Trading Card Guide

= Part 1: Overview & Set-Up =

Overview
Hello and welcome to Celeb Battle League! The first thing to know about us is that we're not just your typical "which celeb is hotter" kind of Subreddit; we have a thriving community (primarily active on Discord) built up around the collecting, trading, and battling of celeb trading cards.

You acquire cards either through spending tokens at the CBL Portal, or trading with other users. Tokens are the main Currency here at CBL, and are used to purchase different Card Packs. You earn tokens by answering the daily trivia, as well as through a variety of other methods listed later on.

Account Set-Up
The primary interface we use for card collection is Google Sheets. This platform allows us to sort and record everyone's cards, and provides the interconnectivity we need to keep everyone updated.



Your User Hub has many useful tabs and functions to help manage your CBL account. You can view and sort the cards in your album, see what you received in your pack orders, and check if your trivia answers are correct. You can also list cards for trade, as well as cards you're looking for, which connect you to our Trade and Wishlist Databases.

For more detailed information on each of the tabs in the newest User Hub (v7), check out this guide.

To set up your CBL account, please take the following steps:

 * Fill out this Google Form, and wait to hear back from a mod via Reddit or Discord DM (this may take up to a few days, depending on availability).
 * Please check out this post for more instructions on how to set up your User Hub v7. Be advised that once you've been added to our system, and entered your Username and PIN into the top left on the first page (the Details tab), you should click the Reload button on the CardList tab for your Hub to display the correct information for your account. Note that we can also set up the User Hub for you, if you don't feel like figuring it out yourself - just ask for that in the form!
 * After confirmation from a Mod that your account is set up, log into the CBL Portal and claim your Starter Pack.
 * Please be advised that user support is only guaranteed on Discord. While you will receive a welcome message on Reddit from a mod if you have not yet joined the Discord, any future support in the form of Reddit messages may not receive a response. This is for the mutual benefit of users and mods, as many questions from new users can be answered in our help-and-support channel without relying on mods to be active on reddit 24/7. We also have a Frequently Asked Questions page on here, which might help you along.
 * Given the effort and bandwidth it takes to set up each new account, please only sign up for CBL if you are at least moderately convinced you will become a regular user. CBL users are also required to be over the age of 18.

Disclaimer: Please know that your Gmail address and account name will be viewable by at least our entire Mod/Volunteer team, so it may be advisable, if you wish to retain some anonymity, to use an alternative account.

Starter Pack
Upon starting out at CBL, you'll have the chance to pick between three Starter Packs, each yielding a total of 15 cards and 300 tokens. You can only claim ONE Starter Pack, and make sure to click through to the end to claim the full pack.

You'll have the choice of the following Starter Packs:
 * Elegant Emma gives you cards of some of the most beautiful celebs (face-wise).
 * Ample Alex gives you cards of some of the curviest celebs.
 * Catwalk Candice gives you cards of some of the leggiest celebs.

The Starter Pack is handed out manually, so please allow up to 24 hours for processing.

Tokens and Gold Coins
Tokens and Gold Coins (GC) are Currency mainly used for buying Packs (more on those later). But you can also sometimes use them in the Auctions or in Trading.

What are Gold Coins?
In short, they increase the odds of getting cards of higher value and increased rarity in a pack order. These are best used on Special Packs or Lottery Packs. It is highly inadvisable to use gold coins on Basic Packs, as the chance of getting higher value cards has a much lower ceiling in Basic Packs.

How to earn Tokens and Gold Coins
There are many ways to obtain Tokens and Gold Coins, these are just some examples:
 * Most days there is a trivia challenge that will reward you for sending in the correct answer. This is the primary source of token and gold coin income for most users.
 * You can use your existing tokens to bet on League matches during the regular season.
 * There are frequently user-hosted games, competitions, and raffles held on the sub's Discord that offer token and/or card prizes.
 * You can spin the Slots once per day, which gives you a chance of winning tokens, cards, gold coins, EXP, and more.
 * Some users will pay currencies in exchange for certain cards.
 * Keep an eye out for other opportunities posted to the Subreddit or the Discord.

= Part 2: Card Descriptions & Details =

Card Ratings
On each card, you'll see ratings in the following categories: Face, Chest, Legs, Rear, Ability, and Desire.

I would think the first four are pretty self-explanatory. Ability is meant to reflect the celeb's relative proficiency in their respective field(s). Desire is meant to reflect the celeb's overall attractiveness/popularity, as well as help factor in some of a celeb's other desirable characteristics such as their stomach, shoulders, voice, or anything else that isn't explicitly covered in another category.

These ratings are inevitably subjective, so I'm sure you'll disagree with some (or many!) of the ratings given. You're welcome to advocate for changes to a celeb's stats, but they are ultimately in the hands of our team of card creators. Card creators currently use a peer-review system for Base ratings and have guidelines for card ratings progressing through the other card types. Card ratings beyond the Base level typically take into heavier consideration the visible aspects of the celeb in the card image, as well as the type itself (i.e. card types that are more special/rare by design will typically have higher ratings).

You can see a card's total stats rating (sum of the Face, Chest, Legs, Rear, Ability, & Desire ratings) displayed on the bottom left of a card (usually). You can see a card's code, used for sorting, categorization, and easy identification, displayed on the bottom right of a card (usually). For a more detailed breakdown, go the More Card Details section below.

Card Types
We have quite a variety of different card types to show off different aspects/pics of our favorite celebs.

Below is a list of some of the current card types. Card types listed below Signature fall under the umbrella category of Special Cards. A fully updated list of the current Card Types can be found on the Card Types page.

Core/Regular Cards: Base (B), In-Form (IF), Super In-Form (SIF), Extra In-Form (XIF), Signature Cards (S) (these are automatically in your album if you have the Base-XIF cards for the celeb), and Career Cards (C).

Seasonal Cards: Summer (SUM), Chinese New Year (CNY), Christmas (XMAS), Halloween (HWN), Juneteenth (JUN), Pride (P), Valentine's (VAL), and Spring (SPR).

Nations Cards (NAT): Albania (ALB), Australia (AUS), Brazil (BRA), Cuba (CUB), Denmark (DK), Mexico (MEX), Netherlands (NLD), Puerto Rico (PR), Turkey (TUR), United Kingdom (UK), and United States (USA)

Misc. Themed Cards: Denim (D/DEN), Glasses (G), Fantasy (F/FNT), In The Nude (ITN), Mirror Selfie (MS), Leather/Latex (L), Monochromatic (M), Neon (N), Retro (R), Saturday Night Live (SNL), Suits (SU), Visage (V), and Workout (WO).

Event Cards: Celeb of the Month (CotM), Celeb of the Year (CotY), Celebrity Excellence (CX), Cup (LL, CdD, or ITC), Premier League (PL), Special Awards (SA), and Custom Cards (CC).

Custom cards are special cards obtained from event prizes, and are one-user-only cards made with the wants of the user in mind.

More info (and more updated info as well) on cards can be found on the Card Types page, in this slideshow (a bit outdated now), or ask any mod/volunteer, or message the Discord if you're seeking any further clarification.

Who gets Cards?
The CBL Trading Card Database is, for the most part, limited to female celebrities - there can be and have been some exceptions. So far, there are more than 400 Celebs in our database, with many more planned. Check out the full list here.

Most database Celebs to date have been added largely at the discretion of the Card Creators or community outreach. You might see some names there that you would not personally consider to be desirable or even Celebs. There are also some fictional characters added for a bit of fun. Keep in mind there are various ways to offload Cards of Celebs that you aren't personally interested in (see Part 3 for more info on this), and at the end of the day it isn't a catastrophe to have a few such cards (you may even end up coming around on a few).

Going forward, we have taken the approach of actively seeking more input on the additions to the CBL database. You will see various competitions hosted on the sub, where the winners of Celeb Battles or the top-ranked celebs may get added.

Every celeb added to the Database gets at least Base-XIF cards, along with a [[Signature Cards|Signature Card]. Any other Special Cards are added at the discretion of the card creators.

Packs
There are currently four types of standard card Packs you can buy in the CBL Portal:


 * Basic Packs (100 tokens, 0-5 GC)
 * Lottery Packs (200 tokens, 0-5 GC)
 * Special Packs (300 tokens, 0-5 GC)
 * Retro Packs (300 tokens, 0-5 GC)

We also often have special seasonal packs, like CX packs in off-seasons, Summer packs during Summer, Valentine's packs during February, etc.

You can read about Pack types and their contents in much more detail on the Packs page.

Boosters
Boosters can be used when buying packs and give you the opportunity to guarantee that the first celeb in your pack belongs to a specific category. They are available to win in Lottery Packs, Lotteries, Raffles, some Events, or via trade. You can read more about how Boosters work on the Boosters page.

= Part 3: Trades, Trivia, Tech Support, and more!=

Trades
What would CBL Trading Cards be without a system to trade them?

Users may arrange card trades or sales, and then post their desired trades to the Trade Confirmation Thread. Our diligent trade team will process those as soon as they are able, and respond in the thread to confirm the trade/sale is completed.

It is highly encouraged for newer users to wait a week or two after getting their CBL account set up in order to first develop an appreciation for the relative values of different cards before making an ill-advised trade. (It's likely our trade team will step in if they think a new user is being taken advantage of.)

In the Trade tab of your User Hub, you may enter the cards that you own that you are looking/willing to trade away. That info will be sent to the Trade Database, where you can see all the cards put up for trade by everyone in the community.

Similarly, you also have a Wishlist in your User Hub, where you can write which Cards you are looking for. This will then show up in the Wishlist Database, where other users can see what you wish for.

Combinations
In the CBL Portal, there are several ways to combine cards into other cards. For example, you can combine 3 Base cards of a celeb into the celeb's IF card. You can also combine several special cards into another special card. You can read more about this in detail on the Combines page.



The Exchange
Every week, there are several random celebs chosen as that week's Exchange Celebs. If you have a Base-XIF card of one of those celebs, you may exchange them for a certain amount of Exchange Points. You may also exchange Base-XIF Cartoon and Retried celeb cards at any time.

You may then spend Exchange Points in the CBL Portal to buy prizes.

Trivia
Doing the daily trivia is the most reliable way to earn tokens and gold coins. These trivias are designed and hosted by anyone in the community (sign-up sheet is here). Trivia answers are usually accepted for around 24-72 hours after they're initially posted.

Some hosts dock your payout if you spam answers instead of working through and finding the correct answer first. If, on the other hand, you find a trivia particularly challenging, you can either wait or ask the host for an additional hint, sometimes also for a reduced reward.

You may submit your answers through the CBL Portal, and then check on your User Hub to see if your answer is correct. A common mistake is to forget to change the day in the box in row 12 -- the sheet will only display your answer/confirmation for the day set in that box.

You can check if your Trivia answer was correct and when it gets paid out on the Trivia tab of your User Hub.

Tech Support
Sometimes, you'll see error messages on you User Hub, either when trying to reload something using the Reload buttons, or if something doesn't load in right and shows #REF! or #N/A! errors in cells.

This is often just due to the sheer amount of data that the sheet is trying to pull and sort. Most of the time, if you refresh a few times and wait ten minutes, it'll start working again. If you get the message after buying a pack and you urgently want to know which cards you got in your pack, you may ask a mod/volunteer who can tell you.

For any other questions/concerns, please message a mod/volunteer, or for a quicker answer - come ask in the #help-and-support channel on Discord.

Discord
Join our Discord server. You can read more about what goes on in there on the Discord page.

Please do not join our Discord server if you plan on doing any of the following: So far we have had barely any of these things come up, and we would like to keep it that way.
 * Spamming channels or users with ads/weird messages/any other nonsense.
 * Using the server as an adult chatroom or forum for roleplay (no shaming intended, just not what our server is for).
 * Picking fights or disrespecting other users.

=Wrap-Up= I'm sure there are many things I've left out of this guide -- such is the behemoth of this sub we've created. I will try to keep the info as thorough and up-to-date as I can manage.

There may be a bit of a learning curve as you become accustomed to all the ins and outs of CBL, but stick with it and I promise you won't regret joining our fantastic community!