I have to say that I'm not really happy with this news...
The TSC UGH figures were a real pain and I was just barely able to get one of each of them - and in terms of having a set of them to open, I never found a second Grievous to open.
For the TAC UGH figures, they were much easier to find as I was able to score a complete set of gold coin figures both in package and to have a complete set of gold coins to add to my coin album.
The First Day of Issue figures were ridiculous from an "exclusivity" point of view since they were really easy to come by, but on the other hand, the ease at getting them in the first few days of the Blue/White Legacy and Clone Wars lines made acquiring them very stress free.
The important thing about all three of these situations was that the figures weren't any different, so missing out on the UGH Grievous w/Silver base wasn't that big of a deal to me.
With this "Antique Force Decoration" - I will be pretty upset if the only way I can get a modern version of the Death Squad Commander is to track down a chase figure that comes randomly inserted one-per-case in the first wave.
I hope that these paint op variants will be spread out over the entire run of the line and with each wave, there is ONE designated figure, so if you order by the case, you're guaranteed the figure, if that's how it works, then I'll be okay with that, at least then there's a chance that I'll be able to score two of each chase figure pretty easily.
I will say that the chase mentality has always seemed to me as an abuse of the collector community. There really is very little "thrill" if you have to go to three-to-four stores a day, every day, and 95% of the time, you find nothing you need.
In 1997, Playmates, after having a pretty successful run of Star Trek figures decided that they were going to only issue 1,701 of a figure. This pissed off A LOT of collectors and really pushed a lot of collectors away. In the recent years with Hasbro whining like bitches that the collector community has decreased in size, I find it odd that they would take on a tactic like this which is only bound to turn even more collectors away.