I just want to make the distinction between selling cards and the value of cards. Sure, to be crass, "before," DOA could fetch $30 maybe. Ebay for $40. They could command a trade for anything, a Shiny Trap and a Challenge From Beyond, two for a Yithian Deck, six Mr. Sixes, whatever story you want to weave. "I could have made millions off you guys," is not that story. Think instead, forgetting reason, that the AE crowd found them beautiful. Never has a white border reprint felt so far from its roots than Core 56 DOA.

Sometimes a thread fares well with banal counterpoint.

Dexter Drake said:

Mr Drake

Thank you for your support and great to see you on the forums. BTW - after that trip to the FLGS I had to get my fanbelt and tensioner replaced - $250. I'm never buying GM again

sepayne7l said:

Of course, my Dominion box came with this great plastic insert that actually has spaces to hold all of the cards in an organized manner and keep them there.

But whatever, it's crappy packaging design, not a big surprise to me after the bizzarre Chapter Pack boxes, what bugs me is the lack of domains. They are an integral part of the game. How did they miss them? It's like shipping the AGOT Core without house cards, it would just boggle the mind. And yet it happened. Where was quality control there?

*edit*

Whoops, didn't see the second page before I posted this. Good to see you mention something, Christian. I can understand if the price would really have been that prohibitive, but I do hope you can see from the players perspective as well that it's annoying to open up a box and see that much space taken up by a holder that doesn't actually do anything productive once the product has been opened.

Hybrid, yes, I would say that The Spaniard probably does have some experience as a CoC player. Take a look at the rule book next to Eric Lang's name.

That said, there are some cards missing that I would have really loved to see in the Core Set, but all in all, I think it looks like a wonderful place to start, and I know it's gotten one player here interested in getting back in, and possibly a couple new people. I think we can have some solid variety at the moment. Thank goodness that all 7 factions were actually represented in one box, unlike the AGoT core.

johnny shoes said:

I guess the posted core set spoilers are wrong. Someone listed this card as Deep One Ambush. FFG really reprinted Deep One Assault?

I'm highly disappointed they choose to do that. Way to crush the value of that card.

There is indeed a list of chase rares reprinted to core - many more quality rares too. If and when core II is released the number will double. We'll see Shining Trap, Assistant, and everything else. Core one taught me that FFG pulled from everywhere in the game, except promos. DOA proves FFG did not limit their options. The maket is half shot, but I think its only psychological.

I can understand why FFG chose to release the set in the size box they did - it makes it look the same on the shelf as any of their other board games. I.e. it's more likely to attract the interest of the passing board-gamer, which is effectively the new market they are aiming for.

Although I agree the insert provided in the box is disappointing and lacks practical value, I didn't find this a problem. As I've also got the Arkham Horror board game and recently loaded all the stuff from the Dunwich Horror and Kingsport Horror expansions into the same box, I've used one of the spare plastic inserts from the (now useless) expansion boxes in my Core Set box and it works just fine.

mikelosaurus said:

Exactly. It's all about shelf space. Remember when CDs (both music and video games)came in bigger boxes? Same thing. The more shelf space you take up the more people will look at the product and the less shelf space your competition has.

Dr. Zoltar said:

Err, we're clearly not on the same page here. It's not like shops couldn't do with the extra space. The philosophy is much likely to have been simply 'well if it looks like a board game then board gamers are more likely to buy it'.

mikelosaurus said:

Makes sense. I think that it's likely to prove a successful ploy and, as previously mentioned, the box art is bloody nice. Just a **** shame 'bout the insert.

The info I posted was given to me from a friend who used to work at Wizards of the Coast. And that was the reasoning for some of the sizes and shapes they chose for game boxes. A lot of I/O psychology goes into pacakging.

As a new and relatively unbiased card gamer (having returned after a long hiatus of only playing tabletop wargames), let me say a few negative and many more positive things about this game and its packaging, etc.

NEGATIVE:

1) What a dumb-ass idea for a cardboard tray, indeed. I pitched that right into the back seat of my car while tearing my first core set open in the mall parking lot. I know, dork alert... At least no one was there watching my nerdy excitement.

2) Holy crap, what was that tray all about? Still thrown carelessly in the rear footwell. what utter piss. It'd mangle your cards if you could fit more than a handful in each tray!

3) Asylum Packs are most inefficiently packaged, with extra cardboard inserts with no apparent purpose other than to make them look like more than 40 cards. And regarding the space available in said boxes... Sorry, FF, I'm going to sleeve my decks when I play with them, not stuff them back in a loose, hard-to-open "reusable deck box!" FAIL.

POSITIVE:

1) What an AMAZING outer box for the core set! It's very durable, quite pretty, and fits my ENTIRE COLLECTION OF DECKS, COUNTERS, MARKERS, TRADES, RARE SETS, WITH ROOM FOR A WELL TRAINED MINIATURE SCHNAUSER THAT ACCOMPANIES ME TO THE GAME STORE AS MY PERSONAL FAMILIAR.

2) The fold-up stories from the Sleeper cycle fit seamlessly into the back of the core rulebook - NEAT, kinda liked they planned it or summat'!

3) I just bought Kung Fu Fighting, but hated its plastic dual-deck insert tray and got rid of that to be able to store all its cards and supplements along with the contents of More Kung Fu Fighting... but I didn't throw out that tray - it now resides in my CoC box on top of all my many piles of things as a deep dual card-holder tray. REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE - I AM A PLANETEER!!!

4) When I get my 2nd and 3rd Core set, I'll undoubtedly use SOME of the extra resource markers for when my decks produce extra resources to use, but I'll still have way too many! I'm thinking of integrating the remainder into a terrain piece for Warhammer that is dedicated to gribbly sleeping sea daemons. Beautiful...

5) Those are some sturdy wound and story tokens, and a whopper of a gaming board! MAGNIFICENT!

I love this game, and I've barely started playing it and planning what all to do with it. It is causing me to forgive M:tG for ruining my youth and spoiling me for other CGs.

Thanks, CoC:LCG.

Love,

~J~

For now, I'm using the LCG box to hold all my custom Arkham Horror Investigators, Ancient Ones, and Heralds (and rule cheatsheets, and FAQs, etc...) Not to mention putting all the rulebooks in one box. And my Monster Cup.

I'm using the tokens glass-side-up as extra Clue Tokens (usually taken directly from the Pool as the dark brown is harder to see on my 1st edition Arkham Board) during the main game, and wound-side-up as "hit points" during the Final Battle: just count out enough wounds in a pile near the Ancient One so that they can be removed in a "Wound-Wound-Doom Token" rhythm (depending on number of players, of course).

The unweildy Cthulhu figures...that have been battered against each other so much during shipping that they look like abused candles...have been tossed into a junk drawer. Is anyone really going to use those?

I look at the box as a storage repository for all of your cards. Throw away the insert; it is useless after you open the box for the first time. Now you have a large area to keep your cards including your own customized decks. Just band each deck together and you're all set. You also still have space for the tokens and the Cthulhu markers.

Never put rubber bands around cards. Might as well keep them in your bicycle spokes.

johnny shoes said:

if you buy the cards you can store them however you want........

True. All are free to choose. Rather, be aware that rubber banding cards is one of those classic collector stories. Ranks probably number four behind.

1. My mom threw them away / sold them for $3

2. They got ruined by water stored in the basement.

3. Tricked by Barry Snogfield to trade them for a bow and arrow.

4. I have them but they're warped and chewed on the sides because I used rubber bands - now in poor, not fair condition.

5. I found a Honus Wagner in the attic worth nine thousand dollars.

rubber bands do hold cards together, but yeah not the best storage for collecting purposes. but playing without sleeves is just as damaging. thats why i have a one-of for collection, pack to binder. they never see play hardly see light. just there to look at. and the cards i play with get sleeved right away.

if youre doing all kinds of bending for shuffling and no sleeves, well rubber bands are atleast keeping them from flying around the box why transporting them.

This packaging is quite simply socially irresponsible.

Quite aside from the uselessness of the box (which I can handle really, it's become standard these days) this package would fail standards in Australia if it contained food, as the proportion of empty space to box surface area is too high.

This is a problem for two reasons:

1. It misleads your customers as to the quantity of what they are buying (yes, I know they state the contents, but I don't measure X number of cards before I buy, I just assume that a large box means a roughly proportionately large amount of contents!)
   
2. MORE IMPORTANTLY, this is a massive carbon footprint issue, as the cardboard, ink and shrinkwrap packaging (not to mention shipping, logistics and inventory storage) is ludicrous for the component size.

Seriously, this was an insane choice of box. I can only conclude that someone screwed up big time in the design of the fold-out mat (which is very very cool) and didn't tell packaging until it was too late to commision a different box size. This game could have fit in a Silver Line style box with no trouble at all (possibly minus the Cthulhus).

I'm not going to stop buying from them, but it's a black mark for me, especially if they keep doing it (which I hope they won't).

Yeah...too bad most big business philosophies I know fall along the lines of:

"You don't have to be chummy with your clientele...Even slightly displeasing them is okay as long as you can make the sale."

Now with that out of the way...despite being a billion dollar business I rate FFG very highly.

It's the only one of its kind:

Leader of all things Ameritrash.

I'm not really so much mad about the tray. Sure, it's absolutely useless, but you can fairly easily throw it away. I really like the miniature Cthulhus. They're completely impractical, but a very nice piece of swag. I'm mostly irritated by the card contents in the box. For one, the game was marketed as a complete game in a box. Only having one copy of each card is a BIG problem in that regard. It's discouraging to new players to have decks that don't function properly because of the card mix. The set certainly could have been better in that regard. More than that, though, I'm irritated by the fact that, if you follow the instructions in the book, you end up with decks that aren't even tournament size, and that's unforgiveable. It's nearly as bad as the AGoT Premium starter, with three decks that are less than half the legal tournament size. At least the size of the CoC decks don't render them completely unplayable. The one per deck nearly does, though. It's the first time I've ever purchased a Fantasy Flight Product and been disappointed.

I wound up removing the insert and made my own using foam core purchased at the dollar store.

The artwork on the box is excellent. I wanted to use the box to store the new LCG style cards.

Personally, I'm glad for the big box. It fits in with my other games and, as of now, holds the core set plus a total of 5 asylum packs fairly nicely (with room to spare). I stole the insert from Ticket to Ride, since I couldn't use that anymore because of the Switzerland expansion.