A Dream: All the Cards easily acquired

[krj]

it would be nice that there would be possibility to buy set of cards of owns choice for fixed price. for example 30 cards would cost $10. everybody can decide which cards he wants.  Spell Tomes could still exist because there you get more cards for less amount of money (but you get set prepared by Arcane Wonders).

[fas723]

An idea I had some time ago, which I posted and never got much notice, was I think a compromise between the casual gamers and the hardcore gamers in terms of the distribution of cards in future expansions.

it goes like this:

include 3 copies of all level 1 spells
2 copies of all higher level spells
1 copy of all epic spells

this would, I think, satisfy the casual gamer. and for the hard core gamer, yes, you would have to spend more to get the "full" set of cards, but you will only have to buy one extra copy of any given expansion (as opposed to 2 or 3 plus 2 or 3 of the tomes)

I must say this would be an awesome improvement Arcane Wonders should really consider!

[Tacullu64]

theduke850's idea is perfect for me. I can't help but think it wouldn't work for everybody. I think if Arcane Wonders adopted that model for expansions and started selling singles in their online store almost everyone would be satisfied. I would guess some people will want extra copies but only of very specific cards. For example one might only want to play the priestess and therefore only want the extra copies of the cards for their various priestess builds. I doubt they would want to buy 2 forcemaster vs warlord sets for a handful of holy cards.

[Texan85]

I agree, each big set needs to have 2 of every card and then 4 of every card that is likely to appear more than once in a spell book. Then the core spell stuff, can fill in the rest

[Texan85]

One moooore thing,

This issue coupled with new content. If the new stuff is far superior to the old stuff, this problem will be exacerbated and just double down on the hardcore players and possibly the more casual player.

I love this game, just these few things can make or break it content be damned, and if we don't want it to die the devs have to be smart about not making us "feel like" even though there is no gun to our heads we have to keep buying. I'm at $100 myself with the core and CST 1 and 2 plus shipping. So please for $100 we should have 4 of every card and 6 of the lvl one cards. I'm cool with that line to not cross. Technically you would need double that for 2 ppl to do everything.

IMO the box plus 2 CSTs = enough for more than one person to play casually and
Core + 2x CSTs = enough for 1 person to hardcore or tournament play

[StormbringerGT]

"Arcane Wonders releases a new version of their rule book"

"The only change?"

"Players are limited to 4 level 1 spells and up to 2 of very other spells. Epic spells are still limited to one."

That would solve the problem though right?

[Texan85]

Law of unintended consequences. Just put more cards in the box and charge $5 more.

[residualshade]

An idea I had some time ago, which I posted and never got much notice, was I think a compromise between the casual gamers and the hardcore gamers in terms of the distribution of cards in future expansions.

it goes like this:

include 3 copies of all level 1 spells
2 copies of all higher level spells
1 copy of all epic spells

this would, I think, satisfy the casual gamer. and for the hard core gamer, yes, you would have to spend more to get the "full" set of cards, but you will only have to buy one extra copy of any given expansion (as opposed to 2 or 3 plus 2 or 3 of the tomes)

ya i thought the same too when i was thinking about this problem. i think this would be a very elegant and satisfactory solution.

[Go4Games]

Here's my suggestion, coming from someone who was told by Arcane Wonders staff at Gencon that all new expansions would include full playsets. Why not come out with a third core spell book expansion that brings the base game into full playset if you buy the base game plus all 3 core spell book expansions. Then any new big box expansions come with a full set or offer a secondary expansion to bring it to a full set.

[Locusshifter]

Hello fellow Mage Wars players, first things first I'm happy that I've bought this awesome game, the only problem so far I've had is the dice, but you can always think about average rolls so it lessens the luck. But to the main topic - I'm your basic enthustiastic gamer, I get hyped about new games, I wanna test them out etc etc. but there's one problem still in the ''card gaming business'' even though the classical collectible card game format is dropped. I'm talking about not getting all the cards for reasonable price. I've had this same problem with Fantasy Flight Games Warhammer Invasion and Android Netrunner.

So what I'm asking is, please, be the first company to make it easy to get all the cards and for reasonable price. The problem is for hardcore gamer like me that you can include six level one spells and four of higher level spells. I would need to buy probably four (or more even?) boxes of Mage Wars.

I do realize that selling cards cheaper / in more affordable collection box seems quite risky. But there are probably many players who don't get into card games like this because ''oh I can get in with just 50$ BUT if I want to be competitive I have to spend 300$''.

So make a man's dream come true and make a box compatitible with the core box which would give max ammount of all cards - even better would be the ammount for two players  

Hello, Nekra. Welcome to the forum.

Am I correct in reasoning that you are requesting packs of cards, sans board, dice, tokens, etc? That would probably be do-able from a financial standpoint, but it is an unlikely scenario from the perspective of hosting a sound business model.

The better alternative is that Arcane Wonders follows the reasonable and sound business model of redistribution through expansion, which is a concept enveloping the release of new cards for the base game in tandem with reprints of older, popular cards from the base game. This serves multiple purposes in that it increases the card pool (expands the broader game and enriches the game through added stock) and lowers the barrier for "suitcase" players and collectors, allowing them to (albeit on a schedule restricted by release) gradually fulfill complete "playsets" of every card in the game.

This formula is in use by a few companies, already, and is tried-and-true.

Under the current distribution, it is perfectly possible to be a "competitive" (whatever that means...there is no organized play system yet in place) Mage Wars player with only the base game and 1 or 2 copies of the current expansion.

Good Gaming.

-nihil

Someone was discussing the idea of proxy  use over on BGG. I'm against it for multiple reasons, not the least of which is, as nihil clarifies, it's not a requirement to have a full set to play well. There are many games that playing with full sets is a bad idea; A Game of Thrones for example.

[pixelgeek]

Actually he is not. I had raised this exact same question in a thread long, long ago. When you are doing a card game with multiples of cards allowed, there will be a certain subset of your customers (let's call them hardcore gamers for ease) who would want to have all the options.

I understand that. There are several issues at play here

1) For every gamer that wants to complete the entire set of spells there are numerous games who don't.
2) One person's idea of complete is not necessarily some other person's idea of complete.
3) A product needs to hit the store at a price point that it will sell at. Adding 100s of cards to the base set would make it too expensive
4) Adding new products increases the number of SKUs that owners need to stock, sell and be aware of. Retailers have a lot of SKUs already and are notoriously shy about adding new ones unless it is critically important

As a producer I don't know that Arcane Wonders can afford to dedicate their product development to a narrow segment of their play base when that player base wants, effectively, a specialized and more expensive version of the game.

The aim of a producer is to get a product in as many hands and as many stores as possible. When you are a new company with a new game you need to make the decision to buy and the decision to stock as simple as possible. A more expensive game with more cards would not sell as well.

Adding more products for a new game would also not be a great draw for retailers who don't want to have to stock multiple SKUs for a product that they may have just recently got into stores.

If AW has extra time to produce more material I would rather see them come out with more promo material and more OP kits and stuff to help promote the game in stores rather than trying to come out with completist products that aren't going to be as beneficial to the expansion of the game.

[Tacullu64]

Actually he is not. I had raised this exact same question in a thread long, long ago. When you are doing a card game with multiples of cards allowed, there will be a certain subset of your customers (let's call them hardcore gamers for ease) who would want to have all the options.

I understand that. There are several issues at play here

1) For every gamer that wants to complete the entire set of spells there are numerous games who don't.
2) One person's idea of complete is not necessarily some other person's idea of complete.
3) A product needs to hit the store at a price point that it will sell at. Adding 100s of cards to the base set would make it too expensive
4) Adding new products increases the number of SKUs that owners need to stock, sell and be aware of. Retailers have a lot of SKUs already and are notoriously shy about adding new ones unless it is critically important

As a producer I don't know that Arcane Wonders can afford to dedicate their product development to a narrow segment of their play base when that player base wants, effectively, a specialized and more expensive version of the game.

The aim of a producer is to get a product in as many hands and as many stores as possible. When you are a new company with a new game you need to make the decision to buy and the decision to stock as simple as possible. A more expensive game with more cards would not sell as well.

Adding more products for a new game would also not be a great draw for retailers who don't want to have to stock multiple SKUs for a product that they may have just recently got into stores.

If AW has extra time to produce more material I would rather see them come out with more promo material and more OP kits and stuff to help promote the game in stores rather than trying to come out with completist products that aren't going to be as beneficial to the expansion of the game.

I wholeheartedly agree which is why I keep suggesting AW offer singles in their online store.

[mitkosim]

I think this whole thread is shifting focus. Nobody is saying pack all cards in a single box. What people want is to have a relatively easy and reasonable way to get all the cards. Singles would be one way; all the cards in a box would be another; having 1/2 the permitted number of cards per box would even also kind of work - then you know you have to get 2 boxes and have everything. And once again, I keep saying this over and over, I understand why the Core Set is as it is. Point is, things should probably shift from here on out with respect to the card distribution. I own 2 Core Sets and have more than I could use of some cards and quite a few cards that I have fewer of than I wish I did - this is frustrating.

As to OP Kits and promos vs ways to get the cards you want, I don't think this is the case at all but let's not derail this thread with a lengthy discussion on that topic.

[SeanDeCoy]

Great feedback guys. We've definitely heard this concern and we're trying our best to find a good compromise. Here's the situation as I see it:

1. As we've said before, we're trying hard to mitigate the number of unique cards we want in the game vs. the number of repeats. Basically, the idea is that if we give you a "full set" of cards, that means including less different unique cards, which means taking the options away from most sets, which means releasing more sets, which means you guys having to spend more money. We wanted a longer lasting product. Very rarely in our playtest sessions did we see Mages using 4-6 of one card multiple times. Perhaps with one or two cards if your strategy depended on it, but oftentimes in games it was more prudent to have one or two copies of multiple cards on the off chance that you needed to counter your opponent.

2. A "full set" in actuality, wouldn't technically be full, it would be full for one mage. Meaning, since six copies is the maximum that you can have of level one spells, and four of everything else - if we gave you six minor heals - that wouldn't really be a full set, it would just be the maximum that one mage would be allowed to have in his spellbook. Most players, we're hearing, are building multiple mages from the core set, either for themselves or for their friends and family. Our goal with the Core Set was to give enough variety in the new game to allow players to see what Mage Wars was really capable of, and how many different options there were in the game. We were afraid that limiting the number of options and opting for a "full" set would decrease what players would be able to do, and as such, decrease their enjoyment of the game.

3. Now, the potential solution would be to sell "full set" mages. Meaning, you go buy a priestess spellbook, and it's one complete priestess set. Again, you'd still have some of the uniqueness problem, but maybe less so depending on how many cards we release. But still, you're looking at paying something like $30 for one Mage, as opposed to $60 for four. Also, this is bad for retailers, in the situation where a particular mage doesn't sell well in their area, they still have to stock it, but then it just sits there forever because their store is heavy into warlocks and necromancers, but not so much into priestesses, etc. This also raises the barrier for entry for new players, as they'll have to buy a couple sets to get a feel for the right mages,

4. We even talked about releasing smaller sets, say with 30 cards, but each set was complete. Say 10 cards at level 1, gives us 60 cards - and then the other 20 were above level one, giving us the other 80 cards. That would cost in stores around $20 (like the Core Spell Tomes), and we could release maybe one of those a month - in fact, that would even be more profitable for us on our end. But it felt too much like the collectible market that we didn't want to get into, we really wanted to release a big robust game with a lot of different options in one set. However, to release a Core Set with a full set of all the cards we wanted to offer, would've contained about 800 cards or so - and even then, that would only have been complete for one mage.

The best I can really say is that we're constantly aware of this back and forth compromise that we have to do, and moving forward we're trying our best to find a better solution. As we saw with the CST1, we tried our best to guess which cards players would find the most useful - however, we learned that there were still a lot of cards from the Core Set that players wanted access too - so we took the feedback and released the CST2. It's possible we'll move to a model where expansions don't come with spellbooks, so we may be able to release more cards - or maybe we'll release expansions with the same number of unique cards, and then release CST's with more complete sets afterwards once players have an idea of which cards they want copies of. Right now, running a singles store online for us wouldn't be the greatest support of the retailers - but as time goes on it might be something we'd be able to revisit.

But again, thanks for the feedback, we're always listening and we're always trying to improve!

[residualshade]

i really don't see an issue with mimicking Fantasy Flight Games Living Card Game distribution model. It is a really popular model with TCG fans who are sick of random packs and the insane single's market that they have.

I also haven't heard any complaints from my local game store about the distribution model.

The key is making sure what cards are in what packs readily available so people can buy the packs they need for their current spellbook project rather than feeling like they need to just grab everything out there.

for example i play Game of Thrones. my initial investment was the core set and a special expansion box for the faction i play. after that i have spent $30 a month to buy two packs of cards. FFG releases 1 pack a month so i am slowly catching up with whats out and will eventually only have to pay $15 a month to stay current. very cheap for a card game. i pay that much a month to play a MMORPG.

also this elusive "full set" is not really something that should be discussed for the very reason brought up. For TCG collection purposes people are usually gunning for what is called the "Play Set" IE the maximum number they can play in one deck/spell book. this is a good target to have in your distribution model.