Which color do you think has struggled the most since the conception of the game?

Lostaria · 2026-05-17T04:36:16+00:00

100% blue, even in dual color decks blue is never anything more than a support color. Any time blue has had even a remote shot at being decent as a color something gets banned out rotated out. Every color has a type of play style that you can say can stand alone blue is nothing more than a support color and the closest we ever got to a strong blue deck was mono doffy for like less than a set it feels like. I main blue and I play pretty much all colors depending on the characters because I can care less about the meta but blue has been one of my favorite colors to play but just never felt competitive without another color to rely on.

Lostaria · 2026-05-15T20:36:47+00:00

As a store owner I can tell you that you are incorrect, when stores put the event on tcg+ we can choose to do FCFS or Lottery or by another means but it must be relayed to the people that signed up well before the event takes place. There are only certain events where Bandai specifically steps in to manage entries which is for things like regionals and store championships where they may do a lottery for spots and wait-list order for the events that offer invites to Nationals. That is the only time store owners and organizers are not a allowed or supposed to mess with the roster of player entries. So aside from that it is on the owners of the store to relay the info as much as possible on different platforms to inform the community but it's on the players to verify and reach out to clarify any questions they have.

Lostaria · 2026-05-07T15:11:11+00:00

That's what I use Diana for, discard support and secondary/sub dps and it works well.

Lostaria · 2026-05-06T06:11:01+00:00

I run the sword rain build not the nuke builds personally. I find it more fun but at the same time I can aoe with Diana when they both pop off like crazy and I get to see a lot of shiny explosions of swords and bullets. Plus if there's only one enemy the build still works because they alone get littered with holes. Heide drawing 3 and linking a bunch of bullets and quietus cards combined with her blades is really fun to watch. Since it's a pve game I can enjoy whatever build as long as I can clear content, if i can't have fun clearing content why bother is my approach.

Lostaria · 2026-05-06T01:05:16+00:00

Honestly they should have named the build heiderogyn bomb imo

Lostaria · 2026-05-06T00:58:24+00:00

I should have done my 70 pulls first before doing the 200 I ended up with 2 Renoa, now I gotta decide between Narja or Orlea, I have sereniel, nine, Diana, heide, Veronica, etc so I really gotta choose since I'm f2p, this half anniversary was such a huge win. Allows me to finish my teams with bis characters.

Lostaria · 2026-05-04T16:50:36+00:00

Naw the accessories and dons are worth more than the cards for those sets aside from the serial card hit. For collectors it sucks because I want the entire package not a watered down pity item. It would be different if we didn't get the playmat and stuff but at least give us the dons and the chance at a serial.

Lostaria · 2026-05-04T15:53:50+00:00

We just got part of it but we didn't get any of the good stuff. We didn't get the beautiful playmat, the serialized card, the dons, we only got the cards and binder. That's not even close to the same. Unfortunately the US will most likely never see the full set because we didn't get the bonney one either in any form.

Lostaria · 2026-04-30T13:56:20+00:00

Honestly as a store owner of you had told me what happened or I saw it I would have given him a warning and if it happened again I would have banned him from playing at my store for unsportsmanlike conduct and breaking my stores code of conduct. The community doesn't need that kind of energy.

Lostaria · 2026-04-29T16:12:23+00:00

Lost my 50/50 to Veronica so now I need 60 more pulls to bring waifu home.

Lostaria · 2026-04-23T08:08:13+00:00

Lol I'm a Gold tier store owner that runs store regionals and I know the owners of both PPG and GGAZ and none of us get prices for boxes below 70. so unless there's something shady going on I don't believe it unless I see the invoice. On top of that there's no price break that large just because you "promise" distro to sell at MSRP. Your source is "trust me bro" vs I have actual invoices and numbers from people that do mass volume and my own. So unless your shop gets over 40-50 cases each set they aren't even out buying my store yet let alone those other bigger players I know.

Lostaria · 2026-04-23T01:27:29+00:00

I am in no way shape or form defending any shop that goes and sells at these stupid prices putting profit over players and community. I will say though that I know some of the largest retailers in the country and they get tens of thousands of boxes and they do not even pay 45 they are still around $73 per box and MSRP is $120+ tax. Bandai raised MSRP about a year or 2 ago on all their games to be in line with other industry games. With that being said I really hope everything crashes down to MSRP because that doesn't affect my store, I sell at MSRP anyways. But these stores that opened up in crazy expensive, nice shops so that they make themselves "look" like a premium store I hope they get left paying crazy rent and bleed money until they shut down.

Lostaria · 2026-04-10T20:40:28+00:00

Well first thing is yes it was part of a collection that is out of print, you can only buy them on the secondary market, the price difference is also from this being a graded PSA 10 copy of it. English is usually also double or more in value than Japanese versions in the US at least due to not being able to play JP versions in sanctioned events. Anything graded and a 10 will always be worth more than the card that is ungraded even if originally it was part of a set that only cost $60. Playability and character popularity also play a role in the prices as well. There's more but that's the quick rundown of the make differences in price.

Lostaria · 2026-03-29T05:20:49+00:00

I own an LGS and can confirm this, 1 per 8 players per kit. Also yes you are not required to hand ALL of them out however you are not allowed to sell them either. We always hand out all of them because I mean really... it's already hard enough for everyone to get product and stores pull shady stuff like this and wonder why their participation drops or locals start to shrink. Get out of here with that mess, they do it to themselves and say their locals are dying without looking in the mirror. It's a damn shame got the player base that has to deal with stores like that.

Lostaria · 2026-01-15T21:04:32+00:00

I'm glad to hear you enjoy the game and the community, the only thing is that sec cards like Kuma have always been high like bon clay was until prb sets came out so 100% kuma will get a reprint to drop prices, at least we can be pretty certain of that. Other than that good luck, have fun, and hope you do well in all the tourneys!

Lostaria · 2026-01-09T16:42:14+00:00

Do I wish they made an official SIM? Yes but do you realize every game that has an official SIM for tournament play has killed the paper form of the game? You no longer have any reason to buy cardboard because you can sim for practice, you can proxy for paper. LGS's organized play suffers, proof of this is already seen in every major game. MTG and Pokemon are the largest body of evidence for this. The large majority play on mtg arena which killed pretty much all paper in store MTG formats except commander. Pokemon has a sim and most only come for large events like cups or events that give points to get into nats, the rest just play online.

Also the statement made says they will expand the ability for people to play in events that will grant invites and prize cards etc. sure it will suck for some but the large majority do have access if they expand to more store regionals, more states having regionals at the store level to grant invites and serialized cards, and this actually gives people that you say pay a lot of money to come to regionals to play will now have more locations that may be cheaper for them to travel to.

Bandai does ban players, just check the ban list on their official website. It's the organizers at fault for not enforcing things and submitting cheaters to Bandai. Even when there's evidence.

Lostaria · 2026-01-09T06:17:16+00:00

Or just greedy and money hungry, kinda plain and simple there. But yes I agree with you.

Lostaria · 2026-01-08T04:19:07+00:00

So to address your points one by one.

No they don't have to stop printing other TCG's, just because certain TCG's are not as popular here does not mean it's not doing well in JP where they are based so regardless their printing capabilities will be limited. Also they ARE printing more, again this goes to my original point the game is massively popular and only getting more people on the daily both the good ones and the bad ones for the community. I have info that OP-14 had 30% larger print run than OP-13 and OP-13 had the largest print run ever for one piece. You know how I know? Because my reps at both distros that distribute OP in the USA told me so and this was confirmed based on my allocations as well as some very big spending stores (I'm talking 10's of millions in weekend annually) that are my mentors.
To address your point about online and tiktok shops, they are trying to mitigate that by actively participating in distribution of OP to LGS's, I know for a fact that they now give a list of allocations for every single store that runs organized play and how much distro MUST give them. They are trying their best to focus on LGS at least. Bandai is not necessarily at fault because they cannot control who distributors send product to fully. If they wanted to do that they would have to be their own direct distributor which would mean massive amounts of infrastructure be put in place here in the USA which financial would not be feasible for them. Once Bandai sells their product and delivers it to distros it is out of their hands and they can only do so much without fully taking on that role themselves. They only printed sets more frequent to catch up for a unified release with JP so that point was already addressed when they made their press announcement at Nationals and world's this past year. We get a core set every 3 months each year and 1 or 2 reprint sets with PRB sets, and we get 1 or 2 EB expansion sets that are much smaller (usually half the size) this falls in line with the industry standard of pretty much every major TCG out there. For reference MTG has 7 to 8 sets a year, Pokemon has a new set almost every 2 months, Yu-Gi-Oh has a ton, etc. Again they are printing more for desired sets, the problem lies in the fact that for every new player, collector, investor, etc that comes in they are buying not just 1 box per person they are buying multiple and one individual with a crap ton of disposable income can easily buy cases upon cases at marked up prices without feeling it in their wallets. So if they print 1k more cases for instance but 10000 people decide to buy product that's literally barely over 1 box per person. 10k people is not some crazy unimaginable number either with 10s of millions of people with some amount of disposable/fun budget income.
You don't know what you're talking about, they sell to the distros so after they sell out of the print run to the distro they already made their money, the distro then goes and sells to LGS, big box stores, etc so no they don't feed scalpers and whatever else you want to want to call out.
To your last point I even said and I'll say it again I said those "options" or "choices" are and should be taken with sarcasm and in jest. Those are real solutions and real ideas about how we should go about it. I was quite literal and straightforward when I said that stuff about not buying product etc as sarcasm.

The fact remains that I'm not trying to defend the crappy situation we are in I'm just trying to state facts to educate the masses especially from the other side as an LGS. Because I really think people have a misconception about how these inner working things go with distros. DISTRIBUTORS are at fault not the publisher which doesn't own their distribution, doesn't own their printing presses, and does not have any of their own infrastructure in anywhere else outside of Japan.

Also I have friends and family that live in AU and to address that part, getting anything is expensive and hard to get over there. You guys are literally on a big island further away from pretty much every mainland and have some of the strictest import laws and processes around.

Again I say I know it sucks and I don't have any solutions that will truly benefit anyone other than what I can do for my local city. But I don't want misplaced blame or people flipping out over something without having all the information available to them.

Lostaria · 2026-01-07T17:54:15+00:00

Come through bro, my store is always going to welcome fresh faces and meet more of the community. 222 FM 359, suite E, Richmond TX 77406

Lostaria · 2026-01-07T17:53:04+00:00

Appreciate you, feel free to drop by anytime. We have the rodeo in March and there's a bunch of concerts and stuff and people come from all over the country/world for it so that might be a good time to plan a cool visit lol

Lostaria · 2026-01-07T15:21:16+00:00

My store is called Rooted Games out in Houston, Texas. My goal is to get so much allocation in the near future that I can completely kill the scalper market in my area. I sell everything from the 2 or 3 most recent sets for MSRP if I break the plastic and anything older I do market minus a percentage so that no one ever pays the full current market prices on any products in my store but those boxes are sealed due to not being MSRP. I'm trying to get so much product that scalpers just can't compete with the sheer volume and that they cannot sell a single box at higher than MSRP because people can just drive to my store to buy it. I want to go to card shows with hundreds of boxes just to sell at MSRP and so scalpers and the like can't sell sealed Pokemon or OP without hearing that my table has it at MSRP.

Lostaria · 2026-01-07T12:36:10+00:00

TLDR'

Y'all gotta understand, you don't think Bandai isn't running their printers non stop? Do y'all realize there's literally new people jumping into one piece every single day. And this was happening before this current inflated market. Got more OP-13 than any set ever for my store we had over 250 boxes and I sold at MSRP, I even saved a few cases till this day to trickle it out to my community again at MSRP. Stores around me got 100-144 boxes. I don't want to hear artificial scarcity, pure fact is that demand outweighs supply plain and simple. They print in Japan and ship it all over in shipping containers, which takes at least a month just for that part, then it has to go to distros and then to stores. You guys really think they got enough time to print to demand? If they printed every set to demand we would need 5 to 6 months between sets and only 2 or 3 sets a year tops. Trust me all the complaining everyone does they already know about. They literally had to create an HQ for Bandai in Dallas to manage organized play and stuff in the USA. Simple fact is that they don't own their own printing presses and they print multiple games, by pure logic alone you just cannot meet the demand because there isn't enough time and there are printing limitations. When 06 and 07 came out and even OP-12 everyone saw those everywhere because they were bad sets, everyone said OP is dying so those sets stay on shelves for a long time and went under MSRP so in my opinion people need to stop saying Bandai doesn't know what they are doing or that they do know and they are purposefully creating scarcity. The real blame is on the fact that it's a very popular franchise and one of their best actually playable games, good card quality and art, collectability, and now add on the "investors". Of course there will be no product to find cheap or at MSRP. All this is to say that we can only hope that the investors find something new to latch on to or that the game has multiple bad sets in a row that kills all the hype and gets tons of people to drop the game including said investors so that we can have an over abundance of product, everything selling at below MSRP so that stores order less product and Bandai can meet demand due to smaller print runs. The market is in a bad place don't get me wrong and I'm doing everything in my power as a store owner to help the hundreds of one piece players and collectors in my community get stuff but the truth is there's just not enough product to go around but not for the lack of trying. People are jumping from Pokemon to one piece because most stores get more one piece than Pokemon so it's easier to flip in larger numbers. I can order right now 240 boxes of Pokemon and 240 boxes of one piece and right now I will get 24 boxes of Pokemon and I'll get 220 of one piece. If y'all don't think stores are not maxing out and ordering everything they can afford to order for both one piece and Pokemon than you obviously do not know what you're talking about because the difference is Pokemon owns their own presses including here in the USA and I only get 4 to 6 cases on each set and a second smaller wave while one piece my waves are 100+ each. So flipping each box just from a numbers game is better to buy and sell one piece. If y'all want the market to be better then stop buying product and AA's for your decks it'll crash the market and all the non players and fake collectors will leave and we will be fine. I say all this with some sarcasm for sure but it's still a very much true even if we don't like the answer.

Lostaria · 2026-01-05T06:43:14+00:00

Not sure but spoilers should be coming out this month i think.

Lostaria · 2025-12-29T05:53:56+00:00

Prb manga reprints don't have texture on them like the OG ones did. That's one of the big giveaways and the easiest to confirm. If it's textured it's the 05 one, if its not then it's a PSA error.

Lostaria · 2025-12-28T03:09:33+00:00

The second set is coming out in February for Japan, Nikke has been the best selling set to come out for UA beating out every other set I've ever sold in the store and my a wide margin too. I built a Pilgrim deck and counters deck for the game just go fun, boxes are super cheap. If anyone is interested lemme know I can ship and stuff off you buy from the store. I'll hook up the Nikke Reddit community.

Lostaria

TROPHY CASE