There's been a lot of noise lately about the price of a Conversion Kit being $49.99 and what it would cost to bring larger fleets up to spec. Players are frustrated because one kit alone might not cover their entire collection, but two kits would be overkill. Beyond our knee-jerk reaction, game store owner/operators are going to struggle with selling a "fifty dollar" product as most game store transactions are small. Brick-and-mortar profits are built on blister pack card sales with a low market cost and a large markup. Your local store makes more money off its Magic Card blisters and Games Workshop paints than it does off its board game titles.

That said, here's a proposed pricing model that I believe would make more sense to the average consumer: don't sell Conversion kits. Instead, sell Conversion blister packs.

Currently the Rebel Alliance conversion kit offers materials to upgrade 37 ships for $49.99. Considering that some ships might have more materials than others, we should say that the average cost per ship conversion is $1.35 each (49.99 / 37 = 1.35). What Fantasy Flight pays its manufacturers to create conversion cards for an X-Wing might cost less than for a Y-Wing (who knows), but at the end of the day, they're asking us $1.35 per ship. We know that Fantasy Flight needs to make a return on the sale, so we'll assume they're running a typical 50% markup, which means they're paying $0.68 per ship conversion on average -- this number is actually probably lower because we'd have to factor in the cost of their packaging materials and overhead, but you get my meaning.

If Fantasy Flight instead took each ship conversion set (which would include a few pilot cards, some upgrade cards, some new tokens, dials, etc.) and bundled them into individual packages, they could easily sell them for $2.50 over the counter at a local game store. Most brick-and-mortar retail customers are walking into the store to play a game and spend a few dollars; it wouldn't be a stretch to see a customer come to the counter and say, "I have ten dollars, and I need to convert the squad I'm going to play for tonight's tournament." At $2.50 per pack, a user could upgrade 20 ships for the same cost as a Conversion Kit, but that would be 20 ships of their own choosing -- I doubt anybody would complain about missing out on 17 conversion kits for ships they don't own nor care to field.

Additionally, a conversion blister pack will be more marketable for brick-and-mortar owners. For one thing, they'd be a peg-hook accessory that would take up little floor space and can be displayed vertically beside the Miniatures lineup. You could try tossing one in as an up-sell or mark them out for tournament prizes. Game store owners love the little merchandise -- why not give it to them?

Most importantly, at $2.50 per pack, Fantasy Flight would boost their margins significantly. The net markup would go from 198% to 367%. And for those of you shaking your head, saying "Don't give Fantasy Flight any ideas to make more money", here's a news flash -- product markup value doesn't mean you spend more money. In fact, you could feasibly spend less than the $49.99 conversion kit and get more value out of the individual blisters. The margin goes to the the game store, there's better value for the player, and Fantasy Flight provides a custom conversion solution for people who want to bring some ships up to the 2nd Edition ruleset.

Asking people to drop $49.99 is just asking for an eBay reseller market to capitalize on the fact that players won't want to buy stuff they won't use. To all the smartest people in the room, if Fantasy Flight doesn't get ahead of this, it would be a sound investment to buy up on conversion kits, take them apart into the individual ship packages, and sell them online for a few bucks a piece. Your $49.99 investment could become a $92.50 payoff. Invariably, there's going to be a huge market for the "Conversion Blister" concept.

Fantasy Flight would be wise to get ahead of it.

I think there may be something to this. During the FFG 2.0 gameplay stream on Twitch back on the 2nd, they (the commentators) kept saying that there "will be a path" for veteran players to get conversions for ships outside of the conversion kits. They did not elaborate on the details, merely implied that we should just keep watching the site for future announcements down the line. The phrase, "will be a path" kept coming up.

Can anyone that was watching corroborate my claim? I wish they posted the stream somewhere because we were pelting them with questions, of which they must have answered 2/3 of, instead of commenting on the games being demoed.

Yes, there will be a path to get new cards that are in the re-releases that aren't in the conversion packs.

Packaging per pack is probably enough to not make $2.50 a pack a realistic expectation. The only other similar product, Star Trek Attack Wing, retails at $10 a pack for less than 20 cards and cardboard. I think $5 or more is probably the lowest we can reasonably expect a future 1 ship conversion pack to go for, but that's just a guess and we'll have to wait and see.

Individual ship conversion kits are currently available for pre-order in the UK...£3.99 (small) to £4.99 (large). This is from a re-seller who will break open the full size kits and sell the contents.

Since he his prices need to account for the ships that people don't need extras of, thereby a percentage of each kit will go to waste, it seems that FFG should definitely release the more popular ships individually!

2 minutes ago, Gilarius said:

Individual ship conversion kits are currently available for pre-order in the UK...£3.99 (small) to £4.99 (large). This is from a re-seller who will break open the full size kits and sell the contents.

Since he his prices need to account for the ships that people don't need extras of, thereby a percentage of each kit will go to waste, it seems that FFG should definitely release the more popular ships individually!

I believe FFG stated that they are not going to do individual ships because its a logistic and stocking nightmare for stores.

1 hour ago, Sithborg said:

Yes, there will be a path to get new cards that are in the re-releases that aren't in the conversion packs.

The way is shut and the dead keep it. The way is shut.

23 hours ago, leathrlung said:

Fantasy Flight would be wise to get ahead of it.

Given that a lot of the 2.0 changes did seem to be in response to these boards, I half-way wonder if they are out there creeping on us before they send 2.0 to the printer.

Which also makes me wonder why FFG would not canvass player interest in advance for something as significant as a 2.0 product.

A lot of the issues have been loud issues for a long, long time.

You go and ask your local game store if they would rather stock three skus or three dozen skus.

Also, not that you guys care, but FFG did address this on stream, and said that the costs and logistics for this would be a nightmare and drastically increase costs, even if the game stores wanted to stock these items. If you want to go piecemeal then ebay will be more than willing to help you with that.

Individual kits would just create different problems. Great, you have an individual ship pack. You don't have the upgrades, of which there are reportedly *170* at launch.

Are you just going to have each individual ship conversion come with a set variety of upgrades? Will you split them up so that only a small portion are included in each pack, similar to what we have now?

Are you going to ask retailers to make room on their shelves to store and display 50-60 something different SKUs for each ship pack? Or will they have to buy a variety box, which is basically guaranteed to leave them with overflow from less popular ships, as everyone grabs up the TIE Fighters and X-Wings and ignores the Quadjumpers and TIE Punishers.

I don't think you're really thinking through what you're asking.

I'm happy with the way they are doing it. I can cover over 90% of my fleets with 2 conversion kits, and have spares to give to or trade with friends. Any extras I need will come from ebay. This will work out much cheaper, and be much easier than having to buy 50+ individual conversion packs.

43 minutes ago, PhantomFO said:

Individual kits would just create different problems. Great, you have an individual ship pack. You don't have the upgrades, of which there are reportedly *170* at launch.

Are you just going to have each individual ship conversion come with a set variety of upgrades? Will you split them up so that only a small portion are included in each pack, similar to what we have now?

Are you going to ask retailers to make room on their shelves to store and display 50-60 something different SKUs for each ship pack? Or will they have to buy a variety box, which is basically guaranteed to leave them with overflow from less popular ships, as everyone grabs up the TIE Fighters and X-Wings and ignores the Quadjumpers and TIE Punishers.

I don't think you're really thinking through what you're asking.

They could also just include every upgrade card in the core set, to go with the new mandatory damage deck and the probably-useful-but-unnecessary templates, as well as the rulebook, which seems critical.
Ship blisters then only have to include the dial, base inserts and ship cards.

2 hours ago, Icelom said:

I believe FFG stated that they are not going to do individual ships because its a logistic and stocking nightmare for stores.

Did not hear this, but it is indeed the case that it would be a nightmare for stores to stock. And stores got burned by FFGs stupid SW RPG Spezialisation cards. I ask 3 store owners, each having hundreds of euros in them laying around and all 3 were pissed and would not order anything that looks similar from FFG ever again.

Now in general store owners seem to be annoyed about FFGs logistics, because that is a nightmare no matter the product. ?

1 hour ago, Porkchop Express said:

I'm happy with the way they are doing it. I can cover over 90% of my fleets with 2 conversion kits,

Let's hope someone in my local community has a similar sized collection, because I literally just need the unique cards out of the second set conversion kits.

16 minutes ago, MrRip said:

They could also just include every upgrade card in the core set, to go with the new mandatory damage deck and the probably-useful-but-unnecessary templates, as well as the rulebook, which seems critical.
Ship blisters then only have to include the dial, base inserts and ship cards.

But then you're overloading the newer players with a metric ton of cards which they can't use.

And it also doesn't address the logistical issues of getting these kits into the hands of distributors, and how store owners are supposed to order, display, sell, and maintain inventory of dial replacements for somewhere around 50 ships.

Do you think that FFG would just be able to manufacture individual cases, with something like 12 dials per case for each ship? And then the retailers could just order cases of of each ship and stock them on shelves? For every different ship type in the game?

If so, then you have the wrong holiday. It's May the Fourth, not 4/20.

3 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Not heared this anyway, but it is indeed the case that it would be a nightmare for stores to stock. And stores got burned by FFGs stupid SW RPG Specialisation cards. I ask 3 store owners, each having hundrets of euros in them laying around and all 3 were pissed and would not order anything that looks similar from FFG ever again.

Now in general store owners seem to be annoyed about FFGs logistics, because that is a nightmare no matter the product. ?

Oh god, the specialization cards are a textbook case study in why this is a bad idea. And those are just basic cardstock, not the heavy satin cardboard that they use for dials.

3 minutes ago, PhantomFO said:

Oh god, the specialization cards are a textbook case study in why this is a bad idea. And those are just basic cardstock, not the heavy satin cardboard that they use for dials.

The SW RPG decks are as well a case study why FFG needs to get their **** together with international shipping. They are losing thousands of dollars because they demand more in shipping costs than those decks are selling for when you order them on demand. Not even their own distributors want to touch those decks. Printing on demand itself is fine, but when you are running an online store, you need to get your stuff together with the shipping costs.

The 2nd Edition Core set from FFG would cost $111 on the FFG Store, because their shipping is insane.

@leathrlung , you've thought this out fairly well. This is probably the only way to even plausibly institute the new packs, but there are a few problems:

We're not talking card-only packs. A serious amount of cardboard is included, thickening the pack far beyond MtG standard and increasing shipping costs. They also cost quite a bit more to produce than cardstock. Medium-base ships include medium bases, so that's more expense and shipping cost. Large base packs would simply be huge - and costly because of it.

Bu that's not the main problem. The deal-closer is upgrade cards.

48 minutes ago, MrRip said:

They could also just include every upgrade card in the core set, to go with the new mandatory damage deck and the probably-useful-but-unnecessary templates, as well as the rulebook, which seems critical.
Ship blisters then only have to include the dial, base inserts and ship cards.

Adding them to the core set probably takes it from the very reasonable $50 (board game standard) up to $80-100, depending on the markup they'd want. That's an extreme buy-in, and very likely going to push many new players away.

They could bring out card-only packs, but for 150 cards you'd be looking at $30 at least, so you're back to square one. There's a solution to this whole mess though:

Social Interaction .

I'm going to be buying one of each conversion set, like the majority of players with 40+ ships. I'm going to have an awful lot of leftovers. And I'm going to GIVE them away to others at my FLGS. That's probably going to be around 60 ships converted just from my own collection, plus plenty of extra upgrade cards to go around. Others will do the same, and we'll all more or less match up, leading to lower costs for everyone than buying stupid individual ships converters.

Individual would be too much added cost to the consumers. Note that each product has a bit of an overhead even if the components are the same.

Halving the kit, or separating them between small, medium and large, or any other form of granularity would be appreciated, though.

Conversion is mostly an issue for people with moderate to large collections, so the cost would be increased by a lot. People with few ships could just invest purely into 2.0 without need to convert.