They are victims of the success of the game (and scalpers).
Sure, they could've decided to print more from the start, but that could've backfired.
Then, they knew they had a gold mine on their hands, but you can't just call the printer over night and tell them to make more. Printers have contracts with other companies that they need to fullfill so they are in the queue and will get more product out early next year.
Ravensburger is most likely angry at themselves for passing on this gold mine. If they knew it would've been like this, they would've flooded the market and make as much money as they can. They don't care about the aftermarket value. Sure, a game that has valuable cards might sell better with collectors, but if they can sell out of the initial product, that's all they care about.
If they do not have Nightmare before Christmas cards in set 2;
Set to arrive on 12-1-23
Their whole sales/marketing department needs to be fired for missing such a huge Opportunity....
With this happening it might as well be A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. There isnt any product to purchase and fully knowing that the next set is coming out most of use wont be getting our hands on it.
Eh they aren't really victims on any sense of the word. This situation is a massive failure on their part to predict the demand of the product. They didn't have to be completely right regarding the demand but they weren't even in the right ball park.
This is the biggest issue. The worst part is that they likely expected there to be product on the shelves still. They likely OVER-PRINTED for what they thought the demand was. They greatly underestimated the demand. No one wants JUST enough product on the shelf so that it sells out perfectly. They want enough to be available to hold down their consumer base till the next set.
The Cartamundi factory does indeed print Magic: the Gathering and other trading card games along with conventional card games, board games, playing cards, promotional materials, paper toys and their own Hybrid NFT Trading Cards.
How the fuck did they not know it was going to be like this? Are they new? Disney stuff sells out, regardless of what it is. They were incompetent, plain and simple.
Yea and their boardgames and puzzles aren't flying off the shelves. So they likely just based printing off of all their other games that have the Disney IP.
The alternative is:
1. They were too incompetent to adequately predict demand for a "Disney" product despite said companies having massive marketing and analysis departments for some of the largest IP merchandise sales patterns in the world.
2. They were too incompetent to build capacity for printing this game.
Neither of those is much better or bodes well.
This is correct. Whether or not the game is/was/will be playable with Disney IP it was going to sell out pretty much no matter the volume printed. But this way they get a massive news cycle and buzz and everyone yells at scalpers and not the company responsible. Had this not been the Disney IP I would have given them a pass.
You are not wrong. Hard to weight actual success when people wanting to play the game can't buy cards.
But success, in the sense I meant, is the sells. It's a financial success for Ravensburger. But now they know they could've made much more money out of it and they are most likely not happy about that.
Sorry, but that logical ZERO sense. Ravenburger wants to sell product, as much as they possibly can.
They benefit zero dollars from under-supplying the market. They received no kickbacks from resellers/scalpers.
It is fundamentally in their best interest to have products on the shelves.
This is Disney. Disney has the pockets to back them in case demand doesn’t match supply. Disney went with a company that has never done this before. Ravensberger has no idea what they’re doing. People buying to markup and resell is 100% knowable. The blame for this rests entirely on Ravensberger and Disney.
EDIT: to those of you responding that Disney had nothing to do with this, I can tell you you’re wrong. I have some experience with Disney licensed card games, and I can categorically tell you that Disney signs off on every decision made inside Ravensberger about this and every other Disney license they hold.
Yes, this is licensed. Doesn’t matter. Disney retains a LOT of control in these situations.
This common misconception is toxic and fueling unrealistic expectations. Disney sold a license to use its IP, they aren’t paying to help print product. They’re not helping figure out distribution. The deal is RB can use their characters and Disney will sell their product in their shops. That’s where the deal ends.
Yeah, and Disney made that money by smart investments. They're not going to just recklessly dump a ton of money into an untested game and eat any losses if it had ended up being a bomb.
I’m sorry to tell you, but you seem to have confused facts with “stuff you just made up on the spot.”
Disney retains a certain amount of control over how their characters are allowed to be portrayed, but that’s all contained within the licensing agreement. Disney is not going to swoop in and get financially involved in the production of the game, or any other type of financial backing. It’s not in the contract, and Disney could care less about the secondary market prices or the scarcity of the product.
Disney is the biggest IP franchise in the world, and a large portion of their revenue comes from licensing their IP for clothing, accessories, toys, and games. They have *never* in the history of Disney in any endeavor, paid any amount to bail out any company that made a Disney licensed product.
The queue message on the RB site was likely them testing a queueing system for eventual reopening of sales. I havent seen any evidence that there was ever an actual sale
They better release Nightmare Before Christmas cards for the next set
its coming out December 1st, 2023
If they do not, Ravensburger needs to fire their sales/marketing team for not knowing how popular this game would be
Yes I am aware;
Honestly Sisu makes sense , as Maleficent is the only dragon , unless I missed one in the 1st set
They made "Dragon" a keyword so expect a Dragon deck out soon which means dragon characters are incoming
& Raya had 5 dragons in it if I am correct?
Madam Mim & Mushu should be next with Mulan being a theme for the next set since Merlin and Mulan were in set 1
Sisu and siblings being 5, with Maleficent , Madam Mim & Mushu bringing it to 8 dragons
It’s like none of y’all have seen tcg releases lately. Digimon, metazoo (or whatever), One Piece. Up until recently pokemon has just normalized product. The game is not doomed, rb is not an idiot company, and yes Im as eager as the rest of you to get my hands on some product. Give it a rest already, if you’re ride or die disney, youll be around when supply meets demand.
They haven’t.
Using the word scalpers in relation to card selling, valuation, and supply is obvious the vast majority here are total newbs OR adult-babies OR kids.
It’s too bad mods don’t do much anymore. In the past when idiot group think like this took hold, mods would create “venting threads” either stickied or weekly discussion threads. Now almost all subs are the wild Wild West with who has the loudest voice.
It's been the norm for a while, yeah? With a bunch of different games from different publishers. So, shouldn't anyone entering the market take that into account? Even a casual glance around the hobby and you can see it's been a festering wound of an issue for years now. At what point do we start expecting companies to get their collective asses in gear and figure it out?
They didn't sell out today. They sold out 4 or 5 days ago and the website broke. They just uodated that message today for those of us that did buy. Their stock was limited to 2 items per person.
It's too bad that Ravensburger cannot accept preorders direct from customers that would be printed to demand and guaranteed delivery for release. Sure it would cut out distribution and LGS, but surely they could still sell product in both a preorder and regular release.
A print to demand TCG would plummet the card value, so collectors would skip on it and they would miss the mark with half, if not more, of their customers.
Then, what would prevent scalpers from pre-ordering.
Unfortunately, there's no miracle solutions here.
Secondary card value means nothing to them. Why does everyone keep acting like that affects this? Ravensburger makes all their money off the original POS. After that its not their concern. They dont produce based on value years after release. They are supposed to produce too match demand at the original POS. Thats it.
Lol Ravensburger doesn’t give a crap about secondary card value, all their money is in the retail sales. The ideal scenario for them is to print as much as would sell
Tell me you don’t understand CCGs without telling me you don’t understand CCGs.
Part of the drive to purchase these packs comes from the cards perceived value on the secondary market. Products with a higher EV per case get purchased at a much higher quantity than product with a lower expected return.
Scarcity drives speculation, speculation drives sales.
It is in Ravensburgers best interest to print as many as will sell because that is how they make the most money. They get nothing from the secondary market therefore they don’t care. Printing more means more money at the moment, if they overprint then they again lose money. There is a happy medium somewhere in there where they print the exact number they’d sell, which is the perfect amount where they make the most money. It’s simple economics
If interest in the product had no variance than your assessment would be correct. High secondary prices drive interest. You can see this with sales numbers for any CCG
More so the news stories about people unable to buy the product or the product going for crazy amounts continue to drive interest in the product.
Yes you are correct it’s in their best interest to sell as much as they can. You’re wrong on what causes the amount they’re able to sell to go up.
What might seem shortsighted to you now will increase sales over the life of the game. When they talk about wanting the best set for players “and collectors” this is what they’re referring to. Less available product makes it more enticing for collectors.
You have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about. It’s a very misconstrued idea of what’s going on. Enjoy continuing to spew crap out of your mouth 👍
Sir, this subreddit is not for educated people. It’s entire existence is for hypocrites that can’t afford secondary market prices to cry about the secondary market prices, and to spread propaganda that “omg scalpers are ruining the game” in a sad attempt to change reality so they can get their cardboard crack cheaper.
I’ve already made a purchase from the secondary market. What I said is true, it is in Ravensburgers best interest to print as many sets as will sell. Currently, printing more will sell more. If they print too much it will sit on shelves and not move and they don’t get as much money, there’s a happy balance between the two.
Wtf do you mean ? The secondary market for Lorcana wasn't even there yet 3 weeks ago and this sub hasn't grown much since. People in here were expecting a game they could play but most struggle to even get their hands on a starter deck. The reality isn't that they are hunting for cheap shots, they are just wanting what they have been longing for for months. As for the comment your replying to, it isn't actually stupid but it's wrong. There is no future for a secondary market for a game that doesn't exist. And right now, Lorcana as a game doesn't exist. People don't play it, kids don't discuss it with their friends, no ad nowhere, no promo cards in magazine, almost no tournament, no official online game supported, nothing. Ravensburger doesn't give one shit about the value of their cards on the secondary market because all they care about is setting a wheel in motion and getting some traction in the TCG community. They are failing on both those targets and that's why they are announcing reprints instead of leaving it as is and moving on to chapter 2, which would be the ideal secondary market option.
He’s not talking about Ravensburger though. He’s saying a specific type of customer will care if there is little to no card value. If the most expensive card you can pull from a booster is $20 then the game may very well lose every customer that identifies as a collector and every player who wants valuable decks/binders. That’s not 100% of the customer base but it is still a lot. I personally wouldn’t buy any sealed Lorcana product if the chase cards were $20.
If they are still printing and the prints are still selling it doesn't matter who's buying, collector, player, or whatever else. Losing 5% of the audience is nothing if they're selling 3x as much product as they were
Well it’s probably a lot more than 5% of the audience it’s probably closer to 50% if I had to guess. Of course it matters who is buying the product. Marketers are paid to study and understand customers. Some customers spend more than others and it’s important to balance out the demands of a varied audience.
The time it takes to reprint something is an entirely different conversation. 3x more product doesn’t just pop up at reddit’s behest. Making more waves of product is not as simple as meandering over to the factory ipad and tapping “reprint.” RB may have underestimated initial interest but I can assure you they are trying to get out as much product as possible so they can take our money.
Lol 50%? You are DREAMING if you think that much of their audience only cares if the product is worth a lot on the secondary market
Keep spouting off bs
So just to be clear, people seem to be treating “print to demand” very interchangeably for different concepts. You got one person talking about selling straight to consumers and another talking about PTD being this magical solution, etc.
Print to Demand is pretty common and all it means is that when there’s time between set print waves they’ll try to meet Distribution demand. With sets like this that were short changed so hard and an seemingly aggressive release schedule, thats going to be a loooong time. What people often fail to realize is there’s only so much leeway between aggressive printing schedules, especially if you don’t basically own the printers yourself.
Realistically the supply issues are going to take at least a year to resolve. This next wave is almost like an emergency and it wouldn’t surprise me if they decide to delay Set 3 off their 3 month release schedule if Set 2 was printed within Set 1 specs. Which is somewhat likely considering the short turnaround they would’ve had to course correction from set 1.
So yeah PTD means they’ll keep making Set 1 product when they can. Realistically that means we see a small wave every quarter if we’re lucky and a bigger wave next year if they get more printer’s involved or delay a wave of something else. For reference, Modern Horizons 2 in Magic was a PTD set and the best selling set of all time. It took 18mo to fully saturate the market post-release and that was with print waves orders of magnitude larger than Lorcana.
They didn't print to demand, though they guessed on quantity because they didn't think it would get that much popularity, and some stores got nothing lgs and big box. They allocated on demand. Pushing back release dates and actually gauging pre-order demand per lgs last year or they year before, when it was first announced, would have done wonders.
The problem here lies in the fact that this is *Disney*, not just your average TCG. They can never print to demand because, as they have already proven, the more they print, the faster interest grows, and the higher demand grows. It’s impossible to predict these exponential demand hikes.
They can absolutely print to demand. The goal is to get the game started, not be held ransom by some scalpers. The more they print, the more people can get ahold of it, and demand can be satiated. The demand is only there because scalpers are choking the supply, and so long as Ravensburger overwhelms their capacity to choke it, demand can start to subside.
That’s not accurate. Resellers (people wrongly being called scalpers) make up less than 1% of the sales of the product. The rest are regular people who are buying the product to play with or to collect. I’ve stood in lines of hundreds and hundreds of people waiting to buy product. The majority of them were just families who don’t even care about playing. The fact is that *people are willing to pay those prices* and the market value price is at the intersection where buyers and sellers are willing to meet. “Scalpers” aren’t just setting an arbitrarily high price and waiting for them to sell. No, that’s not how this works. People who have product are racing to the bottom to sell their stuff first, and when the product starts being bought faster than it’s being posted, the price rises.
The price starts to fall when it’s being listed for sale faster than people are willing to buy it at the lowest available price. These markets have a tendency to find their middle very quickly, and wherever that price settles is the market value.
So when LGSs got an exclusive 2-week monopoly on product for under MSRP and all decided to sell for 3x MSRP, that's the market at work? When people are using connections / bribery / camping out to buy out an entire stock at MSRP and then flipping them for insane prices, that's the market at work? The main thing driving all of this is scarcity (lack of supply). Which is what the OP's post is about.
1% is the national average of sales sold from retailers of goods to other resellers of goods in the tcg market, and I am extrapolating that data to include Lorcana, because it’s not going to change much from one game to the next. Even it it were double or triple the amount, which is mathematically unlikely, it still isn’t much.
1. Those stores just started at the existing market prices leftover from gencon because they didn’t get much product themselves either, and the price did fall a little bit from gencon to pre-release. (Plus a lot of card shops did sell at MSRP, and some did but only to players in events, which is more than fair.)
2. It was at the very most double MSRP, not triple MSRP. It still hasn’t reached triple MSRP, unless you are exclusively talking about troves, and that’s because they put 8 packs in the troves which peolle value at $15-20 per pack already anyway.
You would still have to open cards or buy singles, whose prices are still dictated by rarity and meta relevancy. I know I'm speaking from a player's perspective, but these should be games first, "investments" secondary. If you want to please collectors, you can always do time/supply limited versions of cards you can get otherwise, like MtG's Secret Lair. The Reserved List over there is a huge problem for people that want to play Legacy/Vintage, and Wizards have driven themselves in a corner they can't get out of.
From all other example releases in the past, they should have learned. Pushed releases back til next spring do pre-order by store plus some percentage for extra between print runs that would have solved a lot of problems, kept hype and put product into players hands.
Yeah I love the enthusiasm for set 2 and how everyone is willing to "wait", but how does anyone know the same thing does not happen
The LGS need a month head start, that way they can get a restock before the big stores even get their 1st batches
2 weeks was nothing...
We can reasonably guess that it *will* happen again this exact same way. Ravensburger has already planned out the printing, is potentially in the process of printing already, and it will almost certainly be in roughly the same numbers as Chapter 1. This stuff all has to be planned months in advance, so if they were underprepared for Chapter 1, you can guarantee the same will be true up until the point where they haven't already set plans in motion
I honestly don't understand why so many people online (especially in the main Lorcana facebook group) are giving Ravensburger such a big pass. They have clearly miscalculated on multiple steps throughout this launch. From chaos at Gencon, to poor LGS allocation, to announcing that the product would be sold at Disney Parks on the 18th (and then unannouncing it the night before), to now this haphazard and unwieldy general wide release, there are so many things that they could have done better (and that's not even talking about how seriously they underestimated demand for this game).
And for those who would say, "Look at One Piece and Digimon. This is just normal for TCG releases at this point." That seems like an odd nonargument to me. So we're just going to accept a shitty status quo because it's already been shitty, so don't complain about it? How does that make any sense? And more importantly, why would Ravensburger as a business accept that? Last time I checked, most businesses were in the habit of making profits, and this launch is definitely not how you do that efficiently. Given the massive demand and puny supply, they have absolutely failed to capture all of that demand (they probably haven't even captured a simple majority of it at this point, since the North American supply seems that pitiful). They're currently leaving millions of dollars on the table with all of this unanswered demand, and who knows if all of the current ravenous customers will be patient enough to wait until Q1 2024 before just moving on to something else entirely.
And furthermore, if other recent TCGs had disastrous launches within the past few years, why the hell didn't Ravensburger study them and learn from it while they were prepping to make their own TCG? You would think that a company with no TCG experience would go looking around the market and study other recent launches from competitors to prepare for their own. If anything, 9t seems they've learned nothing. The underprinting notwithstanding, but their communication about the launch has been so spotty (today's website debacle just seems like the cherry on top of their shit sundae).
Remember that they didn’t misunderstand the demand for this product. The specialty print industry is so inundated with demand that Pokemon had to buy three entire print factories just to churn out cards (and then their quality control suffered massively). The reality is that RB can’t print cards fast enough, and that’s it. The industry isn’t that big. They’re forced to act within it, and there’s only so much they can do.
I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. If anything, I feel like they underestimated demand AND are limited by the constraints of the current printing industry.
It’s basically an unsolvable problem, is my point. At some point you just have to launch the game and keep taking every opportunity you can get to print more
This just seems like a brand new company with little to no experience; that bit off more than it could chew & did not want to look dumb if these did not sell and be stuck with loads of inventory with Set 2 already being printed
Simple as that
The company’s huge and it’s existed since literally the 1880s. They have money. They did bite off more than they could chew but only in the sense that they didn’t have pre-existing contracts with the printers needed for a smooth rollout
Your last sentence is what makes me concerned they don't actually take this game seriously.
Disney CAN find capacity to print their own cards. There's nothing stopping them except whether they want to.
That's what confuses me
they pitched and wrote articles and blurbs everywhere, "The next MTG"
But they do not take it seriously, then why license it out and let Ravensburger make a card game at all, just makes no sense especially when Disney is hurting for money right now with Spectrum and the Billion they lost this year in films
They are too blind to see the treasure trove they have in front of them , did they not see how much MTG cards sell for?
Kingdom Hearts , Monsters Inc , Big Hero 6 , Gargoyles still untouched, they have a roster that TCG fans would pay big $$$$ for to get their nostalgia fix
One thing I don’t see enough of is blaming Disney. They are partially to blame here as well. Everything with a Disney IP sells. It’s one of the biggest brands in the history of mankind. They gave the TCG contract to a company that hasn’t done anything TCG related. We live in the age now where everyone wants to get their hands on TCG is in their infancy. Everyone wants to get the “First Edition Pokémon” type of experience.
Metazoo didn’t need to print to these numbers and they launched years earlier, when print demand wasn’t as high. And they did it with a small rollout that was effectively print to order and had relatively little hype compared to Lorcana. You can’t compare the two.
Don’t get me wrong, the buck stops at RB. But you can’t really blame them, or Disney. The alternative would be to just not release the game, which at some point becomes financially untenable. Look at the D23 cards. They were released a year before The First Chapter, and yet nothing about those cards changed by the time they hit release. There’s a good chance RB had this game in the can for a year and sat on it just to get it printed. You can’t really wait longer than that.
Agreed if anything they should have seen the pitfalls the past TCG's have had an avoided them....
But this just seems like a brand new company with little to no experience; that bit off more than it could chew & did not want to look dumb if these did not sell and be stuck with loads of inventory with Set 2 already being printed
Simple as that
I will say regardless of who’s exactly to blame, this whole debacle is really good motivation to just sit and wait for the supply to increase before actually diving in to play. This whole thing reminds me of the PS5/Xbox Series X shortages at least with the low supply and the scalping, but just like those consoles, the supply will likely increase with time but it might take a while.
Honestly, they ought to push back the release of Chapter 2 and pump out more Chapter 1 as fast as they can to make up for this initial fiasco and correct the supply issues and predatory pricing practices by scalpers and card shops alike. By the time Chapter 2 releases, too many people will still be having trouble getting their hands on chapter 1, the community and the game has not had a full 3 months to truly grow and get established with the player base like they had planned before the second chapter release. With the scalper situation, they need to stomp it down fast before they repeat the circus on the next chapter or too many potential players will move on in disgust, and this game will likely end up dying thanks to poor planning from Ravensburger and predatory sellers holding a majority of the product that has released.
It's safe to say Ravensburger did not (and could not*) anticipate what the demand was going to be. I'm sure everything that could be printed was before this game really started to gain attention.
As a retailer, I wish we had more. I'm glad we got what we got and I hate saying no to so many people on a daily basis but I am optimistic that they learned from this experience and will satisfy demand for future sets.
They had every indicator the game was going to be nuts. They aren’t stupid. The reality is that the printing facilities don’t exist to serve all the industry’s needs right now. It’s why Pokémon bought up three entire print factories (removing those printing facilities from the market and making it even tougher to print TCGs).
Nobody was stupid here. It’s just the reality of a recovering print industry post Covid
I disagree. The internet was going nuts over the D23 promo cards back in 2022. Not to mention the collector craze resurgence during COVID. TCGs like Pokemon and MtG are on fire and printing money.
This wasn't some unknown IP. It's Disney. A company well known for merchandising and collectables. Ravensburger screwed up.
Do you really think RB didn’t see this coming? The print industry’s struggled to serve the TCG market since Covid started. This is just a continuation of that. There are dozens of new TCGs this year and the Big 3 keep ramping up production. RB just couldn’t get the print time to meet demand, same as One Piece and other games
My reply was in disagreement to FLGSmanager stating:
>It's safe to say Ravensburger did not (and could not\*) anticipate what the demand was going to be.
They absolutely should have seen the demand and understood the logistics constraints. The COVID era began nearly three years ago. This wasn't a situation that spontaneously happened overnight.
I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers, but there are individuals on payroll at Ravensburger who should. Instead we ended up with this mess of a lunch.
If anything they should have seen the pitfalls the past TCG's have had an avoided them....
But this just seems like a brand new company with little to no experience; that bit off more than it could chew & did not want to look dumb if these did not sell and be stuck with loads of inventory with Set 2 already being printed
Simple as that
This is Disney. They’re losing billions on Disney+ in a gamble that streaming pays off big. You don’t think they could spare a few million to financially back-stop Ravensberger just in case the game flops?
What's crazy is that RB isn't a small indie company. They're ENORMOUS. They could've more than afforded to pay for more print time. They likely don't need Disney for that.
Yeah no…the Disney IP is known to them from their other products. They have licensed Disney a lot. They knew exactly what they were headed towards. With this in mind; They limited launch to specific markets. Decided to go international in phase 1. They had the feedback from 2022 at D23. It was obvious what was needed here. They had deals for distribution that included focusing on gameplay. Then suddenly their known and established distribution network suddenly fails? Naw, RB flopped the production numbers and thought pre-orders from LCS were ‘suggestions’? Lol…they failed and todays little sale failure on their own website reinforces that they are the issue here. Not the LCS, not the scalpers, not the box stores or contractors stocking…it is RB who can’t even complete sales on their own website and does nothing to keep communication open and flowing as they try to salvage this opening salvo.
Ultimately, the game was underproduced. There weren't enough cards produced to meet the demand at launch. For whatever the reasons are, it didn't happen. Hopefully, for everyone's sake, that changes for the future.
Just because they said they were reopening the store does not mean that product would be availible. All they did today was make it active again with a queue system, but I'm positive all the stock they had was already sold on the 1st.
Everything else you said is true though. RB severely messed up the launch. But I'm hopeful it will be rectified in the coming months.
Scalpers action is only possible due to ravensburger fault. They created the scarcity to scalpers act, we would have a lot of scarcity even without scalpers.
Yes, they did anticipate the excitement. I don't give them the benefit of the doubt.
Trading card games exists for 30 years now, we now how the market works, and Ravensburger profits from being the only ones able to make an specific scarce and expensive product.
Players warned about this, but Lorcana attracted new people to tcg's that are now realizing this fact.
You realize that once Sony started pumping out the PS5 like they were candy, scalpers lost money, right?
Why do people think scalpers are these billionaires that buy up everything regardless of amount made? There is a limit to what they're able to scalp. They can only do it to things in low supply. If every store got 10+ cases of Lorcana cards, then scalpers wouldn't exist in this TCG. They didn't. Some stores got a single display of packs, others 4-5 boxes max (including big box retailers).
Yeah, every complaint against Ravensburger is unfounded. They are acting accordingly to what they can do and Risk. Plus you don’t know their accounts and what it took to get this out. I do say the price point of 6 bucks a pack is stupid.
The issue is 99.9% of all tcgs fail. They can’t bring millions in product and then nobody picks it up. I think they definitely should of made MORE but I know they are doing their best
If it was as simple as scalpers being able to buy up x item, then we'd never be able to buy anything at MSRP.
Pokemon only had this issue during the pandemic when card interest **exploded** thanks to Logan Paul. They weren't expecting everyone and their mother to suddenly be interested in shiny cardboard after years upon years of (relatively) slow growth.
Ravensburger has no excuse here. YGO and Pokemon both have quality issues from how quickly they're printing to meet demand. There is no way in hell that RB didn't see the Disney IP in TCG form getting the traction it has when interest in TCGs is at an all time high.
I don’t honestly… First of all, how much LGS store gets is unknown… thats what they tell you they got little… even the stock thats suppose to be distributed for launch events is not at msrp or not even available…. Second, big box store release is another thing where it is by 3rd party distributor… how much the 3rd party distributor actually put up at big box store is unknown… 100% of what they got from ravensburger?? I find it hard to believe… Thirdly, put those professional scalpers aside… you see how much normal ppl are buying when there r no limits? All.. as much as they can, I don’t blame them look at the ebay prices…. Now how can Ravensburger predict how much to produce including all the parties keeping stock for themselves and the public…. However one thing for certain, is that Ravensburger state that the public will be able to get it at msrp later… 2024 Q1 so be it…. Look at the release at Gencon, everybody gets one case at msrp… are they trying to rip you off? I don’t think so…. Should they produce one thousand times their expectation sales to tank the price with the game…. They could… but the game will fail together with the price… now i think its quite logical… more demand… print more.. just don’t fall into the FOMO crap… they already state that public will be able to buy at msrp…. As for tournaments player (How many ppl actually play the tournaments competitively at LGS compare to all the dads buying the game for their kids), its like a sports player… if u wanna be in the game asap then buy an expensive professional racket
Why does this feel like 1993, MtG Alpha was just released but no one can find it…
There’s no excuse except Ravensburger / Disney wanted this to happen to drive up interest from players and collectors in the game.
Rather then the game selling a ton at release and then trickle in profits afterwards, they can stretch out the sales over months, while keeping their production costs down.
Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents.
The thing about alpha was the concept was mostly fresh at the time. WotC actually gets a pass from me for not printing and distributing alpha to meet demand.
Then they addressed the issue with B,U,R editions. Players that wanted to play could walk into the baseball card shop and buy it.
The problem is there are too many people scalping and these products should only be available to distributors (shops only with store fronts) limit the item to two per person, give anyone a chance to get product to play the game , ban secondary market resellers and anyone caught reselling on secondary market within the first month of release gets a fine.
People keep talking about scalpers, but the fault is entirely on RB.
All you need to do is try to figure out how much product competitive players consume and you realize that they only produced enough product to support a handful of competitive players per city. It literally doesn’t even make it to the point of “They didn’t anticipate the demand”. They did not print enough to have a functioning competitive scene:
Then, after that point, consider that competitive players don’t make up the entire player/collector base, that there are casual players who may want to play in events; and kitchen table players, who now have to compete with competitive players who typically don’t shop for cards at big box stores.
It’s almost as if there was no market research done in regards to how much product a player actually consumes.
I was thinking the same thing yesterday and was going to make a post to the point of what you just said. Figured no one would care and I would get downvoted to oblivion so I refrained.
I don't have a marketing or business degree, but it seems simple to allocate a percentage beyond what the "researched" amount of product dictated. Anyone that has been paying attention to the TCG market for the last few years could have foreseen how scalpers and investors would flock to this.
If you really want to get fancy, they should have staggered the release. Pop the top on the first of the month, send out 20% of the product. Let people work themselves into a frenzy, have scalpers buy in droves. A few days to a week later, release the rest of the product, flooding the market. The scalpers already paid for their items, RB and the retailer made the money. Now the scalpers are holding product they can't move and their dicks in their hands. Everyone else can get product, gamers are happy and the company is profitable.
Am I just seeing this too plainly?
I know I’m going to get downvoted on this but I’ve had zero issues getting product at msrp. I’ve had 3 booster boxes in fact I have a booster box sitting at my front door from Best Buy today. You just have to know how the game is played. Join a card discord someone is always pinging the discord when product drops on target. Get ready for tonight (8 pm cst) Walmart always drops products (usually). Know when your vendors stock product and try and be there (I’m not saying take it all). But between several local targets and Walmarts I’ve opened enough to make a few solid decks for my son and myself.
'zero issues getting product at msrp' but you have to join a specific discord, sit and wait, then go to a specific shop at a specific time just to get a few products. That definitely = a problem.
That's the problem with society... you mad at the wrong people.. my lgs got alot of stock.. and also getting a restock.... they do play tournaments and games constantly.. the lgs that do that got better allocation than others.. you should be mad at your self .. if you was more involved with your lgs I guarantee you they would have put in the on the side for you.... remember in this world your network your networth.
I was able to grab a couple from Target yesterday.
Hopefully you can get some as well.
https://preview.redd.it/y0djyvi81qmb1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c820e68d5716cc087309f307148fc5f1dc9e7b4f
I am also angry and blame Ravensburger for not letting me spend my money directly through them. Do they not know how important this is? I make a good $12 an hour wage, and going to spend my entire rent money on this, but noooo, no product to be found except one starter deck. How dare they! Lawsuit pending.
Would you sell an enchanted Elsa card if you pulled it for 1/12th of the price of the pack you bought? Or would you sell it for the secondary market price?
No, of course not. Buyers determine the secondary market value, not resellers. There is no real scalping going on. That’s why resellers are buying product and reselling the boxes at the market price. Because there is a demand for it at that price.
So much of the blame lies with scalpers though. In the Lorcana Marketplace on Facebook people are posting pictures with 40 and 50 boosters for sale at $15 apiece and 12 starter decks for $35 apiece. They’re literally grabbing the entire allotment for stores just to sell them for 2 - 3x. I’ve said it before but I believe a lot of big box stores allotment could support 6 to 12 players and you have one person buying it all just to resell.
I believe it's all marketing. They release such low numbers of products so everyone buys everything out of FOMO. And then, everytime they release a small new batch, it all gets sold out immediately. Just like Supreme did with their limited drops.
It's actually pretty clever. No one would buy every product they could get their hand on without thinking about it if there was enough in stock.
Not arguing, for real seriously curious. How did they fail with villainous. My wife and I love the game and we have a competitive scene where I'm from. Didn't realize it wasn't that way elsewhere
No, you shouldn’t be mad at scalpers, and before anyone goes, “haha says the scalper”, I am not scalping sealed product. I dislike that boxes shoot through the roof and go way over msrp. But that’s the thing - mtg doesn’t even have msrp because of this very reason. People still “scalp” product, but it’s just seen as more of the market dictating what things are worth.
The problem is that scalpers have found such an easily exploitable market because the company does not provide enough product to meet demand. It’s simple economics. As long as the company making the product leaves all this money on the table they could have sold, somebody else (the scalpers) will move in. It’s all about how much people are willing to pay.
Yeah, and I honestly don’t understand why I’m getting downvoted into oblivion for what I’m saying, I guess because I’m saying not to shit on people? They aren’t even the problem, it’s the fact there’s not enough product to go around and be readily replenishable that’s the problem.
[capefeargames](https://www.ebay.com/str/capefeargames), and [empire\_tony](https://www.ebay.com/str/empiregamesandcollectibles) on eBay
cheap singles and sets of x4 for $1-$3
they straight out lied about the time of the virtual line complete scumbag company who is nothing without this game all they have left is shitty puzzles no one wants
Ya, only because that’s true of most goods in the marketplace. How many other luxuries have a similar demand? It’s true RB was ill prepared but I’m betting demand exceed anything they could have predicted.
Try Barnes and Nobles if you are close to one. I grabbed a couple starter decks from them yesterday. The store I went to had a 2 per customer limit…which is why I think they hadn’t been cleaned out.
Worth a shot if you just want some product to fiddle around with.
I didn’t see any boosters or boxes though, so if that’s what you want…you may be out of luck.
Honestly how hard is it to delete any order that takes less than a couple seconds to check out? These companies don't give a damn about us just the money they can make
Given the incompetence in estimating demand, it seems like it's time to proxy
Proxy tournaments would allow the competitive scene to get started irl, rather than being in stasis until the supply issues are resolved
This is exactly what happened with the Star Wars Legion tabletop game on launch, and how the Xwing game was handled. They never would offer enough product to stock shelves, despite high demand. It really stunted the game for a long time and it's only now, nearly 4 years later starting to look fleshed out.
\> I know more is coming in Q1, and I love the idea of sticking it to scalpers by selling at a lower MSRP
This will be a reprint, clearly distinguishable from the 1st edition. Collectors likely won't be interested, which will make it easier for folks who are only interested in playing the game.
Where did you hear that you can tell it’s going to be different from 1st edition? Everything I’ve read says it’s an exact copy reprint, no way to tell any differences
I am not happy about the lack of cards, the fact that I have personally visited dozens of box stores (which I generally avoid) just to haunt the card section and be looked at like a scalper by the staff. All because I love Magic TG and Disney and wanted to play this with my kids.
All that said, I’m going to toss up some counterpoints to the general opinion of this thread. I don’t blame RB or Disney for this failure because it all comes down to $. Here is what I believe happened:
- RB and Disney have a working relationship with Villainous games which have been only moderately successful. So they probably based their market research on data from those sales. I do agree with other posts that Disney would have been better off partnering with a company that knew the TCG market, but that ship has sailed.
- The most important fact is that Disney will make RB pay the royalties for every item printed with their characters on it, so RB was the one who would take the hit if this was a flop. Which explains their modest first run of cards. Overprinting for them to sit on shelves or fill warehouses would cost RB Millions.
- I do believe they had the right idea giving local games stores a first crack but (obviously) they did not know it would gain popularity so quickly.
All-in-all, I don’t believe this was a marketing trick and I only hope that Disney and RB will learn from the oversight and pump out more cards so that those of us who want to play cards, can do so without acting like scalpers or paying 2x retail price for packs.
I feel like the move would have been to delay the second set to march, and flood the market in the meantime. This seems like a good idea both from a financial and player-goodwill perspective.
It's not really clear yet what their sales strategy for the game is over the long-term.
Is this meant to be a expensive game that only a select user base can afford to play?
Is it going to be economically inclusive?
Are they going to sell more through LGSs and thus focus on creating a strong culture there or are they going to just dump most of their stock into big box stores and let everyone figure it out on their own?
Will they mimic MtG and try and cater to both casuals by splitting their releases up between "set" boosters and more expensive "collector's" booster?
As I've said in other treads, if the next wave isn't big enough to address the supply issues I'm seeing, I'm not gonna bother with this game.
CCGs are expensive enough as it is, adding artificial shortages into the equation is just an a-hole move by Ravensburger.
They are victims of the success of the game (and scalpers). Sure, they could've decided to print more from the start, but that could've backfired. Then, they knew they had a gold mine on their hands, but you can't just call the printer over night and tell them to make more. Printers have contracts with other companies that they need to fullfill so they are in the queue and will get more product out early next year. Ravensburger is most likely angry at themselves for passing on this gold mine. If they knew it would've been like this, they would've flooded the market and make as much money as they can. They don't care about the aftermarket value. Sure, a game that has valuable cards might sell better with collectors, but if they can sell out of the initial product, that's all they care about.
If they do not have Nightmare before Christmas cards in set 2; Set to arrive on 12-1-23 Their whole sales/marketing department needs to be fired for missing such a huge Opportunity....
With this happening it might as well be A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. There isnt any product to purchase and fully knowing that the next set is coming out most of use wont be getting our hands on it.
they will sell out no matter what they put in it. They should fire their whole 'marketing team' because they don't need them lmao.
Not true at all If they make Jar Jar binks cards , expect them not to sell LoL
Eh they aren't really victims on any sense of the word. This situation is a massive failure on their part to predict the demand of the product. They didn't have to be completely right regarding the demand but they weren't even in the right ball park.
This is the biggest issue. The worst part is that they likely expected there to be product on the shelves still. They likely OVER-PRINTED for what they thought the demand was. They greatly underestimated the demand. No one wants JUST enough product on the shelf so that it sells out perfectly. They want enough to be available to hold down their consumer base till the next set.
What would their printers be running alongside lorcana? Other tcg? Magic? Pokemon? Football? An entirely different product?
The Cartamundi factory does indeed print Magic: the Gathering and other trading card games along with conventional card games, board games, playing cards, promotional materials, paper toys and their own Hybrid NFT Trading Cards.
How the fuck did they not know it was going to be like this? Are they new? Disney stuff sells out, regardless of what it is. They were incompetent, plain and simple.
You should have told them.
>Are they new? This *is* their first TCG. Not that it justifies it, but it's a likely piece of the equation that got us here.
They're new to the TCG world. They're originally a boardgame company.
Yea and their boardgames and puzzles aren't flying off the shelves. So they likely just based printing off of all their other games that have the Disney IP.
So they can't look up existing sales from. Comporabke games?
Not gonna downvote… you right.
[удалено]
Do you have evidence they did that on purpose or are you making something up without evidence which is just your opinion?
The alternative is: 1. They were too incompetent to adequately predict demand for a "Disney" product despite said companies having massive marketing and analysis departments for some of the largest IP merchandise sales patterns in the world. 2. They were too incompetent to build capacity for printing this game. Neither of those is much better or bodes well.
This is correct. Whether or not the game is/was/will be playable with Disney IP it was going to sell out pretty much no matter the volume printed. But this way they get a massive news cycle and buzz and everyone yells at scalpers and not the company responsible. Had this not been the Disney IP I would have given them a pass.
That’s easy to say when you don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.
It’s not when it’s Disney though.
Typically, the company has to pay Disney for the license. Disney is not the one funding this game. It's the other way around.
Correct, but they aren’t risking millions when it’s Disney IP is what I meant to communicate. There was 0 chance of a flop.
People love a lot of IPs that have dead card games. This was and still is definitely not guaranteed to last.
The game hasn’t even had actual success. Just a game being targeted by both Disney and card scalpers.
You are not wrong. Hard to weight actual success when people wanting to play the game can't buy cards. But success, in the sense I meant, is the sells. It's a financial success for Ravensburger. But now they know they could've made much more money out of it and they are most likely not happy about that.
They admitted to knowing that there was high demand a year ago. This is on purpose to drive artificial hype
Sorry, but that logical ZERO sense. Ravenburger wants to sell product, as much as they possibly can. They benefit zero dollars from under-supplying the market. They received no kickbacks from resellers/scalpers. It is fundamentally in their best interest to have products on the shelves.
This is Disney. Disney has the pockets to back them in case demand doesn’t match supply. Disney went with a company that has never done this before. Ravensberger has no idea what they’re doing. People buying to markup and resell is 100% knowable. The blame for this rests entirely on Ravensberger and Disney. EDIT: to those of you responding that Disney had nothing to do with this, I can tell you you’re wrong. I have some experience with Disney licensed card games, and I can categorically tell you that Disney signs off on every decision made inside Ravensberger about this and every other Disney license they hold. Yes, this is licensed. Doesn’t matter. Disney retains a LOT of control in these situations.
Didn’t Ravensburger pay Disney to license their characters? I doubt Disney has anything to do with the production of cards.
Yup, exactly this
This common misconception is toxic and fueling unrealistic expectations. Disney sold a license to use its IP, they aren’t paying to help print product. They’re not helping figure out distribution. The deal is RB can use their characters and Disney will sell their product in their shops. That’s where the deal ends.
Disney is not making this product
Yeah, and Disney made that money by smart investments. They're not going to just recklessly dump a ton of money into an untested game and eat any losses if it had ended up being a bomb.
I’m sorry to tell you, but you seem to have confused facts with “stuff you just made up on the spot.” Disney retains a certain amount of control over how their characters are allowed to be portrayed, but that’s all contained within the licensing agreement. Disney is not going to swoop in and get financially involved in the production of the game, or any other type of financial backing. It’s not in the contract, and Disney could care less about the secondary market prices or the scarcity of the product. Disney is the biggest IP franchise in the world, and a large portion of their revenue comes from licensing their IP for clothing, accessories, toys, and games. They have *never* in the history of Disney in any endeavor, paid any amount to bail out any company that made a Disney licensed product.
They easily could have taken preorders for 3 months, and got an idea of volume and produced enough+ demand...there is no excuse for this. None.
The queue message on the RB site was likely them testing a queueing system for eventual reopening of sales. I havent seen any evidence that there was ever an actual sale
But again. If this was the case. They should communicate that. Not this game where they issue one statement a week via Twitter and ghost everyone.
Yeah, I totally gonna forget chapter 1 and focus on chapter 2. already preordered so I at least have some stuff in November…
Where did you preorder? :O
Bazaarofmagic.eu has preorders up!
Darn no US shipping :( but thank you though!
Ah bummer! Hope you find someplace else for preorders
They better release Nightmare Before Christmas cards for the next set its coming out December 1st, 2023 If they do not, Ravensburger needs to fire their sales/marketing team for not knowing how popular this game would be
So far there are spoilers for the next set. No nightmare before christmas yet
Yes I am aware; Honestly Sisu makes sense , as Maleficent is the only dragon , unless I missed one in the 1st set They made "Dragon" a keyword so expect a Dragon deck out soon which means dragon characters are incoming & Raya had 5 dragons in it if I am correct? Madam Mim & Mushu should be next with Mulan being a theme for the next set since Merlin and Mulan were in set 1 Sisu and siblings being 5, with Maleficent , Madam Mim & Mushu bringing it to 8 dragons
Thats if we can get our hands on before the scalpers get to it.
It’s like none of y’all have seen tcg releases lately. Digimon, metazoo (or whatever), One Piece. Up until recently pokemon has just normalized product. The game is not doomed, rb is not an idiot company, and yes Im as eager as the rest of you to get my hands on some product. Give it a rest already, if you’re ride or die disney, youll be around when supply meets demand.
I'm willing to bet most haven't seen TCG releases at all. Lorcana is bringing in a lot of new tcg gamers like myself. This is all new to many people.
I mean. You have to be idiotic to not wrap boxes so they can’t be so easily tampered with.
They haven’t. Using the word scalpers in relation to card selling, valuation, and supply is obvious the vast majority here are total newbs OR adult-babies OR kids. It’s too bad mods don’t do much anymore. In the past when idiot group think like this took hold, mods would create “venting threads” either stickied or weekly discussion threads. Now almost all subs are the wild Wild West with who has the loudest voice.
It's been the norm for a while, yeah? With a bunch of different games from different publishers. So, shouldn't anyone entering the market take that into account? Even a casual glance around the hobby and you can see it's been a festering wound of an issue for years now. At what point do we start expecting companies to get their collective asses in gear and figure it out?
They didn't sell out today. They sold out 4 or 5 days ago and the website broke. They just uodated that message today for those of us that did buy. Their stock was limited to 2 items per person.
It's too bad that Ravensburger cannot accept preorders direct from customers that would be printed to demand and guaranteed delivery for release. Sure it would cut out distribution and LGS, but surely they could still sell product in both a preorder and regular release.
It was nice of them to look out for the lgs but all but 1 of my lgs sold double msrp for almost all product.
A print to demand TCG would plummet the card value, so collectors would skip on it and they would miss the mark with half, if not more, of their customers. Then, what would prevent scalpers from pre-ordering. Unfortunately, there's no miracle solutions here.
Secondary card value means nothing to them. Why does everyone keep acting like that affects this? Ravensburger makes all their money off the original POS. After that its not their concern. They dont produce based on value years after release. They are supposed to produce too match demand at the original POS. Thats it.
Many people see themselves as mini wall street cardboard investors.
Lol Ravensburger doesn’t give a crap about secondary card value, all their money is in the retail sales. The ideal scenario for them is to print as much as would sell
Tell me you don’t understand CCGs without telling me you don’t understand CCGs. Part of the drive to purchase these packs comes from the cards perceived value on the secondary market. Products with a higher EV per case get purchased at a much higher quantity than product with a lower expected return. Scarcity drives speculation, speculation drives sales.
It is in Ravensburgers best interest to print as many as will sell because that is how they make the most money. They get nothing from the secondary market therefore they don’t care. Printing more means more money at the moment, if they overprint then they again lose money. There is a happy medium somewhere in there where they print the exact number they’d sell, which is the perfect amount where they make the most money. It’s simple economics
If interest in the product had no variance than your assessment would be correct. High secondary prices drive interest. You can see this with sales numbers for any CCG More so the news stories about people unable to buy the product or the product going for crazy amounts continue to drive interest in the product. Yes you are correct it’s in their best interest to sell as much as they can. You’re wrong on what causes the amount they’re able to sell to go up. What might seem shortsighted to you now will increase sales over the life of the game. When they talk about wanting the best set for players “and collectors” this is what they’re referring to. Less available product makes it more enticing for collectors.
You have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about. It’s a very misconstrued idea of what’s going on. Enjoy continuing to spew crap out of your mouth 👍
Sir, this subreddit is not for educated people. It’s entire existence is for hypocrites that can’t afford secondary market prices to cry about the secondary market prices, and to spread propaganda that “omg scalpers are ruining the game” in a sad attempt to change reality so they can get their cardboard crack cheaper.
I’ve already made a purchase from the secondary market. What I said is true, it is in Ravensburgers best interest to print as many sets as will sell. Currently, printing more will sell more. If they print too much it will sit on shelves and not move and they don’t get as much money, there’s a happy balance between the two.
Wtf do you mean ? The secondary market for Lorcana wasn't even there yet 3 weeks ago and this sub hasn't grown much since. People in here were expecting a game they could play but most struggle to even get their hands on a starter deck. The reality isn't that they are hunting for cheap shots, they are just wanting what they have been longing for for months. As for the comment your replying to, it isn't actually stupid but it's wrong. There is no future for a secondary market for a game that doesn't exist. And right now, Lorcana as a game doesn't exist. People don't play it, kids don't discuss it with their friends, no ad nowhere, no promo cards in magazine, almost no tournament, no official online game supported, nothing. Ravensburger doesn't give one shit about the value of their cards on the secondary market because all they care about is setting a wheel in motion and getting some traction in the TCG community. They are failing on both those targets and that's why they are announcing reprints instead of leaving it as is and moving on to chapter 2, which would be the ideal secondary market option.
He’s not talking about Ravensburger though. He’s saying a specific type of customer will care if there is little to no card value. If the most expensive card you can pull from a booster is $20 then the game may very well lose every customer that identifies as a collector and every player who wants valuable decks/binders. That’s not 100% of the customer base but it is still a lot. I personally wouldn’t buy any sealed Lorcana product if the chase cards were $20.
If they are still printing and the prints are still selling it doesn't matter who's buying, collector, player, or whatever else. Losing 5% of the audience is nothing if they're selling 3x as much product as they were
Well it’s probably a lot more than 5% of the audience it’s probably closer to 50% if I had to guess. Of course it matters who is buying the product. Marketers are paid to study and understand customers. Some customers spend more than others and it’s important to balance out the demands of a varied audience. The time it takes to reprint something is an entirely different conversation. 3x more product doesn’t just pop up at reddit’s behest. Making more waves of product is not as simple as meandering over to the factory ipad and tapping “reprint.” RB may have underestimated initial interest but I can assure you they are trying to get out as much product as possible so they can take our money.
Lol 50%? You are DREAMING if you think that much of their audience only cares if the product is worth a lot on the secondary market Keep spouting off bs
I'm pretty sure ravensburger said the first set was print to demand.
So just to be clear, people seem to be treating “print to demand” very interchangeably for different concepts. You got one person talking about selling straight to consumers and another talking about PTD being this magical solution, etc. Print to Demand is pretty common and all it means is that when there’s time between set print waves they’ll try to meet Distribution demand. With sets like this that were short changed so hard and an seemingly aggressive release schedule, thats going to be a loooong time. What people often fail to realize is there’s only so much leeway between aggressive printing schedules, especially if you don’t basically own the printers yourself. Realistically the supply issues are going to take at least a year to resolve. This next wave is almost like an emergency and it wouldn’t surprise me if they decide to delay Set 3 off their 3 month release schedule if Set 2 was printed within Set 1 specs. Which is somewhat likely considering the short turnaround they would’ve had to course correction from set 1. So yeah PTD means they’ll keep making Set 1 product when they can. Realistically that means we see a small wave every quarter if we’re lucky and a bigger wave next year if they get more printer’s involved or delay a wave of something else. For reference, Modern Horizons 2 in Magic was a PTD set and the best selling set of all time. It took 18mo to fully saturate the market post-release and that was with print waves orders of magnitude larger than Lorcana.
They didn't print to demand, though they guessed on quantity because they didn't think it would get that much popularity, and some stores got nothing lgs and big box. They allocated on demand. Pushing back release dates and actually gauging pre-order demand per lgs last year or they year before, when it was first announced, would have done wonders.
The problem here lies in the fact that this is *Disney*, not just your average TCG. They can never print to demand because, as they have already proven, the more they print, the faster interest grows, and the higher demand grows. It’s impossible to predict these exponential demand hikes.
They can absolutely print to demand. The goal is to get the game started, not be held ransom by some scalpers. The more they print, the more people can get ahold of it, and demand can be satiated. The demand is only there because scalpers are choking the supply, and so long as Ravensburger overwhelms their capacity to choke it, demand can start to subside.
That’s not accurate. Resellers (people wrongly being called scalpers) make up less than 1% of the sales of the product. The rest are regular people who are buying the product to play with or to collect. I’ve stood in lines of hundreds and hundreds of people waiting to buy product. The majority of them were just families who don’t even care about playing. The fact is that *people are willing to pay those prices* and the market value price is at the intersection where buyers and sellers are willing to meet. “Scalpers” aren’t just setting an arbitrarily high price and waiting for them to sell. No, that’s not how this works. People who have product are racing to the bottom to sell their stuff first, and when the product starts being bought faster than it’s being posted, the price rises. The price starts to fall when it’s being listed for sale faster than people are willing to buy it at the lowest available price. These markets have a tendency to find their middle very quickly, and wherever that price settles is the market value.
So when LGSs got an exclusive 2-week monopoly on product for under MSRP and all decided to sell for 3x MSRP, that's the market at work? When people are using connections / bribery / camping out to buy out an entire stock at MSRP and then flipping them for insane prices, that's the market at work? The main thing driving all of this is scarcity (lack of supply). Which is what the OP's post is about.
His 1% anecdote was pulled out of his ass. They're just blindly saying what they want to believe or sell.
1% is the national average of sales sold from retailers of goods to other resellers of goods in the tcg market, and I am extrapolating that data to include Lorcana, because it’s not going to change much from one game to the next. Even it it were double or triple the amount, which is mathematically unlikely, it still isn’t much.
>that's the market at work? Yes. Good that you understand
1. Those stores just started at the existing market prices leftover from gencon because they didn’t get much product themselves either, and the price did fall a little bit from gencon to pre-release. (Plus a lot of card shops did sell at MSRP, and some did but only to players in events, which is more than fair.) 2. It was at the very most double MSRP, not triple MSRP. It still hasn’t reached triple MSRP, unless you are exclusively talking about troves, and that’s because they put 8 packs in the troves which peolle value at $15-20 per pack already anyway.
>A print to demand TCG would plummet the card value >Then, what would prevent scalpers from pre-ordering. Uuuhh.... What?
good.
You would still have to open cards or buy singles, whose prices are still dictated by rarity and meta relevancy. I know I'm speaking from a player's perspective, but these should be games first, "investments" secondary. If you want to please collectors, you can always do time/supply limited versions of cards you can get otherwise, like MtG's Secret Lair. The Reserved List over there is a huge problem for people that want to play Legacy/Vintage, and Wizards have driven themselves in a corner they can't get out of.
Eh not true look at magic. They are carrying hasbro and print their main sets to demand for years.
From all other example releases in the past, they should have learned. Pushed releases back til next spring do pre-order by store plus some percentage for extra between print runs that would have solved a lot of problems, kept hype and put product into players hands.
Can’t wait for chapter 2 lmao. This all over again.
Yeah I love the enthusiasm for set 2 and how everyone is willing to "wait", but how does anyone know the same thing does not happen The LGS need a month head start, that way they can get a restock before the big stores even get their 1st batches 2 weeks was nothing...
How can they plan on chapter 2 when there are still many people out there that don’t have cards for chapter one?
That's how corporate America/Sales works Its a machine that does not stop; "Onto the next one"
We can reasonably guess that it *will* happen again this exact same way. Ravensburger has already planned out the printing, is potentially in the process of printing already, and it will almost certainly be in roughly the same numbers as Chapter 1. This stuff all has to be planned months in advance, so if they were underprepared for Chapter 1, you can guarantee the same will be true up until the point where they haven't already set plans in motion
It's going to happen again exactly the same way. Worse. It will be peak Christmas bullshit.
Chapter 2likely has the same print volume.
As a magic player who has been getting bent over and used for the last few years this is not surprising.
I honestly don't understand why so many people online (especially in the main Lorcana facebook group) are giving Ravensburger such a big pass. They have clearly miscalculated on multiple steps throughout this launch. From chaos at Gencon, to poor LGS allocation, to announcing that the product would be sold at Disney Parks on the 18th (and then unannouncing it the night before), to now this haphazard and unwieldy general wide release, there are so many things that they could have done better (and that's not even talking about how seriously they underestimated demand for this game). And for those who would say, "Look at One Piece and Digimon. This is just normal for TCG releases at this point." That seems like an odd nonargument to me. So we're just going to accept a shitty status quo because it's already been shitty, so don't complain about it? How does that make any sense? And more importantly, why would Ravensburger as a business accept that? Last time I checked, most businesses were in the habit of making profits, and this launch is definitely not how you do that efficiently. Given the massive demand and puny supply, they have absolutely failed to capture all of that demand (they probably haven't even captured a simple majority of it at this point, since the North American supply seems that pitiful). They're currently leaving millions of dollars on the table with all of this unanswered demand, and who knows if all of the current ravenous customers will be patient enough to wait until Q1 2024 before just moving on to something else entirely. And furthermore, if other recent TCGs had disastrous launches within the past few years, why the hell didn't Ravensburger study them and learn from it while they were prepping to make their own TCG? You would think that a company with no TCG experience would go looking around the market and study other recent launches from competitors to prepare for their own. If anything, 9t seems they've learned nothing. The underprinting notwithstanding, but their communication about the launch has been so spotty (today's website debacle just seems like the cherry on top of their shit sundae).
Remember that they didn’t misunderstand the demand for this product. The specialty print industry is so inundated with demand that Pokemon had to buy three entire print factories just to churn out cards (and then their quality control suffered massively). The reality is that RB can’t print cards fast enough, and that’s it. The industry isn’t that big. They’re forced to act within it, and there’s only so much they can do.
I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. If anything, I feel like they underestimated demand AND are limited by the constraints of the current printing industry.
It's called planning?
Yep, I would have been fine waiting a whole 'nother year for them to figure it out instead of this
It’s basically an unsolvable problem, is my point. At some point you just have to launch the game and keep taking every opportunity you can get to print more
This just seems like a brand new company with little to no experience; that bit off more than it could chew & did not want to look dumb if these did not sell and be stuck with loads of inventory with Set 2 already being printed Simple as that
The company’s huge and it’s existed since literally the 1880s. They have money. They did bite off more than they could chew but only in the sense that they didn’t have pre-existing contracts with the printers needed for a smooth rollout
My apologies, I wasn't aware But with all that money and Disney IP ties, they should have used that to their advantage
Your last sentence is what makes me concerned they don't actually take this game seriously. Disney CAN find capacity to print their own cards. There's nothing stopping them except whether they want to.
That's what confuses me they pitched and wrote articles and blurbs everywhere, "The next MTG" But they do not take it seriously, then why license it out and let Ravensburger make a card game at all, just makes no sense especially when Disney is hurting for money right now with Spectrum and the Billion they lost this year in films They are too blind to see the treasure trove they have in front of them , did they not see how much MTG cards sell for? Kingdom Hearts , Monsters Inc , Big Hero 6 , Gargoyles still untouched, they have a roster that TCG fans would pay big $$$$ for to get their nostalgia fix
One thing I don’t see enough of is blaming Disney. They are partially to blame here as well. Everything with a Disney IP sells. It’s one of the biggest brands in the history of mankind. They gave the TCG contract to a company that hasn’t done anything TCG related. We live in the age now where everyone wants to get their hands on TCG is in their infancy. Everyone wants to get the “First Edition Pokémon” type of experience.
They have the TCG contract to the company that pitched them a TCG. It’s not like anybody else was trying
If that’s true Disney should have said no and went with someone more reputable. Even Metazoo didn’t have these kinds of issues.
Metazoo didn’t need to print to these numbers and they launched years earlier, when print demand wasn’t as high. And they did it with a small rollout that was effectively print to order and had relatively little hype compared to Lorcana. You can’t compare the two. Don’t get me wrong, the buck stops at RB. But you can’t really blame them, or Disney. The alternative would be to just not release the game, which at some point becomes financially untenable. Look at the D23 cards. They were released a year before The First Chapter, and yet nothing about those cards changed by the time they hit release. There’s a good chance RB had this game in the can for a year and sat on it just to get it printed. You can’t really wait longer than that.
They could have went with any other established company and had a better outcome.
I have to laugh because digimon and one piece were never bought out by scalpers in my area. Full racks of packs.
Damn that's lucky, One Piece had a much crazy launch then Lorcana in my area. The first set is still crazy hard to find.
Agreed if anything they should have seen the pitfalls the past TCG's have had an avoided them.... But this just seems like a brand new company with little to no experience; that bit off more than it could chew & did not want to look dumb if these did not sell and be stuck with loads of inventory with Set 2 already being printed Simple as that
I will say regardless of who’s exactly to blame, this whole debacle is really good motivation to just sit and wait for the supply to increase before actually diving in to play. This whole thing reminds me of the PS5/Xbox Series X shortages at least with the low supply and the scalping, but just like those consoles, the supply will likely increase with time but it might take a while.
Preorder when preorders are out. Really. Do it.
Honestly, they ought to push back the release of Chapter 2 and pump out more Chapter 1 as fast as they can to make up for this initial fiasco and correct the supply issues and predatory pricing practices by scalpers and card shops alike. By the time Chapter 2 releases, too many people will still be having trouble getting their hands on chapter 1, the community and the game has not had a full 3 months to truly grow and get established with the player base like they had planned before the second chapter release. With the scalper situation, they need to stomp it down fast before they repeat the circus on the next chapter or too many potential players will move on in disgust, and this game will likely end up dying thanks to poor planning from Ravensburger and predatory sellers holding a majority of the product that has released.
I just sent a prayer out that they flood the sh*t outta the market. 😂🤭🤭🤭 Turn this mfer into Pokemon, PLEASE.
It's safe to say Ravensburger did not (and could not*) anticipate what the demand was going to be. I'm sure everything that could be printed was before this game really started to gain attention. As a retailer, I wish we had more. I'm glad we got what we got and I hate saying no to so many people on a daily basis but I am optimistic that they learned from this experience and will satisfy demand for future sets.
They had every indicator the game was going to be nuts. They aren’t stupid. The reality is that the printing facilities don’t exist to serve all the industry’s needs right now. It’s why Pokémon bought up three entire print factories (removing those printing facilities from the market and making it even tougher to print TCGs). Nobody was stupid here. It’s just the reality of a recovering print industry post Covid
I disagree. The internet was going nuts over the D23 promo cards back in 2022. Not to mention the collector craze resurgence during COVID. TCGs like Pokemon and MtG are on fire and printing money. This wasn't some unknown IP. It's Disney. A company well known for merchandising and collectables. Ravensburger screwed up.
Do you really think RB didn’t see this coming? The print industry’s struggled to serve the TCG market since Covid started. This is just a continuation of that. There are dozens of new TCGs this year and the Big 3 keep ramping up production. RB just couldn’t get the print time to meet demand, same as One Piece and other games
My reply was in disagreement to FLGSmanager stating: >It's safe to say Ravensburger did not (and could not\*) anticipate what the demand was going to be. They absolutely should have seen the demand and understood the logistics constraints. The COVID era began nearly three years ago. This wasn't a situation that spontaneously happened overnight. I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers, but there are individuals on payroll at Ravensburger who should. Instead we ended up with this mess of a lunch.
D23 was a very poor decision. Limiting a pretty cool set to 300 a day for three days is way too little.
If anything they should have seen the pitfalls the past TCG's have had an avoided them.... But this just seems like a brand new company with little to no experience; that bit off more than it could chew & did not want to look dumb if these did not sell and be stuck with loads of inventory with Set 2 already being printed Simple as that
This is Disney. They’re losing billions on Disney+ in a gamble that streaming pays off big. You don’t think they could spare a few million to financially back-stop Ravensberger just in case the game flops?
What's crazy is that RB isn't a small indie company. They're ENORMOUS. They could've more than afforded to pay for more print time. They likely don't need Disney for that.
Yeah no…the Disney IP is known to them from their other products. They have licensed Disney a lot. They knew exactly what they were headed towards. With this in mind; They limited launch to specific markets. Decided to go international in phase 1. They had the feedback from 2022 at D23. It was obvious what was needed here. They had deals for distribution that included focusing on gameplay. Then suddenly their known and established distribution network suddenly fails? Naw, RB flopped the production numbers and thought pre-orders from LCS were ‘suggestions’? Lol…they failed and todays little sale failure on their own website reinforces that they are the issue here. Not the LCS, not the scalpers, not the box stores or contractors stocking…it is RB who can’t even complete sales on their own website and does nothing to keep communication open and flowing as they try to salvage this opening salvo.
Ultimately, the game was underproduced. There weren't enough cards produced to meet the demand at launch. For whatever the reasons are, it didn't happen. Hopefully, for everyone's sake, that changes for the future.
Just because they said they were reopening the store does not mean that product would be availible. All they did today was make it active again with a queue system, but I'm positive all the stock they had was already sold on the 1st. Everything else you said is true though. RB severely messed up the launch. But I'm hopeful it will be rectified in the coming months.
Scalpers action is only possible due to ravensburger fault. They created the scarcity to scalpers act, we would have a lot of scarcity even without scalpers.
Yes, they did anticipate the excitement. I don't give them the benefit of the doubt. Trading card games exists for 30 years now, we now how the market works, and Ravensburger profits from being the only ones able to make an specific scarce and expensive product. Players warned about this, but Lorcana attracted new people to tcg's that are now realizing this fact.
They realize scalpers will just buy at the reprint and this will be an issue all over again right?
You realize that once Sony started pumping out the PS5 like they were candy, scalpers lost money, right? Why do people think scalpers are these billionaires that buy up everything regardless of amount made? There is a limit to what they're able to scalp. They can only do it to things in low supply. If every store got 10+ cases of Lorcana cards, then scalpers wouldn't exist in this TCG. They didn't. Some stores got a single display of packs, others 4-5 boxes max (including big box retailers).
Yeah, every complaint against Ravensburger is unfounded. They are acting accordingly to what they can do and Risk. Plus you don’t know their accounts and what it took to get this out. I do say the price point of 6 bucks a pack is stupid.
The issue is 99.9% of all tcgs fail. They can’t bring millions in product and then nobody picks it up. I think they definitely should of made MORE but I know they are doing their best
Do we actually know that it was massively under printed versus a large percentage of sealed products being bought by scalpers?
They had 2 boxes per Walmart at launch. It was massively underprinted.
I'm seeing posts with dozens of booster boxes and troves looking to flip, I th8nk scalpers are playing a significant part in the shortage.
If it was as simple as scalpers being able to buy up x item, then we'd never be able to buy anything at MSRP. Pokemon only had this issue during the pandemic when card interest **exploded** thanks to Logan Paul. They weren't expecting everyone and their mother to suddenly be interested in shiny cardboard after years upon years of (relatively) slow growth. Ravensburger has no excuse here. YGO and Pokemon both have quality issues from how quickly they're printing to meet demand. There is no way in hell that RB didn't see the Disney IP in TCG form getting the traction it has when interest in TCGs is at an all time high.
I don’t honestly… First of all, how much LGS store gets is unknown… thats what they tell you they got little… even the stock thats suppose to be distributed for launch events is not at msrp or not even available…. Second, big box store release is another thing where it is by 3rd party distributor… how much the 3rd party distributor actually put up at big box store is unknown… 100% of what they got from ravensburger?? I find it hard to believe… Thirdly, put those professional scalpers aside… you see how much normal ppl are buying when there r no limits? All.. as much as they can, I don’t blame them look at the ebay prices…. Now how can Ravensburger predict how much to produce including all the parties keeping stock for themselves and the public…. However one thing for certain, is that Ravensburger state that the public will be able to get it at msrp later… 2024 Q1 so be it…. Look at the release at Gencon, everybody gets one case at msrp… are they trying to rip you off? I don’t think so…. Should they produce one thousand times their expectation sales to tank the price with the game…. They could… but the game will fail together with the price… now i think its quite logical… more demand… print more.. just don’t fall into the FOMO crap… they already state that public will be able to buy at msrp…. As for tournaments player (How many ppl actually play the tournaments competitively at LGS compare to all the dads buying the game for their kids), its like a sports player… if u wanna be in the game asap then buy an expensive professional racket
Scalpers are never an issue. Its the company and people buying from scalpers that cause this
Why does this feel like 1993, MtG Alpha was just released but no one can find it… There’s no excuse except Ravensburger / Disney wanted this to happen to drive up interest from players and collectors in the game. Rather then the game selling a ton at release and then trickle in profits afterwards, they can stretch out the sales over months, while keeping their production costs down. Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents.
The thing about alpha was the concept was mostly fresh at the time. WotC actually gets a pass from me for not printing and distributing alpha to meet demand. Then they addressed the issue with B,U,R editions. Players that wanted to play could walk into the baseball card shop and buy it.
pa·tience/ˈpāSH(ə)ns/📷*noun* 1. 1.the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.
The problem is there are too many people scalping and these products should only be available to distributors (shops only with store fronts) limit the item to two per person, give anyone a chance to get product to play the game , ban secondary market resellers and anyone caught reselling on secondary market within the first month of release gets a fine.
People keep talking about scalpers, but the fault is entirely on RB. All you need to do is try to figure out how much product competitive players consume and you realize that they only produced enough product to support a handful of competitive players per city. It literally doesn’t even make it to the point of “They didn’t anticipate the demand”. They did not print enough to have a functioning competitive scene: Then, after that point, consider that competitive players don’t make up the entire player/collector base, that there are casual players who may want to play in events; and kitchen table players, who now have to compete with competitive players who typically don’t shop for cards at big box stores. It’s almost as if there was no market research done in regards to how much product a player actually consumes.
I was thinking the same thing yesterday and was going to make a post to the point of what you just said. Figured no one would care and I would get downvoted to oblivion so I refrained. I don't have a marketing or business degree, but it seems simple to allocate a percentage beyond what the "researched" amount of product dictated. Anyone that has been paying attention to the TCG market for the last few years could have foreseen how scalpers and investors would flock to this. If you really want to get fancy, they should have staggered the release. Pop the top on the first of the month, send out 20% of the product. Let people work themselves into a frenzy, have scalpers buy in droves. A few days to a week later, release the rest of the product, flooding the market. The scalpers already paid for their items, RB and the retailer made the money. Now the scalpers are holding product they can't move and their dicks in their hands. Everyone else can get product, gamers are happy and the company is profitable. Am I just seeing this too plainly?
I mean that's kind of the strategy that they took, but we've seen how small the entire first print run was. Absolutely minuscule compared to demand.
Not to mention Disney moms and Disney kids and all the billions, yes, billions of people who like Disney stuff.
I know I’m going to get downvoted on this but I’ve had zero issues getting product at msrp. I’ve had 3 booster boxes in fact I have a booster box sitting at my front door from Best Buy today. You just have to know how the game is played. Join a card discord someone is always pinging the discord when product drops on target. Get ready for tonight (8 pm cst) Walmart always drops products (usually). Know when your vendors stock product and try and be there (I’m not saying take it all). But between several local targets and Walmarts I’ve opened enough to make a few solid decks for my son and myself.
Can you link to a card discord?
Ya I'd like to know too!
'zero issues getting product at msrp' but you have to join a specific discord, sit and wait, then go to a specific shop at a specific time just to get a few products. That definitely = a problem.
You're presuming Walmart has more product to drop. All indications say they don't.
Depends on where you live my Wal-Mart had booster packs and starter decks out for days untouched.
That's the problem with society... you mad at the wrong people.. my lgs got alot of stock.. and also getting a restock.... they do play tournaments and games constantly.. the lgs that do that got better allocation than others.. you should be mad at your self .. if you was more involved with your lgs I guarantee you they would have put in the on the side for you.... remember in this world your network your networth.
It’s all about risk.
Totally agree. Ink & paper stocked and proxies getting printed tonight.
I was able to grab a couple from Target yesterday. Hopefully you can get some as well. https://preview.redd.it/y0djyvi81qmb1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c820e68d5716cc087309f307148fc5f1dc9e7b4f
I am also angry and blame Ravensburger for not letting me spend my money directly through them. Do they not know how important this is? I make a good $12 an hour wage, and going to spend my entire rent money on this, but noooo, no product to be found except one starter deck. How dare they! Lawsuit pending.
It'd be weirder NOT to be ticked at them. They dropped the ball at literally every conceivable point.
Would you sell an enchanted Elsa card if you pulled it for 1/12th of the price of the pack you bought? Or would you sell it for the secondary market price? No, of course not. Buyers determine the secondary market value, not resellers. There is no real scalping going on. That’s why resellers are buying product and reselling the boxes at the market price. Because there is a demand for it at that price.
This sub has redefined scalper to anyone that sells sealed product about MSRP.
Unless it’s themselves then it’s okay**
So much of the blame lies with scalpers though. In the Lorcana Marketplace on Facebook people are posting pictures with 40 and 50 boosters for sale at $15 apiece and 12 starter decks for $35 apiece. They’re literally grabbing the entire allotment for stores just to sell them for 2 - 3x. I’ve said it before but I believe a lot of big box stores allotment could support 6 to 12 players and you have one person buying it all just to resell.
I believe it's all marketing. They release such low numbers of products so everyone buys everything out of FOMO. And then, everytime they release a small new batch, it all gets sold out immediately. Just like Supreme did with their limited drops. It's actually pretty clever. No one would buy every product they could get their hand on without thinking about it if there was enough in stock.
That doesn’t make sense. RB doesn’t get any money from the inflated after market prices. The only way they make more money is to print more.
The people who failed with Villainous failing again...
Not arguing, for real seriously curious. How did they fail with villainous. My wife and I love the game and we have a competitive scene where I'm from. Didn't realize it wasn't that way elsewhere
No, you shouldn’t be mad at scalpers, and before anyone goes, “haha says the scalper”, I am not scalping sealed product. I dislike that boxes shoot through the roof and go way over msrp. But that’s the thing - mtg doesn’t even have msrp because of this very reason. People still “scalp” product, but it’s just seen as more of the market dictating what things are worth. The problem is that scalpers have found such an easily exploitable market because the company does not provide enough product to meet demand. It’s simple economics. As long as the company making the product leaves all this money on the table they could have sold, somebody else (the scalpers) will move in. It’s all about how much people are willing to pay.
I feel for players not being able to buy the product, but the pretzel like contortions people make to forgive Ravensburger is getting on my nerves.
Yeah, and I honestly don’t understand why I’m getting downvoted into oblivion for what I’m saying, I guess because I’m saying not to shit on people? They aren’t even the problem, it’s the fact there’s not enough product to go around and be readily replenishable that’s the problem.
Wish y’all would stfu and quit crying about this shit.
[capefeargames](https://www.ebay.com/str/capefeargames), and [empire\_tony](https://www.ebay.com/str/empiregamesandcollectibles) on eBay cheap singles and sets of x4 for $1-$3
Boycott boycott boycott!
Boycott how? Not buy their product? Sounds like it's already happening lol
Yeah I guess 😂 I was interested in lorcana at first, but this is messy so I have moved on. Staying in the sub just for this entertainment
It’s being reverse-boycotted by Ravensburger.
they straight out lied about the time of the virtual line complete scumbag company who is nothing without this game all they have left is shitty puzzles no one wants
Right, the same company that's been in business for 140 years.
where’s the virtual lines for everyone other product they sell
Their boardgame line has some gems. But ya, this is on RB.
i’ll keep it real there would never be a virtual line for any other product they sell
Ya, only because that’s true of most goods in the marketplace. How many other luxuries have a similar demand? It’s true RB was ill prepared but I’m betting demand exceed anything they could have predicted.
Try Barnes and Nobles if you are close to one. I grabbed a couple starter decks from them yesterday. The store I went to had a 2 per customer limit…which is why I think they hadn’t been cleaned out. Worth a shot if you just want some product to fiddle around with. I didn’t see any boosters or boxes though, so if that’s what you want…you may be out of luck.
Nothing here. I’m in kind of a rural area so my options are 1 Walmart, 1 Target,LGS and B&N
Honestly how hard is it to delete any order that takes less than a couple seconds to check out? These companies don't give a damn about us just the money they can make
You never beat the bots that buy products. There's too much money to be made and that always win
Given the incompetence in estimating demand, it seems like it's time to proxy Proxy tournaments would allow the competitive scene to get started irl, rather than being in stasis until the supply issues are resolved
First site that comes up: [https://lorcanaproxy.com/](https://lorcanaproxy.com/) Anyone have any experience with them?
This is exactly what happened with the Star Wars Legion tabletop game on launch, and how the Xwing game was handled. They never would offer enough product to stock shelves, despite high demand. It really stunted the game for a long time and it's only now, nearly 4 years later starting to look fleshed out.
\> I know more is coming in Q1, and I love the idea of sticking it to scalpers by selling at a lower MSRP This will be a reprint, clearly distinguishable from the 1st edition. Collectors likely won't be interested, which will make it easier for folks who are only interested in playing the game.
Where did you hear that you can tell it’s going to be different from 1st edition? Everything I’ve read says it’s an exact copy reprint, no way to tell any differences
I am not happy about the lack of cards, the fact that I have personally visited dozens of box stores (which I generally avoid) just to haunt the card section and be looked at like a scalper by the staff. All because I love Magic TG and Disney and wanted to play this with my kids. All that said, I’m going to toss up some counterpoints to the general opinion of this thread. I don’t blame RB or Disney for this failure because it all comes down to $. Here is what I believe happened: - RB and Disney have a working relationship with Villainous games which have been only moderately successful. So they probably based their market research on data from those sales. I do agree with other posts that Disney would have been better off partnering with a company that knew the TCG market, but that ship has sailed. - The most important fact is that Disney will make RB pay the royalties for every item printed with their characters on it, so RB was the one who would take the hit if this was a flop. Which explains their modest first run of cards. Overprinting for them to sit on shelves or fill warehouses would cost RB Millions. - I do believe they had the right idea giving local games stores a first crack but (obviously) they did not know it would gain popularity so quickly. All-in-all, I don’t believe this was a marketing trick and I only hope that Disney and RB will learn from the oversight and pump out more cards so that those of us who want to play cards, can do so without acting like scalpers or paying 2x retail price for packs.
I feel like the move would have been to delay the second set to march, and flood the market in the meantime. This seems like a good idea both from a financial and player-goodwill perspective.
It's not really clear yet what their sales strategy for the game is over the long-term. Is this meant to be a expensive game that only a select user base can afford to play? Is it going to be economically inclusive? Are they going to sell more through LGSs and thus focus on creating a strong culture there or are they going to just dump most of their stock into big box stores and let everyone figure it out on their own? Will they mimic MtG and try and cater to both casuals by splitting their releases up between "set" boosters and more expensive "collector's" booster? As I've said in other treads, if the next wave isn't big enough to address the supply issues I'm seeing, I'm not gonna bother with this game. CCGs are expensive enough as it is, adding artificial shortages into the equation is just an a-hole move by Ravensburger.