The Millennium Pack - Booster of Demise
If the Millennium Pack flew under your radar in the past week, there's a good explanation for that. the millennium change was more than a decade ago. That's long past tense there. Same as with the pack's content. It's already past tense.
Lack of good new cards
Let's start with the positive aspect here. There's a few new cards in this pack. Some are either retrained versions of anime classics (e.g. a new Curse of Dragon), or random cards from the anime that for some reason turn into actual cards.
Yeah, who knew that Holding Arms, Holding Legs or Left Arm Offering would actually make it to an actual card before the rest of the Kuriboh family?
And there's some cards that are actual moments from the anime, like Symbol of Friendship (from the first episode) and The True Name (of the Pharaoh).
Want to know which cards are good? Well, there's only one. Cards of Demise. But this card is so interesting, I'm going to focus a single post on that, later this week.
The "whoops" moment
Past weekend, there was one other card from this set that made Yugioh headlines. And not because it's powerful, but rather because of a screw-up at Konami when translating its text. I'm talking about "Symbol of Friendship".
The card should read:
To activate this card, you must draw it for your normal draw in your Draw Phase while your opponent controls 3 or more monsters and you control no cards, reveal it, and keep it revealed until the Main Phase 1. During your Main Phase 1 that same turn: You can activate this card from your hand; reveal 1 card from your Deck, and add it to your hand.
But it actually reads:
... while your opponent controls 3 or more monsters and you control no monsters, reveal it, and keep it revealed ...
Small error in terms of words, but a world of difference in activation possibilities. Just imagine Gorz the Emissary of Darkness with those two words being switched around.
This just made Symbol of Friendship's usability rise from 0% to like 1%.
Yeah, in case you didn't notice it in my sarcasm, the card still sucks no matter the card text screw up. Yes, I know YOU can make a deck that can make this card work. But that doesn't mean it's going to be a good deck.
Konami finishes the missing alternate art issue... or not?
One of the big promo tag lines of this set was that it had a bunch of the previously unreleased alternate art cards. And yes, that is true (good!). But could somebody at least call Konami and say they even f**ked that one up?
This was the moment to release all OCG alternate art cards we hadn't seen yet. But instead of that, we got a so-so job.
YES, we got a lot of unreleased alternate arts (including Broken Finger Flame Swordsman). Thank you for that.
"Not broken. I can just stretch
my fingers in superhuman ways!"
We also got a lot of "alternate art cards" that we've seen already in previous boosters, like Toon World or friggin' Viser Des. It was already weird enough for Viser Des to have an alternate art, but people certainly weren't waiting for a reprint of that card.
But the biggest issue is the cards which were still "missing" a few alternate arts, but Konami just goes: "Was it this one?" and utterly fails in the process.
I can understand mistaking 1 of the alternate arts. But I've checked. You picked the wrong artwork on FIVE cards. FIVE! How do you f**k that up?
Let me list the errors: Kuriboh, Summoned Skull, Red-Eyes B. Dragon, XYZ Dragon Cannon and Gilford the Lighting. Seriously, Gilford the Lighting? Gilford has TWO artworks. We had one, just pick the other! How difficult is that?
Due to these five screw-ups, these alternate arts are still left unreleased.
And worst of all [personal opinion]... Where's the Gemini Elf alt? Gemini Elf's art was like thé only alt I was really waiting for! And I'm sure I'm not alone on this one. And don't talk about the censorship, because the censored card has already been used in video games! You just had to print it!
"We're still outside of YOUR grasp, boy." *wink*
Low ratio of new vs old cards
And lastly in my rant: What's with the low number of actual new cards? Why didn't Konami take the opportunity to add cards from the Millennium Box Gold Edition (Summoned Lord Exodia, Exodd Flame & Ties of the Brethren), or the cards from the Duelist Road packs (like Ring of Peace, Dark Burning Attack, etc). Or in worst case, add in some old Vanilla monsters not yet seen in the TCG (e.g. Horn Imp WAS a card Yugi used in the anime and still needs a TCG release).
Honestly, I wouldn't have made such a big noise about it, if it wasn't for so many weird/bad reprint choices in this set. Nearly half (if not more) of the cards are reprints of cards that were in other sets already. And I don't think anyone was waiting for another reprint of Scapegoat, or a reprint of Dark Master Zork...
Conclusion
This whole pack is one big heap of disappointment. We got a few new cards, we got some new alternate art cards. But it could've been a lot better!
And it shows. The secondary market only rates TWO cards with a value over €5. Winged Dragon of Ra Phoenix Mode (around €5-7) and Cards of Demise (currently between €12-15). It's been a while since a booster scored this low on the secondary market value.
So, skip buying this booster. If you care about the two previously mentioned cards, just buy them as single cards. There's no way buying a box of the Millennium pack would ever make you a happy customer.
Speaking about disappointments... next booster set is Shining Victories. Yeah, let's just hope the TCG exclusive cards are good, because this set needs a "motivation boost" of sorts. Drifting Ghost and the Blue Eyes monsters alone won't save it.
Until next time, V out.
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