Its unfortunate that we have gotten to this point, and I am not happy that sets continue to be made untradeable in SWCT. Its a terrible precident to set and undermines the app’s reason for existence. Additionally, its an unpopular band aid to an issue that needs intense scrutiny, and needs to be fixed in another more palatable fashion.

That being said, we have to play along or not play at all. As upset as this makes people, here are some thoughts on continuing to survive, even though you cant trade for the sets. It might even be a good idea to employ more than one of the following suggestions.

Better Determine What Sets Are Worth It To You

For the majority of users, building all the weekly chase sets is pretty problematic when you cant trade for them. If sets are going to continue to be untradeable, being more selective with your coins and real dollars is going to be necessary. Take a look at the prospects of the set before diving in, and dont just spend coins to spend coins.

Being more conscious of your spending and coin usage will allow you to save and be prepared when something big hits. It will also give you more ability to streamline your collection and focus on what matters to you.

For me, I will only collect sets that:

• Have cool artwork
• Have cool pictures
• Have a cool theme
• Focus on the main players in the film franchise, and not background people
• Have an easy to follow structure
• Wont bankrupt me to chase

If a set meets your personal standards, decide what parallel you would like to chase. With untradeable sets, its going to be exponentially more difficult to chase down a set of tough parallels, so that could mean lots of extra spending if you find that the rare variants are what you want. Just be prepared.

As a whole, this type of strategy almost needs to be employed for all sets, really coming to terms with what cards you want versus what cards would just be “nice to have.”

Buy The Set on Ebay After the Fact

As far as I can tell so far, the sets are untradeable only until the award is given out. With most of the programs we have seen, buying the whole run after its all done is significantly cheaper than trying to get it during the actual release.

No one said that the cards are any less cool if you get them when the set is done, and most of the time you will save a lot of money in the process. It might take away the fun of ripping packs, but you will still have the cards when all is said and done.

Trade for the Cards After the Fact

Like with the ebay situation, it becomes infinitely easier to trade for cards after the awards are given out. As someone who loves getting things first and fast, this is going to be pretty difficult to avoid, but you can still get the whole set after the program is over if you really want to.

The trade value of new cards can be high, and the allure of collecting a set is diminished if you cant use it as leverage in future deals during the program’s run. These types of “after the fact” type of acquisitions really only apply if you want the cards as part of your collection.

Similarly, if the set is tough to acquire as a whole, the award might be too low in count to make work in this type of fashion – especially as a free player. Of course, free players are not usually considered in any type of program setup, but here they are eliminated from set trading consideration in low count and rare results.

Dont Collect the Set As A Whole

The best part of collecting is a complete set, and its clear that not getting the whole thing is against the compulsive tendencies of my habits. That being said, I have long come to terms with SWCT not being the perfect puzzle piece for the hole in the picture, and that some of those jagged edges might not fit.

Going into a set knowing that you ONLY want certain pieces can be liberating, and it can also make it less of a focus to spend above your limit to get the rest of the cards you miss. The game will produce situations that will be outside your zone. Untradeable sets might be the way that goes down for many of us.

Some day in the future, I hope the team decides to fix the problem in a way that doesnt hurt the customer experience the way this does. I want to go back to the days when sets were released and the economy sorted everything out on the back end. At the same time, if this is the new norm, and I hope it isnt, maybe its time to change our perspective and start figuring out how to live with the changes instead of agonize over the misery they illicit from us.