They pretty much shot the idea of a completionist set down since the first LCG.
Price-wise I’m okay with buying three core sets but I hate the waste of space/boxes/tokens/etc. This pisses me of the most + the needed storage space.
They should offer a “A Competition Edition” that has a complete set of cards for like 3.5x the price, or something like that, of a single Core. I’m sure plenty of people would pay extra money for all of the cards and just one box.
3.5 times the price?! I’m not a businessman but that doesn’t seem like a good price point. I mean, a saavy consumer will just buy the 3 single cores and use the extra cardboard for valuable fuel in wintertime. Money saved.
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I mean, they have to provide an incentive to have people buy the Core Set? I think people would pay for the convenience of just having it all in one box though. Maybe throw in some collector item as well?
This matter has been discussed ad nauseum on all manner of forums.
I, quite frankly, don’t fully understand the gripes people seem to have with the 1-ofs Core Set model. Core Sets don’t contain 1-ofs just to spite the player base, they contain 1-ofs to provide a rich, diverse gameplay experience right out of the box.
Most core sets to date have shipped with I believe 250ish cards? I dont think more can be included without also raising the price. Given that, If each card came in 3x that would make the number of unique cards go down significantly. Keep in mind the core set is intended to be the jumping on point to game, with that noted I vote in favor of a “better” and/or at least diverse gameplay experience out of the box. More unique cards can cover more themes and strategies than less.
As a veteran of the card game genre, I am absolutely enamored with the data pack and and deluxe method of releasing cards. Full playsets are a godsend compared to cracking packs or buying singles.
Now I can see the expectation of that extending to the core set, but as stated before the core can almost be considered it’s own customizable board game, and should probably stay as is. The idea of a “completion pack” seems like a good one at first glance, but when one begins to think of the logistics it seems so similar to just another core set, that it begins to lose it’s appeal.
Buying the same product multiple times might seem silly or a money grab, but I stick by the fact that the LCG model is is still brilliant and worth it, and that most likely better sales numbers for their products allows for more resources to be devoted to said product, making it even better for us!
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Honestly, it looks likely that AGOt 2nd Ed will be a box of singletons anyway, so you really aren’t getting any wastage buying 3 cores. And if you do, it’ll be in the common cards, like resources that, you’d like multile playsets of anyway.
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1of’s lead to a pretty boring core set experience to be honest. Part of the reason netrunner is doing so well is it has hands down the best core set experience of the available LCGs, and a good reason for that is how few 1ofs are included. Being able to functionally deckbuild and make choices is fun and should be a major focus point of all card games, but if you only have one of each card it just feels like you barely have enough to make a deck and someone wants you to buy more stuff. Most casual players will only pick up one core set, because that is all that is advertised to play the game, so being able to access a key component of the game from that is a very big deal.
The only group it isn’t bad for is competitive players who are willing to sink money anyway, but it’s still annoying, but it’s not fun for casual players, due to how boring it often is with one set, and it’s not fun for competitive players with budget constraints or who are focusing on other games, as you have to go through the hassle of buying everything and sorting it all into a reasonable collection.
My boardgame group picked up core sets of both the star wars lcg and conquest, and will not play them because of how crappy the 1of model is (“the only 2of is limit 1 per deck, I’m actually insulted”), while netrunner (core set only) is still popular among them. So no, it doesn’t really lead to a more rich, diverse gameplay experience right out of the box, it puts a major feature of card games behind an 80 dollar paywall, which scares several players off the game and unfortunately away from the lcg model.
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Fair points. I meant to focus on “incomplete playsets” as opposed to just 1-ofs. A good mix of one’s two’s and three’s.
My point still stands that more unique cards out of the gate is better than having less. And while yes, ideally the core set would contain complete play sets of cards, i’m sure there’s a oush and pull between givin as much content as possible and maintinaing a reqsonable price point. Netrunner shipped with 113 unique cards out of the box. Almost an entire Data Pack Cycle!
As for budget concerns, yes they are real, but even $80 ( which you can have significant fun with $40 before going for another) I believe is a reasonable price point compared to the amount of entertainment derived.
This is why I liked Conquest’s core set design. I did the math about six months ago and IIRC you gain about 150 useful cards from the second Conquest core set and ~100 from the third. This is so much better than the 67 useful cards you get from the second Netrunner core set and 11 from the third.
It leads to a less interesting one core set experience, but a more interesting three core sets experience. I don’t think FFG is really even targeting people who only buy one core set anymore, and the first core set is only intended as an introduction to the game.
Yeah, the Four the Watch blog on BGG currently shows 211 total cards (with about 14 cards for house cards and titles for multiplayer). I think it’s going to be similar to Conquest in having lots of singles, maybe a few doubles per faction, and most neutral cards doubled up.
Its funny you say that. I got into Conquest after playing a few trial games with a friend who only had 1 core set. He ended up selling it because the game seemed poorly balanced and he didn’t understand the point of signature squads forcing you to have some 1-of cards.
But if you compare a Conquest single core deck against a Netrunner single core deck, the Netrunner decks play a lot more consistently because they have enough of each card to make a good enough deck. The starter decks in Conquest felt like a total crapshoot, and I only started to enjoy the game a lot with my 3rd core set.
Releasing a core set optimized for people who buys 3 sets, instead of optimizing it as a stand alone game, seems like a huge business blunder. If somebody buys 3 cores they’ve already committed to the game, while somebody who buys one core and thinks (erroneously) that the games sucks based on that is potentially a big chunk of lost sales.
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That’s not what they’re doing, they’ve mentioned before that most of the market is casual players, most of which don’t buy more than 1 core set. The core sets are designed to provide a breadth of experience rather than depth for a specific faction subset (see deluxe expansions for this).
Can we get back to talking about aGoT2 rather than rehashing this tired debate?
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Gladly.
For anyone interested in GoT 2.0 at Gen Con (edit: not worlds, my mistake), the announcement for prize support is up.
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/7/7/2015-agot-2nd-edition-kingslayer-tournament/
That’s for the Gencon tourney.
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Yes, just noticed that. Oops!
That’s a really interesting playmat style; I think I prefer full bleed art with minimal text/symbols though.
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As a big Conquest fan, I definitely agree. Netrunner is pretty different from the other LCGs (probably thanks to its very different development history), and while Conquest and Thrones are certainly more different than Conquest and Star Wars, I suspect there’s going to be a lot more crossover there.
That said, Conquest will be getting the Great Devourer deluxe at a similar time, and there’s a lot of anticipation for that. This box will also make Conquest the easiest LCG to buy into by far, since (assuming Tyranids are any good at all), people will be able to buy 1x core (or just get components/planets/neutrals from friends with multiple cores) and 1x Great Devourer box and be good to go competitively.
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Nestled at the beginning of the new House Martell preview are the rules and reference guide for Thrones 2.0: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/7/13/unbowed-unbent-unbroken-1/
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Interesting, after having the majority of the rules from 1.0 described to me, I don’t think I learned anything new from the “learn to play” pdf except for how the deckbuilding works. Definitely sounds like a fun game.
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This card looks like it might be the Psychographics of AGoT. Yellow, too.
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