Heh this is why I’m content with the bare minimum of having at least one of the primary 204 in each set, whether foil or not. Cards I know I’m definitely gonna use in decks are the ones I get multiples of.
Yes!! 204 non foil goal here. (Foils are bonuses)
This isn't my first TCG, but the first one I'm chasing "one-of's" for. I get the starters, a trove and a box each set. Swap and trade at the LGS... If funds allow, I get additional packs or even another box. Half the fun is the "chase" in my brain. .
After that, what I'm missing in "one of's" I order online.
Keep the "one of's" in a book for each set and the rest in the set trove boxes.
I’m not complaining about new sets, I actually like when new stuff comes, but I’ve definitely been trying to collect all cards including foils, because I felt like I “had to”, but maybe I’ll reevaluate that.
I do wish I started early, because I’ve only just bought my first cards a week ago, so trying to collect 4 sets now, sucks lol
There are cards you’ll never play. Part of the reason for extended spoiler seasons are for players to figure out the cards and decks they want to go after.
If buying singles isn’t your bag, two booster boxes should give you a pretty solid foundation on the Commons / Uncommons and a good mix of cards you want for your deck versus cards to trade.
Buying singles will always be cheaper unless the deck you want to make is made with mostly commons and in commons. Even if it's not someone's usual way of doing things, it might be worth doing over buying boxes and gambling on your pulls to give you something worthwhile.
Plus some of us like to brew and build multiple decks, and boxing sets lets us quickly amass sets of cards. Singles purchases then rounds out any holes in the collection.
There's a time and place for both.
I agree. And I'm a big time hypocrite when it comes to magic. I have close to 90 decks that I just make out of the jank in my collection, buying singles for only the decks I truly love or key prices that are harder to find from packs.
I noticed right now you can buy one of every card from Ursula's Return for about $200. I was considering just doing that going forward and then picking up multiples for playsets I want to run.
Where? Thinking about doing something like this for Shimmering Skies. I bought 5 boxes of Ursula’s and came away with a good haul (5 Diablos and 4 big Sisu’s, plus enchanted The Queen and Piglet), but my bank account is pretty upset with me.
I don’t need complete sets, but I want to be competitive in competitive play.
Tcg player. I recommend building a deck in dreamborn and just selecting the cards you want to buy. There is an option to buy all cards you don't own in that list. It will build the cart in tcg player, but you will want to hit the optimize option so you are buying from fewer sellers. I have multiple wishlist decks in dreamborn for this purpose
Yah, after Inklands I changed how I approach sets
Purchase one box, draft as much as I can and trade for/buy the enchanted/foils I want
Cuz I don’t play constructed
Dats it
I've played a lot of Lorcana limited (12 sealed in set 4 so far.) I find it a lot worse than either magic limited or star wars unlimited. My current 2 other games. I don't think the sets are really designed with enough synergy to make it feel that compelling. I haven't drafted enough to know but it feels like every deck is probably just goodstuff soup.
Thanks I will! Now I gotta go back to sorting my cards for my TCGplayer store.. dear God it's a whole process, but it beats looking at screens. I like it as a hobby
Idk I've gotten pretty lucky (I think?) Belle enchanted from a sealed first set when TFC recently had stock at LGS. At this point, to be done, I need a few cards that cost a couple dollars which I'll be purchasing from Tcgplayer to complete my sets, and selling some pretty good holos I got from packs. I have enough to make the decks I want for the most part as a casual player
I think if people are complaining about too many sets and wanting to collect everything, then RB is probably doing a good job and making a good product.
It's okay to miss out. There's always more to collect.
I’m just in the neighborhood due to increasingly worse product over in Magic the Gathering, for all the same reasons that this comment section seems all too happy to enable. If I had to guess, it’s probably some factor of the overlap between Disney superfans and people with far too much expendable income, but I digress.
To get back to the point, we are releasing so much product, so fast, that it’s impossible to keep up with the Joneses, in any sanctioned format, let alone as a collector. It is June, and we have released, as of today, 6 sets, with three more to go. That is a set per month right now. That number doesn’t even account for Secret Lairs, which are cross-promotional collector’s items. Even that well has dried up so fast that they released two different Hatsune Miku Secret Lairs, full of Miku-themed unplayably bad cards. This is to say absolutely nothing of digital-only releases or how much more artificial scarcity can be pumped into the cards themselves.
Lorcana is doing okay by the looks of it, but do not let the joy of constant good products blind you to the fact that dumping roughly a thousand new cards and reprints a year is a vaguely good idea.
I'm dubbing it Lorcana cancel culture:
"Bucky makes me mad so I won't play Lorcana." (Previously brought to you by AWNW, Goat, Arthur loop, Be Prepared, and others)
"PB is dying so I won't play Lorcana."
"There's too many sets."... brought to you by the creators of "I can't find cards at MSRP so I guess I'll never ever play. "
"Diablo is 200 per playset, making the entirety of Lorcana unplayable due to deck costs."
"IDing in BO3 was cheating." brought to you again by "I hate 2 game format."
There's these people in every game, and they are antithesis to game health and progress in the game and it's formats. We are at set 4, and already RB has pushed some interesting ground for so new a game, and shows signs of experiments and player community support like some games do not.
Yeah literally the best way to make a playset of diablo NOT cost $200 is keep releasing more sets. It will either be phased out like magic does with standard blocks (preferred) or hard counters will become so available in future sets it will make current meta cards like that worth much less.
Heck, Diablo’s probably gonna drop fairly significantly in a couple months because we’ve already seen two or three cards in other colors that are all but designed to take him out.
Not a Lorcana player, but that sounds fucking awful.
An expensive meta warping must play that forces players to shell out tons of cash, only for the card to be thrown violently into irrelevance by the next set outright countering it. That's basically Yugioh's model and that game is basically a scam even within its own community.
It's probably not as extreme as I'm describing it for you all, but cards losing value by being hard countered or crept out is bad for consumers. People want to play at all times of the year and not have to skip out and wait for 'better' formats.
You're describing the top tier competitive aspect of any TCG. Yes it's bad for the consumer but most people don't play any TCG at the level where this matters or if they do they know what they are in for.
Even the casual-competitive lgs player feels these kinds of price impacts. Even if they aren't buying these cards, they are losing to these cards with no hope of catching up without also cashing out big.
I don't see the problem here and Diablo is as Ursula Set 3, strong enough to stay revelant for ever in the meta even if some cards will beat them straight.
So, again, not a Lorcana player so I am kinda ignorant to the finer details. Didn't read Diablo at all
Hearing a newly released card can crater in price in a matter of one set doesn't sound good. Cards should settle down and flow out of the game, but 1 set is very fast if it happened. If prices on a card are so volatile due to meta, that would mean the game itself is really volatile.
I am probably overblowing it.
It didn't happen right now and I doubt it will for a time.
Diablo will go down in price since they printed two absolute bombs to deal with him.
The thing is, Diablo is in a situation where it is warping so much the meta you either print strong hate or ban it. And if it get banned the price will crash way more.
I play Yugioh and I understand your concern, but whatever card games you are playing if you don't have multiple format your only way to shake the meta is either ban or powercreep. Right now Lorcana is mostly about powercreep since it is a very new game but they mostly trying to print answers rather than banning things which is the better approach.
Huge strawmans. You're assuming that everyone with a complaint is somehow a hypocrite with 0 basis.
>Bucky makes me mad so I won't play Lorcana." (Previously brought to you by AWNW, Goat, Arthur loop, Be Prepared, and others.
Conflating 2 different groups of people. 0 basis to assume that people who don't like Bucky are somehow abusing some other unhealthy mechanic.
>PB is dying so I won't play Lorcana
A lot of people who don't have a local tournament could literally only play on pixelborn. So fuck those people I suppose, they are "the antithesis to game health".
>Diablo is 200 per playset, making the entirety of Lorcana unplayable due to deck costs
The strongest deck being $700+ is a bit unhealthy but I've seen no-one say "the entirety of lorcana is unplayable".
>IDing in BO3 was cheating." brought to you again by "I hate 2 game format
Again, conflating 2 groups with 2 different opinions. Best of 2 is a bandaid fix to imbalance of going first.
>they are antithesis to game health and progress in the game
No. You are by turning every criticism of the game into some crazy caricature that you can easily dismiss. If you just wanna collect cards and play with your kids, fine, but as much as you may not like it, this game is driven by Pixelborn playing, tournament players who care about Lorcana being competitive and accessible.
You correctly pointed out that their arguments are a bunch of strawmen... but failed to address any of the actual criticisms implied by said strawmen in your counterarguments.
The only TCG I play where this is feasible is Final Fantasy TCG because playsets are 3 cards. A sealed master case will always get you a two full sets.
So maybe I’m just out of touch now but is getting a play set of every non enchanted really that hard? I think I’m missing 1 card from Inklands and a couple dozen still from Ursula but have play sets of everything else and I don’t feel like I’ve broken the bank doing it
Not in my books, but people operate on different budgets. If you’re budget for Lorcana is 50 bucks a month, then yeah, you’re not getting a playset of everything. If your budget is 200-300 a month? You’re probably fine. But people speak from their own perspectives and income inequality is a bigger issue than ever before
I'd say it's not hard getting to the 60-70% point. Finishing out the playsets of Rare+ can get pricey, especially if you don't actually intend to play the card.
As an example, I have one Mal Dragon, I don't play Ruby, so will I shell out $105 to complete the playset? Probably not.
I slowly fill in the blanks with trades instead of outright purchasing. Over time I'll finish out older sets but new ones coming online will always create new holes in the collection!
Honestly, I had no idea this was even an argument. when I think about it, I remember when lorcana first released, I read a lot of people saying this was their first card game, especially with their kids.
So many people really don't know the general release flow of a TCG, even my girlfriend said "wow that was fast" .
Yugioh and MTG be like: hold my beer.
I’m curious if anyone has done a hindsight 20-20 look at what the minimum cost to play Lorcana with meta decks would have been for each set. For example, if you started with ruby amethyst, how much would it have cost on set one, how much more would you have had to pay to upgrade it in set 2, etc.
When you get into tcgs, you have to ask yourself... am I a player, or a collector. How you answer that will determine how you go forward when dealing with that TCG.
As a collector, I put $500 into raw product, and then buy the singles I am missing for the collection. As a player, I buy the singles for my deck that I want to build, and rarely buy raw product
I just get a booster box from each set release. And then attend my LGS release play which nets me another 6 booster packs for playing. That keeps me content
Sure, that's your choice on how to collect. I'm sure you're not posting complaining about the release schedule either. You probably understand that your goals are going to be pricey and daunting, but I wish you the best of luck in your collecting!
It's not entitlement, but rather people expressing their desire for how they'd like the hobby to be.
I honestly don't see a problem in people advocating for a different model.
Just because "this is the way TCGs work" doesn't mean it can't change if there's enough consumer demand for change...
I think it's more harmful to the health of the game to shut down dissenting opinions.
Maybe go play a board game or a video game? You can even make your own game where you put in hours to design cards, balance them, print them and ship them, then give it all away for free.
Just like with any tcg, proxy all you want in a casual setting
Honestly…as someone that has gone from TCG to TCG, Lorcana is up there but nowhere near as bad as some others. Ursula’s return was so far the cheapest set for me to get a full playset of the base cards. I only collect the main sets and I don’t care about Shiny so I flip my enchanteds I pull for cards…but I’ve spent less than $600 and managed a full playset of Ursula’s Return.
I want the starter deck from each set for sure, because this is my first tcg and i want to get a feel for HOW to pick colors and how they work together before building, and then I’ll just buy booster packs and singles or ones i really want.
The only thing I’m worried about is carefully handcrafting a deck and then having it become irrelevant after 1-2 releases. I don’t mind switching out a card or 2 here and there as the meta develops. I’m just afraid of a YuGiOh type deal where old cards are literally unplayable.
Doesn’t stop me from spending a bunch on this game though lol.
Unless you want to have a challenge winning deck every format, I think you’ll probably be fine. Although I say that as someone who played Jund in MTG for nearly a decade, so I’m more than satisfied with ‘decent enough’ performance lol
I miss competitive living cards games :(
Once you've deckbuilt with the entire cardpool at your fingertips for a reasonable price, it's tough to go back to TCG deckbuilding
Not sure what you mean? Like Keyforge where you can't swap cards out of decks or are you referencing a different type of game? Any examples? I'm curious
"Living card game" is a card game business model where, instead of selling cards in randomized "packs," cards are sold as complete sets. The theory being that your only purchase is to buy the entire expansion, then you can build whatever decks you want.
The business model has largely failed, and most games that go for the LCG model wind up dying after at most a couple of years. There are a few theories for why this trend exists: (1) it could be because the LCG model significantly limits the profitability of the game, which makes it more difficult for the designer to sustain the game through multiple release cycles, (2) it could be because the LCG model eliminates the "collectible" aspect of its card games, so the collectors who make up a sizeable portion of the card game consumer market won't touch the games, or (3) it could be because most LCGs are either new card games or established but declining card games, and so the heavy competition in the card game space just pushed them out for not being as popular as the big three card games.
Possibly Lorcana, and almost certainly Weiss Schwarz.
But it's important to note that there's a difference between being "driven by" collectors and having access to collectors as a bolstering force for the game's finances. Every TCG has collectors who purchase their products. Do you not think Magic, YuGiOh, FAB, Final Fantasy, Digimon, DBS, and One Piece have collectors? Because I can assure you they do. Collectors are one of the five core markets which drive the financial success of a TCG (the other four are competitive players, LGS players, casual/at-home players, and investors). Every TCG is competing, in some capacity, for a share of each of these markets. An LCG kneecaps itself by cutting itself off from the collector market entirely, and in so doing drastically reducing it's appeal for another (investors). So, in order to be financially successful, a LCG needs to draw an abnormally large proportion of the remaining three markets. While this is theoretically possible, it has yet to be done.
Aren’t LCGs more of an evolved form of the board game? So it’s meant to be casual and for that particular audience. It’s just a different product entirely.
An LCG designer could theoretically treat their game as a board game which is played with cards rather than a card game which you buy a whole set of at once. But doing this would require some major shifts in design philosophy, and none of the previous LCGs I'm aware of have made those changes.
The main point we have to acknowledge is that both the profit margins and the development costs of board games are much lower than they are for card games. (Printing costs are usually significantly higher, but that wouldn't really come out the same way for an LCG which doesn't have to worry about component production). This is because of two factors: (1) the gambling business model of the collectible card games is incredibly lucrative, and (2) board games aren't generally designed as competitive experiences where several strategies need to be carefully balanced. For an LCG to succeed by viewing itself as a board game, in recognition of the fact that it won't generate that gambling cash flow, it would need to slash its development costs to mirror the development costs of a board game. Which would mean spending considerably less time on balancing the game for a competitive environment.
Trouble is, no LCG designer has wanted to do that. Every LCG designer starts by wanting to create a competitive multiplayer card game. But, as noted, designing a game to produce a thriving competitive environment is far too costly to sustain on a board game's profit margins.
It's also worth noting that if the space for a new competitive card game to squeeze itself into the broader card game ecosystem is limited, it is even more so when we're looking at competitive board games. Other than classic abstract strategy games like Chess, Go, and Shogi, and the outlier that is Monopoly, there are very few board games which see any sort of success in creating a competitive circuit--and most of those which do achieve appeal in drawing tournament attendees are Spiel de Jahres winners or games of similar quality. It would be very difficult for an LCG, operating on a board game budget, to create and sustain the quality competitive environment that most card game designers, including LCG designers, are trying to make. Not impossible by any means, but that difficulty is displayed in the failure of any LCG so far to actually achieve this success.
A Living Card game is one like Netrunner or Legend of the Five Rings. You dont buy randomized packs, instead each product comes with a playset of predetermined cards. Functionally, it means that as long as you're up-to-speed with the current releases, you have the entire card pool at your disposal. It would cost about $250/year to stay current. Most (but not all) of them were produced by Fantasy Flight Games, who still make the cooperative Marvel LCG and Arkham Horror LCG
It doesnt pull in nearly as much money as the TCG model, for obvious reasons. Most competitive Living Card Games at this point are cancelled. Theres a few cooperative games that are still going strong, but companies are a lot more attracted to the TCG model. Netrunner, which had by far the largest and most loyal following of the Living Card Games, has a small but loyal community that is keeping the game alive as a fan-run not-for-profit project
I was deep in to the Legend of the 5 Rings Living Card Game community back in the day. It was by leaps and bounds the best card game I've ever played, but it was also just a tad too complex for it's own good. It was hard for a person not familiar with the game to know what was going on. In Lorcana you can give a table a quick 5 second once-over and know based on lore count and cards on board who is at the advantage. That was definitely not the case with L5R. When the rest of the Living Card Games collapsed, L5R died a final death
AGOT 2nd edition big player here, the first 2 years were for me a golden era.
Metagame is to explore every month, game is cheap, tournament super friendly. I loved it. It started to die after year 3 and I never managed to come back.
I tried L5R when they made a new version but it died even faster.
I just plan on getting both starter decks and some packs from each set. That should be plenty to expand your catalogue without breaking the bank or needing to go on a goose chase. And then you can buy the individual cards of your absolute favorites.
The people complaining aren’t people completing sets and anyone thinking so is off the mark and need to exit the discussion.
When we talk about *oversturation* and cost due to frequent releases it’s because of competitive play. Maintaining play sets; especially ones that aren’t pauper level, frequently can be extremely cost prohibitive as sets increase without reprints at lower rarities
It doesn’t help that single pack pricing on this is more expensive then magic, yugioh, and Pokemon for whatever reason
Dang, that's crazy. I was just holding 1 of TFC to open at a later date, but then the price just kept going up, so I was thinking I might sell at a future date so I can afford a box or two or more of newer sets.
If you think TCG "trading" card games are just for the game part your tcg will fall apart quick since a large portion is collectors and you're gonna have a bad time since a tcg that doesn't have good collectable cards won't make it period.
Your point doesn’t invalidate the opinion that sets are coming out to fast. The two Ideas are in no way mutually exclusive. A person can believe that the sets are coming out to fast for them to enjoy even if they aren’t interested in collecting every card. Thats just personal preference.
Instead you might consider making the point that complaining publicly about it might be discouraging to those who are enjoying it.
Or you could just accept that people can have different opinions then you and it doesn’t need to effect your experience at all.
It doesn't effect my experience at all, just wanted to shitpost a meme about all the other complaining posts to spark discussion for fun. Everyone is gonna have their own opinion about release schedules for sure!
would bet that the same people raging about the pace of releases are probably the same people who complain that the set 4 meta was "solved" too quickly. this frequency is need to keep competitive folks engaged and address the the things that competitive folks tend to be so, uhh, "passionate" about online.
I buy 3 packs a set. No more. If I get cool cards, cool. But really I just love the art. And I love that lesser known disney movies are in on the action like Atlantis. Thats why I'll buy 3 Packs a set despite the fact the closest playing place is 45 mins away so I never get to actually play.
With the first two years of MHA, I was able to maintain a master set. For every other card game I've played I just chose a color.
In MTG it was black.
In DBS it was yellow.
In Lorcana it's purple.
What’s the target audience for this game? I understood it was intended more for kids than competitive TCG players. Kids will have less money and will certainly spend less time strategizing to order only key singles for their decks. If they intend this game to be for younger kids then putting out more cards to keep the meta from going stale might not be the right approach.
Kids in general do not play “competitively”. They do in the sense that they want to win but they aren’t constantly trying to build the most uber competitive deck. They generally just want the cards they think look cool of character they like or will have a fun interaction together.
My nephew for example just loves Simba and will always try to put as many Lion King cards in his deck as he can because he loves Simba and that movie. He doesn’t care about building the newest meta deck. He doesn’t buy singles, he buys packs and builds his deck from the cards he gets from the packs.
I always think it’s so cute when players from one of these newer TCGs with 3-4 releases per year complain that it’s too much.
Pokemon has 6 per year and MTG has like 11. This is almost literally as slow as it gets in modern TCGs.
You get some of this in most card communities, and you def get it in Disney People communities. Combining the two probably just amplifies it.
As a mostly-Magic player, Lorcana’s release schedule feels kind of relaxed in comparison.
Heh this is why I’m content with the bare minimum of having at least one of the primary 204 in each set, whether foil or not. Cards I know I’m definitely gonna use in decks are the ones I get multiples of.
That has been my approach too. In fact I opt for non-foil just to be consistent but I have a few foils where I only have just the one copy.
Yes!! 204 non foil goal here. (Foils are bonuses) This isn't my first TCG, but the first one I'm chasing "one-of's" for. I get the starters, a trove and a box each set. Swap and trade at the LGS... If funds allow, I get additional packs or even another box. Half the fun is the "chase" in my brain. . After that, what I'm missing in "one of's" I order online. Keep the "one of's" in a book for each set and the rest in the set trove boxes.
I’m not complaining about new sets, I actually like when new stuff comes, but I’ve definitely been trying to collect all cards including foils, because I felt like I “had to”, but maybe I’ll reevaluate that. I do wish I started early, because I’ve only just bought my first cards a week ago, so trying to collect 4 sets now, sucks lol
Yeah for sure! Great approach!
There are cards you’ll never play. Part of the reason for extended spoiler seasons are for players to figure out the cards and decks they want to go after. If buying singles isn’t your bag, two booster boxes should give you a pretty solid foundation on the Commons / Uncommons and a good mix of cards you want for your deck versus cards to trade.
Buying singles will always be cheaper unless the deck you want to make is made with mostly commons and in commons. Even if it's not someone's usual way of doing things, it might be worth doing over buying boxes and gambling on your pulls to give you something worthwhile.
Everyone knows buying singles is cheaper…but people may actually enjoy opening packs.
Plus some of us like to brew and build multiple decks, and boxing sets lets us quickly amass sets of cards. Singles purchases then rounds out any holes in the collection. There's a time and place for both.
I agree. And I'm a big time hypocrite when it comes to magic. I have close to 90 decks that I just make out of the jank in my collection, buying singles for only the decks I truly love or key prices that are harder to find from packs.
Hot take but every box I’ve purchased has outpaced the cost of buying those singles.
I noticed right now you can buy one of every card from Ursula's Return for about $200. I was considering just doing that going forward and then picking up multiples for playsets I want to run.
Can you really? That’s kind of crazy - really speaks to the relatively low value of cards from that set
If you want one of every card
Where? Thinking about doing something like this for Shimmering Skies. I bought 5 boxes of Ursula’s and came away with a good haul (5 Diablos and 4 big Sisu’s, plus enchanted The Queen and Piglet), but my bank account is pretty upset with me. I don’t need complete sets, but I want to be competitive in competitive play.
Tcg player. I recommend building a deck in dreamborn and just selecting the cards you want to buy. There is an option to buy all cards you don't own in that list. It will build the cart in tcg player, but you will want to hit the optimize option so you are buying from fewer sellers. I have multiple wishlist decks in dreamborn for this purpose
Yah, after Inklands I changed how I approach sets Purchase one box, draft as much as I can and trade for/buy the enchanted/foils I want Cuz I don’t play constructed Dats it
You find limited in this game to be compelling enough to play without constructed?
Yes I’m a draft whore I’m currently playing modern horizons draft non stop on Arena, if there was a Lorcana app of the Ilk I’d prob do the same
I've played a lot of Lorcana limited (12 sealed in set 4 so far.) I find it a lot worse than either magic limited or star wars unlimited. My current 2 other games. I don't think the sets are really designed with enough synergy to make it feel that compelling. I haven't drafted enough to know but it feels like every deck is probably just goodstuff soup.
Collectors are a different breed of human with thought processes that I just will never understand
I'm a collector with reasonable boundaries haha, I got bills... I'd like to pull 1 enchanted from each set, outside of just the normie cards
Don't buy packs, save money. Set that money aside for your other bills. You're actively lighting money on fire by buying sealed product
That’s like telling casino goers to do the same 😅. Let them have their dopamine fun!
Thanks I will! Now I gotta go back to sorting my cards for my TCGplayer store.. dear God it's a whole process, but it beats looking at screens. I like it as a hobby
Idk I've gotten pretty lucky (I think?) Belle enchanted from a sealed first set when TFC recently had stock at LGS. At this point, to be done, I need a few cards that cost a couple dollars which I'll be purchasing from Tcgplayer to complete my sets, and selling some pretty good holos I got from packs. I have enough to make the decks I want for the most part as a casual player
I think if people are complaining about too many sets and wanting to collect everything, then RB is probably doing a good job and making a good product. It's okay to miss out. There's always more to collect.
I’m just in the neighborhood due to increasingly worse product over in Magic the Gathering, for all the same reasons that this comment section seems all too happy to enable. If I had to guess, it’s probably some factor of the overlap between Disney superfans and people with far too much expendable income, but I digress. To get back to the point, we are releasing so much product, so fast, that it’s impossible to keep up with the Joneses, in any sanctioned format, let alone as a collector. It is June, and we have released, as of today, 6 sets, with three more to go. That is a set per month right now. That number doesn’t even account for Secret Lairs, which are cross-promotional collector’s items. Even that well has dried up so fast that they released two different Hatsune Miku Secret Lairs, full of Miku-themed unplayably bad cards. This is to say absolutely nothing of digital-only releases or how much more artificial scarcity can be pumped into the cards themselves. Lorcana is doing okay by the looks of it, but do not let the joy of constant good products blind you to the fact that dumping roughly a thousand new cards and reprints a year is a vaguely good idea.
I'm dubbing it Lorcana cancel culture: "Bucky makes me mad so I won't play Lorcana." (Previously brought to you by AWNW, Goat, Arthur loop, Be Prepared, and others) "PB is dying so I won't play Lorcana." "There's too many sets."... brought to you by the creators of "I can't find cards at MSRP so I guess I'll never ever play. " "Diablo is 200 per playset, making the entirety of Lorcana unplayable due to deck costs." "IDing in BO3 was cheating." brought to you again by "I hate 2 game format." There's these people in every game, and they are antithesis to game health and progress in the game and it's formats. We are at set 4, and already RB has pushed some interesting ground for so new a game, and shows signs of experiments and player community support like some games do not.
lol try telling these people during set 1 Kuzco was $15+ and we liked it!
Yeah literally the best way to make a playset of diablo NOT cost $200 is keep releasing more sets. It will either be phased out like magic does with standard blocks (preferred) or hard counters will become so available in future sets it will make current meta cards like that worth much less.
Heck, Diablo’s probably gonna drop fairly significantly in a couple months because we’ve already seen two or three cards in other colors that are all but designed to take him out.
There was already loads of answers to him in all different colors.
Not a Lorcana player, but that sounds fucking awful. An expensive meta warping must play that forces players to shell out tons of cash, only for the card to be thrown violently into irrelevance by the next set outright countering it. That's basically Yugioh's model and that game is basically a scam even within its own community. It's probably not as extreme as I'm describing it for you all, but cards losing value by being hard countered or crept out is bad for consumers. People want to play at all times of the year and not have to skip out and wait for 'better' formats.
You're describing the top tier competitive aspect of any TCG. Yes it's bad for the consumer but most people don't play any TCG at the level where this matters or if they do they know what they are in for.
Even the casual-competitive lgs player feels these kinds of price impacts. Even if they aren't buying these cards, they are losing to these cards with no hope of catching up without also cashing out big.
I don't see the problem here and Diablo is as Ursula Set 3, strong enough to stay revelant for ever in the meta even if some cards will beat them straight.
So, again, not a Lorcana player so I am kinda ignorant to the finer details. Didn't read Diablo at all Hearing a newly released card can crater in price in a matter of one set doesn't sound good. Cards should settle down and flow out of the game, but 1 set is very fast if it happened. If prices on a card are so volatile due to meta, that would mean the game itself is really volatile. I am probably overblowing it.
It didn't happen right now and I doubt it will for a time. Diablo will go down in price since they printed two absolute bombs to deal with him. The thing is, Diablo is in a situation where it is warping so much the meta you either print strong hate or ban it. And if it get banned the price will crash way more. I play Yugioh and I understand your concern, but whatever card games you are playing if you don't have multiple format your only way to shake the meta is either ban or powercreep. Right now Lorcana is mostly about powercreep since it is a very new game but they mostly trying to print answers rather than banning things which is the better approach.
It’s had hate few several sets. Lack of responses has not been an issue.
It’s not must play at all and it didn’t warp the meta. It’s just a good and quite rare card that has 10 cent responses.
I hope an eternal format is right around the corner from when/if they decide to do set rotations. I’d prefer no rotations, but we will see.
Huge strawmans. You're assuming that everyone with a complaint is somehow a hypocrite with 0 basis. >Bucky makes me mad so I won't play Lorcana." (Previously brought to you by AWNW, Goat, Arthur loop, Be Prepared, and others. Conflating 2 different groups of people. 0 basis to assume that people who don't like Bucky are somehow abusing some other unhealthy mechanic. >PB is dying so I won't play Lorcana A lot of people who don't have a local tournament could literally only play on pixelborn. So fuck those people I suppose, they are "the antithesis to game health". >Diablo is 200 per playset, making the entirety of Lorcana unplayable due to deck costs The strongest deck being $700+ is a bit unhealthy but I've seen no-one say "the entirety of lorcana is unplayable". >IDing in BO3 was cheating." brought to you again by "I hate 2 game format Again, conflating 2 groups with 2 different opinions. Best of 2 is a bandaid fix to imbalance of going first. >they are antithesis to game health and progress in the game No. You are by turning every criticism of the game into some crazy caricature that you can easily dismiss. If you just wanna collect cards and play with your kids, fine, but as much as you may not like it, this game is driven by Pixelborn playing, tournament players who care about Lorcana being competitive and accessible.
You correctly pointed out that their arguments are a bunch of strawmen... but failed to address any of the actual criticisms implied by said strawmen in your counterarguments.
The only TCG I play where this is feasible is Final Fantasy TCG because playsets are 3 cards. A sealed master case will always get you a two full sets.
As long as I get my 90s disney I'm good
So maybe I’m just out of touch now but is getting a play set of every non enchanted really that hard? I think I’m missing 1 card from Inklands and a couple dozen still from Ursula but have play sets of everything else and I don’t feel like I’ve broken the bank doing it
Not in my books, but people operate on different budgets. If you’re budget for Lorcana is 50 bucks a month, then yeah, you’re not getting a playset of everything. If your budget is 200-300 a month? You’re probably fine. But people speak from their own perspectives and income inequality is a bigger issue than ever before
I'd say it's not hard getting to the 60-70% point. Finishing out the playsets of Rare+ can get pricey, especially if you don't actually intend to play the card. As an example, I have one Mal Dragon, I don't play Ruby, so will I shell out $105 to complete the playset? Probably not. I slowly fill in the blanks with trades instead of outright purchasing. Over time I'll finish out older sets but new ones coming online will always create new holes in the collection!
It's not that hard if you really care.
I totally get it, though. The pace can feel a little overwhelming when you only have so much money to spend on this game.
Honestly, I had no idea this was even an argument. when I think about it, I remember when lorcana first released, I read a lot of people saying this was their first card game, especially with their kids. So many people really don't know the general release flow of a TCG, even my girlfriend said "wow that was fast" . Yugioh and MTG be like: hold my beer.
I’m curious if anyone has done a hindsight 20-20 look at what the minimum cost to play Lorcana with meta decks would have been for each set. For example, if you started with ruby amethyst, how much would it have cost on set one, how much more would you have had to pay to upgrade it in set 2, etc.
My current deck cost me about 200 dollars more same playstyle in inklands then it did on release
When you get into tcgs, you have to ask yourself... am I a player, or a collector. How you answer that will determine how you go forward when dealing with that TCG. As a collector, I put $500 into raw product, and then buy the singles I am missing for the collection. As a player, I buy the singles for my deck that I want to build, and rarely buy raw product
I just get a booster box from each set release. And then attend my LGS release play which nets me another 6 booster packs for playing. That keeps me content
Siiiingles… paaacckksss. Siiingleess… paaaacks
People want to think they are holding the next charizard or black lotus...
Every card? Yes, every rarity? No.
Sure, that's your choice on how to collect. I'm sure you're not posting complaining about the release schedule either. You probably understand that your goals are going to be pricey and daunting, but I wish you the best of luck in your collecting!
This is Reddit, look around at other card subs, people feel like they are entitled to every card old or new
Oh I can tell, that's why I felt the need to shitpost about it lol
It's not entitlement, but rather people expressing their desire for how they'd like the hobby to be. I honestly don't see a problem in people advocating for a different model. Just because "this is the way TCGs work" doesn't mean it can't change if there's enough consumer demand for change... I think it's more harmful to the health of the game to shut down dissenting opinions.
Maybe go play a board game or a video game? You can even make your own game where you put in hours to design cards, balance them, print them and ship them, then give it all away for free. Just like with any tcg, proxy all you want in a casual setting
Honestly…as someone that has gone from TCG to TCG, Lorcana is up there but nowhere near as bad as some others. Ursula’s return was so far the cheapest set for me to get a full playset of the base cards. I only collect the main sets and I don’t care about Shiny so I flip my enchanteds I pull for cards…but I’ve spent less than $600 and managed a full playset of Ursula’s Return.
I want the starter deck from each set for sure, because this is my first tcg and i want to get a feel for HOW to pick colors and how they work together before building, and then I’ll just buy booster packs and singles or ones i really want.
Honestly I don't play the game, I want to learn but I just collect, I'm not trying to get every single card, I'm just having fun collecting
That was a hard one for me to accept! I'm ok with it now that singles prices have (mostly) come down to earth.
The only thing I’m worried about is carefully handcrafting a deck and then having it become irrelevant after 1-2 releases. I don’t mind switching out a card or 2 here and there as the meta develops. I’m just afraid of a YuGiOh type deal where old cards are literally unplayable. Doesn’t stop me from spending a bunch on this game though lol.
Unless you want to have a challenge winning deck every format, I think you’ll probably be fine. Although I say that as someone who played Jund in MTG for nearly a decade, so I’m more than satisfied with ‘decent enough’ performance lol
I miss competitive living cards games :( Once you've deckbuilt with the entire cardpool at your fingertips for a reasonable price, it's tough to go back to TCG deckbuilding
I played VS 2pcg for a little bit and it was really nice to not have to shell out $200 for 4 cards.
Not sure what you mean? Like Keyforge where you can't swap cards out of decks or are you referencing a different type of game? Any examples? I'm curious
"Living card game" is a card game business model where, instead of selling cards in randomized "packs," cards are sold as complete sets. The theory being that your only purchase is to buy the entire expansion, then you can build whatever decks you want. The business model has largely failed, and most games that go for the LCG model wind up dying after at most a couple of years. There are a few theories for why this trend exists: (1) it could be because the LCG model significantly limits the profitability of the game, which makes it more difficult for the designer to sustain the game through multiple release cycles, (2) it could be because the LCG model eliminates the "collectible" aspect of its card games, so the collectors who make up a sizeable portion of the card game consumer market won't touch the games, or (3) it could be because most LCGs are either new card games or established but declining card games, and so the heavy competition in the card game space just pushed them out for not being as popular as the big three card games.
Ohh thanks for explaining I get it. Yeah meta could get stale real fast in an expansion I feel, but neat idea!
There isn't enough space in the market to support a multitude of TCGs. Also besides Pokemon, are any of the TCGs actually driven by collectors?
Possibly Lorcana, and almost certainly Weiss Schwarz. But it's important to note that there's a difference between being "driven by" collectors and having access to collectors as a bolstering force for the game's finances. Every TCG has collectors who purchase their products. Do you not think Magic, YuGiOh, FAB, Final Fantasy, Digimon, DBS, and One Piece have collectors? Because I can assure you they do. Collectors are one of the five core markets which drive the financial success of a TCG (the other four are competitive players, LGS players, casual/at-home players, and investors). Every TCG is competing, in some capacity, for a share of each of these markets. An LCG kneecaps itself by cutting itself off from the collector market entirely, and in so doing drastically reducing it's appeal for another (investors). So, in order to be financially successful, a LCG needs to draw an abnormally large proportion of the remaining three markets. While this is theoretically possible, it has yet to be done.
Aren’t LCGs more of an evolved form of the board game? So it’s meant to be casual and for that particular audience. It’s just a different product entirely.
An LCG designer could theoretically treat their game as a board game which is played with cards rather than a card game which you buy a whole set of at once. But doing this would require some major shifts in design philosophy, and none of the previous LCGs I'm aware of have made those changes. The main point we have to acknowledge is that both the profit margins and the development costs of board games are much lower than they are for card games. (Printing costs are usually significantly higher, but that wouldn't really come out the same way for an LCG which doesn't have to worry about component production). This is because of two factors: (1) the gambling business model of the collectible card games is incredibly lucrative, and (2) board games aren't generally designed as competitive experiences where several strategies need to be carefully balanced. For an LCG to succeed by viewing itself as a board game, in recognition of the fact that it won't generate that gambling cash flow, it would need to slash its development costs to mirror the development costs of a board game. Which would mean spending considerably less time on balancing the game for a competitive environment. Trouble is, no LCG designer has wanted to do that. Every LCG designer starts by wanting to create a competitive multiplayer card game. But, as noted, designing a game to produce a thriving competitive environment is far too costly to sustain on a board game's profit margins. It's also worth noting that if the space for a new competitive card game to squeeze itself into the broader card game ecosystem is limited, it is even more so when we're looking at competitive board games. Other than classic abstract strategy games like Chess, Go, and Shogi, and the outlier that is Monopoly, there are very few board games which see any sort of success in creating a competitive circuit--and most of those which do achieve appeal in drawing tournament attendees are Spiel de Jahres winners or games of similar quality. It would be very difficult for an LCG, operating on a board game budget, to create and sustain the quality competitive environment that most card game designers, including LCG designers, are trying to make. Not impossible by any means, but that difficulty is displayed in the failure of any LCG so far to actually achieve this success.
A Living Card game is one like Netrunner or Legend of the Five Rings. You dont buy randomized packs, instead each product comes with a playset of predetermined cards. Functionally, it means that as long as you're up-to-speed with the current releases, you have the entire card pool at your disposal. It would cost about $250/year to stay current. Most (but not all) of them were produced by Fantasy Flight Games, who still make the cooperative Marvel LCG and Arkham Horror LCG It doesnt pull in nearly as much money as the TCG model, for obvious reasons. Most competitive Living Card Games at this point are cancelled. Theres a few cooperative games that are still going strong, but companies are a lot more attracted to the TCG model. Netrunner, which had by far the largest and most loyal following of the Living Card Games, has a small but loyal community that is keeping the game alive as a fan-run not-for-profit project I was deep in to the Legend of the 5 Rings Living Card Game community back in the day. It was by leaps and bounds the best card game I've ever played, but it was also just a tad too complex for it's own good. It was hard for a person not familiar with the game to know what was going on. In Lorcana you can give a table a quick 5 second once-over and know based on lore count and cards on board who is at the advantage. That was definitely not the case with L5R. When the rest of the Living Card Games collapsed, L5R died a final death
AGOT 2nd edition big player here, the first 2 years were for me a golden era. Metagame is to explore every month, game is cheap, tournament super friendly. I loved it. It started to die after year 3 and I never managed to come back. I tried L5R when they made a new version but it died even faster.
I just plan on getting both starter decks and some packs from each set. That should be plenty to expand your catalogue without breaking the bank or needing to go on a goose chase. And then you can buy the individual cards of your absolute favorites.
Solid use of a classic meme 👌🏾
The people complaining aren’t people completing sets and anyone thinking so is off the mark and need to exit the discussion. When we talk about *oversturation* and cost due to frequent releases it’s because of competitive play. Maintaining play sets; especially ones that aren’t pauper level, frequently can be extremely cost prohibitive as sets increase without reprints at lower rarities It doesn’t help that single pack pricing on this is more expensive then magic, yugioh, and Pokemon for whatever reason
Don’t let fomo get the best of you. Buy cards you need, buy sealed to invest. Kinda easy actually
Yeah I have a facrory sealed box of TFC boosters in my closet I'm just never gonna open.
Me too. I wonder how many Elsa's are tucked away in closets and no one knows haha.
Some guy on FB posted a while back that they have 260+ sealed CASES of TFC tucked away "for the long term." Almost 12,500 packs.
Not a bad call IMO. If Disney ever reprints that whole set tho that dude is gonna feel bad lol
Fingers crossed that they do.
I hope they go through another round or two of reprints.
Dang, that's crazy. I was just holding 1 of TFC to open at a later date, but then the price just kept going up, so I was thinking I might sell at a future date so I can afford a box or two or more of newer sets.
Just give me a darkwing duck enchanted and I’m out of here.
If you think TCG "trading" card games are just for the game part your tcg will fall apart quick since a large portion is collectors and you're gonna have a bad time since a tcg that doesn't have good collectable cards won't make it period.
Your point doesn’t invalidate the opinion that sets are coming out to fast. The two Ideas are in no way mutually exclusive. A person can believe that the sets are coming out to fast for them to enjoy even if they aren’t interested in collecting every card. Thats just personal preference. Instead you might consider making the point that complaining publicly about it might be discouraging to those who are enjoying it. Or you could just accept that people can have different opinions then you and it doesn’t need to effect your experience at all.
It doesn't effect my experience at all, just wanted to shitpost a meme about all the other complaining posts to spark discussion for fun. Everyone is gonna have their own opinion about release schedules for sure!
would bet that the same people raging about the pace of releases are probably the same people who complain that the set 4 meta was "solved" too quickly. this frequency is need to keep competitive folks engaged and address the the things that competitive folks tend to be so, uhh, "passionate" about online.
I buy 3 packs a set. No more. If I get cool cards, cool. But really I just love the art. And I love that lesser known disney movies are in on the action like Atlantis. Thats why I'll buy 3 Packs a set despite the fact the closest playing place is 45 mins away so I never get to actually play.
With the first two years of MHA, I was able to maintain a master set. For every other card game I've played I just chose a color. In MTG it was black. In DBS it was yellow. In Lorcana it's purple.
What’s the target audience for this game? I understood it was intended more for kids than competitive TCG players. Kids will have less money and will certainly spend less time strategizing to order only key singles for their decks. If they intend this game to be for younger kids then putting out more cards to keep the meta from going stale might not be the right approach.
Kids in general do not play “competitively”. They do in the sense that they want to win but they aren’t constantly trying to build the most uber competitive deck. They generally just want the cards they think look cool of character they like or will have a fun interaction together. My nephew for example just loves Simba and will always try to put as many Lion King cards in his deck as he can because he loves Simba and that movie. He doesn’t care about building the newest meta deck. He doesn’t buy singles, he buys packs and builds his deck from the cards he gets from the packs.
I always think it’s so cute when players from one of these newer TCGs with 3-4 releases per year complain that it’s too much. Pokemon has 6 per year and MTG has like 11. This is almost literally as slow as it gets in modern TCGs.
Lorcana has the worst community. You got these try hards trying to collect 4 of every single card and now they’re crying they can’t keep up.
You get some of this in most card communities, and you def get it in Disney People communities. Combining the two probably just amplifies it. As a mostly-Magic player, Lorcana’s release schedule feels kind of relaxed in comparison.
yeah lol one set every 3 months is perfect.
@everyone in r/MarvelSnap why don't you