MakoSlade said:

At the same time, though, is your FLGS (or their distributor) likely to want to keep all CPs in stock all the time in perpetuity? Likely, the limitations of retail are going to do enough to make older cards scarce as time passes, whether FFG keeps them in print or not. Remember also that the CPs are printed in cycles. FFG may not be able to keep Sacred Bonds in print (which, BTW, means continually printing a banned card just to have the events available) without keeping Epic Battles in print, too; probably not an individual CP that is going to be in high demand in the future.

When the "reality of retail" if taken into account, I have to say that I do not see FFG keeping all CPs in print for the entire life of the game (which is forever, right?). I can see one, maybe two, reprint runs in the year or so after a CP cycle is first printed, but I don't think it'll last forever. Using the "To Be A..." example, I'd say that if those event cards become too much of an imbalance because the are not generally available to new players - and older players are able to take too much of an advantage of them - they would either be banned, or they would be reprinted by themselves (as opposed to the whole Sacred Bonds pack) in a small box expansion (like KotS and PotS) or a "Core Set v2."

Well, in that interview with Steve Horvath that LetsGoRed posted a little while ago, Horvath said:

You would expect normally for a game cycle, once the next expansion comes out the sales would dwindle for the one before hand. But in this case we’re still seeing strong reorders again and again and again. For Game of Thrones we’re in our third cycle of expansion packs. There are six to a cycle. We’re still seeing reorders for the earlier packs. We’ve had a couple that have sold out that we’re going to have to get back into print for some of these games. There are back orders for them. It’s unprecedented and it has a shelf life more of an evergreen product than what a collectible would have.

So it seems like FFG would like to keep everything in print, but practically speaking that probably will break down at some point as ktom points out. I'd like to think that FFG could always keep at least some stock of every chapter pack in their own online store so that the old packs were always available in some fashion even when they had disappeared from store shelves, but it will probably be hard for them to justify reprinting some of the A Clash of Arms packs when there are 10 or more different cycles of chapter packs and demand for any particular old pack is probably pretty low. I would guess that they plan on keeping the seasons packs in print though based on their design philosophy so far. It seems like they're trying to maintain a level of demand for those by continuing to support the seasons mechanic in later chapter pack cycles.

*sigh* I wish I could get quotes to work.

well if publishing was in house or if it didn't come from china and was in the states they might be able to keep them 'in stock' forever. just charge a surcharge for OOP packs and do on demand prints of them. Put like a 2-3 week time period on it and wait till you get like 5-10 orders and blamm-o

schrecklich said:

Sounded more like they are likely to keep things in print as long as there are consistent orders (and back-orders) of a cycle. Once the orders for a cycle off, they will be less inclined to keep something in print. It costs money to keep something on an inventory shelf that isn't selling, or only moves infrequently.

ktom said:

Right, as I tried to allude to by citing you in the second half of that sentence ; )