The Comprehensive Guide to NationStates Cards

[Destructive Government Economic System]

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The Comprehensive Guide to NationStates Cards

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Produced by The North Pacific Cards Guild

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Need a hand in how cards work? Take a look at the universal cards guide for info!

Card guide? What's that?

Hey guys, it's me, DGES! I've been noting how some people might not get the entire concept of NationStates Cards, so I spent over a month writing a multi-dispatch guide in order to get newer players immersed in the experience!

And of course, I've also taken the time to include more-advanced strategies if you wish to be a competitive collector

What's actually in the cards guide?

Good question. For the main page, I've included the basic method as to how you actually gain cards and what happens after you obtain some, along with a few basic tools to aid the process in trading. For the auction system page, I've discussed the basic definition for "auctions", along with the types of players that participate in said auctions. (And as a bonus, I've even included ways you can utilize auctions if you don't want to just buy cards!) For the gifting page, this is rather self-explanatory. I've included the basic definition + functions of gifting, along with how you actually do it and why you should do it.

For more advanced tips, see useful tips and strategies. If you wish to swiftly increase your deck value, gain more bank (in general), or simply obtain cards in a more efficient manner, this has it all covered! After this, you'll might read frequently asked questions for more background information regarding cards, including A) the factors that determine your card's rarity and B) the communities that have sprung as a result from cards.

And finally, there's the index for terms that prospective card traders might not know. Click on a term, and the guide will direct you towards the dispatch where said term is defined and explained!

How do I navigate through the cards guide?

Since all this info might overwhelm you, I (as I might've hinted above) have separated each dispatch into its own specialized topic. There are six headers (i.e. the "main page", "the auction system", "gifting", "useful tips and strategies", "frequently asked questions", and "index"), and clicking on each header will redirect you towards that page of interest.

Each page has its own table of contents, and clicking on a term/phrase (in said table of contents) will send you towards the section that discusses your desired topic!

What if I still have questions/suggestions?

If you've got any questions, concerns, or suggestions, feel free to: A) post in this thread or B) contact me via telegram! NationStates Cards is a constantly growing community and feature, so there's bound to be some edits to the guide! But of course, I can't singlehandedly locate all of these edits (I'm only one person, after all), so please take the time to comment! You'll be doing not only me, but the entire cards community a favor by sharing your thoughts.

(If I'm offline, then I'd suggest contacting Praeceps or The Northern Light too. I'm a busy dude in real-life.)

One more thing. If you've developed a cards tool that's: 1) useful (for all traders), 2) legal (see this section for further clarification), and 3) understandable for new players, I'll add it to the guide! Here's the current ones I've included:

Card Market Watch by The Northern Light

Card Queries by The Northern Light

List of Cards in XML by Ballotonia

Goldretriever-Web by Racoda and Valentine Z

NationStates Card Management Queue by Anozia, Destructive Government Economic System, and Racoda

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Have fun, let me know what you think, and upvote the guide if you enjoyed it.

[9003]

Looks amazing thanks so much for the hard work!

[Blab]

I did up-vote all of the dispatches. This is awesome. Wish there had been something like it when I started. Thanks for all the work and thought that went into organizing and writing the documents.

[Valentine Z]

Woo, I got inside! Thanks for this wonderful dispatch, and for all the hard work! ^^ Upvoted and I will pin it in my puppet storage region. :3

[Destructive Government Economic System]

Glad to see people are making use out of the guide!

Due to some suggested edits, I've made a few changes for accuracy and everyone's convenience. Here's the most important ones:

When you click on one of the 6 page headers (i.e. main page, the auction system, etc.), you will now further know as to which page you are on, as the header will be highlighted green!

After doing some research into the rarities of Season 2 cards (as Season 1 cards are rather weird in that their appearances/badges were changed but not their actual rarities, which made rarity changes very inconsistent), it seems that every commended/condemned nation is an ultra-rare card or higher. Therefore, "extremely high" has now been changed to "guaranteed ultra-rare status (at minimum)".

The edit will be located in the rarity chart in this section: https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 086#RARITY

Searching for nations is, naturally, possible through the Boneyard ID search, but of course, you can simply use the dossier for nations that are still active. Therefore, I've separated the method to search nations' cards into 2 ways:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 301089#WAY

The image used (in the first method) might appear rather compressed, so I might be adjusting its appearance in the future. I'd definitely say that it'll give players the example they need though!

Due to ex-nation cards now being pullable, I've edited this section to say "as new copies are very rarely generated in packs once the nation behind the card CTEs", with a hyperlink to [violet]'s post.

If you don't know, you now have a 10% chance to pull a card(s) of any nations in each pack (including those of CTE nations). Since this chance is both rather rare (along with the fact that you won't even know which CTE card you'll obtain), holding auctions for specific cards will remain the ultimate method into getting an item you want.

See this section for the edit: https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 301078#CTE

Thanks to studies conducted by The Northern Light, we have confirmed that the chance to pull packs from previous seasons are at 1%. Therefore, "perhaps even 1%" has been changed to "approximately 1%" (it's not absolutely 1% due to a few slight decimal places being rounded to this number).

See here for the change: https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 6#PREVIOUS

For the index, not every single card term has been defined (only the relevant ones you need to know). If you wish to gain a further understanding of card terms, see this glossary of terms, as written by fellow trader Recuecn:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1301090#T

The glossary should by hyperlinked and accessible from this section. Do note, however, that some of the terms (in said glossary) are primarily used in the Cards Discord server.

Other than these, all of them were a few slight corrections, (including a little part where I forgot to put a space between the sentences). More edits/additions will be coming soon, but the above ones were needed to keep the guide up-to-date.

Thanks for reading!

[Palmira]

The guide is excellent and the amount of work that went into putting it together is mind boggling but the fact that you all are on the path of continuous improvement and editing it is --well-- awesome. Thank you.

[Recuecn]

I appreciate TWP's card glossary I wrote being linked! I had been considering making a thread here for that but I probably won't now.

I had a question about one of the other updates you mentioned--like you said, CTE'd cards are now pullable. However, the way you word it (which is how I've seen other people word it) doesn't seem to be the same as what [violet] said when the feature was unveiled. Rather than a 10% chance of drawing a cte'd card, isn't it a 10% of drawing from all nations, both cte'd and active? So it's really a 10% that you have a chance at drawing a cte'd card. As I understand it, then, the actual probability of drawing a cte'd nation is 10% times the number of cte'd cards but divided but the total number of cards. I'm sure there's a way to get both of those numbers (the latter is easy) but I'm not sure exactly what the first one is (maybe TNL's query tool can answer that question, I forget).

[Lutvikkia]

I think I still have my original Lutvikkia card. How will it work in the new system?

[9003]

I think I still have my original Lutvikkia card. How will it work in the new system?

If by new system you mean session 2?

It works jsut as normal most packs will contain session 2 cards but 1% will have session 1 cards. As for selling or buying there is no restrictions on old cards the url call has a session= tag to differentiate session 1 and session 2

[Destructive Government Economic System]

I appreciate TWP's card glossary I wrote being linked! I had been considering making a thread here for that but I probably won't now.

I had a question about one of the other updates you mentioned--like you said, CTE'd cards are now pullable. However, the way you word it (which is how I've seen other people word it) doesn't seem to be the same as what [violet] said when the feature was unveiled. Rather than a 10% chance of drawing a cte'd card, isn't it a 10% of drawing from all nations, both cte'd and active? So it's really a 10% that you have a chance at drawing a cte'd card. As I understand it, then, the actual probability of drawing a cte'd nation is 10% times the number of cte'd cards but divided but the total number of cards. I'm sure there's a way to get both of those numbers (the latter is easy) but I'm not sure exactly what the first one is (maybe TNL's query tool can answer that question, I forget).

Thanks for pointing this out!

This seems to be more of an issue with the announced changelog (rather than the guide itself). I've now edited that part of my post to "you now have a 10% chance to pull a card(s) of any nations in each pack (including those of CTE nations)".

So yeah, it's not a 10% chance to pull solely CTE nations, but any cards from that season. As to what is the exact chance of pulling a CTE card (out of that 10% chance), I've got little clue (since nations CTE/refound all the time).

For the dispatch, I think I'll leave it as is, since that section is primarily edited to just include [violet]'s announcement.

[Praeceps]

So yeah, it's not a 10% chance to pull solely CTE nations, but any cards from that season. As to what is the exact chance of pulling a CTE card (out of that 10% chance), I've got little clue (since nations CTE/refound all the time).

Wouldn't it just be 1/[number of cards from that season]? Multiply that by 10% and that would be the exact chance of pulling a specific CTE card.

[Destructive Government Economic System]

So yeah, it's not a 10% chance to pull solely CTE nations, but any cards from that season. As to what is the exact chance of pulling a CTE card (out of that 10% chance), I've got little clue (since nations CTE/refound all the time).

Wouldn't it just be 1/[number of cards from that season]? Multiply that by 10% and that would be the exact chance of pulling a specific CTE card.

For getting a specific CTE'd card, yeah. I interpreted Recu's post as in getting a CTE card (in general), with the latter being impossible for me to calculate.

Since the above addition may need further clarification, I'll likely add a section (in the guide) that fully details the chances of getting specific CTE'd cards (per season), with there being a further edit in the future that deals with (as suggested by The Northern Light) the chances of pulling cards of particular rarities in packs (with respect to each season).

[Destructive Government Economic System]

Alright, folks, a few more changes have been implemented!

At the suggestion of The Northern Light, a new section (within "Useful Tips and Strategies") has been added, which details as to how you may (effectively) acquire cards that may prove difficult to obtain. Here's the two methods:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... PULLEVENTS

The 2nd method is particularly interesting, seeing that a new term (i.e. "pull event") has been defined for the playerbase, and this term should also appear within the index by tomorrow morning.

As useful as the original tool by Valentine Z was, it was also a bit tricky to understand. Therefore, the 4th tool within the main page has been edited to include a simpler (but just as effective) cards tool, created by Racoda and SherpDaWerp:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 01085#HELP

That being said, the original tool has still been credited within the dispatch, seeing that the new one wouldn't have even existed without Val's efforts

(Thanks are also given to 9003 for bringing this tool to my attention!)

Slight tweak, but there was another badge (that determines a nation's rarity) that I forgot to add:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 086#RARITY

It's in the chart, and the badge is named "Secretary-General". From what I've seen, it apparently has the exact same rarity impact as the Secretariat badge, but it's also much harder to obtain (with reasons as to why being linked in the chart). Take a little skim if you're interested!

...

As for this change:

Wouldn't it just be 1/[number of cards from that season]? Multiply that by 10% and that would be the exact chance of pulling a specific CTE card.

For getting a specific CTE'd card, yeah. I interpreted Recu's post as in getting a CTE card (in general), with the latter being impossible for me to calculate.

Since the above addition may need further clarification, I'll likely add a section (in the guide) that fully details the chances of getting specific CTE'd cards (per season), with there being a further edit in the future that deals with (as suggested by The Northern Light) the chances of pulling cards of particular rarities in packs (with respect to each season).

...it's still being worked on due to complications regarding calculating the pull chances for 1) cards of different rarities, 2) cards of different rarities while said cards are also CTE, and 3) how different seasons affect the chances for pulling cards of those rarities (whether they're CTE or not).

Will post an update as soon as it's finished!

[SherpDaWerp]

As useful as the original tool by Valentine Z was, it was also a bit tricky to understand. Therefore, the 4th tool within the main page has been edited to include a simpler (but just as effective) cards tool, created by Racoda and SherpDaWerp:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 01085#HELP

That being said, the original tool has still been credited within the dispatch, seeing that the new one wouldn't have even existed without Val's efforts

(Thanks are also given to 9003 for bringing this tool to my attention!)

Thanks for the credit, but for the record, most of that work was done by Racoda. All I contributed was that you could use Auralia's worldRequest method for card queries... Plus, that tool is written in JavaScript, so naming us as "python enthusiasts" seems a bit odd.

Also, I think Racoda's other tools should be given a mention: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=481816

[Destructive Government Economic System]

Yo! It's been a while since I posted here, but there's been a large slew of feedback from many users beyond this forum o.0

To be more accurate, here's what's been happening since the last announcement:

Due to the new additions regarding the 2020 World Assembly Secretary-General Elections, a new badge was added that may determine your card's rarity (i.e. "WA Vice-Secretary General", which this user currently possesses). (Assumably, this badge has a similar impact as the regular Secretary-General badge.)

In addition to this, I was recently informed by The Unified Missourtama States that several retired moderator cards were of a low rarity. As a result, the "retired moderator" badge's impact has been changed from "high" to "low".

Both of these changes can be found within the spoilered chart within this section:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 086#RARITY

(Thanks to Noahs Second Country and Giovanniland for informing me of this!)

New knowledge regarding how cards are exactly pulled during auction was revealed in this thread. As a result, two sections of the guide were edited to stay up-to-date regarding this information:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 301078#CTE
https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 1089#TCALS

Particularly for the second link, it leads to an entirely new term for the guide [which, in this case, is "Trading Card Anti-Laundering System (TCALS)"], and with this in mind, you'll be assured that the term is also located in the index for easy reference:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1301090#T

...

[Special Note: Due to this announcement by Ballotonia, the changes outlined above might not stay for very long, as the aforementioned system that allows for cards to be pulled is likely to change within the very near future.]

(Thanks to The Unified Missourtama States for giving me the idea!)

For players who may not get the full idea on how to change the appearance of their cards, an entirely new section has been added to the "Frequently Asked Questions" dispatch that details on how to do so (though the methods in doing so are quite limited in availability):

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 6#INSCRIBE

Additionally, due to a new term being defined within this section (i.e. "inscription"), that same word has since been linked in the index for quick access:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1301090#I

For those who might have not noticed, the official thread in which players may recognize your collection(s) has been changed to the following: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=484200

This is due to the original thread's curator, Ponderosa, no longer being active, hence a new one was made to continue the original creator's work. Much thanks are given to Giovanniland for taking up the task for the entire community!

The thread has been hyperlinked in the following section:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 01086#WAYS

A new tool (i.e. the "NationStates Card Management Queue") was added a few months ago due to the efforts of multiple known card traders. It is quite useful, and has been added to the main page of the guide accordingly:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 01085#HELP

You must note that the proper usage of this tool is scattered across multiple posts within the thread, so it is ideal for you to read the description of the tool (within the guide) before proceeding. Once you locate the proper information, you'll find that the tool will vastly improve many convenience factors within card trading!

[Note: It is likely that more tools will be added to the guide soon, due to the efforts from traders such as Racoda and 9003.]

...

As useful as the original tool by Valentine Z was, it was also a bit tricky to understand. Therefore, the 4th tool within the main page has been edited to include a simpler (but just as effective) cards tool, created by Racoda and SherpDaWerp:

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispa ... 01085#HELP

That being said, the original tool has still been credited within the dispatch, seeing that the new one wouldn't have even existed without Val's efforts

(Thanks are also given to 9003 for bringing this tool to my attention!)

Thanks for the credit, but for the record, most of that work was done by Racoda. All I contributed was that you could use Auralia's worldRequest method for card queries... Plus, that tool is written in JavaScript, so naming us as "python enthusiasts" seems a bit odd.

Also, I think Racoda's other tools should be given a mention: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=481816

Though you might've noticed a while back, this has been addressed. Thanks for informing me!

...

Wouldn't it just be 1/[number of cards from that season]? Multiply that by 10% and that would be the exact chance of pulling a specific CTE card.

For getting a specific CTE'd card, yeah. I interpreted Recu's post as in getting a CTE card (in general), with the latter being impossible for me to calculate.

Since the above addition may need further clarification, I'll likely add a section (in the guide) that fully details the chances of getting specific CTE'd cards (per season), with there being a further edit in the future that deals with (as suggested by The Northern Light) the chances of pulling cards of particular rarities in packs (with respect to each season).

For this planned edit, it's proven extremely difficult to implement for me (it requires a lot of math to properly figure out). As a result, its addition has been postponed until further notice. However, while I don't think it'll become part of the guide for the foreseeable future, resources linked within the guide have been provided long before this changelog was announced: the Card Market Watch for rarity-pulling info and this post concerning CTE card pulling.

You'll find them linked here and here, respectively. Be assured that they'll give you some insight regarding what appears from card packs.

...

With all this being said, thanks for reading! Hopefully the past months' edits have accurately reflected the current state of what we know about cards.