If they eventually develop a digital platform that allows everyone to play online using their digital collection, then digital ownership makes total sense.
We ve seen Keyforge fail the same idea miserably. People should learn TCGs belongs to the table, live play, local communities only after that some sparkles maybe.
@@СемёнПыхтеев-г4с Keyforge didnt even DO ANYTHING with the vault app. It felt like there was SUPPOSED to be a digital card game, but it just never materialized.
Really enjoy this style of video. It's a good way of getting more opinions from the team. I like hearing these slightly more informal discussions about new and old games as well as industry discussions. It's super interesting to me and the main reason i miss the old Dicebreaker podcast! More videos like this please and thank you!
It's good to see more TCGs that aren't just dudes hitting dudes. Only other notable one I've heard of was Netrunner, and that was originally made in the 90s.
I’m really into a TCG that isn’t thematically about beating each other up! And I’m hugely into the idea of being able to build a deck without having to hunt on the bloated, wildly speculated markets.
The lane-based non-combat 'softer world' elements of this remind me immensely of the (very underrated) My Little Pony TCG, which worked in a similar vein. All of the strange technological elements have me VERY excited and interested: The idea of having fully-unique cards akin to Keyforge decks but with the option for foiling and reprinting via POD is super novel and has a lot of potential, and given the creator's long history with extremely successful and profitable games, I don't doubt they'll be able to put their money where their mouth is.
a centralized digital marketplace is actually a really good idea (especially if they develop the game for a digital format). Allowing players to collect cards, upload them to a digital database, then sell the card without having to worry about shipping (even if the company takes a small cut) is just really cool
I didn’t know how to feel about the digital assets until you mentioned completely unique 1 of 1 cards that the ownership of the code of could actually be a sweet business. I can imagine having an online shop with unique cards you have aquired that people can pay to have prints of. It feels like if nfts actually had functionality. I also like that the rarer versions are boosted versions of easy to aquire versions, and that part of deck building involves limitations on how many you can include yo avoid a pay to win model. Bravo
Another interesting thing that I don’t think was mentioned in the video (unless I missed it) is that the foilers found in packs are a QR that you scan and can then apply the foil to a card in your collection and they will ship you a foiled card that you chose! I like the concept of choosing which of my cards are foiled rather than leaving it purely up to chance (though not every booster is guaranteed to include a foiler)
Physical cards being proxies will allow me to just order uniques from someone who owns them and just give a middle finger to tournaments. Or I can just ignore uniques in case they aren't fun and just use rares. No need to sleeve cards I can also reprint if I wanted to as well. If I do roll a unique, I can either share the proxy purchase while keeping the unique or sell the unique to someone playing in tournament and use my physical for casual play.
I'm very interested to see how this TCG develops. I think they have a very unique opportunity with the QR codes, the card printing, and the online marketplace integrated into their App. I personally like the art style of the cards, and am backing this product now after looking into it. Hoping to see more collectability aspects added, so all the cards aren't printed into oblivion, but we will see. (Obviously the printing ability is to make sure all cards are accessible, but the chase hopefully stays in tact)
I believe it will still be there. Finding perfect uniques and getting them first will be high priority. However, I will buy the copies from others owned uniques and sell my pulled one instead which will be better on my wallet and allow you to fight for the better deck.
I don't know if this is an accurate way of describing the game, but I really like the idea of the game literally evolving through survival of the fittest. Successful cards that get printed a lot have more opportunities to mutate and develop new versions. Cards that aren't successful and that don't get reprinted go extinct. That's a really fascinating idea to me....
First off, I want this game to succeed. I think they have some really cool ideas especially when it comes to physical/digital ownership of cards.... I don't know how I feel about the non-combat playstyle of this though. I personally just don't see it being a big hit, but I've definitely been wrong before. I will give it a shot, but that just doesn't seem appealing to me. Maybe I am just so used to playing MTG I can't fathom not destroying things.
I think the gameplay is fantastic. The QR code thing, I think will sink it. It's interesting, but games like this usually thrive on stores that support it and this is adding more red tape into that for stores.
definetly need more info about how everything works and how much everything will cost to make a comment about it's success. Interesting idea, hope it works.
I ran a series of demos for the new Star Wars Unlimited TCG last week, and it has a few similar mechanics (namely the draw 2, play 1 as mana thing), and it plays extremely well. I agree that it seems we're entering a new era of TCGs, which I'm excited for. Before Star Wars Unlimited, I was thinking that Lorcana would be my new fixation, but SWU is even better. As for Altered, it certainly looks interesting! I appreciate the effort they're making into merging digital and physical in a way we've never seen before. But I have a feeling that the skill and effort required to get good at the game might be a difficult barrier to cross for most people.
This game is a little more interesting than SWU, mainly because there’s more elements that’s new and fresh. (QR codes and marketplace and stuff) Both games have the cards as resources thing, and alternating actions instead of turns which already has very interesting potential in the future when it comes to design and strategy
Trying real hard not to be snarky about this. This is 18 extra steps to solve "tcgs are too expensive" which was solved by Fantasy Flight's LCG system. The core problem is not that TCGs cost too much or that chase card is hard to get -- that's actually their biggest selling point. The feeling that your cards are worth something (they're really not, and I say this as someone who own a large mtg collection) is a huge driver of demand and interest, even among low-spend casual players. Making the physical cards worthless is just jettisoning the biggest selling point of your game.
Yeah, if the cards are worthless, then the game has to be so much fun to play that you don't mind the gamble for cards that are in a fun game. If the game is unappealing, then the boosters will have little value and not sell, as the game isn't worth spending money for no resell value. Interesting game, but the gameplay and reaching the target audience will make this game sink or swim.
Will that be the case though? The way I look at it is that it allows casual players to keep their pretty and rare physical card (could foil it first if desired) while selling the digital version to someone more committed to the game who cares about things like tournament play. Or if they want to keep the digital version, at least knowing that's an option will give that dopamine hit when opening packs.
My question is, if digital ownership is all that matters for the purposes of organized play, why do I need to go through the company's printing service? Like, obviously if I'm going to use their printers to get my cards, they need to physically ship the cards to me, but let's say I just got a card I want to put into my deck and the tournament is tomorrow, so I need to wait for the card to get physically shipped to me? Why can't I just print out the cards at home and sleeve them like proxies? It's not like there will be anything to act as a card marking that way, and pretty much all TCGs require sleeves for organized play anyway. Like, I absolutely appreciate that this lowers the cost to build an effective deck, but and I can see, from the company's perspective why they'd want us to pay them to print more copies of the card, but I also feel if digital ownership is all that technically matters, I'd want to be able to not have to wait for the card to physically use it. Obviously in order to make money the company would want some kind of restriction in place, like you can only use the proxy card in so many tournaments before there's an issue, or if you provide a receipt showing you've ordered physical copies and they haven't arrived yet then you're good, but you either need a legit card or a receipt to use it. Ultimately, I think this is a very smart idea for monetizing a card game, it basically keeps their finger in the pie for all the aftermarket aspects of the game. They get money when a player buys a booster pack, they get money when a player sells a card to another player, and then they get money for every additional copy printed for that card. The only draw back is that it's likely rather expensive up-front to get the digital system functioning, to have the printers ready to keep up with whatever demand they might have, to keep their servers protected from hackers, etc. It kind of requires that they get a significant player base quickly, and then they keep that player base, almost more than any other new TCG trying to enter the market. I think with such a unique and innovative game design they have a chance to pull it off, since they offer a fundamentally different play experience compared to everything else. If they were just the latest Magic or Yugioh clone that'll be dead in three years and the distribution model was the only innovation, then they'd never be able to get off the ground properly. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this, I've been looking for a new card game to get involved in since L5R died the second time, and this seems like an interesting option!
@@Tymbaroth Acquiring new cards was never the issue, it was copies of cards I already own, buying booster packs doesn't do me a lick of good if I wanna use a playset of the unique I pulled yesterday and the other two copies are two weeks out in the mail. Did you even read my comment or were you trying to be as obnoxiously unhelpful as possible?
@@jacobbissey9311I wasn't telling you to open booster packs in hope to find your missing cards, but to buy paper singles, sold by the shop in which you will play the tournament. Also, you cannot play a playset of a unique card because you can only own one copy digitally. I don't see how my response was obnoxious as I just pointed out a possible solution to your problem?
@@Tymbaroth Ah, I see, you don't understand the whole digital ownership and print on demand distribution system. You only need to own one copy of any given card to run a whole playset, that's the entire point of the print on demand system, you can have as many copies of your card printed as you want, but only the person who owns the digital card can run it in their deck, if I needed multiple digital copies to run multiple copies of the card, there would be literally no point to this system in the first place. Edit to add: also, I don't think a physical singles market will be possible. If digital ownership is all that matters, then a store won't be able to buy singles for resale since the player will already own the digital copy, if they only buy/sell unscanned singles, then it becomes trivially easy to steal the cards by scanning as you flip through the binder, and if the store is ALSO doing their buying and selling through the digital marketplace, then bothering with the physical cards would be a silly waste, better to put anything you intend to sell up for auction or if there is no auction then at least make it available globally and not bother with the physical card at all, as the only cost to the seller that way is whatever cut the company gets of the sale, no need to have the card take up space in your store that could go to other products.
@@jacobbissey9311"You only need to own one copy of any given card to run a whole playset, that's the entire point of the print on demand system, you can have as many copies of your card printed as you want, but only the person who owns the digital card can run it in their deck" => No, your digital collection also tracks the number of copies you own. So if you want to play a playset in tournament, you need to have a playset, which is impossible for uniques. It has been stated multiple times in the Kickstarter comments and many other videos so I am very sure about this. In casual though, you can use the PoD service to play as many copies as you want. You can also use the PoD to not have to swap cards between decks. For your second point, I admit I do not know how and if a physical marketplace will happen. But if a store sells digital copies, they will be left with physical copies they don't need to ship and that they can sell you. It should be possible in theory but I don't know how feasible it would be in practice. My guess is that if certain commons are staples for tournaments, they'll keep a few paper copies around to sell to players on the moment.
I have some very important questions. Can I buy proxy versions of cards from them as well? I don't plan on playing tournaments and want to experience the full game with little issue on my wallet. The economy for me will probably come from draft box pulls being sold digitally and made back to buy more boxes or other products. Can sets be reran if people want them enough and if not, can I simulate them with randomly generated proxies? I love draft/cube so being able to buy my favorite sets as draft reruns and cubes would be fantastic.
Yes, the printed cards you can order should in theory be extremely cheap, as to play in tournaments you will still need to own each card digitally. From the sounds of it I could buy a card digitally, then order a print of a dozen copies and sell them off to others as I only need 3 myself. That should make physical cards on the secondary market very cheap one would hope. Though I expect people to try to price fix the FUCK out of it.
i missed the KS but am really excited for this. thr digital stuff is interesting, especially since it looks like theyre working on a digital play experience as well, but mostly im excited by the idea of a kid friendly TCG where i don't have to be so precious with cardboard
I kinda like it, but also I'm concerned about the cost of getting cards printed by the company and limitations/costs of trading/selling the digital ownership set by the company as well. But it does seem nice to have a card game that "appears" to be accessible for player to get into
It just shows how much MTG has dominated the TCG field over the years that he makes so many references to MTG despite there being so many other TCG's out there. And there are quite a few that deviate from the MTG formula completely.
As both a tcg collector & table top gamer, this is more appealing as a board game than a tcg (which makes sense as creators of Dixit). Looks like it could be potentially fun to play, but for me, the qr code is a turn off in terms of card asthetic & art style could be hit or miss with some people. I could see this as a potential hit for the table top gaming scene, but hard to see it gain the mass appeal in the general public for collectability.
Looks interesting, I wish it succeeds. Actually I wish more of these games succeed. I don’t share opinion of some that only 3-4 games may be successful at any given time. Thing is, virtually each of them seems to be repeating mistakes done in the past, overprinting, printing more sets a year than is sane, while only few selected games are able to repeat mistakes, once they have enough profit to allow for dark age to not bankrupt them.
You did a really great job explaining this. Unfortunately i didnt discover this game until the KS was already over but ive been interested and trying to find out as much as possible. The problem though was that it was a bit confusing especially the concept of the uniques. This really helped me understand it better. That said, im curious about what if packs hold cards that are unsold, will those be lost to limbo, like imagine wanting and looking for a certain unique card but nobody has opened that pack yet so its just never appears. Or what if someone who doesnt care for all the digital stuff just never registers or does it and so you have this unique card out there or whatever that never shows up in the marketplace because the person who owns it just isnt that commited to the bit
I honestly hope that the game takes off and does well because it is a model that is extremely pro consumer. I think the largest challenge for this game will be how much the business model impacts physical game stores. Theoretically this game is great for kitchen-table casual play and potentially for big even competitive play. However, I am having a hard time envisioning a weekly Friday Night Altered event getting support from the LGS unless the demand for Uniques is absolutely insane. If Uniques are so powerful that they will support an ecosystem that allows for LGSs to reliable sell packs and/or crack packs to offer singles through a walled garden market place, I'm worried about how viable competitive play is. If Uniques are mostly okay I worry about how willing LGSs are going to be to support a game that doesn't have product moving off the shelf or out of the display cabinet.
Yeah this sums up my initial worries. Keyforge had this whole "every deck is unique" thing as well, and competitive keyforge quickly came down to "who either got lucky or paid heaps of money to get the deck the algorithm accidentally made the most powerful". I feel like the uniques here could suffer from a similar issue, where there's either a lot of fairly useless ones and a few that randomly get very powerful combinations and will be extremely sought after (and therefore expensive), or they're all on the "okay to have but ultimately not that useful" end of the scale, in which case there's no real reason to open product.
This game reminds me of Chaotic. The QR codes are more convenient than typing an alphanumeric code. But card variants with a digital code to claim ownership. Definitely like Chaotic. Also feels like Marvel Snap. Claiming ownership of lanes while (for the most part) not directly attacking your opponent's cards. And there are lots of TCG that weren't like magic. Hundreds, if not thousands throughout the years. Only a few have lasted or are remembered.
So i guess the reprints either won't have the qr code or the code tells you you that the card is owned already? All they need is a digital version of the game to play with your owned cards as well. Looking forward to it, hope it succeeds.
formats need to be established that allow different levels of the rares and unique legality in the way pauper in MTG is. i can already see only a handful of the unique printings of cards being strictly better than all the others making a select few people and their decks strictly better in tournament play. the people who buy the singles to play might end up getting punished for not sinking tons of money into packs in order to crack a unique card let alone one that is optimal for their strategy. if im playing competitively or casually i have no intention of buying expensive rares and uniques or cracking boxes on boxes of packs just so that I can compete.
Damn it, I literally came up with this very card game last night! 😅 literally I had the same idea behind merging our own canon with fantasy and mythology. I was gonna make it more similar to Yugioh tho, but still. I don’t even wanna keep up on my idea now because it’s already being done on a professional level 😅
have they said how quick the turnaround will be on printing? Concept is cool, its like they separated the demand for casual and competitive. Those uniques are going to be HUGE money, even in paper. It's going to be pay to win so unsure if the competitive scene will grow.
I mean how is that any different than any other TCG that has meta cards be $20+ on the secondary market. And is those cases you need multiple copies of multiple expensive cards, in altered, you can only ever use 3 uniques. Plus, if someone does have a broken unique, then only one person ever is going to have it in competitive play so it’s not super likely you’ll ever run into it, I feel like their model is very anti pay to win
I love the idea of unique cards. My biggest gripe with tcgs is that as soon as you play with any form of organized group, only a few decks are viable and they’re all using the exact same cards that they pulled from a tournament list. One of my favorite aspects of TCGs are theory-crafting and deck building, and trying to make something fun and new. While the core of a lot of decks will still probably remain the same, the small changes that uniques add will make it so everyone has to make individual tweaks to bring out their cards full potential. It reminds me of the yuhioh or bakugan anime where everyone has their own special dudes that are a staple to them. Even if it’s just by a little bit, making every deck unique is incredibly exciting to me. Also since they’re eliminating the secondary market and doing it themselves prices won’t get gouged by scalpers and that’s a plus
Sidenote, why are almost all the card games fantasy-based? I would think modern / sci-fi / cyberpunk would also make for some great games, but there's only a few around and they really struggle.
Idk if i missed it int the video but would if I want them to reprint me some cards would they come out w/o a QR code? I'm worried about people getting scammed out of buying a bunch of cards but they just get the physical onces because the digital version is owned by someone else?
They will still make the same money Magic makes selling the booster packs - their model of print on demand after already selling the packs hood make more money for them. It puts them into the secondary market money - something Magic doesn’t really do.
I was reading through the kickstarter and as soon as I saw "unique" cards I was immediately turned off. While games like MTG and yugioh both have issues with the best cards of the format being way overpriced, at least they are theoretically obtainable by any player rather than one special one that can only ever be owned by one person. Although I am always interested to see new TCGs and how they develop, hopefully Im wrong and the game is great despite this.
Unique cards are massively limited, you can only have like 3 in a deck total. I think they're quite fun! Doubt they'll mean much to the average consumer outside of finding something cool to play with. Bare in mind as well that only one player can own it for tournament purposes, whoever has it can theoretically print off as many physical copies as they want
I can talk only after seeing a few spoilers but the unique cards are only the rare card version slightly improved. They aren't game changing at all in the way you are thinking from what they unofficially revealed up to now. Check it on the spoilers yourself when they will release them. In terms of gameplay the most important gap is between rare and commons, especially because all cards has an altered rare version which allow you to use the card in an other faction. But you can put a limited number of rare and unique cards in your deck, so the power level will be always balanced in this sense, because even if your opponent has 500 unique cards he can't play them in the same deck.
Unique cards have adjusted stats but are more there for having something fun to open and that feels like it’s solely yours. Each deck can only have 3 of them max so they’re not going to be a “pay to win” aspect of the game. Just very cool flavor of a rare card.
One issue that I see...You own the card digitally...until the company fails. I'm not saying they would, but with the fate of many TCGs right now, it isn't out of the realm. If that were the case, those that buy a bunch of cards from the company and then sell their digital card will have all of the value. Then on top of that, since there is no limit to how much a card can be printed, The rarity on the card really won't dictate the actual rarity of the card. I think the biggest issue, is that this won't bring in the collectors, which is a big chunk of the TCG community. I don't consider myself a collector, but the reason I have as many MTG cards as I do, is because of the potential value.
The value of cards in TCGs is ultimately very volatile. No serious investor (like Wall Street players) seriously invests in TCG outside of fun projects. For MTG for example, the value of a bunch of cards keep crashing due to the heavy amount of reprints from the recent years. There's also no guarantee that the Reserve List will stand: if Hasbro is about to go down, you can fully expect them to pull that lever and just reprint the s**t out of all those ABU cards.
@@Tymbaroth The difference though, is that if MTG fails, you still have value in the cards. People know which cards are rare. If you own the card digitally with a company that fails, you no longer own anything. If you had a bunch of copies printed of a "rare" card, the physical copy isn't worth much anymore because it was over printed and is no longer rare. A physical property can still hold property long after a company folds. A digital one is pretty much useless, You can sell your nintendo and playstation games from the past and sometimes make pretty good money out of them. Good luck selling your digital copies. Imagine what it will look like for collectors. 100's to thousands of games from each generation. Then they get to our generation which has more games available than ever before. and they'll only be able to get a few.
@@dustinroberson1865I don't know if the value of the physical cards will necessary go down to 0 in case the company fails. Sure, we don't know the print run size for sure, but the market will adjust depending on the offer. Obviously, this is in the far future and no one knows for sure but the fact that there is still a physical component makes it different from digital games though.
I was starting to get interested when you were talking about the accessibility features like being able to print more copies of cards you own, and then it immediately lost me when you mentioned there are versions that are truly unique. That's just more artificial scarcity for the sake of it. It also just really sucks to see this awesome, colorful art marred by this terrible QR code taking up a quarter of the card.
The non-battle element kinda throws me off... so you and your companion just tries to reunite faster than your opponent... everytime...? Are there going to be more terrains added, or just the card type/abilities that alter the effectiveness of your "travel/exploration" speed? Pokemon you're essentially the trainer, mtg a planeswalker etc. With Altered you are the hero with a pet that just wants to run through the terrain asap? I dont know...
So maybe I’m misunderstanding something but if I buy a booster box crack all the boosters and get several copies of the same card, that’s functionally useless because digitally owning one copy of each is all you need?
If you play in a tournament, you'll need the same amount digitally owned as you are using. (i.e. If you are using 3 of the same card in your deck, you need 3 digital copies)
The QR digital assets is an NFT. You describe it as a CS skin but skins were the original "digital asset". They're selling NFT the card game where the digital form is the only thing that has value Especially if official play only cares if you have the digital asset.
Don't get me wrong it sounds interesting like a car game for the every man. But if you're not trading and slinging paper you're doing it with digital assets
CS skins are centralised on steam, as will these digital cards on their website. So kinda like NFTs, but without the part every NFT bro claimed made NFTs great but actually made them awful. NFTs were also 1 of 1 while there will be thousands of copies of each card on the market at a minimum. The question to be raised is, if you're playing 3 copies in a tournament do you need 3 digital copies or just 1. And if you're playing foil / full art / alt art do you need that specific digital copy or can you own the cheap common copy that functionally the same card. Because they've said every card comes in common as well as higher rarities.
@@BinzobIf you play 3 copies in your deck, you need 3 copies in your digital collection. You can play with foil or alt art of cards you only own in normal versions digitally. Note that common / rares / uniques rarities are different from the foil / alt art treatment. If you only have the common version of the card, you can't play the rare, no matter the version.
Dangit, I really wanted to get a Ramming Three Little Pigs, but Billy Bob's print run policy is awful. In all seriousness it seems like the physical cardgame is more proxies.
I guess my question is: if you get a card through physical trade, are you still able to get the digital ownership? If my buddy gers a unique, and prints some copies to share with our group, am I able to register digital ownership and print more or use it in organized play?
Only the original owner can print and play in organized play (tournament with verification), when you get a physical card you need to scan it for the digital property, and you can also trade - give - sale - lend the card for a limited time
@@demonox6832 So if I understand correctly, that means that the first time a card is scanned, the physical and digital ownership are split, and the card's QR code is essentially null from then on. The digital ownership is the only thing that has rarity, and sharing or trading the physical card only has value for casual players. It sounds like this largely cuts third party companies out of the resale market, which may be an unattractive prospect for shops. But it may also be very inviting to new players as veteran players may be happy to give away spare copies of good cards to help them get started and grow the player base. The possibilities are really interesting!
@@bhikku23 if you pro or casual and play in shop you can give for free the card for who buy your digital copy but yeah if you don't have the digital you can't play in tournament, and that really cool because, being robbed are not too bad for value and in tournament deck check take 1 min for judge
I love almost everything about this game, except the gameplay which I only just like. I hope this changes over time. I'm not an MTG buff either and I've been hoping for something like this to rock the market for a long time, the turn structure is amazing, but the gameplay itself to me feels awkward and sparce at the moment. I love Seasons it's one of my favourite games and I am not a big fan of Diceforge, the board games designed by the same people who makes this TCG, and I feel like this game does aspects of both. I see it deifferently on the notion that this game doesn't do combat though, in essence the whole game is a war on 2 fronts where you fight for superiority by land, sea and air (forest, water and mountain), even if you don't "attack" a card or person directly. A lot of this games structure seems inspired by Legends of Runeterra in terms of turn structure and Artifact / Elder Scrolls card game in terms of lane placement, but the card effects are very much seasoned by Seasons and that does excite me even if it will probably lead to lots of broken combos.
@@dicebreaker And they just announced today that the BGA client will stay up after launch and will allow you to incorporate your digitally owned cards. They will not be selling digital packs, so you have to have opened the cards you own or purchased them from someone on the marketplace.
The reason there aren't any other TCGs that are innovating is because producing and selling those cards isn't worth it - so they make card focused board games, or online card games, like Marvel Snap or Gwent. Both of those feature lanes, have non-permanent board states, and you're even at a disadvantage by going first. It doesn't really matter that Altered lets your cards transfer into online ownership (probably a negative for most people) - people aren't interested in starting to play a NEW game which requires them to buy booster packs.
It might be a surprise after having the big three TCGs going for so long but Lorcana has made it clear people are looking for new things! Altered feels very different than Magic or anything else so it very much scratches a different itch when sitting down to play a game
@@dicebreaker Lorcana is such a bad example. If it didn't have the Disney IPs attached to the game it would just be a way worse Duel Masters and that game has been around for decades now. Altered has no such IP pull, so it's going to have an uphill battle when the gameplay loop is borderline Star Realms but minus the deckbuilding aspect.
Hi, I have a question which you maybe can answer me. When I understand you correct, you can give the order to print cards to Equinox and can play with these cards for fun. But when you go to a tournament, you must show in the App that you still own this card. What is, if you want to play the card you have in the deck multiple times. I think 3 times is the maximum for a card per deck. Do you know if you need that card than three times in your account or is it enought if you have it one time.
I'm actually not sure! It's something I'm interested to know too. I would imagine you need an individual copy of each card in your deck for official organised play but I couldn't tell you I'm afraid
If you're playing in a formal event, you need to own a digital copy of every card in your deck. One for one. So, if you have three copies of a common in the deck, you need to own three digital copies of it. Etc. I believe they've said that renting cards will be available on the app. Pay a fee to own that card temporarily for a big event, for instance.
I guess my only concern is the PSA stuff. Graded cards from this card came will be worthless in my opinion. What's the point of getting the Kickstarter exclusive boosters to "save" so you could potentially resell it at a collectors value? I get you don't have to, but the Kickstarter makes it feel like they're setting it up for that, if that makes sense
Literally one of the key drawing points of TCGs is summoning cool dudes and/or creatures and fighting. This is thus completely a miss for me. As far as games that do something a bit differently, we have Keyforge.
The game sounds unique and interesting, however the idea of uniques and ownership over them sounds weird for a competitive format. I’ve never played competitive in a TCG but I assume if you are someone who pours money into it and got a ultra strong unique that nobody else could ever get it would be a little pay to win. I’m not certain the impact uniques have on a card but it sounds like it could have flaws. As for casual play it sounds wonderful, being super cheap and accessible especially if you have that one friend that wants to get their buddies involved. Just being able to jumpstart their play with cheap physical re-prints sounds wonderful. I’ve actively avoided any TCG because booster packs and inflated prices made by the developers so this sounds like a better direction to take the format.
by their nature they'll only ever be a single card in your 40 card deck and will just be a slightly more upgraded version of a card that already exists for everyone else. You can only have a max of 3 in a deck anyway too. I can't see it exploding competitive games!
I appreciate increased variability it tcgs and think it’s great to see a whole variety of thematic win cons. That being said I personally have no interest in a game that’s not about pinching my opponent in the face in one way or another
You can still absolutely mess with the other person if you want, I had spells where I put other creatures to sleep, or sent them back to the reserve etc it very much depends on the deck you build! - Maddie
There’s a sustainability angle here that’s quite lovely, too. Less value in physical cards means less need for sleeves, which are a lot less good for the environment than paper products alone. There’s something cool here, I just can’t wait for the day when people stop being allergic to NFTs and learn to seek more meaningful ownership of their data
Initial positives given were either fluff or mechanics that aren't actually unique. The digital ownership idea isn't a bad one by default, but these definitely are equivalent to NFTs with how they've gone and created complete one-of-a-kinds. Competitive won't be taken seriously when it's powered by unique cards given arbitrary special effects that are intended to be massive sells on their marketplace. I guarantee the bulk of kickstarter support comes from that economic sentiment over any sort of passion about the gameplay. Feels like the next Metazoo, though it will likely die off sooner.
You can only play 3 uniques in your 40-cards deck though. With an average of 6 turns per game, you have a 50/50 chance of not even seeing one. They probably won't have the impact people think they will have. They're just cool gaming pieces that only belong to you.
@@Tymbaroth The RNG of drawing the buffed card and how much more favored the best ones will make you is secondary(from the way it's advertised it won't be insignificant), the main point is that by design a player can't access the whole card pool in competitive and because of that there's an artificial gap in victory odds between players. Worse yet, depending on how much someone is willing to whale, they could buy powerful uniques just so that other players are denied them. If they were pointless cosmetic changes that would be one thing, but as is this mechanic is bait for bidding wars, and the developers made sure they would be able to siphon off profits from that secondary market so I only see them wanting this to happen.
@@Waluigi101That is a potential risk indeed, but in the way I understood it, Unique will just be slighlty better than rares and so should not cause such problems. But there's no way to tell for sure right now ^^
I assume the fall of Magic is another cause for the new wild west of trading cards. It hasn't collapsed yet, but it's getting really close. And of its two main competitors, Pokemon doesn't hold the strategic depth or balancing, and Yugioh basically requires a tutor to get into. My childhood was nearly centered around TCGs, so it is with grim reluctance that I make the claim that the TCG genre is likely to collapse like the MMO genre. In its place, I predict Slay the Spire-type card roguelites or digital dueling clients like Hearthstone to take over (though, apparently Hearthstone isn't doing too hot right now either).
I think this sounds different but is ultimately the same as ordering from any card site, only that they make the price. Originally, I thought if I had a card digitally, I could print proxy copies at home and use them in the deck officially. Like this I still have to buy 3 different of, say, the same common with different codes, and them have them print it and ship it to me, which is probably still not gonna be cheap.
are there going to be like trillions of QRs? Not sure about how these work.. But what keeps me from scanning what ever card multiple times? I mean, to make money, they have to sell printed boosters. Every card would need its own QR. Then the server costs to keep all this data tracked. Wouldn´t it be like a lot? I dont know. It feels super cool and nice idea. It makes it much more accesable also to areas on this world, where the economic power is lower. And it would make a transicion to digital tcg so easy. But I would really like someone to enlighten me. How would this QR system work?
I assume each card can only be scanned once. They will also take a small fee from each card you request a printed copy for, as well as selling the digital copy you own. It is a really nice sounding idea. Just have to see how it plays out. There will undoubtably be bad eggs trying to price fix stuff. And buyout digital copies to do that.
You’re missing out on a whole world of fun and friends. Growing up, traveling around to regionals with my “team” (just my group of friends from my locals) is some of my favorite memories I have
It's true for most. If there's lots of sets per year it becomes unsustainable. I wanted to get into FaB, and it ended up costing thousands of dollars per year for something I didn't play THAT much because there are many different games that I like to play. And yes it's a cool game... but not ten times cooler-than-a-full-boardgame-and-non-tcg-cardgame-collection kinda cool. If you can stick to one TCG and have it replace another hobby, then it could work. I personally stick to starter decks/minimal cards and stay away from tournaments, and then buy up a collection years down the road. Another way is to only pay for the one/two decks you really want to have to compete with. Which if they are tournament ready in a competitive TCG can cost quite a bit. But to me that's super boring. I want to be able to draft/put together new decks ^_^
@@Jacksuhn I think what he means is, if I give my friend one I printed, and it has a QR code, them my friend scans it, does he ALSO digitally own the card, and can also make prints of it? Or is he just a bearer of a copy of my Owned card? If my friend now has the power to print and sell, then that is why TheCharlieChitty said it is economically over already, since all of the great cards will be printed to oblivion.
@@nibernator if that is what they're asking, then no, the QR code on the copy they give their friend only shows that it is registered to the original owner. It does not create a new instance of ownership. Then no one would ever need to buy product.
So let me get this straight. I can get a super one of a kind card that literally nobody on earth has? And then if someone I play grabs their phone, takes the QR code and requests 1000 of that card and tries to sell them on ebay and then another person just scans the QR off the ebay website and requests 10000 of that card and then tries to sell them on ebay...I mean what's stopping this?
I assume each physical card can only be scanned once? So once scanned it effectively becomes worthless. Meaning selling cards will generally be done with the digital copies. So you pack a super rare and valuable card but want to sell it, so you scan it, print a few copies to play in your decks, then sell it online? You just won't be able to play in official tournaments from the sounds? Likely won't be all rainbows and unicorns I'm sure but it does sound much nicer than the current state of TCGs.
19:57 Chaotic also did something similar. always hoped someone would bring this back. cept with chaotic they had a videogame you could use them in. When i was younger i was making my own tcg and wanted to do something similar.
The term 'token' is so weird to me, coming from board games. How can you call a card a token when there are already tokens in a game. :D One more check in the "MtG isn't for me" column. ;)
They're called counters in MTG! Also original tokens back when the game launched were literal pop out pieces of card like a board game token, hence the name!
Huh the very beginning of the video altered tcg looks almost identical to fortnights intro where the characters are standing on a mountain overlooking the land
This is fascinating the mechanic are interesting though it's no the first game to do digital ownership in this way play fusions lightseekers & Age of sigmar champions was
This is a board game with booster packs. Which is very different to a TCG and while this will success at been a board game it will fail been a TCG lol.
@@dicebreaker By that logic so are many Deck Builder games. But deck builder games aren't always TCG's and this one will show that when the collector side flops for been too easy to get all your game pieces as if it was a board game. Don't get me wrong I want it to be successful, it sounds cool but the fact is the likelihood of this having Rudy and your other investors from the basement put any weight on this game is very low. Been able to print foils already makes them not rare and useless which is a bad sign, we've seen how badly foils fell from MTG heights after they started treating them not special. But hopefully I am wrong, hopefully the Alternate arts or whatever become very premium and it becomes a great TCG carried on the back of just premium versions wouldn't be the first time but for a new one to try it they really have knock it out of the park with making those Premiums super hard to get. Also if the game is more casual friendly that negatively impacts people been bothered to whale on Premiums but we shall see.
Not sure of the official stance but I'd say it's a little more complex than Lorcana and my 7 year old niece plays that fairly confidently, so maybe minimum age of about 12 or so? No upper limit though, it's a proper TCG
Well, watched the video interested in "new TCG" to find what was different. Found a little bit of different, and SO MUCH TALK about the MARKETING strategy! UGH! I'm looking for a great new GAME in a great new game. Late stage capitalism.
It might be a great game. I believe you can currently play it online for free? So you can try it out for no risk. I've only watched this video and squized at the kickstarter so I can't say whether I enjoy the gameplay or not. Which will ultimately be the main thing for it's success. The reason he talks about the marketing, is that games like Magic and Yugioh are stupid expensive to play. For example in yugioh currently the best deck is over $1000. Which if you want to compete in a tournament you just need. Over 80% of players making it into top cuts at big tournaments at the moment are playing this deck. I hope with Altered it will be super cheap, due to being able to order as many (I'm sure there's probably a cap right?) physical copies as you want of each card you digitally own. But if you need to own the digital card anyways it might be expensive to enter official tournaments. Remains to be seen. Supposedly every card is available in common so hopefully the higher rarities and foils carry the value and you can still play the best deck for like $30 at most. And if you only need one digital copy of the card to print as many as you want they will be sold for cheap anyways? Who knows. I really hope it's both fun and cheap.
If they eventually develop a digital platform that allows everyone to play online using their digital collection, then digital ownership makes total sense.
From what I was told at the roadshow event my LGS had they are, the QR code on the cards can be scanned to add it to your collection.
The digital collection is there, and I'm assuming that ExAltered is going to be supported as a virtual client by the studio as well
We ve seen Keyforge fail the same idea miserably. People should learn TCGs belongs to the table, live play, local communities only after that some sparkles maybe.
@@СемёнПыхтеев-г4с Keyforge didnt even DO ANYTHING with the vault app. It felt like there was SUPPOSED to be a digital card game, but it just never materialized.
@@lordxmugen exactly. One of the best companies with one of the most fitting TCGs out there couldn't do it. Makes you think.
One thing about Uniques, Alt-arts, and Promos, is that their reprintability is on a one year cooldown, so that it still feels valuable.
That's true of Alt Arts and Promos, but not Uniques.
Really enjoy this style of video. It's a good way of getting more opinions from the team. I like hearing these slightly more informal discussions about new and old games as well as industry discussions. It's super interesting to me and the main reason i miss the old Dicebreaker podcast! More videos like this please and thank you!
It's good to see more TCGs that aren't just dudes hitting dudes. Only other notable one I've heard of was Netrunner, and that was originally made in the 90s.
Do the quests~~ you got to kill people too~~ to stop opponent to score!
But the whole game is more than just killing isn't it? :D@@PoYi-fi1zt
The problem is those tcgs tend to fail by contrast. For some reason conflict is far more popular...
This is going to be either really special or completely forgotten about in five years. I'm looking forward to find out which
smart money says forgotten
Who is smart money ?
5 years is generous.
This game basically looks like marvel snap.
LOL 5 years. It will be forgotten after the flippers that dumped money into this Kickstarter realize there is no one to sell this to.
I’m really into a TCG that isn’t thematically about beating each other up! And I’m hugely into the idea of being able to build a deck without having to hunt on the bloated, wildly speculated markets.
The lane-based non-combat 'softer world' elements of this remind me immensely of the (very underrated) My Little Pony TCG, which worked in a similar vein.
All of the strange technological elements have me VERY excited and interested: The idea of having fully-unique cards akin to Keyforge decks but with the option for foiling and reprinting via POD is super novel and has a lot of potential, and given the creator's long history with extremely successful and profitable games, I don't doubt they'll be able to put their money where their mouth is.
shoutout to the MLP game!
a centralized digital marketplace is actually a really good idea (especially if they develop the game for a digital format). Allowing players to collect cards, upload them to a digital database, then sell the card without having to worry about shipping (even if the company takes a small cut) is just really cool
The art of the cards really draws me in.
I didn’t know how to feel about the digital assets until you mentioned completely unique 1 of 1 cards that the ownership of the code of could actually be a sweet business.
I can imagine having an online shop with unique cards you have aquired that people can pay to have prints of. It feels like if nfts actually had functionality.
I also like that the rarer versions are boosted versions of easy to aquire versions, and that part of deck building involves limitations on how many you can include yo avoid a pay to win model.
Bravo
Another interesting thing that I don’t think was mentioned in the video (unless I missed it) is that the foilers found in packs are a QR that you scan and can then apply the foil to a card in your collection and they will ship you a foiled card that you chose! I like the concept of choosing which of my cards are foiled rather than leaving it purely up to chance (though not every booster is guaranteed to include a foiler)
This seems super neat! I love the concept and hope this succeeds
If this game is draftable/cubable I'm super excited for it!
It is! We played a draft at the launch party and loved it - Maddie
Physical cards being proxies will allow me to just order uniques from someone who owns them and just give a middle finger to tournaments. Or I can just ignore uniques in case they aren't fun and just use rares.
No need to sleeve cards I can also reprint if I wanted to as well.
If I do roll a unique, I can either share the proxy purchase while keeping the unique or sell the unique to someone playing in tournament and use my physical for casual play.
I'm very interested to see how this TCG develops. I think they have a very unique opportunity with the QR codes, the card printing, and the online marketplace integrated into their App. I personally like the art style of the cards, and am backing this product now after looking into it. Hoping to see more collectability aspects added, so all the cards aren't printed into oblivion, but we will see. (Obviously the printing ability is to make sure all cards are accessible, but the chase hopefully stays in tact)
I believe it will still be there. Finding perfect uniques and getting them first will be high priority. However, I will buy the copies from others owned uniques and sell my pulled one instead which will be better on my wallet and allow you to fight for the better deck.
I don't know if this is an accurate way of describing the game, but I really like the idea of the game literally evolving through survival of the fittest. Successful cards that get printed a lot have more opportunities to mutate and develop new versions. Cards that aren't successful and that don't get reprinted go extinct. That's a really fascinating idea to me....
Heard about this before. Seemed like a neat little experience, always love to see unique takes on tcg's
Super interesting - I'd be all up for never having to buy multiple copies of mythics just to build a deck
First off, I want this game to succeed. I think they have some really cool ideas especially when it comes to physical/digital ownership of cards.... I don't know how I feel about the non-combat playstyle of this though. I personally just don't see it being a big hit, but I've definitely been wrong before. I will give it a shot, but that just doesn't seem appealing to me. Maybe I am just so used to playing MTG I can't fathom not destroying things.
I think the gameplay is fantastic. The QR code thing, I think will sink it.
It's interesting, but games like this usually thrive on stores that support it and this is adding more red tape into that for stores.
Yeah this seems pretty huge for anyone that doesn't want to mess around with CM.
I think this is a good idea. Even if the game flops, the digital ownership idea is just a win for everyone.
definetly need more info about how everything works and how much everything will cost to make a comment about it's success. Interesting idea, hope it works.
I ran a series of demos for the new Star Wars Unlimited TCG last week, and it has a few similar mechanics (namely the draw 2, play 1 as mana thing), and it plays extremely well. I agree that it seems we're entering a new era of TCGs, which I'm excited for. Before Star Wars Unlimited, I was thinking that Lorcana would be my new fixation, but SWU is even better.
As for Altered, it certainly looks interesting! I appreciate the effort they're making into merging digital and physical in a way we've never seen before. But I have a feeling that the skill and effort required to get good at the game might be a difficult barrier to cross for most people.
My concern about SWU is that I have exactly zero confidence in FFG's ability to balance a collectible game long term.
And the hand painted Sorcery. Big fan of that one. ^_^
I played on BGA. It's not nearly as complex as MTG or FaB right now.
This game is a little more interesting than SWU, mainly because there’s more elements that’s new and fresh. (QR codes and marketplace and stuff)
Both games have the cards as resources thing, and alternating actions instead of turns which already has very interesting potential in the future when it comes to design and strategy
They both seem far more interesting than Lorcana to me.
Trying real hard not to be snarky about this. This is 18 extra steps to solve "tcgs are too expensive" which was solved by Fantasy Flight's LCG system. The core problem is not that TCGs cost too much or that chase card is hard to get -- that's actually their biggest selling point. The feeling that your cards are worth something (they're really not, and I say this as someone who own a large mtg collection) is a huge driver of demand and interest, even among low-spend casual players. Making the physical cards worthless is just jettisoning the biggest selling point of your game.
Yeah, if the cards are worthless, then the game has to be so much fun to play that you don't mind the gamble for cards that are in a fun game. If the game is unappealing, then the boosters will have little value and not sell, as the game isn't worth spending money for no resell value.
Interesting game, but the gameplay and reaching the target audience will make this game sink or swim.
Will that be the case though? The way I look at it is that it allows casual players to keep their pretty and rare physical card (could foil it first if desired) while selling the digital version to someone more committed to the game who cares about things like tournament play. Or if they want to keep the digital version, at least knowing that's an option will give that dopamine hit when opening packs.
The uniqueness of it and the difference in game thematically will get a huge first day launch.Hope they can keep up the distribution of it..
How cool you guys are doing coverage on Kickstarter games. Is there an open situation, how does a publisher get their games on your radar?
If you have a press release for a game you can send it to contact(at)dicebreaker.com for news coverage consideration!
My question is, if digital ownership is all that matters for the purposes of organized play, why do I need to go through the company's printing service? Like, obviously if I'm going to use their printers to get my cards, they need to physically ship the cards to me, but let's say I just got a card I want to put into my deck and the tournament is tomorrow, so I need to wait for the card to get physically shipped to me? Why can't I just print out the cards at home and sleeve them like proxies? It's not like there will be anything to act as a card marking that way, and pretty much all TCGs require sleeves for organized play anyway.
Like, I absolutely appreciate that this lowers the cost to build an effective deck, but and I can see, from the company's perspective why they'd want us to pay them to print more copies of the card, but I also feel if digital ownership is all that technically matters, I'd want to be able to not have to wait for the card to physically use it. Obviously in order to make money the company would want some kind of restriction in place, like you can only use the proxy card in so many tournaments before there's an issue, or if you provide a receipt showing you've ordered physical copies and they haven't arrived yet then you're good, but you either need a legit card or a receipt to use it.
Ultimately, I think this is a very smart idea for monetizing a card game, it basically keeps their finger in the pie for all the aftermarket aspects of the game. They get money when a player buys a booster pack, they get money when a player sells a card to another player, and then they get money for every additional copy printed for that card. The only draw back is that it's likely rather expensive up-front to get the digital system functioning, to have the printers ready to keep up with whatever demand they might have, to keep their servers protected from hackers, etc. It kind of requires that they get a significant player base quickly, and then they keep that player base, almost more than any other new TCG trying to enter the market. I think with such a unique and innovative game design they have a chance to pull it off, since they offer a fundamentally different play experience compared to everything else. If they were just the latest Magic or Yugioh clone that'll be dead in three years and the distribution model was the only innovation, then they'd never be able to get off the ground properly. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this, I've been looking for a new card game to get involved in since L5R died the second time, and this seems like an interesting option!
I think most shops will probably keep a stock of paper cards around for them to sell to you on tournament days :)
@@Tymbaroth Acquiring new cards was never the issue, it was copies of cards I already own, buying booster packs doesn't do me a lick of good if I wanna use a playset of the unique I pulled yesterday and the other two copies are two weeks out in the mail. Did you even read my comment or were you trying to be as obnoxiously unhelpful as possible?
@@jacobbissey9311I wasn't telling you to open booster packs in hope to find your missing cards, but to buy paper singles, sold by the shop in which you will play the tournament. Also, you cannot play a playset of a unique card because you can only own one copy digitally. I don't see how my response was obnoxious as I just pointed out a possible solution to your problem?
@@Tymbaroth Ah, I see, you don't understand the whole digital ownership and print on demand distribution system. You only need to own one copy of any given card to run a whole playset, that's the entire point of the print on demand system, you can have as many copies of your card printed as you want, but only the person who owns the digital card can run it in their deck, if I needed multiple digital copies to run multiple copies of the card, there would be literally no point to this system in the first place.
Edit to add: also, I don't think a physical singles market will be possible. If digital ownership is all that matters, then a store won't be able to buy singles for resale since the player will already own the digital copy, if they only buy/sell unscanned singles, then it becomes trivially easy to steal the cards by scanning as you flip through the binder, and if the store is ALSO doing their buying and selling through the digital marketplace, then bothering with the physical cards would be a silly waste, better to put anything you intend to sell up for auction or if there is no auction then at least make it available globally and not bother with the physical card at all, as the only cost to the seller that way is whatever cut the company gets of the sale, no need to have the card take up space in your store that could go to other products.
@@jacobbissey9311"You only need to own one copy of any given card to run a whole playset, that's the entire point of the print on demand system, you can have as many copies of your card printed as you want, but only the person who owns the digital card can run it in their deck" => No, your digital collection also tracks the number of copies you own. So if you want to play a playset in tournament, you need to have a playset, which is impossible for uniques. It has been stated multiple times in the Kickstarter comments and many other videos so I am very sure about this. In casual though, you can use the PoD service to play as many copies as you want. You can also use the PoD to not have to swap cards between decks.
For your second point, I admit I do not know how and if a physical marketplace will happen. But if a store sells digital copies, they will be left with physical copies they don't need to ship and that they can sell you. It should be possible in theory but I don't know how feasible it would be in practice. My guess is that if certain commons are staples for tournaments, they'll keep a few paper copies around to sell to players on the moment.
I have some very important questions.
Can I buy proxy versions of cards from them as well? I don't plan on playing tournaments and want to experience the full game with little issue on my wallet. The economy for me will probably come from draft box pulls being sold digitally and made back to buy more boxes or other products.
Can sets be reran if people want them enough and if not, can I simulate them with randomly generated proxies? I love draft/cube so being able to buy my favorite sets as draft reruns and cubes would be fantastic.
Yes, the printed cards you can order should in theory be extremely cheap, as to play in tournaments you will still need to own each card digitally. From the sounds of it I could buy a card digitally, then order a print of a dozen copies and sell them off to others as I only need 3 myself. That should make physical cards on the secondary market very cheap one would hope. Though I expect people to try to price fix the FUCK out of it.
i missed the KS but am really excited for this. thr digital stuff is interesting, especially since it looks like theyre working on a digital play experience as well, but mostly im excited by the idea of a kid friendly TCG where i don't have to be so precious with cardboard
I kinda like it, but also I'm concerned about the cost of getting cards printed by the company and limitations/costs of trading/selling the digital ownership set by the company as well. But it does seem nice to have a card game that "appears" to be accessible for player to get into
The coolest aspect to me is that sounds like this will facilitate altered arts
It just shows how much MTG has dominated the TCG field over the years that he makes so many references to MTG despite there being so many other TCG's out there. And there are quite a few that deviate from the MTG formula completely.
Super excited to back this project.
Really excited about getting cards into hand! Did demo the PnP and loved it!
As both a tcg collector & table top gamer, this is more appealing as a board game than a tcg (which makes sense as creators of Dixit). Looks like it could be potentially fun to play, but for me, the qr code is a turn off in terms of card asthetic & art style could be hit or miss with some people. I could see this as a potential hit for the table top gaming scene, but hard to see it gain the mass appeal in the general public for collectability.
Looks interesting, I wish it succeeds. Actually I wish more of these games succeed. I don’t share opinion of some that only 3-4 games may be successful at any given time.
Thing is, virtually each of them seems to be repeating mistakes done in the past, overprinting, printing more sets a year than is sane, while only few selected games are able to repeat mistakes, once they have enough profit to allow for dark age to not bankrupt them.
You did a really great job explaining this. Unfortunately i didnt discover this game until the KS was already over but ive been interested and trying to find out as much as possible. The problem though was that it was a bit confusing especially the concept of the uniques. This really helped me understand it better.
That said, im curious about what if packs hold cards that are unsold, will those be lost to limbo, like imagine wanting and looking for a certain unique card but nobody has opened that pack yet so its just never appears. Or what if someone who doesnt care for all the digital stuff just never registers or does it and so you have this unique card out there or whatever that never shows up in the marketplace because the person who owns it just isnt that commited to the bit
Sounds like it has similar turn mechanics to legends of runeterra, that sounds awesome!
The terminology is literally ripped from LoR.
It looks amazing!
I honestly hope that the game takes off and does well because it is a model that is extremely pro consumer. I think the largest challenge for this game will be how much the business model impacts physical game stores. Theoretically this game is great for kitchen-table casual play and potentially for big even competitive play. However, I am having a hard time envisioning a weekly Friday Night Altered event getting support from the LGS unless the demand for Uniques is absolutely insane.
If Uniques are so powerful that they will support an ecosystem that allows for LGSs to reliable sell packs and/or crack packs to offer singles through a walled garden market place, I'm worried about how viable competitive play is. If Uniques are mostly okay I worry about how willing LGSs are going to be to support a game that doesn't have product moving off the shelf or out of the display cabinet.
Yeah this sums up my initial worries. Keyforge had this whole "every deck is unique" thing as well, and competitive keyforge quickly came down to "who either got lucky or paid heaps of money to get the deck the algorithm accidentally made the most powerful". I feel like the uniques here could suffer from a similar issue, where there's either a lot of fairly useless ones and a few that randomly get very powerful combinations and will be extremely sought after (and therefore expensive), or they're all on the "okay to have but ultimately not that useful" end of the scale, in which case there's no real reason to open product.
Unique card game, very interesting ownership system, BUT i am interested if it will be profitable as much for them to keep the game live
This game reminds me of Chaotic. The QR codes are more convenient than typing an alphanumeric code. But card variants with a digital code to claim ownership. Definitely like Chaotic.
Also feels like Marvel Snap. Claiming ownership of lanes while (for the most part) not directly attacking your opponent's cards.
And there are lots of TCG that weren't like magic. Hundreds, if not thousands throughout the years. Only a few have lasted or are remembered.
So i guess the reprints either won't have the qr code or the code tells you you that the card is owned already?
All they need is a digital version of the game to play with your owned cards as well.
Looking forward to it, hope it succeeds.
formats need to be established that allow different levels of the rares and unique legality in the way pauper in MTG is. i can already see only a handful of the unique printings of cards being strictly better than all the others making a select few people and their decks strictly better in tournament play. the people who buy the singles to play might end up getting punished for not sinking tons of money into packs in order to crack a unique card let alone one that is optimal for their strategy. if im playing competitively or casually i have no intention of buying expensive rares and uniques or cracking boxes on boxes of packs just so that I can compete.
Damn it, I literally came up with this very card game last night! 😅 literally I had the same idea behind merging our own canon with fantasy and mythology. I was gonna make it more similar to Yugioh tho, but still. I don’t even wanna keep up on my idea now because it’s already being done on a professional level 😅
have they said how quick the turnaround will be on printing? Concept is cool, its like they separated the demand for casual and competitive. Those uniques are going to be HUGE money, even in paper. It's going to be pay to win so unsure if the competitive scene will grow.
I mean how is that any different than any other TCG that has meta cards be $20+ on the secondary market. And is those cases you need multiple copies of multiple expensive cards, in altered, you can only ever use 3 uniques. Plus, if someone does have a broken unique, then only one person ever is going to have it in competitive play so it’s not super likely you’ll ever run into it, I feel like their model is very anti pay to win
It feels a little bit like its more properly realizing the concept of Chaotic, minus the online game (for now?)
I love the idea of unique cards. My biggest gripe with tcgs is that as soon as you play with any form of organized group, only a few decks are viable and they’re all using the exact same cards that they pulled from a tournament list. One of my favorite aspects of TCGs are theory-crafting and deck building, and trying to make something fun and new. While the core of a lot of decks will still probably remain the same, the small changes that uniques add will make it so everyone has to make individual tweaks to bring out their cards full potential. It reminds me of the yuhioh or bakugan anime where everyone has their own special dudes that are a staple to them. Even if it’s just by a little bit, making every deck unique is incredibly exciting to me. Also since they’re eliminating the secondary market and doing it themselves prices won’t get gouged by scalpers and that’s a plus
Sidenote, why are almost all the card games fantasy-based? I would think modern / sci-fi / cyberpunk would also make for some great games, but there's only a few around and they really struggle.
Idk if i missed it int the video but would if I want them to reprint me some cards would they come out w/o a QR code? I'm worried about people getting scammed out of buying a bunch of cards but they just get the physical onces because the digital version is owned by someone else?
What's stopping people from scanning other people's qr codes, like say you scan a friends card and pretend to claim it as your own?
They will still make the same money Magic makes selling the booster packs - their model of print on demand after already selling the packs hood make more money for them. It puts them into the secondary market money - something Magic doesn’t really do.
I was reading through the kickstarter and as soon as I saw "unique" cards I was immediately turned off. While games like MTG and yugioh both have issues with the best cards of the format being way overpriced, at least they are theoretically obtainable by any player rather than one special one that can only ever be owned by one person. Although I am always interested to see new TCGs and how they develop, hopefully Im wrong and the game is great despite this.
Unique cards are massively limited, you can only have like 3 in a deck total. I think they're quite fun! Doubt they'll mean much to the average consumer outside of finding something cool to play with. Bare in mind as well that only one player can own it for tournament purposes, whoever has it can theoretically print off as many physical copies as they want
I can talk only after seeing a few spoilers but the unique cards are only the rare card version slightly improved. They aren't game changing at all in the way you are thinking from what they unofficially revealed up to now. Check it on the spoilers yourself when they will release them.
In terms of gameplay the most important gap is between rare and commons, especially because all cards has an altered rare version which allow you to use the card in an other faction. But you can put a limited number of rare and unique cards in your deck, so the power level will be always balanced in this sense, because even if your opponent has 500 unique cards he can't play them in the same deck.
Unique cards have adjusted stats but are more there for having something fun to open and that feels like it’s solely yours. Each deck can only have 3 of them max so they’re not going to be a “pay to win” aspect of the game. Just very cool flavor of a rare card.
One issue that I see...You own the card digitally...until the company fails. I'm not saying they would, but with the fate of many TCGs right now, it isn't out of the realm. If that were the case, those that buy a bunch of cards from the company and then sell their digital card will have all of the value. Then on top of that, since there is no limit to how much a card can be printed, The rarity on the card really won't dictate the actual rarity of the card.
I think the biggest issue, is that this won't bring in the collectors, which is a big chunk of the TCG community. I don't consider myself a collector, but the reason I have as many MTG cards as I do, is because of the potential value.
The value of cards in TCGs is ultimately very volatile. No serious investor (like Wall Street players) seriously invests in TCG outside of fun projects. For MTG for example, the value of a bunch of cards keep crashing due to the heavy amount of reprints from the recent years. There's also no guarantee that the Reserve List will stand: if Hasbro is about to go down, you can fully expect them to pull that lever and just reprint the s**t out of all those ABU cards.
@@Tymbaroth The difference though, is that if MTG fails, you still have value in the cards. People know which cards are rare. If you own the card digitally with a company that fails, you no longer own anything. If you had a bunch of copies printed of a "rare" card, the physical copy isn't worth much anymore because it was over printed and is no longer rare. A physical property can still hold property long after a company folds. A digital one is pretty much useless,
You can sell your nintendo and playstation games from the past and sometimes make pretty good money out of them. Good luck selling your digital copies. Imagine what it will look like for collectors. 100's to thousands of games from each generation. Then they get to our generation which has more games available than ever before. and they'll only be able to get a few.
@@dustinroberson1865I don't know if the value of the physical cards will necessary go down to 0 in case the company fails. Sure, we don't know the print run size for sure, but the market will adjust depending on the offer. Obviously, this is in the far future and no one knows for sure but the fact that there is still a physical component makes it different from digital games though.
I was starting to get interested when you were talking about the accessibility features like being able to print more copies of cards you own, and then it immediately lost me when you mentioned there are versions that are truly unique. That's just more artificial scarcity for the sake of it. It also just really sucks to see this awesome, colorful art marred by this terrible QR code taking up a quarter of the card.
I think people are gonna crack so many packs looking for uniques that it's going to be great for the games life
It doesn't sound like the uniques are in packs. Your digital copies just have a chance to become one.
@@kalin310They are in packs. Roughly one in six packs is the rate I think?
The non-battle element kinda throws me off... so you and your companion just tries to reunite faster than your opponent... everytime...? Are there going to be more terrains added, or just the card type/abilities that alter the effectiveness of your "travel/exploration" speed?
Pokemon you're essentially the trainer, mtg a planeswalker etc. With Altered you are the hero with a pet that just wants to run through the terrain asap? I dont know...
So maybe I’m misunderstanding something but if I buy a booster box crack all the boosters and get several copies of the same card, that’s functionally useless because digitally owning one copy of each is all you need?
If you play in a tournament, you'll need the same amount digitally owned as you are using. (i.e. If you are using 3 of the same card in your deck, you need 3 digital copies)
The QR digital assets is an NFT. You describe it as a CS skin but skins were the original "digital asset". They're selling NFT the card game where the digital form is the only thing that has value Especially if official play only cares if you have the digital asset.
Don't get me wrong it sounds interesting like a car game for the every man. But if you're not trading and slinging paper you're doing it with digital assets
@@huemungus5535 I think what makes an NFT an NFT is being on the blockchain. There is no blockchain is this process, hence, no NFT
CS skins are centralised on steam, as will these digital cards on their website. So kinda like NFTs, but without the part every NFT bro claimed made NFTs great but actually made them awful. NFTs were also 1 of 1 while there will be thousands of copies of each card on the market at a minimum.
The question to be raised is, if you're playing 3 copies in a tournament do you need 3 digital copies or just 1. And if you're playing foil / full art / alt art do you need that specific digital copy or can you own the cheap common copy that functionally the same card. Because they've said every card comes in common as well as higher rarities.
@@BinzobIf you play 3 copies in your deck, you need 3 copies in your digital collection. You can play with foil or alt art of cards you only own in normal versions digitally. Note that common / rares / uniques rarities are different from the foil / alt art treatment. If you only have the common version of the card, you can't play the rare, no matter the version.
Lost me at “they’re not at conflict.” No battles… No fun.
The mana system sounds more like VS 2PCG with drawing 2 cards per turn and any card can be mana.
Like duel masters
Dangit, I really wanted to get a Ramming Three Little Pigs, but Billy Bob's print run policy is awful.
In all seriousness it seems like the physical cardgame is more proxies.
I guess my question is: if you get a card through physical trade, are you still able to get the digital ownership? If my buddy gers a unique, and prints some copies to share with our group, am I able to register digital ownership and print more or use it in organized play?
Only the original owner can print and play in organized play (tournament with verification), when you get a physical card you need to scan it for the digital property, and you can also trade - give - sale - lend the card for a limited time
@@demonox6832 So if I understand correctly, that means that the first time a card is scanned, the physical and digital ownership are split, and the card's QR code is essentially null from then on. The digital ownership is the only thing that has rarity, and sharing or trading the physical card only has value for casual players.
It sounds like this largely cuts third party companies out of the resale market, which may be an unattractive prospect for shops. But it may also be very inviting to new players as veteran players may be happy to give away spare copies of good cards to help them get started and grow the player base.
The possibilities are really interesting!
@@bhikku23 if you pro or casual and play in shop you can give for free the card for who buy your digital copy but yeah if you don't have the digital you can't play in tournament, and that really cool because, being robbed are not too bad for value and in tournament deck check take 1 min for judge
I love almost everything about this game, except the gameplay which I only just like. I hope this changes over time. I'm not an MTG buff either and I've been hoping for something like this to rock the market for a long time, the turn structure is amazing, but the gameplay itself to me feels awkward and sparce at the moment. I love Seasons it's one of my favourite games and I am not a big fan of Diceforge, the board games designed by the same people who makes this TCG, and I feel like this game does aspects of both. I see it deifferently on the notion that this game doesn't do combat though, in essence the whole game is a war on 2 fronts where you fight for superiority by land, sea and air (forest, water and mountain), even if you don't "attack" a card or person directly. A lot of this games structure seems inspired by Legends of Runeterra in terms of turn structure and Artifact / Elder Scrolls card game in terms of lane placement, but the card effects are very much seasoned by Seasons and that does excite me even if it will probably lead to lots of broken combos.
Procedurally generated cards were a clear next step after Keyforge. Happy to see this is being developed.
If they have a good online play then I am interested. It is very hard for me to play physical card game nowadays
There's an official demo version available to play online right now on Board Game Arena!
@@dicebreaker And they just announced today that the BGA client will stay up after launch and will allow you to incorporate your digitally owned cards. They will not be selling digital packs, so you have to have opened the cards you own or purchased them from someone on the marketplace.
Love how anyone with a phone can steal your cards as you open them from a booster.
The reason there aren't any other TCGs that are innovating is because producing and selling those cards isn't worth it - so they make card focused board games, or online card games, like Marvel Snap or Gwent. Both of those feature lanes, have non-permanent board states, and you're even at a disadvantage by going first.
It doesn't really matter that Altered lets your cards transfer into online ownership (probably a negative for most people) - people aren't interested in starting to play a NEW game which requires them to buy booster packs.
It might be a surprise after having the big three TCGs going for so long but Lorcana has made it clear people are looking for new things! Altered feels very different than Magic or anything else so it very much scratches a different itch when sitting down to play a game
@@dicebreaker Lorcana is such a bad example. If it didn't have the Disney IPs attached to the game it would just be a way worse Duel Masters and that game has been around for decades now. Altered has no such IP pull, so it's going to have an uphill battle when the gameplay loop is borderline Star Realms but minus the deckbuilding aspect.
Ironically this digital ownership model is a solid use-case for NFT technology. Not the scam.jpg shit that was popularized during the pandemic.
The game deffo looks interesting, but I'm diverting my resources towards SWU. Hope they do well, though!
is there a very high pitch noise on this vid for other ppl as well?
Hi, I have a question which you maybe can answer me. When I understand you correct, you can give the order to print cards to Equinox and can play with these cards for fun. But when you go to a tournament, you must show in the App that you still own this card. What is, if you want to play the card you have in the deck multiple times. I think 3 times is the maximum for a card per deck. Do you know if you need that card than three times in your account or is it enought if you have it one time.
I'm actually not sure! It's something I'm interested to know too. I would imagine you need an individual copy of each card in your deck for official organised play but I couldn't tell you I'm afraid
@@dicebreaker you don't need to be afraid...you can tell frank :P
If you're playing in a formal event, you need to own a digital copy of every card in your deck. One for one. So, if you have three copies of a common in the deck, you need to own three digital copies of it. Etc. I believe they've said that renting cards will be available on the app. Pay a fee to own that card temporarily for a big event, for instance.
I guess my only concern is the PSA stuff. Graded cards from this card came will be worthless in my opinion. What's the point of getting the Kickstarter exclusive boosters to "save" so you could potentially resell it at a collectors value? I get you don't have to, but the Kickstarter makes it feel like they're setting it up for that, if that makes sense
Literally one of the key drawing points of TCGs is summoning cool dudes and/or creatures and fighting. This is thus completely a miss for me. As far as games that do something a bit differently, we have Keyforge.
The game sounds unique and interesting, however the idea of uniques and ownership over them sounds weird for a competitive format. I’ve never played competitive in a TCG but I assume if you are someone who pours money into it and got a ultra strong unique that nobody else could ever get it would be a little pay to win. I’m not certain the impact uniques have on a card but it sounds like it could have flaws. As for casual play it sounds wonderful, being super cheap and accessible especially if you have that one friend that wants to get their buddies involved. Just being able to jumpstart their play with cheap physical re-prints sounds wonderful. I’ve actively avoided any TCG because booster packs and inflated prices made by the developers so this sounds like a better direction to take the format.
by their nature they'll only ever be a single card in your 40 card deck and will just be a slightly more upgraded version of a card that already exists for everyone else. You can only have a max of 3 in a deck anyway too. I can't see it exploding competitive games!
I appreciate increased variability it tcgs and think it’s great to see a whole variety of thematic win cons. That being said I personally have no interest in a game that’s not about pinching my opponent in the face in one way or another
You can still absolutely mess with the other person if you want, I had spells where I put other creatures to sleep, or sent them back to the reserve etc it very much depends on the deck you build! - Maddie
3:10 oh...like an alternative history
Would have been an auto-backed for me if they chose the publishing way like Keyforge...
There’s a sustainability angle here that’s quite lovely, too. Less value in physical cards means less need for sleeves, which are a lot less good for the environment than paper products alone. There’s something cool here, I just can’t wait for the day when people stop being allergic to NFTs and learn to seek more meaningful ownership of their data
Initial positives given were either fluff or mechanics that aren't actually unique. The digital ownership idea isn't a bad one by default, but these definitely are equivalent to NFTs with how they've gone and created complete one-of-a-kinds. Competitive won't be taken seriously when it's powered by unique cards given arbitrary special effects that are intended to be massive sells on their marketplace. I guarantee the bulk of kickstarter support comes from that economic sentiment over any sort of passion about the gameplay. Feels like the next Metazoo, though it will likely die off sooner.
You can only play 3 uniques in your 40-cards deck though. With an average of 6 turns per game, you have a 50/50 chance of not even seeing one. They probably won't have the impact people think they will have. They're just cool gaming pieces that only belong to you.
@@Tymbaroth The RNG of drawing the buffed card and how much more favored the best ones will make you is secondary(from the way it's advertised it won't be insignificant), the main point is that by design a player can't access the whole card pool in competitive and because of that there's an artificial gap in victory odds between players. Worse yet, depending on how much someone is willing to whale, they could buy powerful uniques just so that other players are denied them. If they were pointless cosmetic changes that would be one thing, but as is this mechanic is bait for bidding wars, and the developers made sure they would be able to siphon off profits from that secondary market so I only see them wanting this to happen.
@@Waluigi101That is a potential risk indeed, but in the way I understood it, Unique will just be slighlty better than rares and so should not cause such problems. But there's no way to tell for sure right now ^^
Your video about a ks campaign is sponsored by a ks campaign. This hobby has just… I can’t. What?
I assume the fall of Magic is another cause for the new wild west of trading cards. It hasn't collapsed yet, but it's getting really close. And of its two main competitors, Pokemon doesn't hold the strategic depth or balancing, and Yugioh basically requires a tutor to get into.
My childhood was nearly centered around TCGs, so it is with grim reluctance that I make the claim that the TCG genre is likely to collapse like the MMO genre. In its place, I predict Slay the Spire-type card roguelites or digital dueling clients like Hearthstone to take over (though, apparently Hearthstone isn't doing too hot right now either).
I think this sounds different but is ultimately the same as ordering from any card site, only that they make the price. Originally, I thought if I had a card digitally, I could print proxy copies at home and use them in the deck officially. Like this I still have to buy 3 different of, say, the same common with different codes, and them have them print it and ship it to me, which is probably still not gonna be cheap.
are there going to be like trillions of QRs? Not sure about how these work.. But what keeps me from scanning what ever card multiple times? I mean, to make money, they have to sell printed boosters. Every card would need its own QR. Then the server costs to keep all this data tracked. Wouldn´t it be like a lot? I dont know. It feels super cool and nice idea. It makes it much more accesable also to areas on this world, where the economic power is lower. And it would make a transicion to digital tcg so easy.
But I would really like someone to enlighten me. How would this QR system work?
I assume each card can only be scanned once. They will also take a small fee from each card you request a printed copy for, as well as selling the digital copy you own.
It is a really nice sounding idea. Just have to see how it plays out. There will undoubtably be bad eggs trying to price fix stuff. And buyout digital copies to do that.
Never could get into TCG's...felt like a running on a money spending treadmill.
You’re missing out on a whole world of fun and friends. Growing up, traveling around to regionals with my “team” (just my group of friends from my locals) is some of my favorite memories I have
Then this might be the one for you!
@@thatguymatt5816 I'm sure its alot of fun.
Same. I am just happy with my Epic Card Game. You should check it out if you don’t want to invest money on tcg. Its model is expandable card game.
It's true for most. If there's lots of sets per year it becomes unsustainable. I wanted to get into FaB, and it ended up costing thousands of dollars per year for something I didn't play THAT much because there are many different games that I like to play. And yes it's a cool game... but not ten times cooler-than-a-full-boardgame-and-non-tcg-cardgame-collection kinda cool.
If you can stick to one TCG and have it replace another hobby, then it could work. I personally stick to starter decks/minimal cards and stay away from tournaments, and then buy up a collection years down the road.
Another way is to only pay for the one/two decks you really want to have to compete with. Which if they are tournament ready in a competitive TCG can cost quite a bit. But to me that's super boring. I want to be able to draft/put together new decks ^_^
If I scan a card and order cards, do the cards sent have no QR code?
Otherwise it's economically over already.
They will have QRs because they need to be scanned at OP events to prove ownership.
@@Jacksuhn I think what he means is, if I give my friend one I printed, and it has a QR code, them my friend scans it, does he ALSO digitally own the card, and can also make prints of it? Or is he just a bearer of a copy of my Owned card?
If my friend now has the power to print and sell, then that is why TheCharlieChitty said it is economically over already, since all of the great cards will be printed to oblivion.
@@nibernator if that is what they're asking, then no, the QR code on the copy they give their friend only shows that it is registered to the original owner. It does not create a new instance of ownership. Then no one would ever need to buy product.
@@Jacksuhn Perfect! Thanks for the answer
So let me get this straight. I can get a super one of a kind card that literally nobody on earth has? And then if someone I play grabs their phone, takes the QR code and requests 1000 of that card and tries to sell them on ebay and then another person just scans the QR off the ebay website and requests 10000 of that card and then tries to sell them on ebay...I mean what's stopping this?
I assume each physical card can only be scanned once? So once scanned it effectively becomes worthless. Meaning selling cards will generally be done with the digital copies. So you pack a super rare and valuable card but want to sell it, so you scan it, print a few copies to play in your decks, then sell it online? You just won't be able to play in official tournaments from the sounds?
Likely won't be all rainbows and unicorns I'm sure but it does sound much nicer than the current state of TCGs.
I live in Brazil, so no Altered for me.
19:57 Chaotic also did something similar. always hoped someone would bring this back. cept with chaotic they had a videogame you could use them in. When i was younger i was making my own tcg and wanted to do something similar.
The term 'token' is so weird to me, coming from board games. How can you call a card a token when there are already tokens in a game. :D
One more check in the "MtG isn't for me" column. ;)
They're called counters in MTG! Also original tokens back when the game launched were literal pop out pieces of card like a board game token, hence the name!
Huh the very beginning of the video altered tcg looks almost identical to fortnights intro where the characters are standing on a mountain overlooking the land
This is fascinating the mechanic are interesting though it's no the first game to do digital ownership in this way play fusions lightseekers & Age of sigmar champions was
I mention AOS Champions just forgot the name of it
Did you say there's a drag queen character? Can you confirm if this is true or just your speculation?
It's absolutely true
what's the name of the character do you know?@@MrVovoda
@@LuisFelipeVillegas It might be a spoil, but oh well… it's Auraq & Kibble
So is this a TCG Euro Game?
This is a board game with booster packs. Which is very different to a TCG and while this will success at been a board game it will fail been a TCG lol.
You collect cards, build decks, and trade cards which makes it a TCG! 😊
@@dicebreaker By that logic so are many Deck Builder games. But deck builder games aren't always TCG's and this one will show that when the collector side flops for been too easy to get all your game pieces as if it was a board game.
Don't get me wrong I want it to be successful, it sounds cool but the fact is the likelihood of this having Rudy and your other investors from the basement put any weight on this game is very low.
Been able to print foils already makes them not rare and useless which is a bad sign, we've seen how badly foils fell from MTG heights after they started treating them not special.
But hopefully I am wrong, hopefully the Alternate arts or whatever become very premium and it becomes a great TCG carried on the back of just premium versions wouldn't be the first time but for a new one to try it they really have knock it out of the park with making those Premiums super hard to get. Also if the game is more casual friendly that negatively impacts people been bothered to whale on Premiums but we shall see.
What age range is this TCG aimed at?
Not sure of the official stance but I'd say it's a little more complex than Lorcana and my 7 year old niece plays that fairly confidently, so maybe minimum age of about 12 or so? No upper limit though, it's a proper TCG
over $4mil in kickstarter funding
its too long, the intro is too long i forgot the video was playing
Well, watched the video interested in "new TCG" to find what was different. Found a little bit of different, and SO MUCH TALK about the MARKETING strategy! UGH! I'm looking for a great new GAME in a great new game. Late stage capitalism.
It might be a great game. I believe you can currently play it online for free? So you can try it out for no risk. I've only watched this video and squized at the kickstarter so I can't say whether I enjoy the gameplay or not. Which will ultimately be the main thing for it's success.
The reason he talks about the marketing, is that games like Magic and Yugioh are stupid expensive to play. For example in yugioh currently the best deck is over $1000. Which if you want to compete in a tournament you just need. Over 80% of players making it into top cuts at big tournaments at the moment are playing this deck.
I hope with Altered it will be super cheap, due to being able to order as many (I'm sure there's probably a cap right?) physical copies as you want of each card you digitally own. But if you need to own the digital card anyways it might be expensive to enter official tournaments. Remains to be seen. Supposedly every card is available in common so hopefully the higher rarities and foils carry the value and you can still play the best deck for like $30 at most. And if you only need one digital copy of the card to print as many as you want they will be sold for cheap anyways? Who knows. I really hope it's both fun and cheap.