4 Brave Ninjas...

Have you seen Ninjago from LEGO? I love these!

[caption id="attachment_857" align="alignnone" width="279" caption="Test your Spinjitsu!"][/caption]

The background story revolves around Ninjas battling a skeleton army using their powers of Spinjitsu.  But this time, LEGO has brought us more than just a playset. Sure, you've got good guys, bad guys and an awesome theme, and that's all very good in it's own right. Plus with LEGO minifigs and bricks, these ninjas can do some pretty awesome tricks. There are lots of clever hidden traps and details, plus your ninjas can run along walls or hang from a ceiling to drop on an enemy. But it doesn't stop with cool scenes and stories - Ninjago is an awesome game as well.

The game works something like this: Choose a Ninjago minifig character, three weapons, a spinner base and four battle cards. Your choices affect the battle, and so does your skill in spinning - that's Spinjitsu! You'll place your character on the spinner, equip and position your weapons, then set him spinning to attack your opponent. The last ninja standing wins the round and takes one weapon from the fallen character. The game is simple enough to grasp, but once you start playing, you'll find that the combination of your choice of weapons and positions, plus your skill in spinning the figure and the effective use of battle cards, keeps things challenging.

Ultimately, there's a lot you can do with the LEGO Ninjago sets. The game plays a bit like Beyblades, but with the addition of battle cards and the interchangeable minifigs. And of course, with LEGO, the possibilities are always endless. You can spend hours trying out different figures, weapons and parts from other sets to build your most powerful character...even if he's not really a ninja.

Last Chance Thursday: HALO!

Today we're having "Last Chance Thursday" at ToyWiz.com! All day we'll be Tweeting HALO merchandise - only HALO items that have just 1 left in inventory.  Follow us @toywizdotcom on Twitter to keep up with the latest last chance items!

Hidden Arsenal 4: This Time It’s Personal!

Jackalope here with a look at the brand new Hidden Arsenal 4 set. I’m deviating from my prior YuGiOh articles as I’m going to crack (open) an entire case of Hidden Arsenal 4 boxes. Let’s take a quick look at the stats on that.

[caption id="attachment_870" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Step 1: Prepare you case for skinning."][/caption]

1 Case of Hidden Arsenal 4 = 12 Boxes = 288 Packs = 1440 Cards.

Now most of you are not opening a case of cards, so why am I going through the trouble of writing this article on this? Simple, my friends: Averages! Yes, when you break a box of cards there is a high degree of randomness to it, but when you break a case you can see trends and averages to better give you an idea of what you can expect out of a box. This might help you decide whether it makes sense for you to buy a box to try for certain cards or to just pony up for the single cards.

[caption id="attachment_871" align="alignnone" width="285" caption="Step 2: Discard the booster skins"][/caption]

Let’s look at some more delicious numbers! In that case of 1440 cards you will get exactly 288 Secret Rare cards and 1152 Super Rare cards. There are 20 different Secret Rare cards in the set and 40 different Super Rare cards in the set so if we go just by averages you should get approximately 14.4 of every Secret Rare and 28.8 of every Super Rare.

Spoiler Alert! It does NOT work out that way.

[caption id="attachment_872" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Step 3: Arrange your card filets in preparation for sorting"][/caption]

“Well Jackalope, how does it work out?” you’re asking, and I am glad you did! Let’s look at a few more numbers, specifically the best and/or most valuable cards in the set and see how many we got:

x7 Dragunity Knight – Trident $ 17.99
x8 Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier $64.99
x8 Dragunity Knight – Barcha $7.99
x8 Naturia Landoise $19.99
x12 The Fabled Unicore $5.99
x12 The Fabled Cerburrel $16.99
x15 Jurrac Meteor $6.99
x16 Neo Flamvell Sabre $5.99
x17 Naturia Exterio $4.99

Note that all these cards are valued at or over 5 dollars to show you what “money*” cards you can expect in your theoretical box purchase.

Looking at the numbers we got you can expect one, possibly two of: Jurrac Meteor, Neo Flamvell Sabre & Naturia Exterio. You can with come certainly assume you’ll get one each of these in your box: The Fabled Cerburrel & The Fabled Unicore. And lastly you have a 2/3rds chance of getting the big three, and almost certainly one of the following in your box: Dragunity Knight – Barcha, Dragunity Knight – Trident, Naturia Landoise & Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier.

What does that tell you? Well if you are looking for three Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier cards you would have to buy the equivalent of 5 or 6 boxes to ensure you got them, at a cost of $79.99. That’s quite a hefty price tag as opposed to buying the single cards outright, but in addition you’ll get a whole lot of other cards. You've got lots of options for getting what you want: buying boxes and hoping for lucky pulls will give you lots of extra cards for trading, or you can purchase the individual cards you need.

[caption id="attachment_873" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Step 4: Portion out and serve your collection. Bon Appetit!"][/caption]

Only you can decide whether or not purchasing a box is worthwhile to you, or if buying the few single cards you need to finish your deck fits the bill, but hopefully this shows you the average odds you have of getting the card(s) you’re looking for!

Exit, stage right!

* Money cards refer to the expensive cards out of a set. Those can be valuable due to demand or rarity, oftentimes both.

Please keep in mind all prices are subject to change and these are the prices of the cards as of this writing which was on the day of release for the set.

The Battle of the Box

Jackalope here with another cost/value analysis. This time of an older set. A lot of players and collectors feel that there is less value when you buy an older box and open it. This is for various reasons, but the most commonly held belief is that the longer a set is out, the more of it gets broken (opened) and the more single cards there are in the market. I’m going to do a single box breakdown for you here. This is just one random box that I opened and is not typical of all boxes, but it gives you a good idea what you should expect if you bought a box of YuGiOh 5D's Starstrike Blast.



[caption id="attachment_819" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="So serene, just sitting there…"][/caption] 

[caption id="attachment_820" align="alignnone" width="293" caption="NOM NOM NOM!"][/caption]

Okay, let’s look at what makes up a box:
24 Packs, 9 cards in each pack. Each pack will contain at least 1 Rare card and may contain a foil card.

Newbie in the Magic Tourney, Round 2!

Well I haven't played since last Friday, but I went again to try my hand again. And hey...I'm getting better at this! My deck is too!

[caption id="attachment_807" align="alignnone" width="171" caption="These make all the difference. "][/caption]

I arrived early and bought 7 booster packs to try to build the deck I want. At first, I was a little disappointed - I got some duplicates that weren't needed and 4 cards I'd been hoping to see. That wasn't fantastic, but then I realized why you should always get to the tournament early...

Amazing Lego Creations

We love putting together fun scenes with LEGOs here at ToyWiz.com, but there are people out there who do amazing things with these bricks. Stop-motion animations, recreations of famous artworks, and even original artwork made entirely of LEGOs.



So for today, I want to share one of the great artists using LEGOs as a medium for his creativity - Nathan Sawaya of New York, whose creations have been touring museums in North America with a show called The Art of the Brick.

Be sure to check out his gallery of great LEGO brick art!

Why Collect Action Figures?

We talk to action figure collectors all the time and we love getting the chance to meet some of them in person at Comic Cons or at our retail store. I always love hearing about the collections, and usually I find out what type of collector a person is right off the bat.

Of course, lots of collectors have more than one "type" of collection going at a time, and some switch from one to another as their tastes change and develop. But most people I meet are avid about their reasons for collecting.

The Nostalgia Collector: These are people who loved action figures as children and continue to enjoy them for years. As adults, they may decide to fill in missing characters from old sets, locate figures they once owned, or finally buy themselves a few pieces they wanted but never got as kids. They tend to be focused on vintage pieces or re-released items, locating missing parts, or even finding the elusive mint-in-box figure from childhood.

Media Fans. These collectors focus on movies, comics, television shows or video game series action figures. Often they'll get every related character and watch for new releases.

Single-minded Collectors. These are easy to spot at home - I have a friend with every possible version of Batman figure imaginable. No Robins. No villains. But the Batman is all over her house in figures large and small, boxed and open! This type of collector wants one thing and one thing only - and they'll search high and low for a missing version of their favorite character.

Quality Collectors. These are the people who look for high-end figures with a lot of detail. While a specific movie fan may want every mass-produced figure, regardless of how many points of articulation and accuracy, some look at action figures as art. We have some amazingly detailed figures with accessories and paint that make them look almost lifelike. Some of our collectors love assembling shelves of these amazing action figures in lifelike poses.

Investment Collectors. These are the guys who stay on top of new releases and pop culture trends to buy figures they expect to rise in value. While all collectors certainly hope that will happen, some are banking on it!