I'll join in with the common sentiment in this thread: even if you want to play competitively, W:I is not that expensive, especially compared to pretty much any other non-LCG on the market.

I'd have to agree. I have 3 copies of the Core set and 3 copies preordered of Skavenblight, and spent a whole $104.94. And I'm not even planning on playing terribly competitive, but hell at that price, to have literally maxed out everything I need in a card game, I couldn't resist.

Let's consider the multi-purchase, and what it means.

If you buy 3 copies of the core set, you get a full playset for all four races. That's about $120 retail, or around $80 if you get it online (which I don't recommend, support your LGS!") That's the price of a box of boosters for most CCGs, which give you what...? A third of the set at all, much less full playsets, MUCH LESS full playsets for all factions in the game. Is it perfectly priced? No... But it's also dramatically cheaper than pretty much all CCGs.

So if it's still more than you're willing to spend, why not look for alternatives? You need three sets to make a full playset... Get two friends and buy a box each. Pick a race each, and split the last one. Draft for the neutral cards that you're lacking a full set of, and Woo! Full playset for the race you want at $30. That's pretty much impossible to match.

And, finally, if we assume the price for the full sets of cards would be the same, what the multi-buy does is let people choose. You may want a full playset for all races at $120 - someone else may not want the full playset. Why should they have to buy three times as many cards as they want because you have some ideological opposition to a broken-out purchase?

Apologies if any or all of this was already covered by previous posts.

I think the big thing is that many players aren't considering that there can still be trade possibilities. We're (old CCGers) are so used to trading as being part of the collectible part. Around here in my local group, we are already talking up the ideas of how someone might buy one skavenblight pack, I'll buy two, but we should both be able to get the cards we want through a little bit of trading. Yeah, I know, it doesn't make it perfect, but unless you're looking for a playset for every faction's possibilities, then you might want to consider trading off some for others. I know that's what I'm thinking of. I'm not too keen on having nine copies of some guys because I wanted three copies of one other card.

Periculum said:

see i actually like this. I'm one of those guys who likes to have a deck for every faction, plus with splashing being fairly simple in this game those extra copies of cards means its easier to have multiple decks with some of the same core elements. I could easily see 9 warpstone evacuations still having me shuffle some around decks as that card slots into many types of decks.