[Inside Government] Uncovering the Cabal: Investigating Card Trading






Uncovering the Cabal:
Investigating Card Trading

Written by Istillian




(Europeia - July 25, 2021) - Under the guise of the innocent and hardworking nation scattered across NationStates, there is an undercurrent of corruption going on wherever we look. This corruption consists of bribery, mob mentality style trade deals, and worst of all, the ever present 'bank' looming over us. The Europeian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) set out to uncover not only the dealings behind closed doors, but also the the activities right in the very face of our people.

Our reporters discovered that this 'bank' now controls our region’s leaders, has inspired many of our best citizens to spend their time slaving away at screens for hours at a time, and right now is infecting Europeia’s elite with a capitalistic approach to our dealings by use of international artwork bribery. I speak, of course, of card traders. These card traders refer to their practices as 'card farming', in honour of their approach to toiling away on the abundance of puppet nations to draw out cards from. Often hurting innocent nation populations by answering the issues that are plaguing them without a second thought. Right now these card traders have made their way to the top of many of our own allied regions like The North Pacific, The West Pacific, and recently even right here in Europeia with The Europeian Card Caucus, formed earlier this year, and which blatantly stylises itself as: “Corrupting the democratic institutions of our region through the use of cards.”

On June 30, 2020, the EBC spoke to a much beloved former citizen and minister of radio, Acapais, regarding card collecting practices. Acapais provided insight to us specifically on what Legendary cards are, how the NationStates Administrator nations often are some of the hardest to find cards, and even helped the author to start a collection of Europeian cards based on this advice. Legendary cards amass the power of World Assembly membership, resolutions, gold badges and population to determine their worth, disregarding all others for a golden elitist club. The further a collector delves into collecting practices though, it is worth mentioning that collusion of and sharing of artwork, and strategic thievery happens from a central location, in what is called: “the Market.”

We soon turned to former minister of World Assembly Affairs and current senator, Pland Adanna, and asked how card trading has damaged, or even helped, the NationStates community in-game, by being used to commend prominent individuals.

“To my knowledge, the word “card” is never used [in World Assembly resolutions]," Pland Adanna said. "Unless it’s part of the name of a cards organization/event. Authors often talk about “artwork”, “collections”, “museums,” and “galleries”. I think it is generally accepted that card collecting can be commendable, depending on what and how much a nation does. For example, it’s not commendable if a nation just collects a few legendaries but, if they amass an enormous amount of cards, work to commemorate something through cards, and/or contribute greatly to a region’s culture through cards, they may be commendable.”

Intriguingly the card collecting community seems to have been planting subtle messages of good faith into our current senator, answering more favourably our questions on the topic of commendations.

“I have to say, personally, at first, I was confused by card commendations and wasn’t really a fan but, since then, they’ve grown on me. There aren’t necessarily history textbooks or encyclopedias in NS and, even with the historical resources that there are, they will usually only mention the super important players. An argument that I’ve seen and kind of like is that these are not just art museums; they’re history museums, preserving the memory of nations, some of which no longer exist.”

I felt that our readers may be curious as to how card collections and card trading may be used in the World Assembly for condemnable actions specifically, and we enquired on this topic further with Senator Pland Adanna. “[C]ard collections are generally only used in commendations. Sometimes a commendation will be built entirely on cards and sometimes it could just be a small part of the commendation that adds onto a nation’s other commendable endeavors. Obviously, the former requires much more cards work than the latter. However, I don’t think a cards condemnation is impossible. If it was about heisting … the nation would need to do a LOT of it in order for it to be condemnable and, even if that were the case, there would be a big debate about what the threshold for a cards condemnation is. A nation will need to be extremely “evil” with cards to get cards condemnations to start but, once the first one has passed, they could get more popular. (this is, of course, assuming one of these has never passed before, which is my current understanding.)”

The EBC then turned to the self-styled “Card Czar” themselves, Giovanniland (Gio), regarding heisting or stealing cards, including current heisting practices, how to avoid it, and his own experience with it. But firstly, we were given a brief description on what this thievery, heisting, is.

“Heisting is when one player steals bank (the money in the cards minigame) from another," Gio said. "It may occur when one player transfers bank from a puppet to their main nation, since that player must "sell" the card to that puppet in order to move the bank. When another player has the card and places a lower ask (underasking) with the intent of earning that bank, we call it heisting.”

With this mechanic in mind, we queried Gio on if there were some common practices among card traders to avoid having their artwork heisted.

“The two most common are mass transfering and piggybacking. Mass transfering is when one player owns dozens of copies of a card and divides the bank to be transferred in several small sales, so that if a heist happens, the player only loses a small quantity and not the entire transfer. Piggybacking is different, it needs only two copies (although more copies help for better security) and goes as following: the player starts the 60 minute auction by selling and buying the card at a low price (we call it self-matching), and on the last minute sets a second ask that will be matched by the puppet, so that the transfer is only visible during one minute and then has less chance of being heisted. No method is 100% safe though.”

With the concept of having so much bank stolen in the last few seconds of a trade in an auction sounding quite terrifying, we asked Gio, having so much experience in the field, if he had experienced this happen during his own trades on the market.

“Yes, especially when it comes to inflating the value of cards," Gio said. "Since an inflation takes place by doing several bank transfers at a high value from a main to a puppet back and forth until the card gains value. Luckily, by having several copies of the cards I inflate, I've been able to reduce the amount that I lose in a heist.”

Finally, we tried to dig into the underground dealings of heisting, to explore if any highway robbery was a lonesome task, or if there was quite a bit of colluding behind the scenes on the market, only to be met by Gio noting that; “This is uncommon.”

We were taken aback, were our attacks on card trading collusion unfounded? Are the card farmers truly that innocent? Gio was kind enough to explain why, stating: “A heist usually only involves two people, but it does happen. If several people have copies of the same card that someone uses to transfer, they could have an advantage against the transferrer [sic] and heist more easily: I've seen it happen on the Trading Cards discord server before. This tactic is usually done to players regarded as annoying by most of the trading community, and almost never happens otherwise.”

So there you have it folks, our investigation seems to have shown that while the mechanics of card trading isn’t always easy in game, the amount of thievery, corruption and collusion from card traders is low. Only time will tell if the truly distinguished dealers will turn their coat on the game and commit some obviously criminal actions against the rest of the cabal, the card trading community, or the political elite hoarding and inflating their artwork. For now though, EBC reporters will keep their eyes peeled on the market for those sneaky traders heisting others; so may your collection grow, and your dealings be ever safe.

 
I said this in drafting but I'll say it again: this was super entertaining!

Also, while we discussed this in the Kuramia Newsroom, I wanted to clarify for readers that I was wrong about the cards condemnations. Koem Kab and Noahs Second Country have both already been condemned for card-related activities.
 
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