As promised, it's Thursday and we have more information on Wave 3: Lightseekers Kindred.

Today we take a closer look at the Kindred booster packs and get confirmation of some conjecture from Tuesday's post.





Card Count

With today's announcement that Kindred booster packs will each contain 12 cards, I think it is now guaranteed that each “Advanced Starter Pack” will include a Kindred booster pack.

When we got an extra card in the Mythical booster packs, it was nice but I didn't expect another increase so soon.

While I hate making comparisons to other games, I think this 12-card booster definitely puts Lightseekers on par with other games. I think this is especially true when you consider that Lightseekers doesn't require “Land” cards (or other cards strictly for payment purposes).

Since we also know that Lightseekers Kindred will only be available in 24-count boxes, we'll be getting 288 cards per box.

Card Distribution

In Lightseekers Awakening we had just 9 cards in each booster pack. In Wave 2, Mythical, it was bumped up to 10 cards. Now for Kindred we have been blessed with 12 cards in each pack.

Here's what that distribution looks like over time:

Lightseekers Awakening 5 Common

2 Uncommon

1 Rare

1 Hero (any rarity) Foils appeared in most (but not all) packs. Foils heroes were treated separately from other foil cards. Foils appeared in most (but not all) packs. Foils heroes were treated separately from other foil cards. Lightseekers Mythical 5 Common

2 Uncommon

1 Rare

1 Hero or Combo (any rarity)

1 Foil (any rarity) Lightseekers Kindred 6 Common

3 Uncommon

1 Rare

1 Hero or Combo (any rarity)

1 Foil (any rarity)

Rarity Breakdown

In the initial offering there were 386 cards announced. For Mythical we saw 198 cards in the set (152 new cards + 46 reprints).

Kindred is in the middle, but it leans more towards what we saw in Awakening (Wave 1). Kindred will give us a whopping 291 new cards! No specific number on the reprints just yet, but I have been told that it's very low.

These 291 cards break down like this:

106 Common

88 Uncommon

88 Rare

9 Mythic

I am definitely glad to see more of a curve in this set. I know there will be plenty of complaints about how hard it will be to get your hands on all the Rare cards, but that doesn't bother me so much. As a collector, I enjoy a bit of a hunt.

What intrigues me the most here is the numbers, specifically the number of Mythic cards we're getting.

Looking at 106 Common cards, I expect 17 new cards in each of the six Orders with 4 Unaligned cards.

(17 x 6 + 4 = 106)

For the Uncommon and Rare cards, I expect 14 new cards in each of the six Orders and once again 4 Unaligned cards.

(14 x 6 + 4 = 88)

That brings us to the mysterious 9 Mythic cards. To date, we only have 6 Mythic cards and they're all Cross-Order Heroes. So it's hard to say exactly what they would or wouldn't do at this point.

OPTION 1

The most mathematically logical solution at this point is that we're getting 9 new Cross-Order Heroes.

Between the six Orders there are 15 possible color combinations. These are currently all represented in the 15 Cross-Order Combos that debuted in Lightseekers Awakening.

So I definitely think it would make sense to level the playing field and offer Cross-Order options for every pair.

OPTION 2

I don't think they would (or should) make Mythic cards that anyone would want more than one of in a deck.

This likely limits the field to Heroes and Combos, but an occasional Item card could spice things up.

If it's not Option 1 above, then my vote would lean towards more Cross-Order Combos. But given that the first set of Cross-Order Combos were only Rare cards, I think this would be an odd choice.

It becomes even more frustrating when you look at the math and realize that no matter which way you slice it, the Cross-Order Combos would not line up with the Cross-Order Heroes available.

OPTION 3

I've seen some folks discussing the notion of Unaligned Heroes and Unaligned Combos.

While this would be a novel idea (and one I would certainly entertain down the road), I don't think it's what the game needs right now.

An Unaligned Hero would either require a larger pool of cards to choose from or a special set of rules (not ideal).

If we're talking Unaligned Combos, that could work, but I couldn't see more than one or two in a set and then my numbers don't work again.

Option 1 is still winning.

Final Thoughts

It's still early, but so far I'm liking all the changes we've seen for Lightseekers Kindred.

Tune in next week Tuesday to discover what the mystery icons mean moving forward.