Card distribution in future products

[mitkosim]

Hey,

I've had this on my mind for a while now so I thought I'd put it on here so people can comment and maybe even to get some official feedback from the designers. Basically my concern is the following: I understand why designers make starters the way they do in terms of card distribution - this is a gateway product that is meant to be self-sufficient and offer a reasonably full game experience at a good price. Once the line moves into expansions, however, dedicated fans would want a good way to obtain a full set of the possible cards as they are released. So my question and hope is that expansions would come out with at least the auxiliary option of getting a full set of cards in some way other than buying said expansion x3 for example. I'm not saying that every product should offer this but rather that for every expansion that comes out it would be really great if we could have a Spell Tome of sorts that includes the missing spells for a complete set. I am saying "of sorts" because the CST is far from that mark. I was genuinely surprised when I saw that it included 1's of most cards and 2's of several. I opted for two complete core sets but I don't see myself doing that for every expansion.

I hope this sparks some discussion and maybe the people who can actually make these decisions can weigh in as well! I am still waiting on my two core sets to arrive and I can't wait to play. I am incredibly excited about this game, which is why I am raising my concern now - I really want to keep liking it ever more and supporting the team behind it with my continued business!

[patrickconnor]

Thank you so much for your interest and comments.

Currently, we are working on our first two-mage expansion, the Forcemaster and the Warlord. This expansion will include more copies of some of the cards in the Core Set, as well as, new spells tailored to these two mages.

As we add more Mages to the mix, we plan to be offering booster packs of spells, non-random of course, according to the different schools of magic, i.e. Arcane, Dark, Fire, Holy, etc. These booster packs will provide players with multiple copies of spells from each corresponding school of Magic. When you have a Beastmaster, Druid, and Huntress, you may want to pick up that booster pack of Nature spells!

[bowlkart]

I am kinda sad there's only one fireshaper ring and one lightning ring. If one gets destroyed you don't got a second to equip.

[Klaxas]

part of the problem there is that there are some cards that you want more of that arnt likely to be in these booster packs.

for example.  temple of light (i think thats right, the temple that shoots the beam out) for the holy mage only.  its unique so they most likely wont be in the seperate packs, but i would probibly run 4 if i was building a deck around them (simply because my opponent WILL want to destroy it.

[mitkosim]

Thanks for chiming in! Klaxas hits on my main point exactly! I understand that there are probably utility spells that a lot of decks would use but there are some unique spells, or expensive spells, or whatever that are currently left out of the additional expansions. I would be perfectly fine with this if say the Nature booster contains all the nature cards to date in quantities that when combined with the main expansions and core set go up to 4 of's (6 of's for lvl 1 spells). I would just like to be able to decide for myself which spells to include a full set of and not be ruled by the distribution of the expansions.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to participate in this thread (special thanks to Mr. Connor for the swift official response!)

[Arcanus]

Great thoughts - thanks for letting us know how you feel!  It is our desire to provide players with all the copies they need.

We have had to make some tough choices, because if we provide plenty of each card, then the variety of cards goes down. For example, in the base set, we provided everyone with a pretty good mix of cards, and out of 322 spells, 174 are unique.  If we instead included lots of copies of everything, players would have ended up with half as many different spells, or even a third.

We created the Core Spell Tome to immediately help players to get a few more of the most important spells.  In the future, these "Spell Tomes" will have some NEW spells in them, but also provide additional copies of past spells.

We want your opinion please!  Would you prefer these Spell Tomes to be keyed to specific Mages and schools of Magic?  In this manner, if you like playing the Priestess, you could get extra copies of all of her Holy Spells, plus a few new ones.  

Or would you prefer them to be keyed to a THEME.  For example the Creature Rush Pack has extra copies of all of the creatures for all of the Mages?

Also, these Spell Tomes should not be confused with a Mage Expansion Set. For example, our first Mage expansion set, The Forcemaster vs. the Warlord, will come with 220 spells, the majority of them new, and all related to the new Mages.  The only older duplicate spells in these sets will be a few Dispels, Minor Heals, etc. which each of them will need to help round out their spellbook.

[Shad0w]

We posted almost the exact same thing at the same time. My response to another thread.

[theduke850]

for my two cents, I would prefer the spell tomes to be keyed to specific Mages and schools of magic.  but, then again, I wouldn't mind the occasional theme pack.  

another thought is to put out packs of two fully fleshed out and evenly balanced spellbooks for people new to deck building or who don't necessarily like deck building but are interested in this game. this might be too close to what MtG does with it's pre-constructed decks, but I think it is a good strategy for getting new players to try the game.

[Klaxas]

i think my preference for spell tomes would be mage and school.  simply because you dont just do creature rush, you do a wizard creature rush.  or a warlock creature rush, etc.  if im doing a new warlock book i want to pick up a warlock pack and a fire pack and reasonably expect to have everything i need.  maybe add an equipment pack?  the occational theme pack would be fine as well, creatures, equipment, attack spells.  but i would concentrate on the mage/school ones first.

[Shad0w]

I think once each of the schools has a mage out, school tomes would be better. As of now we have not even seen the base schools yet.

[mitkosim]

I agree that school packs are probably a better idea than theme ones (aside from equipment, which is its own thing ). And again, I fully understand why the base set and probably mage expansions are going to include a balanced mix of spells as opposed to complete sets and agree with it. Just, please, have some products that hardcore deckbuilding fans can obtain to accommodate their cravings

[stadi]

I'm also for school packs. After all schools had their full packs some theme-packs are welcome, but only after the school packs.

The pre-built deck are also a good idea!

[Tacullu64]

All of the ideas put forth sound viable and interesting. I think there are a lot of ways to package the cards that I would personally be willing to purchase.

It seems to me that the easiest way to allow completist (of which I'm one) to fill out their collections would be to also sell singles in your online store.

[Klaxas]

or rather single card if its epic, or 4 or 6 depending on level.  these of course would be an expencive way to get cards, but if you just needed one or two cards it might be worth it rather than get the sets.

[Tacullu64]

That is what I was thinking. It should be more expensive per card than buying sets since it is not meant to replace buying sets but supplement buying them and make it easy to get complete playsets of cards.