questions, feel free to send them to us-ygorules@konami.com and we might address them at a future point. Be sure and start your subject line with “BUILDING THE BATTLE PACK”!
