What if the deck lists weren't hidden?

This question intrigues me. With QR code technology, they could easily have a window to the QR code on each box, allowing you to see the card list. Alternatively, package them in clear plastic like LCG packs and have the QR code covered. If the QR code is exposed, they could have a second one that actually unlocks the deck in the app.

If this were the case, what effect would it have on the game? Every deck is still unique, but it isn't a blind buy. Does it ruin the game?

It would probably make it hard for retailers - they'd get stuck with decks nobody wants to buy. Otherwise, that's what I'm expecting from the secondary market (eBay).

I don't think it would negatively impact the game.

35 minutes ago, Duciris said:

It would probably make it hard for retailers - they'd get stuck with decks nobody wants to buy.

That was my best guess, too.

For a game selling into FLGS, you really have to consider the cost/benefit to the end retailer. From a retailers perspective they want to be able to sell all the product they buy at full price, so having decks they can't sell is a significant issue. Even just one or two per case seriously weakens their profit margins. Blind box games help to solve that issue for stores.

An old example from back in the 90s; Magic cards used to be packaged in a thinner plastic pack where a person could actually read the card names. So certain people (or unscrupulous store owners) would go through each booster, find the best packs and only buy those. Once word of this got around, people wouldn't buy from those retailers any more as you knew you were going to get the junk packs that were left over. So the better stores had to train employees to prevent this, in order to just maintain their sales. Turning Magic away from random packs reduced sales, for both the company and the retailers. Magic had to update it's packaging to solve the problem and restore confidence in certain products.

9 minutes ago, CountBlah said:

For a game selling into FLGS, you really have to consider the cost/benefit to the end retailer. From a retailers perspective they want to be able to sell all the product they buy at full price, so having decks they can't sell is a significant issue. Even just one or two per case seriously weakens their profit margins. Blind box games help to solve that issue for stores.

An old example from back in the 90s; Magic cards used to be packaged in a thinner plastic pack where a person could actually read the card names. So certain people (or unscrupulous store owners) would go through each booster, find the best packs and only buy those. Once word of this got around, people wouldn't buy from those retailers any more as you knew you were going to get the junk packs that were left over. So the better stores had to train employees to prevent this, in order to just maintain their sales. Turning Magic away from random packs reduced sales, for both the company and the retailers. Magic had to update it's packaging to solve the problem and restore confidence in certain products.

This is a large concern for Faction Packs in LCGs as well. There are some people who want Clan specific starter packs for L5R to make the entry point more reasonable. If you have an equal number of players for all clans, this isn't a problem. However, if you have 7 Crab players and 1 Unicorn player, this probably isn't reasonable for retailers to keep in stock. This was worse for OL5R, as each starter box contained 1 (or 2 or 3) of each faction starter. If a retailer wanted to sell to those 7 Crab players, they'd have been stuck with 6 Unicorn starters (and all the rest).

What they're doing with AGoT:LCG will be better than the latter option (releasing single, orderable packs for each faction), but I've always assumed that FFG steers away from that for FLGS overstock reasons. AGoT has been out for a while, and this may be the way to get new players in. I suspect it is a test product to see what they can reasonably do to grow the player base.

For KeyForge, I don't see it as a good move. Doubly for the tournament play I'm most looking forward to: $14-$15 entry which includes a new (blind) deck.

I agree, this is a key challenge to physical game publishers. They have to try to satisfy the player demands versus the needs of the retailers. Fantasy Flight appears to be trying new approaches, they've built out some very unique print on demand options which now allows for other games like Keyforge, but major success for a physical game still seems to require that presence in game stores.

Players are only getting more demanding, and I think that's understandable given the flexibility that digital games have to solve a lot of these issues. In many ways this is why I'm attracted to Keyforge, it simply removes a lot of the accumulated baggage that CCGs bring with them these days (collecting/trading, deckbuilding/netdecking, etc). But at the same time, a lot of people struggle with sheer randomness of it all.

I don't think it would be as bad a problem with Keyforge as with Magic, because there are few, if any, chase-rares. The most powerful cards I've seen are all commons.

But even if it didn't go against the 'Do what you can with what you get' spirit of the game, and if it wouldn't cause issues with orphaned decks, I don't think there cost-to-return would be there.

Wouldn't the store sell the "good" decks for a higher price?

58 minutes ago, Amanal said:

Wouldn't the store sell the "good" decks for a higher price?

Maybe... if they can figure out which decks are "good".

With CCGs, it's pretty obvious. It's the card that everyone is saying is better than the rest. Or the one in the netdecks. With Keyforge, it's harder. You can't target individual cards and expect to be as accurate. For example, Gateway to Dis (destroy all creatures, gain 3 chains) has been considered a strong card. But having four of them in a deck with 26 creatures is pretty bad.

The simple solution is to charge a flat price per deck, stores could just open boxes and leave the cards in the wrapper.

The problem is, if players only want 1 in 4 decks then are you going to by decks at $40 each or 1 in 12 makes the decks about $120 each.

6 hours ago, Amanal said:

Wouldn't the store sell the "good" decks for a higher price?

Yes, this was another concern I had.

5 hours ago, Xelto said:

Maybe... if they can figure out which decks are "good".

With CCGs, it's pretty obvious. It's the card that everyone is saying is better than the rest. Or the one in the netdecks. With Keyforge, it's harder. You can't target individual cards and expect to be as accurate. For example, Gateway to Dis (destroy all creatures, gain 3 chains) has been considered a strong card. But having four of them in a deck with 26 creatures is pretty bad.

I agree. It looks like it will be tough at first to figure out what makes a deck "good." However, I don't think the deck has to actually be good for it to go for a high price. Rather, if a deck is perceived as good by the larger community, it will sell for a higher amount.

And I believe this is where the secondary market will work well. For game store owners it's unrealistic to expect a majority of them to learn another game well enough to price out the cards/decks. We always used StarCity to price our Magic cards, as none of us played it and we only had 1 customer who knew every set well enough to get approximate values for fringe cards.

11 hours ago, Budgernaut said:

H owever, I don't think the deck has to actually be good for it to go for a high price. Rather, if a deck is perceived as good by the larger community, it will sell for a higher amount.

That's where I expect people are going to have culture shock. Early on, were going to get people hunting for decks with cards X, Y, and Z. But they'll realize soon that you have to look at the deck as a whole. And doing that without playing it will be a real artform.

What about knowing just the houses of the deck?

13 minutes ago, Kloud said:

What about knowing just the houses of the deck?

I think you get the same effect, but to a lesser extent. I think certain houses will be more popular than others and certain houses will be perceived as more valuable (cool, powerful, etc.). So I can imagine stores getting stuck with house combos nobody desires and then increasing prices on valuable ones. Secret contents protects consumers from these practices and allows deck searching to happen on the secondary market instead of the primary market. I'm no analyst, but to me, that seems more fair than what will happen if information is on the outside of the box.

6 minutes ago, Kloud said:

What about knowing just the houses of the deck?

Right, but do people just want random cards from that house or are they really expecting a couple specific cards they want from that house instead? I expect for most people it's that they want certain cards, because an Untamed faction with 2 hunting witches in a creature heavy deck is very different then an Untamed faction with 2 dust pixies and mainly actions and artifacts.

I think the spirit of not knowing is part of the game that Richard Garfield wanted to make. I also believe that because of how easy it is now to open the box and see the house combo/card list and just put it back in the box, that the finale packaging solution will be different than what was presented at gencon. I believe the final product will at least be in a sealed clam shell package.

33 minutes ago, Kloud said:

What about knowing just the houses of the deck?

I ran a poll over on BGG, asking people who hadn't played the game what house they were most interested in, and asking people who had played essentially the same question. Under 10% of the people who hadn't played the game didn't care about houses. Over 40% of the people who were experienced with the game said they didn't care about house.

Early on, there are going to be people digging for/buying specific houses and combinations, and a secondary market that tries to exploit this. But while I don't think hunting for specific cards or houses is going to go away entirely, I think it's going to drop off significantly once people are familiar with the game, and/or have a few decks with the houses they're most interested in.

I think I will talk to my mates and well see about creating a pool of decks that we didn't enjoy playing.

Once we have this pool of decks, then you can take a deck and put one in. I may not have enjoyed a deck, but someone else may.

If we leave the decks with our FLGS then they can use them to run demo games, loan out to people and develop a community. We could also use them in a league where you play the ones you didn't throw into the pool.

New players can buy in by adding a deck to the pool then trading a deck for a deck. (So the first deck will "cost" 2). In that way we grow the pool with the player count.

On 8/28/2018 at 3:52 PM, Amanal said:

I think I will talk to my mates and well see about creating a pool of decks that we didn't enjoy playing.

Once we have this pool of decks, then you can take a deck and put one in. I may not have enjoyed a deck, but someone else may.

If we leave the decks with our FLGS then they can use them to run demo games, loan out to people and develop a community. We could also use them in a league where you play the ones you didn't throw into the pool.

New players can buy in by adding a deck to the pool then trading a deck for a deck. (So the first deck will "cost" 2). In that way we grow the pool with the player count.

Personally, I could easily see an FLGS doing a "Give a deck, take a deck" function, where players can give them a deck and get another deck (probably picked at random). The deck they get would go into a box with some other decks, ready to be handed out to someone else when they give in a deck.