True story.  I attended the Eldritch Moon pre-release.  It was my hope to score a Liliana, the Last Hope.  I did not during that event.

The LGS (The Tangled Web in Spartanburg,) does random rolls for the losers.  I was one of those losers!  I won an extra pack.  My wife picked me up, and I opened it on the way home, and what was in that pack?  Not only a Liliana, but a FOIL LILIANA.

At the time, that card was worth over $100.  Now it is hovering around $70.  But hey, that was fun!

My most recent problem has been storage.  I didn’t buy a fat pack box for Shadows Over Innistrad.  Instead, I purchased a booster box.  That box has held all of my cards from that set.  It is a flimsy box, but serves its purpose…the problem is I have a fat pack box from every expansion set since Return to Ravnica.  So….

Making the problem worse, I decided with Eldritch Moon that I wouldn’t get any boosters I didn’t draft or obtain in sealed products.  My Shadows Over Innistrad box was a real stinker, and just about swore me off of booster packs.  (The only legendary creature I got was The Gitrog Monster.  And I got no planeswalkers.)  So I have been storing my Eldritch Moon cards in Pre-Release boxes…which have eventually become inadequate.

I also swore off the “Fat Pack” back during Theros block.  Fat Packs come with a ton of lands.  I have a giant box of lands!  I started finding the Fat Pack boxes here and there.  Sometimes the Tangled Web sells them for $5.  Sometimes people don’t want them and donate them to whoever wants one.  And this is how I have come to get half of the Fat Pack storage boxes that I have.

But recently, my land collection has been dwindling.  The SpartanKid has been making lots of decks.  And that’s great.  So I needed the box.  I needed the land.  I like Liliana alot.  So I went ahead and shelled out the money.

Notably, this is the final Fat Pack I will get to unbox and review.  From Kaladesh forward, the basically same product is called “Bundle Box” or similar.  (It is a better storage box, too!)

The Players Guide.  I almost forgot about this important piece.  The players guide fills the player in on the story, and has a catalog of all of the cards availiable in the set.  Here are some pictures.  Actually, when I removed the cellophane, the package fell apart, and this fell out into the floor, giving me a sudden reminder.

This time the guide takes a moment to explain the “meld” cards.  Basically you get to pair two cards with meld instructions together to make an oversized card.  The most notable is the combination of Bruna and Gisela, sister angels who become Eldrazi-ed up and combined into Brisela.

The sleeve for the box unfolds to make this poster.  Which is really nice.  Especially since it depicts the SpartanNerd Liliana.

The storage box looks like this…

These boxes are pretty good.  Sometimes if they get overstuffed, cards on the ends can be damaged.  I use these Fat Pack boxes to store my common and uncommon cards.  I keep all my rares sleeved in binders.  (Incidently, I organize my cards by CMC, grouped by name, alphabetically.  Is that excessive?)

Here is the package contents.  The only thing I am not showing you is the cardboard spacers that helped the package maintain its girth.  You can see the deck boxes.  The Spindown Counter.  The stack of lands.  And the nine booster packs.

These deck boxes are good for a sixty card deck without sleeves.  Good art.  But I have said repeatedly that the Wizards could do better.  And they have proven it by giving us better boxes in some other products.  (Duel Deck Anthology, Chandra and Nissa Planeswalker packs, Commander decks, and Planeschase decks.)

At least it has Liliana on one!  (The other is Emrakul)

The only way this spindown counter could be better is…I guess this is as good as they get, besides my lucky one with a skull on it from “Graveborn.”

Here are the lands I assured you I would get.  And YIPPEE.  Checklist cards.  I needed more of those too.  (not)

Now for the MAIN EVENT.  Nine (9) booster packs.  I wonder what they will contain?  Here is alot of hopefulness.  Liliana is the most expensive card in this set..about $40 for a regular printing.  Emrakul is second place, at around $15.  Thalia is worth about $5.00, but is expected to go up.  Tamiyo is worth about $10. Gisela is worth $10. Not much else of value in this set.  So what did I get?

NONE OF THE ABOVE.

About $7.20 (TCG Median) worth of value.  The most valuable card I pulled was Summary Dismissal, which exiles the cards on the stack.  It will never be a Remand, at four-drop.  The two foils I got were not worth more than fifty cents combined.

In short.  This box was a stinker.  Adding everything up gets you about $17.20.  The Fat Pack costed $4o, so….

Now it could have gone the other way, of course.  I could have had a TON of Lilianas.  Fat Packs are supposedly even more randomized than Booster Boxes.

But it didn’t.  I gambled, and lost.

Is the product worth it?  Now I have an Eldritch Moon box that matches the size of all my others.  It is making me want to seek out and find a Shadows Over Innistrad Fat Pack Box.  SO there’s that.  It has great arwork depicting Liliana.  We haven’t had that since…I guess we had it in Origins, and in the first Innistrad block.  But this is the one I now own.

The guide…all of that information is available on the internet.  The lands and checklist.  Meh.  My boosters were lame.  So…

This Eldritch Moon Fat Pack gets a D+.  It could be a higher score if I pulled better cards.  (you CAN pull up to three rares and mythics from a pack if Eldritch Moon and Shadows Over Innistrad packs….the regular rare.  A foil.  And a double-sided.  But none of this happened for me this time!)

The SpartanNerd is going to rate his Eldritch Moon Fat Pack at 2/5.  The box is the best part.

 

Do you agree or disagree?  Let me know in the comments!