by Max Barry

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Trading Cards Are Back!

by Max Barry
Fri, 21 Dec 2018

Sorry, that took slightly longer than anticipated. But now cards are available again!

Yes! Trading Cards

Finally cards have completed their transformation from a one-off April Fool's event into a permanent feature. Here's what's new:

Issues

New packs of cards are earned occasionally and randomly when answering an Issue, instead of being delivered on a regular timer. (You can opt-out of this in Settings.)

Auctions

Cards are traded through a Timed Double Auction, a system designed to reduce the ability of puppet nations to feed valuable cards to their masters. The main feature is a one-hour countdown timer that permits other buyers and sellers to jump in with a better offer, replacing one of the trading parties. Details!

There's also a new ability to gift a card directly to a particular nation, for when you want to skip the auction, by paying a nominal amount of bank.

Collections

You can organize your deck into Collections, according to any scheme you like. One of the great things about the April event was how people set out to build different decks for different purposes—but those purposes could be hard to divine for anyone just looking at the cards. Collections allow you to bestow order and titles upon your purposes.

Seasons

The original set of cards was made from all nations who were active as at the start of April 2018. This is still the case, but these cards are now marked "Season One." At some unannounced time in the future, we will enter Season Two, at which point a new set of cards, marked "Season Two," will be created from active nations at that time.

New packs always contain cards from the current season only. When a season ends, the cards remain, but no more of them will be generated.

Cards are now snapshots of a moment in time, instead of changing to reflect the nation's current state. Cards for the same nation will therefore look different across different seasons.

Season One cards are unusual in that they were generated in April 2018 but only converted to snapshots in December. This means that a Season One card only exists if the nation was active in April, but reflects the state of the nation in December.

Market

A new page offers a global overview of current auctions, top cards, and top decks, with multiple ways to keep your finger on the pulse of the marketplace.

Assorted Changes

  • New packs don't rarely contain cards of nations that no longer exist.

  • Cosmetic overhaul! Including a nifty zoomable graphical sales history.

  • During the April Fool's event, each new pack had a high chance of containing a card of a nation in your region. This remains true, but the chance is much lower.

  • The number of cards that can be held at once is now limited by Deck Capacity, which can be upgraded by spending bank. This limitation stems from the technical challenges of managing nations who hold extremely high numbers of cards. Nations with Site Supporter status from the Store have double normal Deck Capacity.

For even more, there's detail in the FAQ!