Stuffed like a Turkey!
The Reiya cluster saw an attempt at something different, sealed abilities. The general gimmick here was that the starter decks had rulers with an ability and some weird symbols. As the sets were released, updated versions of the rulers would be printed with those symbols replaced with additional abilities. This seems like a fun idea, the downside is that the value of said rulers drops a bunch when more versions are printed, especially when it’s the same art. This didn’t affect all of the rulers, but most.
The Starters
| Set | Abr | TCG L | TCG H | Ebay L | Ebay H | Amz L | Amz H | Avg |
| King of the Mountain | SDR1 | 8.99 | 49.99 | 14.75 | 24.5 | 14.99 | 18.33 | 21.93 |
| Blood of Dragons | SDR2 | 6.99 | 16.00 | 23.50 | 23.50 | 16.78 | 17.95 | 17.45 |
| Below the Waves | SDR3 | 8.99 | 18.00 | 30.50 | 40.50 | 19.08 | 43.98 | 26.84 |
| Elemental Surge | SDR4 | 6.99 | 19.96 | 13.50 | 21.20 | 11.97 | 19.95 | 15.60 |
| Children of the Night | SDR5 | 19.59 | 30.00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 24.80 |
| All 5 Reiya Starter Decks | 74.99 | 74.99 | 74.99 | |||||
| The Lost Tomes Starter Deck | SDR6 | 41.00 | 44.95 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 42.78 |
These prices are all over the place, and I don’t agree with most of them. The thing is about process, you can ask anything you want, but what are people willing to pay? That is the key. In most of the instances for the SDR product, the answer is not that much. These prices are a little older, but I came into possession of 8 boxes of each of the 5 original starter decks last year and have had them listed for sale for over 6 months now. I can tell you this, aside from SDR-05, the others sell slow or not at all.
The only value here is Children of the Night, which is easily going for over $30 now and the Lost Tomes, as it was not printed as much as the others. Blood of Dragons and Below the Waves are solid movers, but not at too high a price.
I give SDR 1 a flat D-, unless you can get it for free. SDR-4 is a D at best. SDR-2 and 3 I would give a C- if you get them cheap and don’t mind sitting on them. SDR-5 and 6 are solid B as $15 or less. Those last two will see growth, if not fast, at least steady. The others I wouldn’t use as door stops. In fact, I have tried to give away SDR-1 as prizes and people have still turned them down.
The good thing about SDR-1 is that you can use it to teach new players the game.
The Sets
| Set | Abr | TCG L | TCG H | Ebay L | Ebay H | Amz L | Amz H | Avg |
| Ancient Nights | ACN | 60.00 | 78.98 | 75.00 | 75.00 | 122.00 | 122.00 | 88.83 |
| Advent of the Demon King | ADK | 75.00 | 99.00 | 89.99 | 89.99 | 122.00 | 122.00 | 99.66 |
| The Time Spinning Witch | TSW | 307.50 | 307.50 | 55.00 | 109.98 | 0 | 0 | 307.50 |
| Winds of the Ominous Moon | WOM | 136.88 | 136.88 | 110.00 | 149.99 | 150.00 | 150.00 | 138.96 |
Like a donut, but the filling isn’t really that great.
Ancient Nights showed us a new direction for the game, larger sets. This wasn’t really a bad thing, since most other games had much larger sets. But when increasing your average set with 50%+ you need to come up with that filler. And let’s just say that it was a lot of misses. This isn’t to say the sets were inherently bad, just more than a few cards were less than impressive. To this end though, it was a lot more fun in limited play, but Force is not known for it’s sealed or draft play. The added basic rulers meant for limited events was a good addition though and much needed.
The other thing was the packaging, it was nice, very nice. It only lasted the first two sets, but it was good. I still have like a dozen of the boxes I use for stuff. They also went hard into the themes, like Gems, Pandas, Golems, Weather, Strength and Mystery Counters, Elementals, etc. This cluster also had a lot of chase stuff, Secret Rares, Uber Rulers, Variant Cards, and Watermarked cards. So, they tried a lot, some stuck, some didn’t. What we get in the end is a sloppy product for the player, but a solid investment for the sealed.
Ancient Nights had a healthy print run and at $50 a box or less I would give it a B.
Advent of the Demon King continued on with what the first set did, and not much to add here. It is in the same price range and for the same amount to buy I would give it a B as well. There is more I want to say, but it applies to the whole cluster, so I will go more into it at the end.
Time Spinning Witch is Reiya Cluster’s money set. I wouldn’t go so far to say it is worth the $300 a box, but limited listings do show that it is rare. I would say the $200 to $250 range is more realistic, but $300 is likely in say a year or more. The thing is this set has some money cards, and to boot a huge difference in the 1st and 2nd printing.
The original boxes had the rulers messed up. The J-Rulers were different than the Rulers. This made the company have to print a ton of replacement rulers and to have a replacement program. All of those misprint rulers go for at least $10 each, some as high as $40. It was corrected in the 2nd printing, but not a lot was printed, also you really can’t tell the difference between the boxes.
It’s hard to say which printing would even be worth more as even those rulers in corrected form don’t command a much higher price. TSW also just had a lot of amazing cards that have become staples in Wanderer, Genesis, Epic Stories, and other formats. Even at $200 a box, the EV (Expected Value) for singles is close to make it worth cracking. That is kind of rare for a Force set.
If you can nab a box at $150-ish, this is an A-. If you plan to sit on it a while, $200 a box is reasonable and a B.
Winds is an oddity with Force, I mean that in a good way. In most other clusters, this would be considered the money set, clocking in at an average value of about $140. But we just covered the money set. Reiya cluster has basically two money sets, and this is the second.
The water marked cards were tossed in here, just reprints of cards from the other sets in the cluster, but textured foil with the will symbol behind the text box. It is hard to see unless you put it under light at the proper angle, but it looks sweet. The real problem here is that it is easily mis-listed on sites and you can win or lose when you buy. Most people don’t know that the card is watermarked and by ordering the original foil, you might get one of these instead, win for you. Or you order the WM version you might get the original. Needless to say, there is no other difference between them.
It’s a fun set on its own and at $100 or less a box I give it a B. It won’t go up as fast as TSW, but it will go up. A good addition to any sealed portfolio that has Force.
The cluster overall had a few going for it, it also had a lot of meh stuff. The ubers are good for the set rulers, the ubers of the starter rulers are basically worthless. The Variant cards were a bust. The only thing going for them was their rarity, about 1 per box. But as cards they stunk. Most of the variant versions were worse than the regular versions.
I think the quantity over quality experiment failed, since after Reiya cluster we went back to the 100-110 card per set model. Forcing in a lot more cards, just to add them was a bad idea. This likely goes back to the small design team asked to pump out more than they are used to. Without adding staff or time to vet the cards you won’t get the quality the consumer is used too. This wasn’t all bad though, as if you did get a chance to draft/sealed with it, some of the filler cards were okay for consistency, but again Force is not known for its limited experience.
It was an attempt to try and add to the game, which though is nice, didn’t work in the end. For investment though, this is likely one of the better clusters, and if you can grab boxes and the two valuable starts for about 75% of the average value or less, I think you will be doing good.
Dan Rowland
Top Scrub
Owner CCGPrime.com
