Cactus Game Design Message Boards

In my opinion the old packs help with the booster drafts during tournaments and although some single are high the most expensive card ever in redemption was around 50 and that was a promo. The other card games I've played to build any good deck costed you ~300-500 while redemption you only need 100 at most to build a good deck.

I find that most of the time you just need to find some really nice people to trade with.

Packaging old cards with those in the new set is a cost-reduction move that allows Cactus to sell actual booster packs instead of tins.  Redemption doesn't move as much volume as the bigger collectible card games (e.g. Magic), so they need to find creative ways to improve their margin on the product they do sell.  Tins are the other model that Cactus has used in the past to help offset the cost of printing new cards, but those have several disadvantages compared to actual booster packs for both customers and Cactus.

Additionally, it's a lot better for new players to be able to get the stronger old cards in these packs.  Since all cards ever printed in any Redemption expansion are still legal for tournament play, someone just coming into the game (and wanting to compete in tourneys) needs ways to build out that back collection of 20 years worth of sets.  Seeding old cards in the newest boosters lets players acquire both new and old staples by purchasing packs and directly supporting Cactus.

Finally, padding a booster with cards from older sets helps to allow things like the introduction of the Clay brigade.  Adding a new brigade in a set demands that a huge amount of the cards in that set either have or relate to that brigade.  This causes wacky side effects in draft, where if all cards in the booster pack are from that set, every player drafting is pushed to that new brigade/concept and all the decks start looking similar.  Mixing in old cards lets drafters choose between supplementing the colors they've already drafted and complementing those colors with the appropriate new cards.  You can see this effect most with drafts featuring only foil boosters - drafting the Priests packs present a weird tension with teal and orange brigade cards.  With the guaranteed new/old distribution in TEC and PC packs, that weirdness is largely absent, and you as a drafter have a better handle on whether you should dive into Clay brigade.

As for us older players, most of us are pretty content to either give away cards we already have lots of, or do other things like create wacky decks or drafting cubes with them.  Or just keep them and let them sit in a box somewhere.  Or use them as a resource for starting a playgroup.  Lots of options.

Imo tec is the best pack because you'll get the new cards, but also warrior and Tin cards, so that's what I go with if I want to buy a pack

It depends on where your collection stands currently, but if you're starting from scratch, I definitely agree with Early Church. There's always the chance of pulling a Shipwreck, which would give you a huge trading/selling chip that you could use to acquire lots of other cards.

It would not be that big of a deal building up a collection of old cards if not for the fact that the cards were re-formatted not too long ago.  It's hard to find something that's new to you, and then get into the older version.