Box-Mapping 2!

I got some extra box-mapping data from the Pojo and Reddit threads, so I've added them to my data.

The new spreadsheet:

Does this new info change any of my predictions from the last Box-Mapping post? Let's see:

• The total number of RR and higher still matches expectations. 
• Total Rares Theory: Still good.
• The bands of RRs is still mostly visible, but box 5 is shifted pretty far. 
• RR Bands Theory: Weakened, but still good.
• The SRs aren't positioned like mine at all, so my prediction about them being next to RRs is invalid.
• SR Location Theory: Dead.
• The RRRs all seem to be 2 packs from an RRR, so my theory that they push the nearest RR could still be true.
• RRR Location Theory: Still good.
• The SP was on the opposite side of the box, so we can't tell much there.
• SP Location Theory: (see next theory)
• Only 2 of the dead zones (rows that only ever had Rs) still remain, BUT the SPs are both the only things keeping their row from being a dead zone. 
• I'm going to go out on a limb and say that these dead zones (rows 1, 5, 16, and 20) can only have Rs or SPs.
• Deadzone Theory: Revised, now the "SP/R Zone Theory"
• The RRRs and SRs are much more equally distributed now.
• Back Half of the Box Theory: Destroyed.

As before, if you have any new box mapping data, let me know so we can keep narrowing this down.

What does a booster box get you?

As you saw in yesterday's post, I opened up 4 Madoka Magica booster boxes (80 booster packs) and tracked what cards I got. In today's post, I'll be talking about how many copies of each card I got in total. I'm focusing on each card number and getting a playset of 4 copies, so I'll be merging R/RRs with the SRs, RRRs, and SPs that are parallel copies of them.

Here they are, sorted by card number:

Summary of the data:

• I got at least 1 of every non-parallel card, and the parallels helped me hit 4 copies on several cards.
• There are only 2 cards with only 1 copy and both are RRs.
• I got at least 2 copies of each rare, and 4 copies of several.
• I got 3 copies of only two RRs, and my SP pushed one of those to 4.
• I got an average of 2.85 copies of each card.

Based on that, here are some estimations:

• Opening 4 boxes will get you at least 1 copy of each card.
• 6 boxes will get you a an average of 4 copies of each card, but you'll have some cards with less than 4.
• A case (16 boxes) will have at least 4 copies of every card.
• 4 boxes gives you no extras (over 4 copies) to trade.
• A case will give you almost 320 extras.

And from those estimates, I can give this advice:

• Buy 2 boxes if you want to build just one specific deck, since you can trade the cards you don't care about for the ones you need.
• Buy 4 boxes if you want at least 1 of each card, but you'll probably need to trade away non-extra cards to get some cards you want.
• Buy 6 boxes if you want 4 of each card, since you can trade your extras for the ones you opened need more of.
• Buy 16 boxes if you want 4 of everything without needing to trade.

Have you had different experiences, or do you have different strategies when buying boxes? Let me know below.

A Bit of "Box-mapping"

A couple of days ago, the 4 English Madoka Magica boxes I preordered arrived in the mail.
I opened them up, but kept careful track of what each rare was and where in the box it was. I put all of that in a spreadsheet so I could look for patterns.

Let's get into the numbers:
Total Rare or higher: 80 (of course, since I opened 80 boosters)
R: 60
RR: 16
SR: 2
RRR: 1
SP (signed): 1
Even at a glance, this all fits perfectly within the predicted pattern, but I got lucky with the SP, since they are about 1 per 8 boxes.
Also, as predicted, I got exactly 8 of each Climax Common in the set, and 4 of each Climax Rare.

Here's where the cards were in the boxes (Pack 1 is the front of the box, 20 is the back):

This isn't a big enough sample size to be sure, but it certainly looks like there are a few overlapping patterns:

• RRs occur in or near packs 4, 8, 14, and 18.
• SRs can be near RRs, but don't replace them.
• The RRR seems to have pushed the RR that should have been there away. With only 1 RRR, we can't really make any assumptions about its pattern.
• The SP was the last pack in the box, but with just 1, we can't tell much.
• There are dead zones of only Rares in packs 1, 5, 6, 9-11, 13, and 16.
• All the SR, RRR, and SPs are in the back half of the box.

With that data, I'm going to conclude that the back half of the box is the best bet for rarer cards, and that packs 10 and 11 are the least likely to have RR or better.

I do admit this isn't enough information to know anything for sure, but with more data we could see the trends better. Did you open any boxes and keep track of their order? Are you opening any boxes soon and want to record the order? If so, let me know and we can learn more together!

What's in a booster?

Weiss Schwarz has very specific structure to its booster packs, and a booster box contains reliable patterns (unlike some TCGs that have very random boosters). I've gathered those patterns here.

Each booster pack (except in Extra sets; more on that later) has 8 cards:

• 1 Climax
• 1 in 5 packs will have a Climax Rare
• A booster box (20 packs) will always have 1 of each of the 4 Climax Rares in that set.
• 4 out of 5 will have a Climax Common
• A booster box will always have 2 of each of the 8 Climax Commons in that set.
• 1 Rare or higher
• SP – Special – A signed foil, or in older sets, a foil Climax.
• 1 in 160 packs. A carton of 16 boxes will always have 2.
• RRR – Triple Rare – A foil rare, often with alternate art.
• 1 in 80. A carton will always have 4.
• SR – Special Rare – A foil rare, with normal art.
• 1 in 32. A carton will have 10, and each box will have 1 of SR, SP, or RRR
• RR – Double Rare – A foil card, different than cards than Rares.
• 1 in 5. A booster box will always have 4: 1 of each color.
• R – Rare
• 3 out of 4 packs will have a regular rare. A box will have 15 different rares.
• *Note that some sets are a bit different, since some don’t have any of certain rarities.
• 2 Uncommons
• 4 Commons 

Normal sets are 80-100 cards, and opening 4 or 5 boxes usually gets you a playset (4 copies of each card) of the whole set, except for alternate art cards.

Extra Boosters have only 6 cards, and cost a bit more, since they always have foils:

• 2 foils (just foil versions of the normal cards)
• Either 1 Rare and 1 Common or 2 Commons
• 1 non-foil Rare
• 4 or 5 non-foil Commons.
• There are no SP, RRR, SR, or RR cards in Extra Sets

Extra Boosters come in 6 pack boxes, and Extra sets are only 36 cards. Opening 5 or 6 boxes usually will get you a playset of the whole set.

Any pack will never have 2 copies of the same card.

Sources: 1.  2.  3. 

Weiss Schwarz Anime Watch!

Want to learn more about the anime shows in Weiss Schwarz?
Here's a list of the anime from WS that are officially streaming right now:

Name	Site 1	Site 2
A Certain Magical Index	Hulu	Funimation
A Certain Scientific Railgun	Hulu	Funimation
Accel World	Hulu
Angel Beats!	Hulu
Bakemonogatari	Crunchyroll
Black Rock Shooter	No official stream
CANAAN	Hulu
CLANNAD Volume 1	AnimeNetwork
D.C. & D.C. II	No official stream
D.C. III	Crunchyroll
Disgaea	Hulu
Fairy Tail	Hulu
Fate/stay night	Funimation
Fate/Zero	Crunchyroll
Guilty Crown	Hulu	Funimation
Katanagatari	No official stream
Little Busters! Anime	Crunchyroll
Love Live!	Crunchyroll
Lucky Star	Crunchyroll
Macross Frontier	No official stream
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's	No official stream
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The MOVIE 1st	No official stream
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The MOVIE 2nd	No official stream
My-HiME & My-Otome	No official stream
Nanoha StrikerS	No official stream
Nichijou (My Ordinary Life)	Crunchyroll
Persona 4: The Animation	Hulu
Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~	Hulu
Puella Magi Madoka Magica	Crunchyroll
Rebuild of Evangelion (1.0, 2.0, 3.0)	No official stream
Rewrite	No official stream
Robotics;Notes	Hulu	Funimation
Sengoku Basara	Hulu
Senki Zesshō Symphogear	Funimation
Shakugan no Shana	Hulu
Sora Kake Girl (The Girl Who Leapt Through Space)	No official stream
Sword Art Online	Crunchyroll	Hulu
Tantei Opera Milky Holmes	Crunchyroll
THE iDOLM@STER Anime	Crunchyroll
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya	Crunchyroll
Vividred Operation	Crunchyroll
Zero no Tsukaima (Familiar of Zero)	No official stream
Zero no Tsukaima F	Hulu
UPCOMING Weiss Schwarz sets:
Name	Site
Psycho-Pass	Hulu
Dog Days	Crunchyroll
Devil Survivor 2: The Animation	Crunchyroll
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet	Crunchyroll

The Improved Insert Printer!

The card-sleeve inserts on HeartOfTheCards.com are incredibly useful for Weiss Schwarz players like me who can't read Japanese (I probably never would have tried Weiss Schwarz if those printouts didn't exist). However, they are very inconvenient to print and cut, so I wanted to improve them.

Enter the "Improved Insert Printer".
I made an Excel document that easily takes a list of cards and prints out paper sleeve-inserts. Then, you put them in a card sleeve with your Japanese card and play Weiss Schwarz!

Download it HERE 

The full instructions are in the document.
It requires Excel 2007 or newer, and you will need to enable Macro Content if it asks you.

I'll continue to improve it, so if you have any questions or suggestions, let me know :)

(and thanks again to HeartOfTheCards.com. My Improved Insert Printer uses their translations, but please note that none of them are included in the file. Users must go to HeartOfTheCards.com, get the .txt translation files, and paste them into my document.)

Feature Highlight: The "Pages" sidebar

To the right of the blog area, there's a sidebar called "Pages".
Eventually it will have links to all the most important permanent pages of the site.
Right now it just has:

• Home: the main page of All Weiß Schwarz
• Useful Links: A large list of useful websites related to Weiss Schwarz, from blogs to YouTube channels to places to buy specific cards.
• Game Rules: A list websites with English-language rules. Great for new players learning to play, or experienced players looking for info on specific technicalities.

If you know a site you'd like me to add to either of those lists, let me know!

Glossary of Weiss Schwarz 'slang'

Weiss Schwarz fans have come up with nicknames or abbreviations for many of the card types and card abilities. There are also several abbreviations used when trading/selling cards online.

I want to create a list of all these nicknames, so you new players can tell what it means when someone says "RRR 0/0 Akiha suicide FT, LF 2k1 CR CX"

Abbreviations:
CX (Climax)
FT (For Trade)
LF (Looking For)
LTB (I'm Looking to Buy)
Opp (Opponent)
PM (Private Message)
SG (Singapore)
TD (Trial Deck)
WS (Weiss Schwarz)
WTB (I Want to Buy)
WTS (I Want to Sell)
YYT (Yuyu-tei): A Japanese site, often used to get single card prices.
#/# (example: 3/2 Miku): Referring to a specific card by Level/Cost and name.

Rarities (copied from http://weissschwarz.wikia.com/wiki/Card_Number):
C (Common): Four in each Booster Pack.
CC (Climax Common): There are 8 pairs per box.
CR (Climax Rare): One of each per booster box. So each booster box has one copy of all the CR cards.
R (Rare): Fifteen in each booster box.
RR (Double Rare): Four (One of each card color) are included per booster box.
RRR (Triple Rare): Holo-foil cards, most of these feature new descriptions and art. Only 4 of these are included in a booster carton.
SP (Special): Holo-foil CC/CR cards or cards with signatures. Only 2 of these are included in a booster carton.
SR (Special Rare): Holo-foil cards, without different descriptions or art. Ten of these are included in a booster carton
TD (Trial Deck): All Trial Deck cards are this rarity, many of them with parallel U or C rarity versions. There are also a number of Trial Deck only cards.
U (Uncommon): Two in each Booster Pack.


Set abbreviations:
MB (Melty Blood)
SAO (Sword Art Online)
PD/PDf (Hatsune Miku Project Diva F (Vocaloid))
Many more

Nicknames:
Suicide/Suicider: A character that can reverse its Battle Opponent when it is Reversed. Example: "When this becomes Reversed, if its Battle Opponent is Level 0 or lower, you may Reverse that Character." Some characters have variations of this, such as putting the opponent in Stock instead of Reversing it.
Mill/Milling: Discarding cards from a Library to the Waiting Room. Example: Brainstorm keyword
Healing: Moving a card from Clock into (usually) the Waiting Room.
Vanilla: A card with no effect. Example: 0/0 3000 characters.
Stick: When damage isn't canceled by a climax, it "sticks".
1k1: A climax that gives +1000 power and 1 soul to all your characters. Often has interesting Trigger icons.
2k1: A climax that draws a card and gives +2000 power and 1 soul to one character. Always has 2 Soul Triggers.



Know of any other common abbreviations or nicknames? Let me know and I'll get them added to the list ASAP.

Maiden Voyage!

Welcome to the beginning of All Weiß Schwarz.
This blog will be several things:

• A central location for useful and in-depth information about the Weiss Schwarz TCG.
• A blog for discussion, analysis, and strategy.
• A rallying point for Weiss Schwarz players in the Rocky Mountain region of the US.

Further information about each of those categories:

• The collected info about Weiss Schwarz will be called the "Data Hub". All posts related to it will have the "Data Hub" label.
• Blog posts will all be tagged with "Natron's Thoughts". Once we get more contributors, they'll have similar labels.
• Our current community is based out of Colorado, so some content will relate to the Rocky Mountain area. Look for the "Colorado" or "Rockies" labels.
• Also, anything only somewhat related to Weiss Schwarz (such as anime reviews) will have the "Spin-off" label.

Watch the blog closely in the coming week, since I'll be adding content at a fever pace!
(currently in the works: Improved Translation Printer, Retailer and Distributor List, Glossary of Slang terms, and more!)