HypeTrain: Numbercrunching Black Panther Brick Pulls

Posted October 18th, 2024 by Joe Pangrazio


Thanks to our friends at Wizkids, I got to open a brick of Black Panther. For people interested in that kind of thing, I'm going to post my pulls below to give you an idea of what you can expect in a Brick.

I have a few thoughts at the end.

Commons

001 Black Panther x 2

002 Black Panther x 2

003 Luke Cage x 2

004 Storm x 2

005 Miles Morales

006 Amadeus Cho and Kirby x 2

007 AIM Agent x 2

008 White Wolf x 2

009 Klaw

010 Everett K. Ross

011 Hatut Zeraze x 2

012 Dora Milaje

013 Ayo

014 Wakandan Scientist

015 Colleen Wing

016 Killmonger


Uncommons

017 Black Panther

018 Misty Knight

019 Power Man

020 Vibranium Man

022 Scientist Supreme

023 Hercules

024 Plunderer

025 Phil Coulson

026 Akili x 2

027 Okoye x 2

028 Ramonda

029 Shuri


Rares

031a War Machine

032 Queen Storm

033 Black Panther

034 Spider-Man

035 Venomm

036 Ares

038 M'Baku

040 Ironheart


Super Rares

042 Captain America

046 Snowbird

050 Namor 

Extras (bonus 3D EFFECT terrain markers)

S001 Vibranium

S002 Heart-Shaped Herb 


Takeaways:

A brick of ten boosters contains 50 figures, when they are five figure boosters. This brick had 25 commons or half of the brick. That feels a little high. Especially when we see so many duplicates of named characters. The average Heroclix player isn't excited to run two 001 Black Panthers.

But.

If one of those Black Panthers became a Hatut Zeraze (which can be generated by an uncommon), an AIM Agent, etc. you start to see more value. There are still army builders in the Heroclix community, generics can just be so frustrating to collect.

And I also point this out because this is a single brick. If this were part of a sealed case, we could expect to see a third Luke Cage or Storm. Which isn't as useful, because they're commons. Everyone will have more than enough of them. And unlike Magic the Gathering, in Heroclix too many commons take up too much space.

The Good: Getting all the commons in a brick is good. It makes the easiest to collect rarity easy to collect. And some times just delivering on a simple expectation is very good.

Doubling up on two uncommons while missing two uncommons feels odd, but likely balances out at the case level. Which also allows for easy trading among brick/booster buyers. So I have no real complaints about the collation of Uncommons or rares.

Though, I will point out: there were 14 Uncommons (which is 28% of the brick) and 8 Rares (16% of the brick). Which leaves the Super Rares at 3 (6%) of the brick.

When we talk about value, this is...not great. All the value in the brick is tied up in 6% of figures. And those 6% of figures are not going to balance out cost wise.

A blind package collectible model is almost always going to lose value when going from sealed to open. That's how the model works. The potential pulls are always going to be higher in theoretical value than the actual pulls. But, I can't help but worry about the drop off in value here.

The EFFECT terrain are cool, and their coolness can make up for some of the FOMO (fear of missing out) of not pulling a chase or prime. As well, including Vibranium tokens on the back of promotional cards is a pure win and I hope to see more of that in the future.

If anyone at Wizkids were to ask me how to improve sealed bricks? Balance commons more towards generics or figures that have value being played in multiples. Maybe even bring in split numbering at the commons like we saw in Nick Fury Agents of Shield and Amazing Spider-Man; so that we can have some “power” commons. If we're going to have bricks with no chases, have two primes. If we're going to have bricks with no chases or primes, slide in two extra Super Rares. If these kinds of bricks are needed for the model, find a way to add value (like EFFECT terrain, cardboard proxies) without just adding more chases. Hell, slipping some Legacy cards randomly in boosters (paired with a booster that has no SR or higher figure in it) could be a good step.  

But that's just my musings for today. Below is a link to an Instagram post with the figures in their booster formation (so the figures per picture were in a single booster). I would like to thank Wizkids again for the chance to open up some product, I'd like to thank all of you for watching the video, reading this article, and just generally supporting all the many things I do for the community.  


It means more than you could ever know.  

 

 


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