Yu-Gi-Oh has long been a game of "cookie cutter" decks based around powerful archetypes, only really altering with the changes in the meta-game as new sets are released. It is very true that certain archetypes simply overpower a wide majority of others, and match-ups between the Top 8 "cookie cutters" versus the more creative brews tend to be very poor for the latter category. Well, Konami has decided, correctly, to switch things up and level the playing field with the new Battle Pack, and hopefully the first of many, Epic Dawn.
Like the Mega Packs before it, the Battle Pack is a reprint set, with cards dating back quite a few years. Unlike the Legendary Collection 2's Mega Packs or the more widely distributed Ra Yellow Mega Packs, however, Epic Dawn goes back to the very beginning of Yu-Gi-Oh. As you might imagine, this makes for a very large and varied set, and that it does. While having Airknight Parshath in the same pack as an XYZ monster like Utopia is a little strange, when you look at how the set is constructed, it all comes together.
The Battle Pack is specifically designed to be a product that allows you to go out with your friends, buy a few packs and instantly make a deck from those cards. This is pretty awesome when you consider just how good the cards in these packs really are. Yes, there are a lot of "old school" cards that don't seem all that relevant anymore, but man, how long has it been since you've seen a Slate Warrior? With only 5 cards in a pack, yes, you'll have to buy quite a few packs, but considering they'll be selling for about the same price as a Duelist Pack (about $2) you can afford to buy a lot on a tight budget. Think of that, 50 cards, a little more than a basic Yu-Gi-Oh deck, for about $20. That's better than buying a starter deck, really, when you then see the set list.
Understandably, to make it appealing for a competitive limited format there are a lot of interesting cards, as well as very powerful cards. Tour Guide from the Underworld (one of the most popular monster cards in the history of the game) and Fiendish Chain are now very readily available for you to use in your Battle Pack deck, not to mention, you can then use them in your actual Constructed Yu-Gi-Oh deck. Even more fascinating is the inclusion of cards long banned from competitive play, such as Raigeki and Harpie's Feather Duster. These cards are now playable in the Limited Battle Pack tournament format, since they're going to be fairly common (even as rares in the pack) so you can be sure that you'll see more than a couple during any given tournament.
What's great about this set though is the fact you don't even need to go to tournaments to have a lot of fun. You can just keep buying packs until you build a really good and powerful deck, one that you could actually take to a very competitive Constructed Tournament and win more than a few games with.
How does this affect the secondary market for cards like Tour Guide? To be honest, it's the starfoil card in every pack that will make this set so highly sought after. Like the Hobby League parallels and Duel Terminal foil cards before them, the starfoils can be any card in the entire set (either common or rare). Since every pack has one, you could potentially have a very valuable collection of starfoil cards very quickly, especially if you're getting Pot of Duality, Forbidden Lance or Tour Guide on a regular basis in that slot. Yes, you'll see a huge drop in card prices, but the only ones that are really going to be affected severely is Tour Guide (goodbye $100 price tag) and Fiendish Chain (no longer $50). The inclusion of the starfoils in such a huge set is going to make individual starfoils highly sought after, and therefore, they will have pretty high value on the secondary market.
Yu-Gi-Oh players can't wait for the Battle Pack tournaments to start. There will be some pretty good prize cards for winners, apparently, and not only that, you'll be able to take home some pretty good cards just from the packs you played with to soup up your own personal deck to help take it over the top to win you that tournament that you could never seem to top simply because you couldn't afford Fiendish Chains and Tour Guides. Thank you, Konami.
If you're looking for more information on recent and upcoming card game releases, you'll want to check out Exceed Summon (http://exceedsummon.wordpress.com/) for Yu-Gi-Oh and Win Target Game (http://wintargetgame.com/) for Magic the Gathering.
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