So, you’ve decided you’d like to buy some Lorcana cards. Good luck finding any.
It feels wrong to describe Lorcana’s launch as “Ugly” since we’re still technically in the middle of the launch… But I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Ravensburger massively underestimated initial demand for the product.
I could just link to the subreddit here, but I decided I’d grab a few choice examples:
1. Players complaining about LGS’s selling Booster Boxes for $300
2. Players being told their LGS won’t get more product till October
3. Boxes selling for $400 in the land of Canada
Oh, and Penny Arcade made this.
In short, nobody can actually buy what they want, every item for sale in big box stores already got bought out by bots, and the general tone is “People like the game, but are pretty upset they can’t get cards to play it.”
And booster packs are $19 a pop.
Edit: In the time between me writing this, and the post going live, they’ve gone down to $15. Which is still too high.
So, ugly launch. But I’d be lying if I said that this was particularly surprising. A lot of TCG’s have these super hype launches, that then fizzle out several months later. MetaZoo might be the best example of this.
Right now though, we’re firmly in the middle of the hype train, and it shows no sign of stopping. As such, as much as I like the game, there’s no way I would ever buy it at current prices.
A Tale As Old As Time
Part of that is because I’ve been here before. I’ve bought into plenty of TCG’s that ended up dying early on (Looking at you, Force of Will). Prices for a base set are a pretty bad way of estimating how much staying power a game will have. For example, a few years ago the new hotness was MetaZoo. Then it became Flesh & Blood.
There will always be a brand new card game, and there will always be content creators hyping it up as the next member/killer of the Big Three: Magic, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh.
Here’s the thing: in over 15 years in this hobby, I haven’t seen any new TCG’s that have really stuck around. Some end up niche, like Buddyfight Vanguard, or Flesh and Blood.
But most just fade and die.
Why does this matter for Lorcana?
I’ll write more on this in the conclusion to this series, but as I’ve already noted, Lorcana is currently at a state of very low complexity, and perhaps more importantly, it can’t actually get less complex over time.
Unless Lorcana wants to be yet another failed attempt to bottle lightning, right now could be the largest period of hype that it experiences. And it probably wants to convert that hype into an actual community of long term players.
From a gameplay perspective, this is currently the easiest period for onboarding players who have never played a card game before. From a physical product acquisition perspective, it’s the worst time for onboarding new players. If there’s not enough product for people who are actively aware and hyped about the game to get their hands on it, there sure isn’t enough for casual players to try it, or buy it.
That’s not to say Lorcana is dead in the water. But frankly, I would consider this to be a badly managed launch for what feels like a family oriented introductory card game.
So that said, let’s say you do get ahold of those booster packs, and don’t have to sell a kidney for them. Then what? How do the odds for various rarities stack up? How much of the set are you likely to see?
That’s what we’ll be covering tomorrow.