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«12. . .9,9009,9019,9029,9039,9049,9059,906. . .12,16012,161»

Happy Independence Day to our American Posters!
Time for some John Phillip Sousa:

  • https://youtu.be/qgABUZ4i9co

  • https://youtu.be/mZyLchZer9A

  • https://youtu.be/a-7XWhyvIpE

Enjoy!

Bhang Bhang Duc, Fuentana, The unified missourtama states, The nation of wicca, and 1 otherThe Vergville

Numpties wrote:I really do enjoy Ken Dodd, bless him. Always underrated as one of the great English comedians I thought.

Me and the better half went to one of his gigs once - we got away at about half past midnight and he was still going.

Numpties

Are you interested in NS trading cards? Or maybe you always thought it sounded cool but it was a bit intimidating to get into? Good news! TWP now has its own trading card guide to help you start to dip your toes into it! Check it out!



All your chocolate belongs to Darkesia


TWP Introduction to NationStates Cards


What are Trading Cards?


Trading Cards is a fun minigame within NationStates. You can open new packs of cards, look for ones you want, trade, and sell cards to other nations. Cards don't grant any benefits to your nation, except bragging rights of owning them. Each nation has its own card for each season, provided the nation existed when that specific season was released.

You can earn cards by answering issues to win packs of cards to open, and you can trade those cards with other players on the market! There are different ways to play: you can compete with other players for a coveted spot in the list of most valuable decks, or simply build collections of cards you like, whether they are your friends, region-mates, or simply cool-looking cards! Isn't that amazing? Let's get started with this TWP-special beginner’s introduction!

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How do I start trading?

Each time you answer an issue, you have a slightly greater than 20% chance of getting a pack. The maximum number of packs you may store in a nation is 9, and each pack will give you 5 randomly chosen cards.

These cards can have different rarities and seasons.
Rarities can be common, uncommon, rare, ultra-rare, epic, and legendary.
Seasons are sets of cards, launched at different times. Season 1 was created on April 1st of 2018, while Season 2 was created on November 28th of 2019, and Season 3 on November 12th of 2022.

Once you get those cards, you can choose what to do with them:

Junking: In order to get rid of a card you don't want and gain a little bank (money) in the process, simply click on the card and press the "junk" button that appears. You will receive a small quantity of bank: 0.01 for common cards, 0.05 for uncommon cards, 0.10 for rare cards, 0.20 for ultra-rare cards, 0.50 for epic cards and 1.00 for legendary cards.

Gifting: You can also gift a card to another nation by clicking on the card, pressing "gift", and entering a nation name. You will have to pay a small fee that is the same as the junk value.

Trading: Often you'll want to sell the card, as there may be people looking for it. People can place asks to sell a card they have, and bids to buy a card they don't have. The bank needed to bid can either be earned by junking or selling cards. When an ask and a bid match, it brings us to the... auction system!

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How do auctions work?

Auctions are the way cards are traded. An auction will start when either a nation places a bid equal or higher to an asking price, or a nation places an ask equal or lower to a bidding price (when there is a match). Every auction starts with a timer that counts down from one hour. When the timer runs out, the auction ends, and the sales are finalized, with the seller and buyer's prices taken to a single average, the match price. The buyer will pay the full match price, whereas the seller will only receive 90% of the match price above 10 bank, due to the sales tax taking the remaining 10%.

During the auction, a nation can bid for more (overbid) or ask for less (underask), in order to get a good deal. When this happens, the match will change, and it will extend the auction by one minute. If you have been overbid, don't worry, because you can simply offer a higher price (and offer a lower ask if you are underasked). However, you may not remove any ask or bid when it is matched. Auctions even allow multiple trades to happen!

At the end of the auction, a card is traded between the lowest ask and the highest bid, or multiple bids and asks. If they are different, the final price (the match) will be the average of them.

Once an auction starts, it will be displayed in the market. Here, every nation can see all ongoing auctions in order to find cards they want, as well as using filters to only display auctions of a specific season or rarity. In auctions, you'll find several types of people. Some people may penny bid, which means placing a bid exactly 0.01 higher than the previous one, while others may bid a higher quantity to discourage others from bidding over them. There are also snipers, people who overbid at the last minutes of an auction, giving other people less time to react. For that reason, it is important to watch an auction if you really want to buy a card, especially the last minutes.

It is important to say that not all trades can be done by auctions. Sometimes, if you find a valuable card in another nation you own, it's better to gift the card to your main nation, in order to avoid people stealing it. For that, you need to ensure you have deck capacity to receive gifts. If you don't, that's fine, because you can increase it by paying a sum of bank: deck capacity is very important because you need it to place new bids or edit existing ones.

After you learn the basic auction system, you are free to start chasing your goals in the trading card game! You can regularly watch the market in order to get good deals and cards you want, or simply bid reasonable quantities of money on cards you need and wait for someone to sell. There are many choices, but the fact is, Trading Cards can get way more exciting once you enter the advanced steps below.

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Starting your own Card Farm

You've decided to go down the advanced card farmer road! A bit scary, isn't it? Don't worry, though, we're here to help. While you are casually bidding on cards you like, you’ll notice that you simply don’t have enough bank to compete with lots of players on the open market. How can you solve that? It’s simple: with the magic of card farming nations.

Card farming nations are one kind of puppet nation (or just puppet) that you can have on NationStates. A puppet is any nation you control other than your main, original nation, and people may have puppets for lots of different reasons. Card farming puppets are created for the sole purpose of answering issues and opening packs. That means you don’t have to worry about creating lore for these nations, because they are merely puppets. The most successful card farmers have hundreds or even thousands of nations, just to get more cards! But it’s not necessary to have that many: if you have only one nation, adding just one more will double your production! Merely 10 or 20 card farming nations is a good starting number, and will have you working your way up the leaderboard, if that’s something you’re interested in trying to achieve. Reminder: you can have as many puppets as you want, but only one World Assembly nation.

First, decide how many puppets you want to create. This depends on your schedule in real life and in your free time you use for NationStates. Usually, new farmers start with 10 to 30 puppets, while the average farmer has 50 to 200. Then, after you answer lots of issues and get packs, you can gift valuable cards to your main nation (provided it has deck capacity) and bolster your income! An additional step, for advanced farmers, is to use scripts and other tools to make card farming faster, which will be explained later in this guide.

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Guide to your first Bank Transfer

If you create new puppets to farm cards with, you’ll see that not only will you find more cards you want, but you’ll also begin to accumulate bank on those puppets. In fact, this is the main reason most people have puppets to card farms with. But how can you move that bank you earn from your puppets to your main nation? It’s easy enough to send cards by gifting them, but there’s no magic button to click to send bank. Instead, you must learn how to use a Bank Transfer.

The concept behind a Bank Transfer, or just a transfer, is simple: by using your puppet to buy a card from your main nation, the bank from the puppet goes to the main nation. However, the process is complicated by the fact that it must be coordinated between both nation accounts, and by the fact that transfer takes place as a trade on the open market, where other players may interfere with the auction.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to your first bank transfer, with illustrations in the spoilers.

  1. The first step is to find a card to use. Since you’ll have to place the card on the market, choose a card you wouldn’t mind selling in case someone decides to bid for it. Also, no one else should currently be trying to sell the card. You should also choose a card that has as few owners as possible: this will make it harder for other people to interfere with the transfer. Finally, if you’re planning to do more transfers in the future, you’ll probably want to gift this card back to yourself (this will make sense later). Therefore, you should choose a card of the common rarity, so that gifting it is less expensive.

    You should have the card on your main nation—the nation to which you are trying to move your bank. When you’ve chosen a card, copy its url.

  2. You also need to decide how much money you want to transfer. Log in to your puppet, the nation from which you are trying to send bank. To avoid having to go back and forth between your puppet and your main nation, you can save time by logging in in a different browser or in incognito mode. Once you’ve logged in, you can see how much bank you have available to transfer. You don’t have to transfer it all at once. It’s good to start with small amounts to practice, since otherwise someone may be able to steal your bank from you. (NOTE: It is best to transfer at or below 10 bank to avoid taxes.)

  3. Go back to the card on your main nation, and place an ask for the amount of money you’ve decided to transfer. You want to place the ask first in case someone matches it: that way you’ve just sold a card, instead of overpaid for one.

  4. Now go to your puppet again, and paste the link for the card. Then place a bid to match the ask you just placed on your main account.

  5. You should be good now. Keep an eye on the auction. Someone else may try to sell the card to take your bank. You can lower your ask to combat this, but don’t go too low or they’ll just place a matching bid and then you won’t be able to defend your transfer anymore.

When you’re done, the bank should have moved to your main account, and the card to your puppet account. You’ve completed your first transfer, congratulations! You can now gift the card back to your main account from your puppet and do it all over again.

As mentioned, be careful when doing this: if other people own copies of the card they can sell it and take your bank instead of you. This is called heisting. There’s a few ways to combat this. For one, you can try to get a few good cards to use that don’t have many owners. You can also do lots of transfers with small amounts of money so that if you do get heisted, it’s not the end of the world. If someone tries to heist you, you can just buy the extra copy of the card, and that way you’ll have more copies to use in the future, and you’ll be better able to combat a heist the next time.

Another strategy is piggybacking: here you can start an auction by matching yourself on both the ask and bid, and then when it’s almost over, use another copy of that card to transfer your bank so people don’t have as long to try to heist you. The downside is that you need at least two copies in order to make this kind of transfer.

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Advanced Card Farming: Tips and Tricks

For more information on card terminology, we advise you to read our Card Glossary.

After setting card farms, finding valuable cards, and even transferring bank to your main, there's more? Here we'll take a look at some advanced, hidden aspects of Trading Cards.

Auction Strategy: Every new card farmer may have the chance to encounter an experienced nation and be quickly outwitted. Here are some of the most commonly used tricks:

Dropping: in a lengthy bidding war, there’s often a great difference between the original ask and the highest bid. Players with a copy of the card can then take advantage of that by matching the high bid while buying the cheaper copy. This means they earn bank but still keep a copy of the card. Therefore, you must always be careful when outbidding a player that owns said card. You should also try not bidding more than you actually want to pay, just because there's a lower ask and the average price will be lower. It can be a great deal, but sometimes you'll end up with a loss.

Flipping: Similar to dropping, but any player can do it even if they don't have the card. It's done by sniping at the last minute on an auction where there’s a large difference between the match price and the bid price, and then reselling for a profit before the other player removes their high bid. This is sometimes risky, as there is a 3 minute cooldown you must wait, and often the other player will be quick to remove their bid—even more so when dealing with high values since the sales tax may cause one to actually lose bank.

Sniping: As said before, a change of match adds only one minute to the auction timer. Players called snipers take advantage of this, bidding at the last minute to get the card! This is why it's important to keep an eye on cards you want, especially on the last five minutes. You can also find times when the market is less active in order to buy lots of cards with less risk of being sniped.

Card Rarities: A number of factors affect the rarity of cards (remember that if you joined the game after Season 3 started, you’ll have no card). The main ones are issue stat badges, influence and WA endorsements: the last two are a good reason to stay in a big region like The West Pacific! Other badges such as founders, issue authors, WA resolution authors, and even game moderators or administrators, also contribute.

Inflated Cards: Often experienced card farmers will use a card to transfer bank between different puppets or even purposely increase its value. The card's value will then increase, because market value is calculated by the median of the last fifteen trades (with every 3 trades needing to be done by entirely different nations). Many nations buy those cards for a cheap increase of their deck value, but this isn't a good strategy at all: once more trades are made, the market value will drop and all the bank invested will be gone in vain. Therefore, you should avoid buying these cards and instead gift your main nation valuable cards you find with your puppets to earn a true deck value increase!

Keeping Track of Cards: You may want to bid 0.01 (lowest possible) on cards you need, but are simply too expensive for you at the moment. This will automatically place the card on your auctions page whenever there's an auction for it. Once you get the card, you can also lodge a 10000.00 ask (highest possible), in order to avoid accidental junking. This works because cards you are selling can't be junked, and the price is simply enormous for someone to ever buy!

The Trading Card Forum: Did you know Trading Cards has a Forum? Indeed! The forum is where discussion over the most recent happenings occurs, as well as people seeking cards they want or offering some for sale. It even has a pinned list of interesting collections where you can submit your collections. They will be added if they are unique and carefully curated enough!

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Appendix: Card Farming Tools

This is not a required step, but it is great if you want to improve your card farming experience and make it faster or less boring! Remember that when using scripts, one input to the site (e.g. answering one issue or opening one pack) must be a result of one human action, this is commonly known as the 1:1 rule.

LinkAuction Displayer: Ever wondered who is who on an auction? This script displays puppets’ owners whenever one is trading in an auction, based on a log of over 50,000 nations! You will need to install this as a Tampermonkey script.

LinkCard Queries: Search all seasons' cards here! You can also look up cards of a certain type, such as all cards from a region, a specific rarity, with a certain name or even badges.

LinkContainerise: This is a Firefox-only extension that allows a player to build as many containers as they want for farming! Each container can access a different nation, so the benefit is that you can be logged in on several nations at once. You can additionally check this dispatch guide on how to install and set them.

LinkGold Retriever: Here, you can input your puppet names in order to check how much Bank and Deck Value they have. It’s of course essential to read the guide before using it, as with all other scripts and tools for card farming.

LinkKeybinds for Cards: A Tampermonkey script that uses keybinds for various card actions, such as opening packs, junking or gifting cards, placing asks or bids, and more!

LinkRCES: Scripts for faster issue answering! Includes features to answer issues by pressing enter instead of clicking, removing all text except the option buttons and focusing on a random one, and closing the issue page unless a pack is generated (or even if a pack is generated, if you want).

Guide written by Giovanniland, Mediobogdum and Recuecn.

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Layout by Bran Astor & Fujai
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TWP


Read dispatch

Bhang Bhang Duc, Recuecn, The Holy Principality of Saint Mark, Numpties, and 5 othersFuentana, The unified missourtama states, The nation of wicca, Zoran, and Forvinia

Hello

The unified missourtama states, Willow Gate, Torkiuistan, and Locksley Hall

Post by Wesatic suppressed by a moderator.

TODAY IN THE WEST

Today is Workaholic Day. It is a day that reminds hard workers to remember to rest and enjoy recreation. No work today unless it is NationStates related!

It is also Graham Cracker Day. This is the most underrated of the three ingredients of the 'smore. Funnily, the graham cracker was originally intended to be a health food. Now it is emotional health food as a component of 'smores, ice cream sandwiches, and more.

As we put finishing touches on TWPride, join us later today for Sunday Cocktail Hour at 5:00 PM EST on Discord. We'll be sipping cucumber gin and tonics.

Stay tuned later this week for a great upcoming event with our friends in Balder and our next issue of The West Pacifican!

Bhang Bhang Duc, Recuecn, Gryphonian Alliance, The Holy Principality of Saint Mark, and 8 othersBran Astor, Starblazer, The unified missourtama states, Giovanniland, The nation of wicca, Zoran, Rikanhimel, and Bobki

Post by Mordecai the blue jay suppressed by Bhang Bhang Duc.

Mordecai the blue jay

We will make the entire world regular

Fuentana wrote:TODAY IN THE WEST

Today is Workaholic Day. It is a day that reminds hard workers to remember to rest and enjoy recreation. No work today unless it is NationStates related!

All my work is NationStates related.

Bhang Bhang Duc, The Holy Principality of Saint Mark, Bran Astor, Fuentana, and 4 othersGiovanniland, Rikanhimel, Torkiuistan, and Ukerainia

but workaholics can't stop working

The grandest empire, Rikanhimel, and The democratic republic of eons

What do you prefer ? have an encounter with a being from space or a ghost (demons etc)?

Torkiuistan wrote:What do you prefer ? have an encounter with a being from space or a ghost (demons etc)?

Definitely the being from space... unless I'm encountering the holy ghost :)

The Holy Principality of Saint Mark and The grandest empire

The union of american territories

Hello Everyone

Isle Royale, The unified missourtama states, Willow Gate, and Locksley Hall

Torkiuistan wrote:What do you prefer ? have an encounter with a being from space or a ghost (demons etc)?

Being from space!

Fuentana

Torkiuistan wrote:What do you prefer ? have an encounter with a being from space or a ghost (demons etc)?

If an extraterrestrial landed in my area they would be convinced Earth is uninhabited.

Torkiuistan wrote:What do you prefer ? have an encounter with a being from space or a ghost (demons etc)?

Definitely a being from space!
... and your answer was hilarious, OT!

Empire of zealandia

hi

The unified missourtama states and Locksley Hall

Fuzzy iridescent oroboros

Torkiuistan wrote:What do you prefer ? have an encounter with a being from space or a ghost (demons etc)?

Both are interesting, but the last could be more disturbing on certain levels.

Post by Torkiuistan suppressed by Bhang Bhang Duc.

Fuzzy iridescent oroboros wrote:Both are interesting, but the last could be more disturbing on certain levels.

but what if a demon girl falls in love with you?

Empire of zealandia wrote:hi

Hello to you!

Torkiuistan wrote:*snip*

Now you’re just getting weird - let’s not go any further with this.

The union of american territories wrote:Hello Everyone

Hello to you!

The unified missourtama states and Locksley Hall

Andius acramia

Good morning from Northeren Europe

The unified missourtama states

Post by Brestivtiks suppressed by Fuentana.

BE COMUIST

Post by New skithia suppressed by Fuentana.

Brestivtiks wrote:BE COMUIST

OVER MY DEAD BODY YOU FILTHY RED

Post by Brestivtiks suppressed by Fuentana.

Revelation!!!!!!!

«12. . .9,9009,9019,9029,9039,9049,9059,906. . .12,16012,161»

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