Should Character Rarity Go Away?

Written By Grant Emory

Welcome back to Undefeated at Locals! It’s been a while since my last article; I have been busy getting my deck figured out for LCs ever since Reign of Kaiju released! The brand-new Godzilla set, and the characters within it, is what prompted the writing of this article!

Like most sets since the release of Attack on Titan Battle for Humanity, Reign of Kaiju contained character rarity. In most of these sets it hasn’t really seemed like an issue outside of maybe AoT 1 & 2 which also added Ultra Rare and Secret Rare characters, as most boxes end up with at least one of each character. However, that does not seem to be the case with this newest set. Marvin and I collectively opened a TON of product, 4 sealed cases, at least 10 Pre-Release Kits, and +/- 20 more various prizing backs starting from the pre-releases at Worlds through about 2 weeks after release. This amounts to around 650~ packs, so even with the existence of rare characters, you would think we would have gotten a ton of each character, right? WRONG, one we didn’t even get 10 of, in over 600 packs, that is just not ok. Below will be the breakdown of each character.

Space Godzilla R – 15

Mechagodzilla R – 8

King Ghidorah R – 12

Titan of Terror R – 15

Destroyah R – 15

Biollante R – 14

Battra R – 15

Rodan C – 63

Mothra C – 70

Jet Jaguar C – 68

Hedorah C – 62

Shin Godzilla C – 65

Gigan C – 68
Burning Godzilla C – 69

Anguirus C – 67

Alt Art Characters – 22 (0 Mechagodzilla)

So, the most we got of any rare characters was 15 and the least 8. I get not getting many rare characters in the pre-release kits, as each of those is 6 random packs, and obviously in the random prizing packs as those were across many different boxes from 4 different events in 3 different states. It’s the cases that confuse me, 4 cases is 24 boxes, that means IF we didn’t get one or more of the Mechagodzillas in the pre-release kits or random prizing packs then we didn’t even average 1 in every 2 boxes. As it stands even the ones we got 15 of, means maybe half the sealed boxes included one. This feels like insanely low pull rates for characters.

I think if someone is spending the money to get a full box the average should be 1 of each character in 24 packs, the best way to accomplish this is getting rid of character rarity entirely. I don’t see a need for it at all. I have heard people say it matters for the draft format, but a side format should not dictate what can and can not be pulled easily in packs. Furthermore, none of the rare characters in this set seem particularly insane in draft, other than maybe Titan of Terror and even then if we were to go back to the old rules where you pick any character regardless of if its in your packs then characters like Titan become much harder to play as everyone would be looking for 5 diff moves.

Attack on Titan Apocalypse and Heroes of Exandria did not have character rarities at all and it worked out great. I did not buy nearly as much Apocalypse as I did Reign of Kaiju and still ended up with plenty of every character, averaging almost 1 of each per box in all 6 boxes I opened and that is exactly how it should be. Either way you look at it or feel, we have to agree on one thing, there is no way I should have come out of opening over 650 packs and only have 8 copies of any 1 character. UVS games have made HUGE strides in bettering a lot of aspects of the game in the last year and I really hope this is next. I will update this after Tekken releases though I am not a huge Tekken fan so will not be buying anywhere near this amount of product so the sample size will be much smaller.

Thanks for reading my ramblings on character rarity! What are your thoughts on rare characters in our game? Let me know in the comments.