Cards on the Table: A Brief Interview with UPC
What are cards? How did UPC get so darn good at them? And how can you?
Conducted by Gem
Yesterday, on Sunday, September 10th, we had the honor of (proverbially) sitting down with the wonderful UPC—short for United Peoples of Centrism—for a lovely interview on their journey through and accomplishments with NationStates Cards, and a back-and-forth on how you, too, can become a renowned card collector. Aside from being our current Government Accountability Officer, UPC is (by their own description) a longtime member of the cards community and author of terrible code. They're nearly in the top ten in the game for total deck value, and own over 2,000 legendary cards, just to name a few of their achievements!
UPC is most certainly an authoritative figure on the subject, but we won't hold you in suspense any longer. Without further ado, the EBC presents... Cards on the Table: A Brief Interview with UPC!
Gem
Hello, UPC. It's wonderful to have you on today! Could you please introduce yourself, and some of your card-related accomplishments?
UPC
Hey there! I am UPC, a longtime member of the cards community and author of terrible code. I have done a lot in cards -- I am currently 11th on the world leaderboard for deck value, I have over 2,000 legendary cards, including complete collections of Season 1 and 2 legendaries, and I also have complete Season 2 and 3 epic collections. My favorite collection (or set of collections, I suppose) is my Europeia Season 1/2/3 collections, and I have all but two Europeian cards from across all three seasons.
Gem
That’s very impressive! Can you please give us a brief explanation as to what cards are?: How do you get them? How do you see them? And why should I be interested in them?
UPC
Certainly. So far there have been three seasons of NationStates Cards, and if your nation was alive when a season was inscribed, you got a card*. The card is a sort of snapshot of your nation at the time the season came out -- it has your nation's flag, pretitle, population, and some of your badges. And, of course, there are different rarities of cards depending on how many badges your nation has. For example, I do not have a Season 1 card, my main nation in Season 2 was an uncommon, and now for Season 3 I am an epic.
Every time you answer an issue on your nation, you have a chance of earning a pack of 5 cards. Most of the time, these cards will be from the current season, but there is a very small chance to pull cards from previous seasons as well. You can see your current cards and any available packs on this page: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck.
The great thing about NS Cards is that you do not need to be interested in them! Lots of people aren't. And if you don't care at all, you can even opt out of getting card packs from issues through your nation's settings page. But there are plenty of reasons why you may be interested, and there is a ton of freedom in the minigame. Some people just like collecting their own card. Other people like collecting cards belonging to their friends and regionmates. Yet others hoard certain rarities, or just try to gather as much bank (the currency of NS Cards) as they can. There is so much variety to what you can collect, and with over 650,000 cards across all three seasons, you are almost certain to find something that you like.
* many nations did not get S3 cards; the admin team opted to skip numbered puppets in the interest of keeping the number of cards somewhat reasonable.
Gem
650,000 cards, that's nuts! If I get five cards an issue, and four issues a day, it would take me years to get anywhere close to that number... Is there any way I can collect cards faster?
UPC
Right, it would take a very long time to collect cards if you only did so with one nation. Most (but not all!) major cards players solve this by using many nations. I have just over 850 puppets, most of which I have used for farming. This is a relatively large number, even among "big farma," but there are a couple of people who have thousands of farming puppets.
Gem
Woah. How do you make so many puppets, and how do you keep track of all of them? Surely a bunch of them must Cease To Exist every month!
UPC
It wasn't that bad honestly! I am terribly uncreative, so I have about half a dozen puppet sets, and they all follow the formula "NAME NUMBER." Most of my nations were created in batches of 50 to 100, and while it was kind of time consuming, it was not that difficult, and I was able to devote most of my attention to Netflix or whatever while I did it.
Thankfully, I do not have to manage all of those puppets manually. All of my nations are covered by a login script I have running weekly on an AWS EC2 instance. This script keeps everything running smoothly with no need for me to intervene.
Gem
wow. this all sounds so cool. How exactly did you start out with card collecting, and for that matter, how can I?
UPC
When I first joined NationStates way back in early 2019, I played around a little bit with cards with my one nation, and managed to collect the cards of a bunch of notable Europeians. I didn't really get into it until the end of 2020, though, when then President Peeps put out an announcement about how Season 3 of cards was probably coming soon (lol), and that everyone should join the WA to improve the rarity of their card. Season 3 didn't end up coming out for almost two years after that, but that announcement was what really got me interested in the minigame.
If you are interested in cards, I highly recommend joining the NationStates Cards discord server (I am not sure if I can include a link here). There are tons of friendly people there who can give you advice on how to start collecting. I started farming with 10 nations, and kept creating more as I felt I needed and could handle them. And modern card farming is heavily optimized by scripts, so if you are looking to step up your game, that is definitely an avenue that you should explore. The most important thing is to have a goal that you want to achieve, though, and that's something that you will have to define for yourself. Cards is a lot more fun when you are aiming for something concrete, and completing a challenging collection is something to be very proud of. Like I said earlier, there are so many ways to get involved at different activity levels, just jump in and do whatever, you'll figure out what feels right eventually.
Gem
Season three, in 2020? Peeps sure was a joker.
But now to our final question. What's your favorite thing about NS cards?
UPC
Definitely the community. I have met so many unbelievably cool people from a variety of regions across NS through cards, and I am very grateful for that. I don't really farm regularly anymore, but I still frequent the Cards Discord server just to keep up with people. I wouldn't have finished half of my collections without these friends, and probably would have lost interest in cards a long time ago without them.
Gem
well, thank you for (proverbially) sitting down with me today, UPC
Have a great rest of your evening!
UPC
Thanks for having me! It was a pleasure.
You as well!!
Hello, UPC. It's wonderful to have you on today! Could you please introduce yourself, and some of your card-related accomplishments?
UPC
Hey there! I am UPC, a longtime member of the cards community and author of terrible code. I have done a lot in cards -- I am currently 11th on the world leaderboard for deck value, I have over 2,000 legendary cards, including complete collections of Season 1 and 2 legendaries, and I also have complete Season 2 and 3 epic collections. My favorite collection (or set of collections, I suppose) is my Europeia Season 1/2/3 collections, and I have all but two Europeian cards from across all three seasons.
Gem
That’s very impressive! Can you please give us a brief explanation as to what cards are?: How do you get them? How do you see them? And why should I be interested in them?
UPC
Certainly. So far there have been three seasons of NationStates Cards, and if your nation was alive when a season was inscribed, you got a card*. The card is a sort of snapshot of your nation at the time the season came out -- it has your nation's flag, pretitle, population, and some of your badges. And, of course, there are different rarities of cards depending on how many badges your nation has. For example, I do not have a Season 1 card, my main nation in Season 2 was an uncommon, and now for Season 3 I am an epic.
Every time you answer an issue on your nation, you have a chance of earning a pack of 5 cards. Most of the time, these cards will be from the current season, but there is a very small chance to pull cards from previous seasons as well. You can see your current cards and any available packs on this page: https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck.
The great thing about NS Cards is that you do not need to be interested in them! Lots of people aren't. And if you don't care at all, you can even opt out of getting card packs from issues through your nation's settings page. But there are plenty of reasons why you may be interested, and there is a ton of freedom in the minigame. Some people just like collecting their own card. Other people like collecting cards belonging to their friends and regionmates. Yet others hoard certain rarities, or just try to gather as much bank (the currency of NS Cards) as they can. There is so much variety to what you can collect, and with over 650,000 cards across all three seasons, you are almost certain to find something that you like.
* many nations did not get S3 cards; the admin team opted to skip numbered puppets in the interest of keeping the number of cards somewhat reasonable.
Gem
650,000 cards, that's nuts! If I get five cards an issue, and four issues a day, it would take me years to get anywhere close to that number... Is there any way I can collect cards faster?
UPC
Right, it would take a very long time to collect cards if you only did so with one nation. Most (but not all!) major cards players solve this by using many nations. I have just over 850 puppets, most of which I have used for farming. This is a relatively large number, even among "big farma," but there are a couple of people who have thousands of farming puppets.
Gem
Woah. How do you make so many puppets, and how do you keep track of all of them? Surely a bunch of them must Cease To Exist every month!
UPC
It wasn't that bad honestly! I am terribly uncreative, so I have about half a dozen puppet sets, and they all follow the formula "NAME NUMBER." Most of my nations were created in batches of 50 to 100, and while it was kind of time consuming, it was not that difficult, and I was able to devote most of my attention to Netflix or whatever while I did it.
Thankfully, I do not have to manage all of those puppets manually. All of my nations are covered by a login script I have running weekly on an AWS EC2 instance. This script keeps everything running smoothly with no need for me to intervene.
Gem
wow. this all sounds so cool. How exactly did you start out with card collecting, and for that matter, how can I?
UPC
When I first joined NationStates way back in early 2019, I played around a little bit with cards with my one nation, and managed to collect the cards of a bunch of notable Europeians. I didn't really get into it until the end of 2020, though, when then President Peeps put out an announcement about how Season 3 of cards was probably coming soon (lol), and that everyone should join the WA to improve the rarity of their card. Season 3 didn't end up coming out for almost two years after that, but that announcement was what really got me interested in the minigame.
If you are interested in cards, I highly recommend joining the NationStates Cards discord server (I am not sure if I can include a link here). There are tons of friendly people there who can give you advice on how to start collecting. I started farming with 10 nations, and kept creating more as I felt I needed and could handle them. And modern card farming is heavily optimized by scripts, so if you are looking to step up your game, that is definitely an avenue that you should explore. The most important thing is to have a goal that you want to achieve, though, and that's something that you will have to define for yourself. Cards is a lot more fun when you are aiming for something concrete, and completing a challenging collection is something to be very proud of. Like I said earlier, there are so many ways to get involved at different activity levels, just jump in and do whatever, you'll figure out what feels right eventually.
Gem
Season three, in 2020? Peeps sure was a joker.
But now to our final question. What's your favorite thing about NS cards?
UPC
Definitely the community. I have met so many unbelievably cool people from a variety of regions across NS through cards, and I am very grateful for that. I don't really farm regularly anymore, but I still frequent the Cards Discord server just to keep up with people. I wouldn't have finished half of my collections without these friends, and probably would have lost interest in cards a long time ago without them.
Gem
well, thank you for (proverbially) sitting down with me today, UPC
Have a great rest of your evening!
UPC
Thanks for having me! It was a pleasure.
You as well!!
