So I've been doing some thinking about the whole booster box thing lately with wave 2/rise of the combiners coming soon. I feel like maybe buying booster boxes might not be the best way to get all the cards, or at least get the rares.

I'm going to do some very basic math, but I need someone with more numbers about the odds of pulling rares and super rares to reveal some of those numbers to me. As of the moment I think there is a rare in about every 7 packs assuming 4 rares per box, so roughly $111.72 for 4 rares. The big caveat here is I think you might end up with less dupes then if you bought 2 to 3 booster boxes to get all the rares.

Can any of you help me solve this?

 

The Rare character card distribution stinks.

I got 2 rares in my one box.

 

I'm getting a box of wave 2 just because it's cheaper online, and I figure I have to load up since I'm starting from scratch and have zero cards.

On the whole, I have had much better luck with individual packs. After wave 1 went on clearance, I started buying around 7 packs at a time from different stores, and I tended to get 1 or 2 rares each time for some reason, especially Battlefield Legend Prime for some reason.

 

As you personally already know, I'm planning on buying a booster box for this wave after just doing singles for wave one. I figure it's worth a shot since this is the big combiner set where you gotta get five (or two or six) characters from a set so I might as well get a ton of cards at once this time around. But yeah, no clue of theres a different math to it. At least the odds on the super rares are better this wave!

 

Last set I bought one box when it was cheap and then over a box in singles across various stores. I think I got 2-3 Rares and 1 SRT from the box. And then I bought another 53 packs (damn) at random from multiple places and got another 6-7 Rares and no SRTs.

So randomly I got Rares from 1:8 or 1:9, box I got Rares or SRT from 1:8 or 1:10

At the end of the day a box will never net you more than average Rares. Random buys have an even chance of getting you better or worse odds. The payoff for a hitting a Rare ($25ish) to the cost ($4ish) is decent enough to gamble. I think the real trick is knowing when to quit. I bought 2 Rares and 2 Uncommons for cash and traded for another Rare even after opening 83 packs. After 60 or so it was probably cheaper to buy the cards I wanted, but you have to factor in enjoyment of buying something and wondering if it'll yield what you want. I also build decks for others to play with me so I'm keeping 6 of each battle card when possible. The distribution of Rare Battle Cards seemed pretty even.

 

You got an odd box. I've opened 5 boxes over all and have always gotten 3-4 rares per box (1 of the rares being SRT Bee from three different boxes. So 3 SRTs from 3 different boxes).

Come Wave 2 I've ordered a case (4 boxes). Once I get them I'll post how many rare characters I get per box.

 

Not sure why they dropped so much, but just secured a booster box wave 2 on Amazon for $73, then it instantly jumped back up to $93. Might be worth monitoring to see if it drops again...

 

I pre-ordered around $84 and they changed it to the $73.14 price. Nice.

 

I know right. And my local shops still won't order boxes from their distributors (or their distributors are not stocking the game) I know I should support local businesses and what not, but at this point I literally can't support them. I've got 6 boxes pre-ordered for less than $450, vs $660 from a FLGS if they would have chosen to sell it to me, so I guess I'm a bit grateful for them not stocking the game as it alleviates any guilt I might have had for giving Amazon my business.

 

Yikes, I bought 3 boxes and thought that was extreme. Isn’t less expensive to just buy the cards off eBay after three boxes? What is the general recommendation for this? I bought bought two boxes for wave one and still had to buy a bunch off EBay.

 

I've bought all my boxes (wave 1 and 2) from the same online dealer -- boxes are about $86 with free shipping.

For wave 1, I picked up 2 boxes which netted me 6 rares and all common/uncommon cards......but no SRT. I then bought singles of the cards I was missing.

In addition to the boxes, I also bought numerous packs from stores when I saw them and never had any luck with anything better than uncommon.


Going for 3 boxes for Wave 2 and hoping for the best.....

 

I run draft tournaments so I need sealed boxes. The game is a lot of fun to draft. I've probably played just as many matches drafting as constructed. I also like having spare decks (especially common/uncommon spares) that I can give away to new players curious about the game to grow my scene. So I prefer to buy sealed product to the second hand market. And I've been able to trade spare rares to fill out sets just fine, I prefer that to spending $90 on Nemesis, that's a whole other box.

 

I bought 1 starter and at least 20+ booster packs from 4 different stores in my area (1 store still has a sealed booster box). I am missing 2 uncommons and 11 rares to finish the Battle Cards set and just 10 Decepticons and 8 Autobots to finish the character cards set. Went to my local GameStop last night where I found out a guy I know from a now closed LCS works at the GameStop. He dug up the last 6 boosters that they had from a drawer behind the counter where the CCG's are kept. From the 6 packs, I pulled Jetfire, Wheeljack, Skywarp and Darkmount (can't remember the 5th one) who I needed and a dupe Sludge. (Edit: the character card totals are from after the packs I picked up last night)

 

If you're just collecting characters you're best bet is probably to buy singles. Hell for wave 1 I would of sent you the common and uncommon characters for the cost of a small flat rate box. The rare character distribution sucks. I've heard more boxes with 2 rares than 4. The average seems to be three. This is based on wave 1 and I'm assuming nothing has changed.

If you play the game I would say buy at least 2 boxes. This is because of the battle cards. 2 boxes should have you with at least a play set of common and uncommon battle cards. You'll also have a good base of rare battle cards. Now you'll just need to fill in needed rares via singles which should be cheaper than chasing them through packs. Hopefully you also pull some of the expensive character cards.

The real trick is understanding where you hit diminishing returns and the box becomes not worth it. Some games I've played the box is always worth it due to trade fodder you get. I don't think that really holds true in this game particularly because of character cards. There is almost separate economies for character and battle cards.

EDIT

I Just got two booster boxes for rotc and it looks like rare distribution is better. 4 rares per box and 1 super rare per box. Super rares odds printed on the box are 1:50. ROTC boxes seem to be better value than wave 1.

 

I got sent a box of the ROTC Booster Packs by Hasbro to review, so 30 packs. I found the distribution of cards as follows:

Combiner Characters: 66%


Hero Cards: 33% (one Ultra Rare)


Enigma Cards: Got all 5


Star Battle Cards: Got 6 of 7



So not too bad on the whole. The only Combiners I was able to make outright from one box were Menasor and Dreadwing.

Anyway, more info in my Blog for anyone interested  

 

I hope the rare distribution improves with the next set again or at least stays the same way as with ROTC.

Still missing a lot of CC from Wave 1, hoping to get more with 1-2 displays.

 

For what it's worth. I shopped for Single lots on eBay and ended up with a full playset (3 each) of common and uncommon Wave 1 and 2 battle cards, plus all of the common and uncommon Wave 1 character cards for about $100. Which is about the price of one booster box.

The Rares in this game are fairly situational and the ones that aren't seem to go for $10 minimum per battle card. Character cards it's a whole other issue, Super Rares on eBay can go for up to $35. Commons and Uncommon Combiner teams seem to go for $10-15, I don't want to think about what a full set of Dinobot Combiners would go for.

Honestly, I wasn't really feeling this game, until Combiners were a thing and Devastator was a pre-made box.

I did it this way because I've been playing LCGs for a while where you just dump $15 every so often for a full playset of 20 cards. Also there's the notion of buying cards no one has any use for, plus not having to open another box of wrappers that will just end up in landfill.

 

I bought a box of series 1 and a box of series 2. No super rares. Bought two random packs from Walmart: Springer super rare! Wanted Starscream but I'll take it!

 

My wife bought a box of Wave 2 for me for our anniversary. I had very good pulls. 1 SR and 4 Rares. Blitzwing, Grimlock, Sludge, Venin, and Skywarp. 3 W2Booster packs from Target netted me a Rare Snarl and 2 common/uncommon characters.