Stand and Draw: Card game rants and experiences

"So I tried to go to your store, and I'm seeing your blog! What gives!?". The domain will now point to this blog, and will probably stay that way. Update: Well, looks like the domain is gone.

Well, that it. I've closed the store, a day earlier than planned. Many thanks to all supporters out there who had helped me come this far. I do wish I had the time and resources to do up a more professional store but alas, despite all the planning, that idea was scrapped. I had wanted each card's translation to be reflected in the item's  description among others as well as high resolution scanned images for the cards, especially for the Japanese version card games. It may seem trivial but when I buy a card online, I personally rather have the translation on the card's page itself rather than having to go to the wikia for translation and I believe most of us would rather see that piece of info on the same page.

As mentioned in my previous post, the lack of time and resources (namely manpower), as well as shipping cost was one of the major factor that lead to my decision in closing the store. Once again, thank you for your support and I hope you'll still continue to follow my blog! Happy card gaming!

After giving it some thoughts, I've decided to close down the store. Although it has only been 8 months, there are too much commitment in real life that I'm unable to update the store (and even the blog) as regularly as I'd love to. There's lots of items to add in; from Wixoss booster 5 and trial decks, Japanese Weiss Schwarz, both English and Japanese Vanguard to the much needed updates for Ange Vierge and Level Neo. Sadly, there's only one of me and I can't really outsource for external help.

Another deciding factor was shipping costs. Throughout some feedback from a few customers, their main complaint was that shipping can be too expensive for a single card. Even with registered shipment, the shipping and handling fee can go up to $6. So if the card they are looking for is $5 and shipping is $6, it becomes quite a turn off. Not forget to mention the duration of the shipment. While the post office claims it'll take 5 to 10 working days to reach its destination, it may take 3 to 4 weeks for it to actually reach. Fedex, DHL, EMS and the likes are way too expensive for a single shipment as their minimum weight rate is capped at 500 grams, which costs about $30 for one shipment. So imagine shipping out a card that is only 10 grams in total with bubble mailer and top loaders and having to pay $30 for shipping. Well, let's throw that idea out the window shall we?

So when exactly the store will close? Welp, we're closing on the 31st January 2015, which incidentally is a month later. Well, it's sudden but it can't be help. So any orders from 31st Jan will be cancelled and payment returned. I won't be adding in more items to the store during this period.

Now what will happen to this really empty blog? It'll stay the same. Probably with the store closed down, there would be more time for me to finally put up more contents. The URL will probably just revert back to the blogger address.

Will I ever re-open the store again? Depends. But the chances are quite slim.

After a long week of delay by the new distributor, I finally managed to get my hands on WIXOSS booster 04. Why the long delay? Turns out, the distributor encountered some hiccups with the delivery of Booster 4 and there wasn't enough for all pre-orders by every other stores. So they decided to do the next worst thing: Distributing the boosters to the larger chain of stores first (which obviously have a larger amount of pre-orders) instead of doing a "first come first serve" basis. So yeah, majority of the smaller stores got their pre-orders last despite being the first ones to pre-order them. And we did like what other humans will generally do, bombard the distributor with complaints.

Phew, that was a load off my chest. I did not take an unboxing video for this booster sadly due to technical issues. But for those who have been waiting for singles from this booster, I have good news! It's now up for grabs in the store! (Images will be updated soon)

I've updated the prices for WIXOSS booster sets 1 and 2 as well as more stocks added in. Not much differences but you may have noticed the foil cards are steadily dwindling down in price and has stabilized mostly. And yes, I finally got off my lazy butt to upload the images for each cards as well! So long to those "Now printing" images!

I am saddened to announce that WIXOSS booster set 3 will be slightly delayed for one or two days however. The prices are spiking up and down a little as various stores across Japan having slightly different prices by a large margin as well. I expect for the price to settle down within one or two days though.

Ninja update: Prices seems to have stabilized. WIXOSS booster set 3 have been added in to the store!

Visit the webstore now!

I apologize for not updating for too long. No, it's that I'm lazy. I literally have no time to do any updates as I've been doing lots of overtime work in real life, working 6 days 12 hours shift a week. I did take a few unboxing videos (Ange Vierge Chapter 4 and Project Diva F 2nd) but I have yet to upload those. I have some free time these few days but I hope the lazy bug didn't get me.

For now, I'm just here to announce that there have been major price update for WIXOSS. The market price over in Japan have stabilize and the updates have been done to reflect them. From what I heard, the price have been stabilize for about two weeks but I delayed a little in case there was another unforeseen fluctuation. You'd be glad to see cards that used to cost more than $20 is now just about $10 odd. Well, except for Three Out which is has increased to $12 despite being just a common card (and I heard it may still increase some more). For those who are sceptical about the prices, I'm using Bigweb and Card Kingdom as a reference, which most players and shops in Singapore are using for Japanese singles. Head down to the store and get those cards that you've been itching to get!

Yes, the singles for Set 2, Stirred Selector, are up in the store now! As usual, I followed the Japanese market rate for these cards. Stocks are limited so get them while they last! Level 0 Yuzuki and Eldora promos also available so you can build a deck without needing the trial deck! Scanned images of the cards will be added soon.

EB09 have just released everybody is rushing to grab them. I originally wanted to grab a video of everything...but well, as usual, I got lazy (though the place was a bit crowded and noisy). But, I did take a couple of images for you all to enjoy! And oh, the EB09 foils are now available in the webstore! Grab whatever you need and spend $50 to enjoy free shipping!

Update: EB08 now available!!

Vanguard English eb08 and eb09! pic.twitter.com/wQK3MJ2lYc
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

Eb08 unboxed! 1 galaxy SP and 1 immortal SP! pic.twitter.com/NcDDktzfcT
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

pic.twitter.com/41HNhXqG95
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

6 Monds, not bad pic.twitter.com/aW2IoNV4la
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

So many perfect guards.... pic.twitter.com/TtynwVILfh
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

Kagero galore! pic.twitter.com/cIZNW5HJQF
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

Everybody wants this guy... pic.twitter.com/vpJeNmP6Hs
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

Cruel dragons and blast bulk Dragon. Definitely great cards for trolling pic.twitter.com/nOXrV2hnnZ
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

More kagero stuffs pic.twitter.com/fhCm9YQJy7
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

Wondering if Bushiroad will make a dragon dancer archetype. Definitely will build one! pic.twitter.com/x0PaxK8E2C
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

I feel these 2 cards are a waste of slots... I like lawkeeper but... pic.twitter.com/AxA1c7UjCz
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

The two SPs of the carton. Too bad couldn't get Nouvelle Vague pic.twitter.com/o21nQ0mZmS
— Stand and Draw TCG (@StandandDrawTCG) June 6, 2014

Phew, it has been a month since I last updated...now where do I begin...Firstly, I apologize (again) for not updating much. Work has been extremely crazy that I didn't have much time for Vanguard or blog updates. It's a Sunday and I'm still busy working too but as I am writing this, I have already finished quite a bulk of things.

Initially, I wanted to use two different blogs; one simply for my rants, deck recipes and videos (yup this blog!) and another one for updates on the store. I realized then that having two blogs is a pain and decided to use this blog and twitter for both.

While my job have been pulling me away from playing TCGs, I do find at least 2 or 3 hours to play some games to unwind once a week. I mentioned busy, but I was busy on two ends, my real life job and of course updates for the webstore. So here are a few updates on the store end!

1. Just added in more cards for Cardfight!! Vanguard, such as Trans-core Dragon or more Eradicator units. Also some EB09 Kagero cards as well from the booster draft!
2. Search optimization!! Now you can simply search for the clans you need instead of jumping all over the place, scrolling through the booster sets and getting frustrated. To be honest, this took me a couple of hours to finish. Update: May need a little bit more optimization. Eg, if you search "genesis" you get nothing but if you search "Genesis" you get something. Will fix this in due time.
3. Follow me on twitter! Posting updates on the blog, webstore and of course some random stuff! I'll be tweeting some of the box opening pictures for EB08 and EB09 this Friday Singapore time! (This will be a Thursday for those living in the west :D)
4. Got a new scanner! Some pictures added in for those with blank images. While I can simply grab an image for Vanguard on the Wikia, I rather scan my own images for quality purposes. Of course another reason is that some of the TCGs I carry doesn't have good images hi-res off the web. WIXOSS and Weiss Schwarz are such examples.
5. Blog have moved to a new domain! If you noticed, your address bar is now showing http://blog.standanddrawtcg.com. The old link will still be used, but it will simply redirect itself here.

I believe that should be about all the updates I did. I am not so sure when the next update will be (apart 6th June). Hopefully I can update more frequently soon :D.

I quite frustrated with ebay. Too many restrictions and issues that I've made a decision 2 weeks ago to might as well start an eStore. And now, two weeks later, the store is now up and running! There are a few kinks left to fix, mainly;

1. Paypal only payment. I know paypal sucks but because of location issue I can only accept paypal. Looking to other modes of payment though
2. Older cards (pre BT12) won't be stocked up, unless I managed to find some.

For now, I only have Cardfight!! Vanguard up. But I will be adding in more TCGs to the list such as Weiss Schwarz, Ange Vierge and Sieg Krone among others. That's about it for today. For those reading, I do hope you spread the word around!