Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Pulls being all over the place in Plasma Storm

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Unrelated, but I thought I was the only person who went to Retro on here. Missed this prerelease unfortunately. I spoke to the guy who organized it at the BC prerelease, he opens the boxes and shuffles the packs and then puts 6 in little plastic bags. He reckons this helps distribute the ultra rares a bit more fairly, but I think the boxes are too random for it to actually make a difference.
 
FSULugia said:
Pulls can always be like that unless you buy a case. Most cases have even distributions. How they are disrupted throughout the 6 boxes is a different story.
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This is the first I've heard or even thought of this. Is it a fact? That the card printer treats a case of six boxes (216 packs) as one whole unit in which they organize the right number of kind of ultra rare cards?

Previously I thought they just did it on the box level, and 6 boxes randomly put together into a bigger box make a case.
 
Houndoom said:
Unrelated, but I thought I was the only person who went to Retro on here. Missed this prerelease unfortunately. I spoke to the guy who organized it at the BC prerelease, he opens the boxes and shuffles the packs and then puts 6 in little plastic bags. He reckons this helps distribute the ultra rares a bit more fairly, but I think the boxes are too random for it to actually make a difference.
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Yeah, seems superstitious to me. Let's say that two ultra rares happen to be clumped together in the first six packs on the left side of a box. Anyone at the table has a fair chance of getting that group of six packs as is. (Unless say there are tables of six, and the person in seat #1 on the left always gets the first six on the left. In that case a player could game the system and try to sit there, but it would be pointless unless they know for a fact where the clumps were.)
 
losjackal said:
This is the first I've heard or even thought of this. Is it a fact? That the card printer treats a case of six boxes (216 packs) as one whole unit in which they organize the right number of kind of ultra rare cards?

Previously I thought they just did it on the box level, and 6 boxes randomly put together into a bigger box make a case.
Click to expand...

Well Ive opened a few cases and thats just what I been seeing. Each box has a different amount of EX's/FAs/Ace Specs/Secrets. Some boxes you get 3 FAs, some you get none, some you get 1. Same with EX's and shinys. However, through out the whole case you end up with the same amount of holos as you would in another case. You get about 1 copy of each FA, 2-3 copies of valuable exs, 3-4 semi valuable exs, and about 6 of the lesser exs. You get 2-3 shinys and I lost count of how many ace specs and regular holos but those are a lot to remember nor that relevent (at least the holos, you do get about 1-2 ace specs a box, id say 10-12 as a guesstimate). Sometimes the box may short you a few of the regular holos or 1-2 exs, but i notice its pretty consistent.

I opened a few Boundaries Crossed cases and see a lot of the same cards each case. You get all the FAs or sometimes a double of a certain FA (once i didnt get Keldeo and got 2x Bianca instead), you get all the exs, doubles of some (3x celebi, 3x cresselia, alternating between either 2x keldeo or landos, same with white and black kyurems). The Secret and Ace Specs are random, theres no rhyme to reason to behind them at all.

At least thats my experience. I think cases have a certain type of distribution. More than the boxes at least. Maybe its just from my experience but I opened quite a few cases and just see the same thing every time.
 
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In my first 6 packs I got:

1x FA Lugia EX
1x Victory Piece
1x Scramble Switch

In my last two packs:

1x Lugia EX
1x Moltres EX

Then I traded for a pack and got Dowsing Machine. best prerelease ever.
 
At first I got 3 holos; and the 3 people next to and across from me pulled an EX, Shiny, and Full Art EX ( This was all from the same box). Afterwards I pulled 1 Full Art Colress, and Dowsing Machine; and 3 EX's, and a Shiny were also pulled from that box by other people.
 
The one I went to today somebody pulled the Charizard (the Fighting energy "goof").

I pulled this stuff (played 2 Pre-releases):

FA Colress
Lugia EX
Articuno EX
2 Infernape
Druddigon
2 Watchog (no Patrats)
2 Bouffalant
and several others.
 
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Our PR seemed to have had lower pull rates than the past 2 or 3 that we've had. Out of 25 people only three pulled a full art of any sort, and only one shiny. I saw about 8 or 10 regular EX's.
 
I dunno, I'd say pull rates were decent. I think there were around 2 boxes at mine, maybe 3, and total I saw pulled;

3 Victory Piece
2 Scramble Switch
1 Dowsing Machine
3 FA Articuno EX
1 Moltres EX
1 Zapdos EX
1 Charizard
1 Blastoise
1 FA Victini EX
1 Victini EX
1 FA Lugia EX
1 Lugia EX
1 Black Kyurem EX
1 White Kyurem EX

But they weren't really distributed, as people noted. The same person got Lugia EX and Shiny Blastoise, another got both FA Victini and FA Articuno, I only ended up with one of the Victory Piece, etc. Looking at that there were probably 3 boxes and I just didn't see everything that was pulled. It'll be more accurate to estimate when people start opening boxes.
 
Ill be opening 2 cases of this set. Hopefully the pulls are as good in each of the boxes as everyone is reporting lol.

Ill post results of what I get here!
 
This set's pulls are diffidently more random than even Dragon Exalted and this makes the set all the more worth buying.
 
FSULugia said:
Well Ive opened a few cases and thats just what I been seeing. Each box has a different amount of EX's/FAs/Ace Specs/Secrets. Some boxes you get 3 FAs, some you get none, some you get 1. Same with EX's and shinys. However, through out the whole case you end up with the same amount of holos as you would in another case. You get about 1 copy of each FA, 2-3 copies of valuable exs, 3-4 semi valuable exs, and about 6 of the lesser exs. You get 2-3 shinys and I lost count of how many ace specs and regular holos but those are a lot to remember nor that relevent (at least the holos, you do get about 1-2 ace specs a box, id say 10-12 as a guesstimate). Sometimes the box may short you a few of the regular holos or 1-2 exs, but i notice its pretty consistent.

I opened a few Boundaries Crossed cases and see a lot of the same cards each case. You get all the FAs or sometimes a double of a certain FA (once i didnt get Keldeo and got 2x Bianca instead), you get all the exs, doubles of some (3x celebi, 3x cresselia, alternating between either 2x keldeo or landos, same with white and black kyurems). The Secret and Ace Specs are random, theres no rhyme to reason to behind them at all.

At least thats my experience. I think cases have a certain type of distribution. More than the boxes at least. Maybe its just from my experience but I opened quite a few cases and just see the same thing every time.
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This is more "the law of averages" coming into play than any real evidence. If you flip a coin 20 times, its very probably to hit 18 heads. If you flip it 1000 times, you are really, really likely to see about 50/50.

Cards are not made by boxes, they are made by print runs. I don't know what the print run is, but I can assure you, its not a case or each case would be the same. Given that there is upwards of 50 rares in each set and not every pack that has the same rare is the same pack, if it were done by the case, that means each rare would only have about 3 possible different packs, which is not the case. I would venture to say there are easily over 1000 different possible packs in a print run, which means the case theory goes away pretty quick. The Rares (by this, I mean holos, EX, FA, etc, anything that can occupy the rare spot) are distributed across the print run as the design team sees fit. Theoretically, there is supposed to be some rhyme or reason to it, but I highly doubt it...
 
This is the first time in years that I planned to buy a box but these pullrates :(

"So I opened a box today and got Black Kyurem EX, Articuno EX and Random Receiver secret rare.

A couple of packs had errors. One of the packs didn't have a rare, but had 10 cards plus TCG code. The very next pack had a rare in the front of the pack, along with the normal reverse then rare pattern. This pack also had a total of 10 cards, plus TCG code. "

"box 1-full art articuno, victini ex, zapdos ex, dowsing machine, scramble switch

box 2-black kyurem, zapdos

box 3- fa colress, fa articuno, white kyurem, cobalion, zapdos, scramble switch, scramble switch, dowsing machine, dowsing machine."

from reddit...

If I get a box with 2 scrs which are zapdos and moltres I'll probably never buy a card again.. >_>
 
chrataxe said:
This is more "the law of averages" coming into play than any real evidence. If you flip a coin 20 times, its very probably to hit 18 heads. If you flip it 1000 times, you are really, really likely to see about 50/50.

Cards are not made by boxes, they are made by print runs. I don't know what the print run is, but I can assure you, its not a case or each case would be the same. Given that there is upwards of 50 rares in each set and not every pack that has the same rare is the same pack, if it were done by the case, that means each rare would only have about 3 possible different packs, which is not the case. I would venture to say there are easily over 1000 different possible packs in a print run, which means the case theory goes away pretty quick. The Rares (by this, I mean holos, EX, FA, etc, anything that can occupy the rare spot) are distributed across the print run as the design team sees fit. Theoretically, there is supposed to be some rhyme or reason to it, but I highly doubt it...
Click to expand...

Im kinda not understanding what you mean. If you flip a coin 20 times the odds of getting 18 heads are very unlikely.

I dont think every case is EXACTLY the same but they are similar within the range of cards your pulling. As in theres a certain range of holos and rares you should expect to get. I think each case is made to where your going to see a certain amount of cards in each one. That number again is not exactly the same but not off in between each one. I guess I will see once I get my Plasma storm case if that is true for this set as well.
 
I opened 2 boxes today, here is whay i got

Box 1-

FA Lugia EX
FA Cobalion EX
Victini EX
Moltres EX
Dowsing Machine

Box 2-

FA Lugia EX
Moltres EX
Cobalion EX
Scramble Switch
Victory Piece
SR Blastoise

Not too bad in my opinion
 
Picked up my Judge Box today and got
FA Victini
Victini EX
Zapdos EX
White Kyurem EX
Victory Piece
Dowsing MAchine
&4 hypnotoxic Lasers

wasnt a bad box in my opinion. seems to be within the "normal" Pull rate (3 EXs, 1 FA, 2 ACE)
 
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