Rarity in Star Trek CCG: Reflections: The First Five-Year Mission

As the sparkling new Reflections foil cards come out, there will undoubtedly be questions and comparisons to Star Wars CCG: Reflections: A Collector's Bounty. Especially since it uses a somewhat different rarity configuration! How is it different?

First of all, there are 4 ultra-rare foils, 50 super rare foils, and 46 very rare foils, resulting in a 100-card set size. The ratio of these cards is 1:2:3, with 242 possible "slots" (this is 4x1 + 50x2 + 46x3). For comparison, Star Wars Reflections was 1:2:4 out of 400.

Why four ultra-rare cards instead of two? And, why more super rares than very rares? Well, adding two more cards while keeping the rarity the same means that you get an ultra-rare twice as often as you would have! This adds excitement and makes it easier to get one of the ultra-rares, while preserving the value of the four individual cards.

As with Star Wars CCG Reflections, each display will have 30 expansion packs. Each pack will have 18 cards, including one foil and seventeen cards at random from Premiere to The Dominion.

We are also attempting a new process with the sorting of the foils in each display. Our goal is to minimize duplication in each display, avoid the "A and B box phenomemon" (minimize duplication between any two displays), and to leave things as unpredictable as possible. In fact, there is even a chance to get two ultra-rare foils in a single display.

Happy hunting!

Related Links:
Reflections foils list
Star Trek CCG Discussion Message Board

Sandy Wible
Technical Manager for Product Development
(originally published September 18, 2000)