Like some monster in a horror movie who is defeated, only to return for the sequel, I am back! And I’m back in the Omegathon. Also, I saw this rad card game, and I played some sealed Riftbound, and I helped run the Pokecrawl!
Woo. Very busy day. Lets start at the top shall we?
My morning was dominated by two things: Getting the most I could out of media hour on the show floor, only to be followed by competing in round one of the Omegathon. For media hour, I mostly bumped around the show, chatted with a few folks, and I want to call out two things.
First up, Brother Ming is out demoing Re;MATCH! It’s got a Kickstarter1running right now. Longest time readers will know that I have been waiting for this game since 2020, and that it has been a long and interesting road to get her, but I’m thrilled that it’s gonna be a real thing I can own.
The first big discovery of PAX East though, the first exciting new thing, is Eidol.
It is Path of Exile crafting meets a card game. It is fascinating, it is ambitious, and I am so deeply hopeful that it works out. I recognize that asking you to put your trust in me, and join a Discord for a game that doesn’t exist yet, and even the Discord server is a bit sparse, but trust me: this thing has stupid amounts of potential, and if I could have you play this demo, I would.
And as I final brief aside: Orna has a booth! I wrote about Orna almost 4 years, but since then the game has evolved immensely. I’ve been told the game now has a queuing feature where you can “collect” encounters, check ins, and events, and then play them all at once later, solving my primary issue with the game: Trying not get hit while a bus while playing classic RPG combat is actually kinda difficult, so I may have to give it another try.
Which brings up our next topic of interest: Round 1 of the Omegathon.
Okay. So.
It was Rocket League. I am quite bad at Rocket League, but in what is becoming a bit of a running bit, I was carried by my awesome teammate Dizzybelle. I would also like to note that unlike last year, I DID practice rocket league. I played like 10 hours! I’m just very bad at rocket league.
Witness the faces of the returning “were very close to being champions”.
Anyway, after that I grabbed some lunch, and did a little meandering before sitting down for my second competition of the day: a sealed Riftbound event.
I haven’t played anywhere near enough Riftbound to have a good set of thoughts about it yet, but what I’ve played so far has been interesting, and I generally like it. I didn’t do incredible, winning round 1, before getting cleaned out in round 2 by a much more experienced player who was kind enough to help me fix my deck after.
I find Riftbound much challenging then many of the card games I’ve gotten into recently, as there are a lot more play lines then I’m used to considering, even compared to magic in some situations.
Anyway, I had to drop from that early to get over to help run the Pokecrawl! I’ve done this about 3 times now, and it’s always a fun event, and it’s even more fun to help run!
And now I am back home. And I am tired. This reads a bit more like a journal entry then it does a full writeup, but I think that, and unpacking a million cards is all I have energy for now, so I’ll end it here, and I’ll be heading back to the show tomorrow!
P.S: If you’d like to try out the newest Card City Critters puzzle, keep an eye out for me around the show! I’ll be wearing the same goofy green sweatshirt, and possibly a ditto bucket hat!
Quick Disclosures and Whatnot: I’m a Kickstarter backer for the this. Do your own research before deciding to back Kickstarter projects, because my risk tolerance my not match yours. Okay, back to normal writing.↩︎
pls pls pls pls let this proclamation age well. ↩︎
So, I got the chance to compete with the Omegathon last year, but before I talk about that, I’d like to tell a quick story.
A long time ago at this point, I had a friend who loved the musical Hadestown. I’ve never seen the whole musical, but there’s a line from it stuck with me far after we’ve fallen out of contact, and I can no longer quite remember them as well as I’d like1.
And it’s this.
But that’s just how the story goes.
Much like the story of Hadestown, I already know how this story ends even before writing this.
I still think about it and that friend a lot. Perhaps more then I’d like to admit.
Prologue
Now that we’ve gotten that somewhat grimmer then expected opening out the way, lets talk about the Omegathon! It’s an event that takes place at PAX where a set of random attendees are selected to compete across all the days of the show in a set of single elimination games. The winner gets $3000, and the runner-up gets to compete in the Omegathon the next year.
PAX East is also a little special in that it’s all teams of two, which means that one of the first things I want to do here is introduce my kickass teammate, @shiraffetopus.
As such, something really important I want to note going forward is that while I’ll be purely speaking about my experience, and my thoughts, there was ZERO chance that this run got as far as it did without her as a teammate. I’ll also be introducing a few other key folks in the journey as we reach them.
Act 1 – F-Zero X – Thursday
The first game was F-Zero X, a game that technically was released when I was alive, but not much else. As such, I’d never played it or another F-Zero game at all before.
I would like to tell you that with this information, I practiced F-Zero X hard for the month prior to the event, mastered the game, cleared all the expert difficulty stages, and came in ready to compete.
Unfortunately that would be lie. I spent the last month playing Blue Prince, Skin Deep, FragPunk, and a bunch of other games all of which were not F-Zero X. I did download the game off the Nintendo Online, and play a bit, but I mostly sucked.
Fortunately, as noted above, this is a team tournament, and so I had a teammate in Shiraffetopus. And unlike me, she had been practicing.
Of course the spirit of the Omegathon is to always spice things up just a little bit, and as a result, this wasn’t going to be any old F-Zero X race.
No, this was on the F-Zero X Japanese exclusive expansion pack, with a custom course made just for the Omegathon. And in addition to that, we had a choice of driving either in tandem, each player having a hand on the controller, or switching off between laps.
After some quick discussion and evaluation of our options, we decided that it would make more sense to have Shiraffetopus drive the first and third lap, as she was the much stronger player of the two of us, and to have me… just mostly try not to crash during lap two.
I did my job, I did not crash, and we made it to round 2!
Act 2 – Push Me Pull You – Friday
After reviewing my non-contribution of Day 1, I was determined to not let that happen again. As such, the next day I pulled out my chunky gaming laptop, a pre-COVID purchase from when I still traveled for work, downloaded Push Me Pull You, plugged in a controller, and realized that I needed at least one other person to play with. After a few postings across the various PAX discords, I was able to find another Omeganaut who was also looking to practice, and we ground out a few rounds.
We also managed to get a few rounds in as a team, so I was feeling fairly confident, and that confidence was mostly well placed! We managed to shred our opponents, and so I sat down feeling very satisfied with myself.
Then the next match of Push Me Pull You happened.
As a side note, I’m finishing up some of this several months later, so I apologize for any mistakes here, but I believe the next match was Guys Being Dudes vs Party in the USA.
And just… holy shit.
Had these two teams been matched into literally anyone else, myself and Shiraffetopus included, it would have been a bloodbath. They were far and away the strongest of anyone else who played that day. I did not think of Push Me Pull You as a solved game, but it turns out if you have the right coordination and tactics, you can absolutely just play in such a manner that once you set up, your opponent can do nothing to stop you.
It was mildly horrifying.
Did I mention that whichever of these teams won would end up being our opponents for the next round?
Act 3 – Wavelength – Saturday
Saturday’s game was Wavelength, a fairly well known party game that I had never actually played before. I’ll go over briefly how it works, before I go over the strategy me and Shiraffetopus used to squeak past this round.
Wavelength’s main component is a dial with a set of scoring zones. The dial is spun randomly, and then hidden. A card is drawn with two polarities and one player has to single to their teammate with a single word clue where to place the dial.
Image blatantly stolen from the Dicebreaker review of Wavelength by Charlie Theel, before the site was thrown into a blender by IGN.
Enter Stage Right – ?????
I’m gonna call this person ?????, because I have no idea if they want to actually be named. If they do, I’ll have to rewrite this section, but I suspect they don’t.
I asked them at one point if they would have done the Omegathon with me, and they responded by saying that “Being up on stage in front of people playing a game is my version of hell”. Anyway. ????? is very good at games, is a friend of mine, and had played Wavelength before, and they had a theory about the game.
In their mind, the primary problem with Wavelength is one of alignment of scale. Lets say you pull a card that reads “Hot/Cold”, and the dial is set to the far left, so very cold. I might say Antarctica, because that’s the coldest place on earth, but you might think that I mean only somewhat cold, because of the vacumn of space is much colder.
This is the alignment problem.
What ????? had Shiraffetopus and I do before we played was agree on a “scale” to use if we got clues or questions that we didn’t have a good reference for. And that scale was Pokemon, as it was something we both had a shared interest in.
And this meant that when we found ourselves with what might be the single worst card ever made, “Push Me/Pull You”, I gave the clue of Ivysaur, keeping us in contention with a perfect guess from Shiraffetopus. This was followed by Shiraffetopus also nailing a guess on our opponents “10 Minute Game/10 Hour Game” to win us the round, and push us into the finals.
Act 4 – Killer Queen – Sunday
The final game of the Omegathon is a secret, up until the last moment. And when it was announced as Killer Queen, I was ecstatic.
See, I’ve actually played a fair amount of Killer Queen Black, the not-quite-sequel to Killer Queen. Not a huge amount. But as the only person on the team who had played before, I thought I had a pretty good shot at winning the game, as I’d be familiar with the strategies and tactics.
A few big wrenches would immediate be thrown into the plan though. First up, both teams were granted a backup player in the form of a someone far, far more familar with Killer Queen then I was:
Jyro, one of the developers on Killer Queen, and Daphane, a professional Killer Queen player3.
Secondly, it turned out that despite my initial confidence, there were large number of differences between Killer Queen, and Killer Queen Black. This included mechanics, tech, and movement of units, and how killing units worked. Not super important if you’re playing a game casually…
Somewhat more important if you’re playing for $3000.
After some discussion, my plan with Shiraffetopus was pretty simple. I would play the Queen, we would call up team members from the audience, and we’d go for a more aggressive military victory. Our plan was to try to crush our opponent before they had time to get more familiar with the controls.
It almost worked.
We managed to take game one and two with some fairly aggressive positioning. I was feeling pretty good about things.
And then we lost game three.
And game four.
Game 5
After game 4, I called a quick huddle, and asked for everyone go for a pure military victory. Given that we’d previously had pretty good luck with pulling that off, I figured that if we put everyone onto warriors, and aggressively chased the queen, we might have a chance before they outplayed us.
Unfortunately for us, they took a strong economic lead, and I didn’t do an effective enough job of controlling the gates. With two berries left and both of us on our last life, we boxed in their Queen, and I went in for a clash.
One of the core mechanics that Jyro explained to us beforehand was how combat works. In Killer Queen, the higher unit will always kill the other unit if the attack connects.
In some sense then, in this exact moment, I lost the Omegathon to a height difference of about six pixels.
But y’know, not quite.
The reality of though is this: I didn’t have to go for this Clash.
I could have been more aggressive earlier in the game, or tried to do zone control purely for our side of the map.
I could have done something other then call for the military rush I asked for, and that my teammates delivered on.
Dragula Slammers won because they forced us into a position where I took risky play to try to avoid certain defeat, and still failed.
And that’s how I got second place in the 2025 PAX East Omegathon.
Epilogue
I don’t like losing. I don’t think anyone who plays games really does.
That said, losing in front of a crowd of hundreds of people on a massive stage is still a bit of a new one. In order to finish out this writeup, I’ve had to watch myself fail over and over on Twitch.
It is a deeply novel experience.
That said, second place gets to compete again. So, next year, I’ll be back. This was still an incredibly fun experience, even if I got so close only to miss out on being a champion.
I also want to offer some small quick thoughts on strategy, what worked well, what worked less well, and what I’d do again.
Play every game beforehand! It doesn’t matter if it’s for five minutes. It doesn’t matter if it’s with the wrong controller. Do whatever you can to play the game beforehand. Any experience will go further then no experience.
Strategize with your teammate! A bad plan well executed is better then no plan at all. The Omegathon at East is a team game, and you can’t win without your teammate.
Expect the unexpected. If you can try to figure out what the twist will be for a specific game, or at least be prepared for the twist, it’ll help when it comes up.
Play it out, even if you think you’re losing, or don’t think you can win. The reality of it is this: You don’t need to be better then everyone else. You just need to be better then your opponent for just a few moments. Comebacks can happen, and you might not ever get another chance to compete in the Omegathon.
So just give it your all and see what happens.
That said, if you happen to get picked next year, I am going to do my best to crush you.
If this post at any points seems a little melodramatic, it’s because I wrote the majority of it last year immediately after losing, then spent several months just sorta sitting on it. Today might be the last day it’s relevant, so I figured I’d just put it out there, and call it a day.↩︎
If it’s not obvious, I don’t like losing. I don’t like it one bit. The best way I can put it is this: I can (and do!) lose gracefully, but inside it tears me up a bit, and based on discussions with friends, more then most folks.↩︎
So, I don’t know that Daphane plays Killer Queen exclusively as a job or anything, but she was introduced to us as a pro, and calling her a “semi-pro/high level player” seems to somewhat understate the achievements of the person who is going to straight up butcher me in the next 30 minutes. Spoilers, I know.↩︎
Edit 3/27/2026: For various reasons, I would like to quickly elaborate that I think Once Upon a Galaxy is a good game, and you should play it. It’s cool. I don’t intend to change my actual writeup, but uh, rereading this today, I think it comes across a little less enthusiastic on it, and slightly more caustic then I actually feel.
We all remember Storybook Brawl, right? It was a cool card based auto-battler with a fairy tale theme by way of Shrek meets Grim. In 2022 it sold to scrappy little company called FTX, and in 2023 it was shut down when everyone involved in FTX was being prosecuted for 16 billion dollars in fraud.
As far as I can tell, at least some of the people in Good Luck Games went on to make Once Upon a Galaxy. It’s a cool little card based auto-battler with a fairy tale theme by way of pop culture references meet Grimm.
Write what you know I guess.
Making a game, getting it popular, selling it to a Crypto company1, then making a new company to make a new game that is pretty much just a better copy of your old game is a bold strategy. It seems to have mostly worked out for Matthew Place and the team at Million Dream Games, presumably because everyone who might be upset about them doing this is currently in prison2.
But I’m not here to recount the one time in the last 20 years that financial criminals were held even remotely responsible for their actions. I’m here to talk about Once Upon a Galaxy.
I’m gonna be honest, I feel like I should put an in-depth explanation of the games mechanics here, but I’d just be rewriting paragraphs 3 through 5 of my Storybook Brawl write up, so just go read those real quick. We can pretend I put them here.
It’s actually a little tricky to find good images of Once Upon a Galaxy, because the combat screen and shop screen look pretty much the same to anyone who hasn’t played the game. Anyway, please appreciate my 23k Snapping Hydra.
There’s a lot of things in Once Upon a Galaxy that were copied over from Storybook Brawl. The core conceit is pretty much the same: Pick a captain3/leader card, build a team of units, have them fight each other, stay alive the longest to win. But there’s also a lot of fat trimming going on here, places where Once Upon a Galaxy looks at Storybook Brawl and goes “No, I don’t think we need that.”
Most notable is probably board size and reserve. Storybook Brawl had 7 combat slots, and 3 reserve slots. Once Upon a Galaxy has 5 slots. There’s no gold to managed for buying units either, instead every shop is just a 4-pick-1 rogue-lite style set of choices.
Of course, there’s also a fair amount of stuff I haven’t seen before, or things that are tweaks from existing mechanics. Treasures existed in Storybook Brawl, but they were limited to a max of 3 per player, requiring you to throw one away when you got your fourth. In Once Upon a Galaxy, they are no longer locked down in that way, opening up a whole bunch of interesting space, such as dragons that care about creating them, and get buffs based on the number, to characters that manipulate the stat buffs they grant.
I could probably write multiple paragraphs about Candy, a cross card type mechanic that influences a global “Sweetness” value, and is used as both a modifier of spells and card abilities. It’s also a good example of how the game creates glue for it’s archetypes, with various candy cards adding the Candy type to non-candy cards, allowing them to be slotted into an archetype they otherwise might fall out of.
Generally speaking, the game feels fun to play even if a few strategies feel over represented, or good across multiple captains.
This was supposed to be an image of a Animals comp, but then I got this CRAZY Paul Bunyan/Echoing Fae synergy combo off, and I had to see what happened, and then I realized I needed to stop playing if I wanted to actually finish this article.
Probably the biggest mechanic (or the one I will attempt steal at some point) is slot buffs, where buffs can be applied to a slot, and not the characters in the slot, so that you can replace them without losing the picks spent on those buffs. And of course, some characters interact in a cool way with those buffs!
One of the genres core mechanics has also been adjusted in a pretty clever way. Most auto-battlers have a mechanic where drafting multiple copies of the same unit powers that unit up, usually three copies. This could put you in a difficult place if you got the first two, but never found a third. Once Upon a Galaxy, banishes this, instead making each copy after the first a promotion, first to silver, then gold. Picking a silver unit gives an extra shop, and picking a gold unit gives a treasure.
There are some things that are just copied, like the Slay4 keyword, which has been renamed to Hunt. I’m okay with that. I think it’s fine to copy your own mechanics.
Then there’s the things they copied that I wish they didn’t.
I have a limited number of complaints about Once Upon a Galaxy. Many of them are small to medium sized annoyances, like how some Captains have a single line of voice acting, and others don’t.
The games UI is clunky5, and signing in to make an account has been the biggest stumbling block to actually playing. Every time I press the launch button, there’s a 2/3 chance that Steam doesn’t actually launch the app. I’ve gotten a few bugs where the games just kinda… crashes out a bit, and shows me a card named “404 Shop Not Found”.
But none of these quite compare with the monetization.
The monetization is “hmm”. I dunno even know that it’s bad, in a traditional way? I am a sucker for garbage6. Despite the fact that I’ve played 15+ hours of Once Upon a Galaxy in three days, I’m uninspired to buy anything it. Partly because it feels like a bit of a bad deal, with characters/decks running for about five to six bucks each. Partly because it feels a bit pay to win.
It just feels kind of off.
Most of these are small things. The monetization isn’t even egregious. There’s no gacha, the battlepass is easy to farm, so while there is some FOMO, there’s no limited daily progression. Still, I wish it was a bit better.
I generally like Once Upon a Galaxy. It gives me the play experience that other people get from Balatro, that of just sinking into a small math puzzle of upgrades, builds, strategies and signposts.
I do think there’s a bunch of cool stuff here as well. A bunch of vestigial stuff that Autobattlers have involving things liked gold/level management has been cut. There are neat new mechanics.
So yeah. Go play it before it turns out Million Dreams Games hasn’t figured out how to monetize the genre yet, and they have to sell themselves to an AI company, then remake this game a third time.
Also, if two of your use my pyramid schemereferral link here7, I can get 500 more gems total.
Or maybe not? Sure, Sam is still in prison, but some of these people only got 2 years. They say crime doesn’t pay, but apparently it does if you’re white collar enough about it. ↩︎
Captains grant some sort of permanent build around passive or trigger-able ability.↩︎
Slay/Hunt is a trigger-able keyword that occurs whenever the unit attacks and kills another unit. The important bit here is “Attacks.” If a unit with slay is attacked, and kills the other unit on the defense, that doesn’t trigger the keyword. Using slay effectively means either gambling that your unit will get the first attack, or buffing it high enough to be able to take a hit, and smash back.↩︎
I had one friend who I showed this game to, who immediately stopped playing after 10 minutes because of how aggravating he found the on-boarding/UI to be. Knowing it was his sort of game, I persuaded him to give it one more shot.
He proceeded to play for literally 12 hours in a row. I went to bed, woke back up, and he was still playing. The game is that good, and the UI is that bad. ↩︎
I spent $50 on an arcade versions of Minecraft Dungeons yesterday, because it spat out collectible trading cards. The bright side to being an unemployed miser is that I now have a lot more free time to spend the money I spent the last 10 years shoving into a pile.↩︎
This is the only referral link in the article. All the other links are normal ones, and will just link to the Steam page. Figured I’d just put that disclosure out there. ↩︎
The Path of Exile 2 beta is out. I got a demo a few months ago, but now that I’ve fully played through it, I have even more thoughts. I’m going breaking down my thoughts on it into two writeups, one on the campaign, and one the endgame. Technically, they are the same game, but mechanically they are very different experiences.
Now, before I get into that, there’s some brief background that is necessary. Path of Exile 2 is a sequel to my 2nd most played game of all time, Path of Exile. (about 3000+ hours?) My thoughts are going to be at least somewhat in comparison to it’s predecessor.
As a brief filter, I offer the following phrases: “juicing maps” “6L” “Farming blood adqueducts for a Tab”
If you know what any of these mean, just click here to skip ahead. If you don’t, you are likely to find the following background information helpful.
ARPG’s in Brief
Path of Exile 2, hereby abreviated to PoE 2, is a isometric ARPG from Grinding Gear Games.
For those who might not know, ARPG stands for “Action Role-Playing Game.” ARPG’s are defined by having virtually no roleplaying elements, and the action parts dominated by spamming your abilities every second you have the mana/rage/potato points to do so.
Here’s a less cynical definition: ARPG’s are traditionally top-down or isometric real time action games defined by extensive skill trees, character customization and itemization. Combat generally has two modes, fighting against trash mobs, which are pinatas for stacks of loot, and fighting against bosses, which are also pinatas, except this time they have a baseball bat.
Trash mobs are fairly brainless and just rush the player, while bosses tend to be more correographed experiences, closer to something from a Bullet Hell, or Hades.
The first Path of Exile differentiated itself from other ARPG’s by making everything into game an item, and making those items tradable. Skills are items, (skill gems) which got socketed into other items you wore, and those sockets had colors determining which gems could be socketed.
The ability to refund skills points was an item. To enter endgame areas, specific items were needed. Same to fight endgame bosses. To buy items from vendors, it was necessary to have more items to trade them.
It’s other big differentiator was a skill tree so massive that one of my favorite things to do is pop it out as a joke, just to mess with people, who did not believe it was real.
Finally, there was the gem system. Gems could be supported by other gems. Take a fireball, link it to a multiple projectile gem, and now it shoots three fireballs. Link it to a piercing projectiles gem, and now they penetrate. Link it to a faster cast speed, make a few more tweaks, and now your character is a Fourth of July fireworks display.
Changes between PoE and Poe 2
PoE 2 makes a lot of changes to the above underlying systems, most of which serve to make the campaign much less punishing for inexperienced players. Gold exists as a flat currency to use with vendor NPC’s. This makes getting leveling gear a much easier process.
Gold can also be used to refund skill points. This is possibly the biggest change between the two games, because in PoE, a badly built skill tree would softlock a character. This would make it impossible to get the items needed to respec, and pretty much force the player to make a new character.
Sockets on items and their associated colors are also gone. Skill gems are socketed into a general skill gem menu. The types of support gems that can be used are limited by primary stats. There are even more small tweaks to make suggestions to players on what gems to use, and to prevent them from making choices that simply don’t work.
The skill tree is still massive. There’s now a dodge roll. Movement is a much more flowy thing then it previously was.
The general changes though result in much easier on-boarding experience with the games initial systems, instead of purely being thrown into the deep end, like the player was with the first Path of Exile.
Does all of this mean the game is easier?
Well, yes and no.
The Campaign
Generally I like the campaign. There are some incredibly sloggy bits, notably a single map in Act 2 that just goes on forever, and three or four of the Act 3 areas really tested my patience for just wanting to see the next few things.
That said, outside of these, I really didn’t have many complaints. The bosses feel far more diverse and interesting then their PoE 1 counterparts, and also much harder. The final boss of Act 1 in particular killed me about 10-20 times before I finally defeated it. It’s worth noting that I actually killed it right as it killed me, but that still counts, so on I went.
They’re also just much more fun as a general visual spectacle. My personal favorite is probably Crowbell, a giant crow-man thing that tries to beat the player to death with a bell. The fight isn’t particularly hard, but does have a fun transitions, with Crowbell running around, powering up, wrenching a bell off it’s stand, then using it as a bludgeon.
The trash mobs… well, they’re ARPG trash mobs. The nicest thing I can say about them is that they did in fact contribute to my /deaths count.
Finally, there’s the story elements. I generally quite liked these, even if the current content kinda ends on bit of a cliffhanger. I’m also the only person I know who cared about the lore of PoE, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. There are some callbacks to PoE, but I don’t think missing them will have any impact on your enjoyment.
I will say that I personally experienced a moment of glee getting to fight a character whose only ever been hinted at in flavor text from PoE, but another friend of mine who played the game before me didn’t even realize he was a recurring character, and thought he was someone new.
If you’re playing through the campaign without a build guide, or information about the game, I’d estimate it’ll take about 12-20 hours to play through? There’s a good chunk of game here. That said, the campaign does not currently conclude the story, as that’s planned for the games full release, so if you’re playing the game just for the campaign, I’d hold off.
Overall Thoughts
I like PoE 2. I have problems with the game, but they’re not present during the campaign. It changes a lot of esoteric bullshit that was required to play, made the boss fights more interesting, and is just generally more friendly, if not easier.
Some parts are a bit of slog.
That said, I think the main reason to currently play the campaign is to get to endgame. The campaign is not a finished game yet, with a complete story, and the beta is currently $30.
If the full campaign maintains it’s current level of quality for the remaining acts on full release, Path of Exile 2 will be worth playing purely as a standalone ARPG just for that. But for players who aren’t in a rush, or want a new ARPG, I would say to wait.
So, maybe you read the last post, and despite the fact that Lorcana boosters are currently going for a street value of $5 an ounce, (a ratio that really feels like it should be reserved for a different type of substance), you still want in?
All right. It’s a pretty fun game. But instead of buying those starter decks at prices people are selling them, we’re instead going to use the power of the free market in our favorite for once.
Here’s how it works. First, click on one of the above links. This will bring you to TCG Players bulk entry page. It will look something like this.
If this all looks good, click the add to cart button! And presto, we have a cart with all the cards in the starter deck!
It’s also going to currently be costing you a lot more then the starter deck. No worries. We can fix that by clicking on the Optimize button in the lower left corner, right under the Paypal option.
After this, TCG player will try to optimize for shipping and buying from the fewest number of sellers. If everything looks good, you can send your purchase though, and end up with your very own Lorcana starter deck for less than a retail video game.
Ed Note: This writeup contains links to TCG Player, the management of which is a bunch of union busting corporate weasels. These aren’t affiliate links, (we don’t ever do that) and we don’t endorse their anti-competitive bullshit. That said, they’re owned by eBay, so it’s not like there’s a better place to go buy cheap singles that isn’t tainted by a desire to screw the employee.
Ed Note 2: This was written when Lorcana was being CRAZY scalped. It’s possible that the prices have gone down to a sane range by the time you look at this writeup. Such is the internet, and writing about collectibles.The general approach to using TCG Player, and the optimize functionality for buying singles likely remains the same though.
