I see FFG has plunged into the real of gimmicks, just like every other freaking game company.

I have plenty of concerns here about this whole thing, but the biggest one is cheating. We've seen FFG games are not immune to cheating in the past. This is gonna be farrrrrrrr worse. People are just gonna scan their cards, print new ones with the appropriate card back and serial number, and insert them into their decks, so that they can get around the unique thing. There will be deckbuilding, just it will be illegal. I have very little graphic design knowledge, and yet I'm pretty sure that I could whip up a bootleg deck in like fifteen minutes. This game really is gonna have to stay casual, just like Warhammer: Diskwars failed in the competitive scene. And here's the thing: when playing casually with friends, you could always play sealed play. This is nothing special in that instance.

Now, I get what they were going for. I wish I could get away with using certain lame cards in my Netrunner collection. But this is not a good solution.

Really, really disappointed though about FFG launching into the realm of gimmicks. It seems like every game has to have a gimmick to get published these days.

Ok that is a lot of work, for what payoff?

This game seems pretty casual

2 minutes ago, Radix2309 said:

Ok that is a lot of work, for what payoff?

This game seems pretty casual

Again though, people have gone to much greater lengths at much greater risks of being caught in order to cheat in an LCG or minis game. In X-Wing, people have changed their dials when their opponents look away. In Conquest, someone sneakily drew extra cards. This is easy, nobody would notice, especially with sleeved cards.

And that's another thing. Are we forced to use clear sleeves with this game? Because opaque sleeves would hide the unique card back, which I assume is what identifies the deck.

I mean you have to replicate their printing process and card stock, Not to mention alter the Archon.

You can use opaque sleeves, because the name of your avatar is written in the corner of your card.

1 minute ago, Radix2309 said:

I mean you have to replicate their printing  process and card stock, Not to mention alter the Archon.

You wouldn't have to replicate the card stock though, if it's sleeved. It would just have to be close enough.

You can use opaque sleeves, because the name of your avatar is written in the corner of your card.

Okay, thanks. I was confused about that.

You could print cards for MTG and actually play in big money tournaments...

Exactly. People cheat in LCGs, but usually in low effort ways. If you are going to this effort to counterfeit cards, just use it for a game where they actually offer cash prizes.

21 minutes ago, Supertoe said:

Again though, people have gone to much greater lengths at much greater risks of being caught in order to cheat in an LCG or minis game. In X-Wing, people have changed their dials when their opponents look away. In Conquest, someone sneakily drew extra cards. This is easy, nobody would notice, especially with sleeved cards.

Cheating will always happen and Getting some fake cards out is an easy process now for anyone with some basic dedicated skill and material. I work in fraud prevention and I see fake IDs and other fake documents every day, some are really impressive despite all the safety measure governments use to prevent forgery. We are not talking passports here just game cards.

While looking for some material for proxying some cards, I was able to find at a local store in the little lost town in Ireland I live in the exact same paper used for making the Race for the Galaxy cards. From there I only need photosho[ and hire a pro printer to create whatever cad I want. And will not cost me a kidney

40 minutes ago, Hellvlad said:

Cheating will always happen and Getting some fake cards out is an easy process now for anyone with some basic dedicated skill and material. I work in fraud prevention and I see fake IDs and other fake documents every day, some are really impressive despite all the safety measure governments use to prevent forgery. We are not talking passports here just game cards.

While looking for some material for proxying some cards, I was able to find at a local store in the little lost town in Ireland I live in the exact same paper used for making the Race for the Galaxy cards. From there I only need photosho[ and hire a pro printer to create whatever cad I want. And will not cost me a kidney

Exactly. And in other games, there was no need to forge cards, because you could just buy them anyway, as singles or in LCG packs. Now there is a huge gameplay incentive to make fakes.

People will fraud and cheat because they can and think that they can get a benefit from it. If someone believes that throwing a few hundreds of USD ( and I'm being generous here) is worth it in ord to get the fame and the prizes associated to an organized play event, or mabe multiple of them, I can guarantee 100 that it will happen. Whether these people will be successful or not or will get caught its another story, but you can safely bet that there will be attempts.

Considering FFG POD can't match their own production cards' colors and quality I think the printing effort you describe in your original post is way more work than you let on. If they are gonna go to that lengths to win an FFG card event (where the prize is usually almost nothing) then I think they should evaluate how they are spending their time. If it's an attempt to manipulate the secondary market then I don't see how that would be any different than counterfeiting MtG cards.

Some people are ready to go through the hassle of stealing a credit card in order to make a 20 USD purchase so, really it comes down to each and every single one's priority and personnal value system. But it will happen

I am going to ppint out there is also a code on the Archon, which presumably matches up with an online decklist. I don't think you can take that. And it is easily verifiable.

12 minutes ago, Hellvlad said:

Some people are ready to go through the hassle of stealing a credit card in order to make a 20 USD purchase so, really it comes down to each and every single one's priority and personnal value system. But it will happen

Stealing a credit card is actually pretty easy compared to this, and usually those people are doing it in aggregate.

I had also assumed that those decks had an identifier that was verifiable considering these decks are not hand picked. They are procedurally generated. So if this was a problem then it would be a combatable thing. If that ID is in fact unique and somehow verifiable then this would be the hardest game to counterfeit.

16 minutes ago, phillos said:

Stealing a credit card is actually pretty easy compared to this, and usually those people are doing it in aggregate.

I had also assumed that those decks had an identifier that was verifiable considering these decks are not hand picked. They are procedurally generated. So if this was a problem then it would be a combatable thing. If that ID is in fact unique and somehow verifiable then this would be the hardest game to counterfeit.

The announcement article mentions registering your deck online. This implies to me a code on the Archon card, but I can't find where they mentioned a code in the articles.

Chaotic did it over 12 years ago with codes verifying packs. I don't doubt that if they are procedurally generating the decks, they have a database of every deck printed, and a corresponding code that is assigned to it. Not hard to track and verify at all.

That means a judge will need to check each deck before each official match. Everywhere. This is doable at world in the finals but do you think this will be the case in local stores tournaments?

It's not like it will be a common knowledge that "this card does not belong in this deck" No one will be alarmed

Isn't hard. The Archon has a cardlist, compare it to the online one to verify its identity. Then just compare the deck.

It isn't any different from deck checking any other game.

I have this feeling that a player in this game would easily recognize the difference between a random deck and one that is constructed.

David vs. Goliath

We check LCG decks already for legality at high level tournaments. This would just make that procedure easier. It was said somewhere that the decks were procedurally generated. Not sure where that was said, but that has to be the case considering they talk about a quadrillion possible unique decks in the inflight report. It was clearly not just random distribution since they discuss vaguely the rules for deck composition inside each pack.

Decklists are checkable on the app.

8 hours ago, Radix2309 said:

I am going to ppint out there is also a code on the Archon, which presumably matches up with an online decklist. I don't think you can take that. And it is easily verifiable.

This. If the QR code contains the list of cards in the deck, you can easily do a verification of any of the winners, and disqualify people who cheated.

7 hours ago, Hellvlad said:

That means a judge will need to check each deck before each official match. Everywhere. This is doable at world in the finals but do you think this will be the case in local stores tournaments?

It's not like it will be a common knowledge that "this card does not belong in this deck" No one will be alarmed

You just have to check the top 16, 8 or whatever. Just the threat of being caught should be enough. Think about the weights and measures people at the gas pump. They don't check every single gas station every single day. They scatter check, and that's enough to keep people in line.

Your you can cheat would require more money then any tournament be able to give in prizes. Not like they'll have 60k$ tournaments....

How... To have never taken part into any tournaments ever, I didn't know people would go as far as forgering game components in order to win.... Money I guess ?

I'll look like the old gramp always complaining about everything and nothing, but whe, you put money on the table, everything changes... It's always been like this I don't know why I'm surprised at what you say here.