Japanese War of the Spark packs at Wal-Mart

[RxPhantom]

I was browsing a Wal-Mart by my in-laws today, seeing if they had any Modern Horizons packs left, and instead I came across this:

After checking out the other two packs, I decided to pick it up. Here are the contents:

2 Japanese War of the Spark packs
1 Dominaria pack
1 Guilds of Ravnica pack
1 Etali, Primal Storm promo
1 Beast Whisperer promo

This seemed like an odd thing for Wal-Mart to carry, as this may not appeal to casual players as much. But maybe they're trying to target the more enfranchised players with this. Anyway, I thought it was cool so I bought two. Lemme open the second one to see if there's anything different...and nope. Same exact thing.

I didn't notice until now, though, that the retail promos were using the expansion symbol from the set it's from rather than the old shooting star. When did that start? Thalia's Lancers?

[SquirrelToken]

I didn't notice until now, though, that the retail promos were using the expansion symbol from the set it's from rather than the old shooting star. When did that start? Thalia's Lancers?

Bristling Hydra was the first.

The WalMart packs are tossed together by a third party - no thought is put into it, it's literally piles of packs that go unsold get repackaged, marked up (usually), and tossed back out there. So I'm not entirely surprised to see JP WAR there.

[The N82O Molecule]

yes I noticed these as well and bought one (ok well 2) worth it? no
that being said the Japanese alt art planeswalkers got me hook line and sinker.

I wanted the arlinn one and got lucky (its a uncommon so not that lucky).

20$ for four packs is not worth it. your paying twenty dollars on a lottery ticket for alt art lilliana basically haha

im not an addict, its cool

[RainyDay]

Well, it's kind of worth it. If you consider the 2 english packs at $4 full retail to be an acceptable price. In that case you're really only paying $6 a pack for the Japanese packs, which isn't an awful price for them. (This is assuming the wal-mart promos are worthless as they usually end up being.)

[Maluko]

You should watch this. It's not the exact product you bought, but I guess the principle behind it is the same.

[RxPhantom]

You should watch this. It's not the exact product you bought, but I guess the principle behind it is the same.

I'm familiar with the video and the massive ripoffs described therein. I used to work at Target years ago, and those cubes sometimes contained straight fire. I picked up many of those cubes back when the face cards were shown and they contained tons of value. I managed to get, among other things, two complete Divine vs. Demonic Duel Decks (including face cards), a Champions of Kamigawa Theme Deck with Umezawa's Jitte, and multiple commander decks.

They also had a product for $12.99 that gave you a pack of Mirrodin Besieged and some random precon deck, which was often a Commander deck.

I don't think this particular product is a ripoff, though. I'm not interested in buying an entire box of Japanese War of the Spark, Dominaria packs are always cool to get since the print run on that set seems to have been abbreviated, and I have decks for the promos. The price point was about what I'd expect for what was included.

Well, it's kind of worth it. If you consider the 2 english packs at $4 full retail to be an acceptable price. In that case you're really only paying $6 a pack for the Japanese packs, which isn't an awful price for them. (This is assuming the wal-mart promos are worthless as they usually end up being.)

That's pretty much how I feel about it. You're mostly right about those promos, but I will say that I'm glad I picked up a bunch of Knight Exemplars back when they were the promo du jour.

[RainyDay]

You should watch this. It's not the exact product you bought, but I guess the principle behind it is the same.

The cubes are definitely garbage, nowadays. They used to have decent stuff in there, but lately all I've seen have been planeswalker decks (minus the face cards), starter decks, and fat pack land packs. However, the ones with boosters seem to be safe as long as you're ok with the mix of boosters inside. I've seen no evidence that the manufacturer is tampering with the boosters or box mapping and only including junk ones. From the way the top and bottom of the packs are usually folded, I'd guess most of the boosters in the wal-mart blister packs come from the same unsold intro packs and bundles they break down to make the cubes.

The only thing I have seen is they'll occasionally swap out boosters for similarly colored packs of less desirable sets. When I bought mine I was worried the yellow pack was going to be Dragon's Maze, but they were nice enough to make them all standard packs this time.

[The N82O Molecule]

what will make these a hot item (speaking from personal experience) is that there are no other places to get them (Japanese packs).

I paid weirder for less. . .I mean I bought the jiang yanggu mu yanling for the basic lands.

I think what the video may imply is that typically things packaged like that are ransacked for the value, like mapping boxes. this implies that if your buying these Japanese packs for the hopes of getting a foil lillianna you probably wont (I don't really know honestly) since its already been stripped out.

but. . .and I will say these packages have value in perspective
war of the spark has a lot of cool rares, Japanese cards don't tap the opposite way so you can still use them the same, and you can make up the text on them (jk) for more winning (unless you are playing someone who either knows the card or can read Japanese obv)

the Japanese pw cards have a slightly higher value since they have a interesting rarity within the entire system

ravnica has shock lands which are always. . .always. . .always. . .always. . .going to be. . .always good
dominaria has rare lands and the teferi that costs a fortune.

[SquirrelToken]

I was killing time before the hardware store opened, and I picked up one of these four-packs. I didn't have the Beast Whisperer, and I figured that a shot at some alt-art PWs would be decent. I got Ob Nix and Huatli, both in "normal" form. Fortunately, got a Watery Grave from the GRN so the whole affair wasn't a complete waste of money, but I've learned my lesson, I think.

[RainyDay]

Well, it looks like they're not all winners. As I expected, they started slipping crap packs into these sets. I picked up a second one, and instead of a pack of Ravnica it had a pack of Journey into Nyx. So if you're going to get one, watch out for less desirable packs lurking behind the Japanese packs.

I do wonder where they got enough Japanese packs to put this all together. My local store had a real hard time getting japanese War packs from their distributor. Did they get them straight from japan, break down Japanese PW decks to plunder the boosters, or do they have better distributors than stores do?