I have been wondering about this since the announcement of KeyForge, and now also for this game.

Will an aftermarket/secondary market form, like with Pokémon and Magic the Gathering, where people will be selling and buying components for the game? Is there any interest in this from the community? Would this be feasible, or will every component be so uniquely tied to a specific deck/game that it would become useless in other sets?

Any thoughts?

We don't know if components will even be transferable. It's possible, for instance, that in order to get one item (say, an obsidian knife), you may need a specific terrain (volcano) or specific character (mason or miner). If it's set up like this, you can't sell individual components.

Aftermarket speculation may well be premature.

I suspect any manual remixing of components will fall into house rule territory, as there won't be written rules for how to properly add and remove aspects of your game, and we won't easily know which ones are meant to always go together vs algorithmically prevented from being together in one box. Trading, buying, or selling entire copies of the game will probably make more sense.

I've said this over on the KeyForge forum, but feel it applies here (and probably to all future Unique games). I think the secondary market will value opened, known copies of both games more than sealed copies. Which is really, well, unique.

I think that photographed, unplayed copies of this game will be worth equal, or a little more, than sealed copies.

For KeyForge, I think the value will vary greatly, but between the houses (factions) and card list of a deck, I think they'll have the potential to easily be worth 50% more than a sealed deck.

It's just that either will run the risk of not selling.

It will be very interesting to see how it plays out for sure. If opened copies are really worth more than sealed ones on average, that would be a strong signal that FFG is wrong about the appeal of the surprise factor here.

2 hours ago, Duciris said:

I've said this over on the KeyForge forum, but feel it applies here (and probably to all future Unique games). I think the secondary market will value opened, known copies of both games more than sealed copies. Which is really, well, unique.

I think that photographed, unplayed copies of this game will be worth equal, or a little more, than sealed copies.

For KeyForge, I think the value will vary greatly, but between the houses (factions) and card list of a deck, I think they'll have the potential to easily be worth 50% more than a sealed deck.

It's just that either will run the risk of not selling.

I do wonder how many opened unplayed boxes there will be. With keyforge people will (probably) buy multiple decks and sell the ones they don't want because they still have a few they want to keep. Discover is a lot pricier. I wonder how many people will buy a 2nd copy. And if they stick to one I don't see them selling it, because now you got nothing to play with.

Or maybe I'm wrong and people will buy a copy play it and then sell it on to buy another one.

Maybe in the future we'll see groups of Discover players come together at LGS and conventions to play each other's copies.

13 minutes ago, Robin Graves said:

I do wonder how many opened unplayed boxes there will be. With keyforge people will (probably) buy multiple decks and sell the ones they don't want because they still have a few they want to keep. Discover is a lot pricier. I wonder how many people will buy a 2nd copy. And if they stick to one I don't see them selling it, because now you got nothing to play with.

Or maybe I'm wrong and people will buy a copy play it and then sell it on to buy another one.

Maybe in the future we'll see groups of Discover players come together at LGS and conventions to play each other's copies.

Yeah, that'd be fun.

I like the idea of this game being unique rather than a traditionally scripted legacy game because it allows me to play my copy, and then play a different copy with friends and have a completely different experience. That is not the case with Pandemic Legacy.

I don't think there will be many people buying more than 1 copy of the game unless its on clearance or something but people might be more interested in having their own copy of the game if they like it rather just play with their friend's copy.

I also don't think that opened copies are going to sell for more than retail prices. But there will probably be demand for certain components like the character cards.

On 8/15/2018 at 2:11 PM, Bogoran said:

It will be very interesting to see how it plays out for sure. If opened copies are really worth more than sealed ones on average, that would be a strong signal that FFG is wrong about the appeal of the surprise factor here.

I don’t think this is necessarily true. If the game sells 10,000 copies and there are 200 on eBay that sell for > MSRP that doesn’t mean much. This board suggests that there’s SOME market for known contents.

Keyforge is a horse of a different color, though. It makes more sense for someone to pay more than MSRP if the deck results are strong.

2 hours ago, KalEl814 said:

I don’t think this is necessarily true. If the game sells 10,000 copies and there are 200 on eBay that sell for > MSRP that doesn’t mean much. This board suggests that there’s SOME market for known contents.

Keyforge is a horse of a different color, though. It makes more sense for someone to pay more than MSRP if the deck results are strong.

Or if they have a preference for all 3 of their house. Which is a 1 in 35 chance as is. It's unrealistic for a retailer to carry 35 sets of random decks, as some (probably a lot) will not sell as well. For the secondary market, however, I think it will accommodate that well.

For this game, I think people will pay MSRP or maybe up to 5$ more to get the specific terrain they want. I live in the woods and near (20 minuets from) the Great Plains. I'm more interested in desert/mountains/islands. Some people will care for their sole copy of the game. Other people will care that their second copy is not too similar to their first. I don't expect them to pay more than MSRP, though.

EDIT:

To be clear, you don't go to eBay or Amazon to purchase items at MSRP. I don't think that the game will sell with known items at a price drastically more than MSRP. I just think that an known copy on eBay may sell for more than an unknown.

The concept reminds of the Arcadia: The Wyld Hunt card game based on White Wolf's Changeling game from the 1990s. You could buy a booster pack and play just from those contents with each booster being different or combine for a deeper game. To my eyes this is packaged in a bigger form factor. In that sense the secondary market was / is viable but the game never took off in my area as it wasn't every deep with just a booster pack. You can still buy packs for a few bucks on eBay.

On 8/16/2018 at 7:37 PM, Knave Squawk said:

The concept reminds of the Arcadia: The Wyld Hunt card game based on White Wolf's Changeling game from the 1990s. You could buy a booster pack and play just from those contents with each booster being different or combine for a deeper game. To my eyes this is packaged in a bigger form factor. In that sense the secondary market was / is viable but the game never took off in my area as it wasn't every deep with just a booster pack. You can still buy packs for a few bucks on eBay.

That reminds me of the D&D Gamma World that had boosters to "enhance your experience." That never really took off either.

I think Discover won't really merge well with other copies. The game looks to be designed with missions and scenarios that are tied to the content within the box. I guess you could try a mix-n-match scenario - mission 1 from the first game, mission 2 from the second game - or modular terrain matching - we'll land on my set's beach, then go into the your set's desert - but I think the game will be tailored to a single set. The events and tools and characters should (and I'll give FFG the benefit of the doubt here and say it will) be tied to the things found within a box.

When it is released, we can have a go at selectively building a new game from multiple copies, or just throw 2+ copies together and see what happens. Until then, though, I'll stick to speculating about one copy.

On 8/15/2018 at 11:04 PM, Duciris said:

I like the idea of this game being unique rather than a traditionally scripted legacy game because it allows me to play my copy, and then play a different copy with friends and have a completely different experience. That is not the case with Pandemic Legacy.

Yup, that's what I was thinking, as well. Currently, in our board game group typically only one player owns a particular game and everyone's relying on that player to bring the game when we want to play it. With 'Discover' this might be different. I'm still unsure how different an experience playing with a different copy of 'Discover' is going to be, though. I can't imagine one player buying two copies of it, though. More likely I could see increased trading of copies between players.