Power Equals Rarity: Difference between revisions
→Tabletop Games: Adding two Yu-Gi-Oh! examples
(→Tabletop Games: ...Gryphon Wing is a counter against people who bought the games for HFD, obviously. The problem is one that card-specific counters share and as such isn't tied to rarity anyway) |
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* One of the best known cases of this trope is ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! (Tabletop Game)|Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' - generally, if something's even mildly useful, more often than not it's going to be rare or up. The gradations of rarity in ''Yu-Gi-Oh'' are many, and the most powerful tend to be the rarest, giving ''Yu-Gi-Oh'' the reputation of being a "rich man's game" - there's a well-established niche in constructing cheap and competitive decks, which often benefit from lower-rarity reprints. Below are just a few prominent examples out of many:
** [https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mechanicalchaser "Mechanicalchaser"] is perhaps the earliest such example, an Ultra Rare released in the very first Tournament Pack booster (which could only be won from in-store tournaments). Single copies went for ''four-digit prices'', and are ''still'' collectors' items in the modern era - and what warranted this monster pricing? A Level 4 Normal Monster with 1850 base ATK... but those extra 50 points gave "Mechanicalchaser" [[Boring but Practical|the highest ATK of any Level 4 monster ''without'' a built-in drawback]]. The only Level 4 to surpass it was "Dark Elf" at 2000 ATK, and it required 1000 LP to even declare attacks; the attacker of choice was more often the 1800 ATK [https://yugipedia.com/wiki/La_Jinn_the_Mystical_Genie_of_the_Lamp "La Jinn"] and [https://yugipedia.com/wiki/7_Colored_Fish "7 Colored Fish"], which were reasonably more common. "Mechanicalchaser" was the first monster that could beat them without any cost to Life Points (as with "Dark Elf") or field presence (Tribute Summoning a stronger monster or [[Mutual Kill|crashing your own "La Jinn"/"7 Colored Fish" into them]]).
** [https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Crush_Card_Virus "Crush Card Virus"] is almost synonymous with this trope in the community for its rarity and power. It was so rare that in a booster pack with 3 guaranteed Ultra rares, it was stated to only occur once in every 10 packs (and rumored to only be printed once every 75 packs). These packs were usually valued at 35 dollars as well, making it quite a stroke of luck to pull one of these. As for power? It could completely empty your opponent's hand and field of any strong monsters for the next three turns - all for a comparatively tiny cost of a single low-ATK monster.▼
** Tournament Pack 2 brought us [https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Morphing_Jar "Morphing Jar"] - another Ultra Rare, this monster instead had an effect that [[Discard and Draw|forced players to discard their hand and draw 5 fresh cards]]. As with many cards before it, this very simple Flip effect was capable of a massive momentum swing all on its own; this was devastating in the relatively simple days of the Spell Ruler "meta", where distinct archetypes were just coming to prominence. Any cards your opponent was saving for a rainy turn end up wasted if they flip one of these, and a successful early Morphing Jar flip can easily set the tone for the rest of a three-game match by propelling you ahead with a replenished hand ''on top of'' enabling mind games - do you hold on to cards and risk losing them to "Morphing Jar", or set Spells and Traps where they're vulnerable to destruction effects?
▲** [https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Crush_Card_Virus "Crush Card Virus"] is almost synonymous with this trope in the community for its rarity and power. It was so rare that in a booster pack with 3 guaranteed Ultra rares, it was stated to only occur once in every 10 packs (and rumored to only be printed once every 75 packs). These packs were usually valued at 35 dollars as well, making it quite a stroke of luck to pull one of these. As for power? It could completely empty your opponent's hand and field of any strong monsters for the next three turns - all for
* In ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', though the rules are set basically by the [[Game Master|DM]], there are a group of items called "artifacts" which are said to be very, very rare, and literally can warp reality. These are perceived as so rare that they don't have any effective gold piece value listed. In general, too, the more powerful items are limited by DM's so as to make sure the party doesn't go around killing Great Wyrm Red Dragons in a single turn.
** Supposedly it's this way. In practice, many if not most of the "artifacts" are actually little more than decent-but-normal magic items with no real special effect. Many others can be replicated with existing spells, and most of those which are really unique are only a little more effective than a "normal" magic item counterpart.
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** And then played straight by ''the very nature of reality'' in every other aspect of ''Exalted'': Humans are common and laughably weak, enlightened Mortals and Godbloods are rarer and stronger, Dragonblooded are more rare and powerful still, while there only 700 Celestials in all of Creation, and they're able to defeat small armies of Dragonbloods. Likewise, powerful Manses, Artifacts, Charms, Sorcery spells, et cetra are all said to be rare and hard to come by (though the design of PCs in any given campaign may or may not support this).
* In ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]]'', all magic items are pretty much unique due to time and labour expenditure involved in their creation: Rules for crafting 'generic' magic weapons appears in the Winds of Magic splatbook, where only dwarves can do it and it takes ''years'' of off-time to make a single one (and tradition forbids runesmiths from mass producing or making more than one of any particular magic weapon: Only one runesmith ever did it and was stuck with the epithet 'The Mad' for having performed such blasphemy). Even nonmagical weapons and armour tend to be rarer the more powerful they are, but in most cases it's justified by these being cutting-edge and not yet having entered mass production, or simply being unavailable for civilian purchase. Higher-quality versions of regular equipment are also harder to acquire, due to having been hand-crafted.
* Played with in the ''[[Legend of the Five Rings]]'' CCG. While it is true that there are powerful rares, several of the most powerful cards in the history of the game actually were only available from ''starter packs as fixed cards''. These generally include the [[Asskicking Equals Authority|Clan Champion]] as well as goodies like the [[Infinity+1 Sword|Clan Swords]]. While you could certainly argue cost effectiveness, some of the biggest and baddest characters in the settings have been only available as a fixed card (ie always present in that starter) in their clan's starter packs.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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