Category: Card Games

PAX Unplugged 2023 – The Trading Card Games

Ah, Trading Card Games, or if you’re me, “The Money Hole.” PAX Unplugged is almost always awash in TCG’s of some sort or another, and this year was no exception.

Alpha Clash

Alpha Clash was the indie TCG of the show for me. Were there other small TCG’s at the show? Yes, but if you can afford a Disney license for your product, you’re not small enough.

It’s also the one I’m probably going to write the least about here. It’s actually interesting, so I’m going to play a bunch more and do a full writeup later. But as a teaser, here are some of the game’s mechanics:

  • Every creature effectively has haste. (Okay.)
  • All cards are lands. (We’ve seen this before, but still neat.)
  • The entire system for resolving combat has been blown up. There’s a secondary system to prevent the game from stalling out in a game of chicken with combat tricks. (Actually very new and interesting.)

As with almost all games, I do have problems with it. I dislike the the rarity system, and I don’t love the American comic book aesthetic. But the game’s actual mechanics are far more solid than pretty much every other indie TCG I’ve run into over the last few years. So this could be one to watch.

If this sounds interesting, here’s a link to the game’s webpage, and the game has a fully functional TTS implementation as well.

Star Wars: Unlimited

I’ve done some thinking about other Disney properties in Lorcana, but I never put my thoughts into writing in my “Future of Lorcana” writeup a while back. I was curious if Lorcana could potentially see Marvel or Star Wars cards, and the answer right now appears to be “No.” Otherwise I suspect Fantasy Flight wouldn’t have shelled out for a license for Star Wars: Unlimited.

I never actually asked anyone what the Unlimited in the name meant. Presumably the amount of money Fantasy Flight hopes to make with the game? Regardless, I did play a demo of Star Wars: Unlimited.

I don’t have much to say on the game itself. It’s not uninteresting, but the starter decks and demos often don’t translate into thrilling gameplay. Meanwhile, Star Wars: Unlimited doesn’t have any incredibly unique inherent systems if you’ve already played a ton of games.

The most interesting part of the game for me is how it handles the ever present “actions on opponent’s turn” problem. Star Wars: Unlimited makes it so that players don’t really have turns, they just have actions. Doing anything: attacking, playing a unit card, using a commander ability, or playing an action card all use up your action, resolve the effect, and then pass priority to your opponent. In addition, one of the actions that can be taken is to pass all futures for the round, and in exchange, get to act first next round, called seizing the initiative.

If I remember correctly, I think this sort of mechanic might have been in Star Wars: Destiny, another collectible game by Fantasy Flight.

My overall thoughts on Unlimited are kind of just “Okay.” Star Wars has negative brand loyalty from me, mostly because I just don’t care about the franchise. Also because I’m petty and billion years ago dated someone who cared too much. There were some elements in Star Wars: Unlimited that felt like fun flavor touches with how certain mechanics functioned, or characters worked together. But while I’d play more of the game, I’m not in any rush to acquire a copy. It launches March 8th, and I suppose I’ll see what state it’s in at PAX East.

Lorcana

The most notable thing about Lorcana for me at PAX Unplugged was that the prices were “within expectations” as opposed to an “arm and leg.” Usually things are not notably cheaper at Conventions. Usually it’s the other way around. But booster boxes and decks were at MSRP. For comparison, single booster boxes are currently $207 dollars.

Not cheap, but yknow. Normal prices. Also 8% sales tax. The hell is that Pennsylvania?

I was going to say that I didn’t actually play any Lorcana at the show, but that’s not true! While I didn’t play any during the show, I did run into a very friendly group of folks in the hotel lobby Wednesday night, and spent a few hours chatting with them. And also beating them with their own starter decks that they’d just picked up. Because y’know, I’ve played the game before. A lot.

There wasn’t anything in the new set that immediately stood out to me. Looking back at it now, it does have at least one new keyword, and some new typal references. It also had a fair amount of space on the show floor.

Magic: The Gathering

Magic earns a slot on this just barely above Pokémon by virtue of the fact that I actually did play some Magic at Unplugged. It was a grand total of 3 games, they were all two-headed giant Ixalan drafts. Me and the friend I was playing with won every single one, admittedly some by the skin of our teeth. But win we did, and I was able to get a copy of one of the Dr. Who commander decks with our prize tickets.

There’s not too much to say on Magic, really. Ixalan is a fun set. Pasttimes is still running events in a way that makes no sense. You still have to use the terrible MTG Companion app whose one saving grace is that I can log in with my MTG Arena Account.

Pokémon

I didn’t play much Pokémon this year outside of looping by the Pokémon booth to get some pins. At this point, I’ve played those demos enough that I could probably run them. They did add a small raid battle mode which was almost cool, but unfortunately, doesn’t actually have any meaningful strategy.

As such, it’s hard to tell if Pokémon was mostly at Unplugged as a collector’s game, as opposed to a TCG.

Everyone else.

It was an interesting year for PAX TCG’s. There was a lot more support for mid-level entries than I was expecting. The show had at least semi-dedicated areas for Flesh & Blood, and One Piece. I think I saw SolForge fusion over somewhere as well. That said, I didn’t play any of these, and didn’t feel very compelled to.

Unlike last year, with Gem Blenders & Genesis, and last year’s PAX East with Nostalgix, it felt like a very light year for the true indies, with Alpha Clash really being the only one.

Still though. Lotta card games.

Magic’s New Play Boosters

Content Warning: Maximum Amounts of Inside Baseball on TCG’s

Magic just announced a new type of Booster Pack, and it’s something I find fascinating for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is that it has the potential to break some things horribly. Before I get into those things, I’m going to lay out a few assumptions. If you disagree with these assumptions, you’ll still enjoy the article, but it may sound like rambling from a madman.

Assumptions

  1. Magic cards are artificially scarce. It costs just as much to manufacture a rare or a mythic rare as a common or uncommon.
  2. Past a certain point, when opening booster packs to collect cards, the only card that matters is the rare or mythic. (Yes, there are uncommon cards with value like Pitiless Plunderer, but they’re few and far between.)
  3. Rare cards are more powerful. If two cards in the same set have a similar effect, and one is rare/mythic, and the other is common/uncommon, the rarer one will be better.
  4. Magic’s limited formats are reliant on uncommon and commons cards making up the bulk of the strategies and play.

Why New Boosters?

There are several reasons for play boosters. Most are in the Mark Rosewater writeup, but one is conspicuously absent: manufacturing cost. Back in December of 2022, the Pokemon TCG updated its boosters pricing, but also added additional rare cards. For Pokémon, adding more rares doesn’t have much of a trade off, because Pokémon doesn’t have a limited format.

But Magic does have a limited format, and that format is popular enough to cause a problem. Some Magic players use booster packs as game components to play one type of game, and some buy boosters to get components to play a different game.

Wizards’ first attempt to fix this problem was to split things out into Draft Boosters and Set Boosters, separating the two types of players. The aforementioned Mark Rosewater writeup is a 4 point memorandum on why that design failed for business reasons.

So now Wizards has done the opposite. They’re attempting to combine both products into a single product to be used by both audiences, solving the above issue of product availability and stocking.

A New Set of Problems

However, in moving the problem from a business problem into a design problem, they’ve opened the potential for a variety of incredible things to wrong, and that’s what I’m excited about.

See, Wizards is trying to make this product serve two masters. If the contents are a downgrade from Set Boosters, it’s going to piss off everyone not playing limited formats. The whole thing that made set boosters desirable (more variety of cards, more rares) could go completely out the window. Given that Set Boosters are the product that everyone is buying, according to Wizards themselves, I’m hopeful they won’t destroy the fun of Set Boosters.

Instead, I’m hoping they keep the rare rates up, and run Limited formats into the ground adding 50% more rares to a format with traditionally limited bombs.

Even if they don’t do that, though, having draftable cards from “The List” should be a real hoot. I’m looking forward to seeing Wrath of God and Skullclamp in low power limited games.

Ultimately, they’re going to have to make the experience different for someone: either drafters, or collectors. I’m hoping it’s the first, because watching Wizards warp a format for money is much funnier than watching people open trash rares.

Lorcana’s Future

So far this week we’ve looked at Lorcana’s strengths (game design) and weaknesses (product allocation, rarity distribution). So now it’s time to get into the armchair, and pundit like no one has pundited before. What does the future of Lorcana actually look like? Will this game be around in 2 years? What factors will determine its future?

The House of Mouse and the Burg of Ravens

Lorcana’s wide ranging appeal is likely going to be seen as the result of the use of Disney property. Ignoring whether or not this is completely true, this puts Disney in the driver’s seat here for the continued production of Lorcana as it exists, with the use of the Disney intellectual property.

And there are sooooo many things that have the potential to go wrong.

It’s worth noting that for the other large card games with sticking power, they almost always completely own the art and IP they’re working with. Pokémon is owned by the Pokémon Company, Yu-Gi-Oh is owned by Konami, and Magic is owned by Wizards of the Coast.

Sure, other card games that have IP from other franchises exist. There’s things like Weis Schwarz and MTG’s Universes Beyond. But these are side products, augmenting an existing game.

Here’s just a short list of problems I could see happening:

  1. Disney refuses to license any additional characters to Ravensburger for use, limiting space for growth.
  2. Disney ups the price of the license to the point that production of the game isn’t worth it.
  3. Disney approval and checks of licensed designs require a large amount of sign off, extending the production schedule of sets, and causing Lorcana to product sets at a much slower pace than its competitors.

And I’m sure more exist. The short version is that any breakdown of corporate goodwill or licensing agreements could kill Lorcana real quick.

Community Building

Disney can’t kill Lorcana faster than the fanbase could, though. Trading card games need an active community of players to survive and thrive. Do you know what doesn’t contribute to an active and healthy community? Booster packs costing the same amount as another game’s starter deck.

Some dude once said something about people being unable to survive off just bread. You can quote me on this one: card games can’t survive off whales alone. Right now, I suspect a majority of would-be players are priced out of the market for playing this game. Lorcana needs a casual player base.

Right now, Lorcana is not in the position to have that player base. That’s not to say you can’t buy singles and play the game cheaply. But the players Lorcana needs are the players who haven’t heard of something like TCG Player, and maybe don’t even known what TCG stands for.

If Lorcana isn’t able to actually meet demand and start selling to players who aren’t hyper invested, and who aren’t whales, they’re very unlikely to actually build the casual player base that is the fundamental foundation of a community. Without a community large enough to sustain prolonged interest, attract new players, and weather down time and bad sets/designs (because it will happen!), I predict Lorcana will shrivel and die.

This clause in particular seems incredibly… hmm. Look, friendly local game stores are not a big money business, and requiring a store to purchase new product every 90 days for an unproven game just to be in your program feels like it could go badly.

Oh, and also because I’m that sort of person, I read through the entire set of terms and conditions for becoming part of their organized play program, and while I’m not a lawyer, I’m gonna be honest. Their whole thing seems smotheringly draconian compared to other programs I’ve seen of this sort.

Author Note: Just based off theming and demographics, I suspect the group that needs to worry about Lorcana coming for its lunch money isn’t MTG, but Pokémon. Lorcana has the potential for cross generational appeal in a non-threatening manner, which is much more Pokémon vibe than Magic’s. Y’know, given that the upcoming Magic set features people being eaten by a murderous village of candy, in a world suffering from the aftereffects of invasion by a group of sentient flesh robot hivemind. Other sets this year include the giant living horror murder hotel.

Expansive Design

But not every prediction for Lorcana’s future is a bummer.

The last thing Lorcana needs is design space to continue to release expansions and sets. And I actually think it has that in spades. First Chapter is a very restrained product, and if playing a game makes me think of 5-6 new mechanics, I guarantee the actual designer has a list including all of those, and an additional fifty in a text document somewhere.

There’s a lot of obvious space. Cards that care about color. Cards that are multicolor. More typal support, modal typal punish. Just going and borrowing twenty years worth of what Magic already did.

Now, because the people who make this game are likely smart, they also need to do this in a way that isn’t overwhelming, but I have confidence they can pull that off.

Conclusion

Lorcana has the potential to turn the big 3 of cards games into the big 4. However, it needs to surpass a significant number of challenges and risk to do so. Even ignoring their fans, Disney and Ravensburger need to maintain a good working relationship. But the biggest challenge is going to be Ravensburger’s ability to supply product to LGS’s and other stores where people can buy it at sane prices.

Funnily enough, the one area I don’t have any worries about is the game’s design and playability. It’s fun. It’s interesting. It’s relatively unique.

But it needs to be easier to get ahold of than, for example, illegal street drugs. And also have a lower price point.

If Lorcana can do all of the above, and survive the next two years, then Ravensburger might actually have made a popular, mainstream TCG.

Lorcana Enchanted Rarity

Enchanted is Lorcana’s sixth rarity, and its rarest rarity. Enchanted cards alternate art cards with a special finish and design, but the same mechanics as a lower-rarity card.

Left: Belle, Strange but Special. Right: The exact same card, but 10x more expensive.

In Lorcana, First Chapter boosters, enchanted cards can only show up in the foil slot of the booster. This means you have at most one chance to pull an enchanted card per pack.

So what are the approximate odds? There’s no official source for these odds. Instead we’re going to look at two separate sources of experimental data.

The first is from Digital TQ, who posted their breakdown here. I don’t trust this breakdown very much for several reasons, but I’m still going to use it, and I’ll talk about why in a bit.

This data set has 216 booster packs opened (9 boxes worth) and 5 enchanted cards pulled. This puts them at an experimental probability of 2.3148% odds of a booster pack containing an enchanted card.

The second data set is from a game store in Halifax, Nova Scotia called The Deck Box. They posted their own data from opening 18 booster boxes online, and had an experimental probability of 0.9259%.

Wonderful graph made by The Deck Box, with the experimental probabilities of various cards. Like, seriously. This is a really nice infographic.

So, we have two different sets of numbers. You might have noticed that what I didn’t do is just average these two numbers together, because that would violate principal one of the Fundamental Constraints of Math.

This might be better worded as “The Two Fundamental Constraints of Mathematical Analysis”. Also, in this diagram, the stupid person is me. I’m the stupid.

As such, experimental data indicates that the experimental probability of opening an Enchanted card is likely around 1%.

Math Time

Disclaimer: Any of the below writing and statement of the problem is the result of my requesting that some friends help me out. As a result, any mistakes for dumb shit, misinterptation of math, or misuse of statistics should fall to me, chief idiot of Gametrodon. Any praise for analysis or clever thought should go to them.

However, just because I’m stupid doesn’t mean my friends are. In fact, some of them are quite smart, and actually do statistics based things.

So I reached out to one of these friends, and asked him to help me calculate a range of probabilities for what the true rarity of enchanted cards is likely to be, and here’s what he came up with.

VanillaWald HighWilsonWilson LowWilson High
Estimated Probability of Rare0.0090.0180.01360.00360.0236

So based off these numbers, here’s what we can say.

Based on the assumption that the 432 packs were opened were a representative sample of Lorcana booster packs, we believe that the true probability of opening an Enchanted rarity Lorcana card in any given random pack is between 0.3%, and 2.3%.

So, assuming that’s the case, how many boosters would you need to open to probably get an enchanted card, for each of these probabilities?

Packs OpenedOdds of Getting At least 1 Enchanted Card at 0.3%
51.49%
102.96%
246.96%
9625.06%
Packs OpenedOdds of Getting At least 1 Enchanted Card at 1%
54.90%
109.56%
2421.43%
9661.90%
Packs OpenedOdds of Getting At least 1 Enchanted Card at 2.3%
510.98%
1020.76%
2442.79%
9689.29%

There are a lot of assumptions here, and I’m sure real statisticians are looking at this and wincing, but the point I mostly want to make with these charts is the following:

If something has a 1/100 chance of occurring, and you do it 100 times, there’s no guarantee of getting that 1/100 chance odds. Actual odds are around 60%.

Author’s Note: I don’t care about enchanted cards, because when all is said and done, they’re alt-arts, and that’s it. That said, leaving them out entirely seemed rude to people who might care. So I’ve compromised by giving them their own post.

Lorcana’s Rough Launch

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.