Junk Rare: Difference between revisions

[[File:One_With_Nothing_7807One With Nothing 7807.jpg|link=Magic: theThe Gathering|frame|Yes, this is a rare card<ref>as shown by color (gold) of the expansion symbol</ref>. No, [[Joke Item|discarding your hand is not a good thing]].]]

There are the awesome, powerful rare cards that you're eagerly praying to see when you crack open a booster pack...and then there are these. A [['''Junk Rare]]''' is weak, narrow, useless, or otherwise undesirable, and to make matters worse, it's ''rare.'' So much for [[Power Equals Rarity]].

Naturally, [[Your Mileage May Vary]]. One player's [[Awesome but Impractical]] is another player's [[Rule of Cool|Who Cares How Impractical It Is, It's Awesome!]] And one should never underestimate the power of [[Narm Charm]]. And [[Hundred-Percent100% Completion]].

This trope is not exclusive to [[Collectible Card Game|Collectible Card Games]]s--[[Random Drops]] can qualify as well, and when they do they are often also [[Vendor Trash]].

* ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering]]'' has a lot of these, usually [[Intentional Trope|on purpose]]. Mark Rosewater, the game's head designer, wrote a lengthy [[Justified Trope|Justification]] of the practice titled [https://web.archive.org/web/20090602111149/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr9%2Fdaily%2Fmr9 "Rare, but Well Done"], in which he discusses in great detail why this trope exists. In general, cards are rare when they really ''are'' [[Game Breaker|powerful enough]] to dominate games (especially sealed deck and draft games), when they're [[Cool but Inefficient|weird and wacky enough]] that only a small portion of the players would want to use them, or when they're [[Difficult but Awesome|complicated enough]] that they can overwhelm beginning players. When players complain about a rare being one of those last two types and insisting it should have been an uncommon, one of Rosewater's stock replies is "you hate it, so you want to see it in ''more'' of your packs?"<br /><br />Of course, it's not unheard of for the quirkier ones to become [[Lethal Joke Character|Lethal Joke Characters]] later on--one infamous example is [http://magiccards.info/mr/en/272.html Lion's Eye Diamond], which was originally designed as a [[Nerf|nerfed]] [http://magiccards.info/un/en/233.html Black Lotus] so weak that nobody would ever play it. It's now banned or restricted in almost every format.

* In ''[[Pokémon (Tabletop Gamegame)|Pokémon]]'':

** Rarity seems to be more related to the Pokémon featured than the potential for playability. There have been instances in every tournament season up to the present (2010-112010–11) of a player doing well with a deck using nothing above Uncommon, the second-lowest rarity, though such decks have never moved beyond the national level. There was one time a World Championship winner's deck used only 4 Rares out of 60 cards per deck. (There were at least three rarities above Rare at that time. And if you're curious, it was the [[Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire (Video Game)|Lunatone-Solrock]] deck.)

* 90% of just about ''any'' item you get in ''[[Diablo]]''. Unless you can bribe someone to run you through an area with it.

* In ''[[RunescapeRuneScape]]'':

* Anchors are the rarest items in ''[[Super Mario Bros 3 (Video Game)|Super Mario Bros 3]]'': every other world has an [[Guide Dang It|untold]] level where collecting an untold number of coins gets you anchor. All the anchor does is stop the airship from changing its place on the map if you die. In World 5 a very rare glitch can make the airship fly to an [[Unwinnable By Mistake|unreachable square]], so it's probably most useful there.

* The Goblin, Bomb and Mind Flayer [[Summon Magic|summons]] in [[Final Fantasy IV]] and its [[Final Fantasy IV: theThe After Years|sequel]].

* Nintendo World Championship 1990 is one of the rarest NES games in existence with an interesting piece of history behind it, considered to be the Holy Grail of game collections. However, as shown on [[The Angry Video Game Nerd (Web Video)|The Angry Video Game Nerd]], it exists as nothing more than a competition cart split between segments of [[Super Mario Bros.]], [[Rad Racer]] and [[Tetris (Video Game)|Tetris]].

* Back in the days of vanilla ''[[World of Warcraft (Video Game)|World of Warcraft]]'', Molten Core's Sulfuron Harbinger encounter occasionally ended in disappointment when one of the items dropped was [http://www.wowhead.com/item=17074 Shadowstrike]. Sure, it had the gimmick of transforming into [http://www.wowhead.com/item=17223 Thunderstrike] and back. But it had inferior DPS to other two-handers, so the Warriors and Paladins didn't want it, and no stat bonuses, so the Hunters, Druids, and Shamans didn't want it either, and the other classes couldn't wield Polearms. No surprise that its nickname became "[[Vendor Trash|Vendorstrike]]", and later "Nexusstrike," as it became a reliable source of Nexus Crystals from disenchanting.

* Unusuals from ''[[Team Fortress 2 (Video Game)|Team Fortress 2]]''. They are extremely rare, only being found in [[Bribing Your Way to Victory|Mann Co. Supply Crates]] at a ''1%'' rate. The most valuable variants of them are valued at ''thousands'' of dollars and lots of in-game high-level "currency". And what are they? [[And Your Reward Is Clothes|Hats]] with special particle effects- literally no more than cosmetic items with flashy effects.

[[Category:Tabletop GamesGame Tropes]]

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