Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Thank you Rob!

I hope the secondary release becomes a staple and that people really get behind it.

Thanks for clarifying Rob--I thought you mentioned there being slightly more during our conversation at Nationals, but I must have misunderstood.

Certainly did not mean to mislead anyone.

I would love to have the alternate border art become standard border art and do away with the whole alternate border idea. The AB look so much sharper, nicer, thematic and inviting than the regular border, but you can only get the AB at Nats anyways. It's asking a lot for people to re-purchase functionally the same cards again just for the different border art.

Regarding borderless, personally, I wish all of the cards were borderless as they definitely look the best, but if that's not really an option they can continue to be used as the standard layout for promos and prizes.

I'm glad to see we all agree that the current model for distributing AB cards is not in the best interest of the community and should be changed going forward.

Promise,

1. assure someone that one will definitely do, give, or arrange something; undertake or declare that something will happen.

2. give good grounds for expecting (a particular occurrence or situation).

What was said concerning the availability of AB cards, by this definition, is, at least to me, clearly a "promise" of sorts because the precedent has been for well over a year now that the cards would only be released at nationals and that was everybody's expectation right up until the announcement was made.

Even if you call it a "plan" instead of a "promise", the method and timing of all this is still highly questionable and unfortunate. Like Rob said, he was in a tight spot and it felt like insider trading, and, from my perspective, it was. Honestly, if last years set was received so well then the method of distribution should have been changed for this years release. But it wasn't. If this announcement had come even a week before nationals it would have at the very least allowed everybody to make decisions knowing what was going to happen.

In the past couple of years both Magic and Pokemon reprinted sets that were "out of print" and they lost credibility with investors because of how they handled it. Now, the Redemption scene is much smaller and there isn't nearly as much money involved, but, from a business perspective, the principle should remain the same and the scale or demographic of the Redemption community shouldn't be used as justification to ignore it.

I think that going forward the community has overwhelmingly stated that AB cards are good for the game as a whole and I hope that it is possible to either expand the release of AB cards substantially, or replace the regular release with AB cards all together. I think anything less than this leaves the possibility of something like this happening again in the future.

At the end of the day I am fully behind whatever Rob decides to do knowing that he has taken the time to discuss this and weigh all the pros and cons.

Thank you again for all of the constructive discussion that has taken place so far. I'm proud to be part of such a wonderful community.

Didn't read everything, but are orders being taken for these boxes yet?

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate Rob Anderson.

I'm a big fan of maintaining the incentive to go to Nationals. The first thing people ask me when I tell them I was at Redemption Nationals is "how many people were there?" Keeping them as a thing you can literally only get at Nationals is great for promoting attendance.

I'm necessarily disagreeing with this point, but I do wonder how much the AB cards make the difference between someone going and not going? For me personally, I love that we've been able to do them and it's become one of the things I look forward to the most. However, even if we didn't have the opportunity to do AB, I'm pretty sure I would still go to Nats--it just wouldn't be quite as epic. I would be interested to know if there are people who would decide to pass on Nationals if that incentive was not there (i.e. the AB style was used for the regular release and there wasn't a distinctive "Nats only" set).

I would be really excited if CoW AB was reprinted during Christmas time with the same one ultra guarantee like RoJ

While it seems the one year delay for re-release is the best compromise, I would still be happy to have the "Allow each person to buy one additional box" option as that was what I had hoped to do at Nationals (and I'm guessing many others as well). While I understand I could have had someone who wasn't going to buy a box get another one for me right away, I decided to just wait for the limit to be lifted so that everyone had the opportunity to buy their first box. Guess I know better for next year... 
For those who were opposed to the re-release idea for this year, I (kind of) understand your position, but I hope you can understand mine.

@Guardian

Because there were "ringers" at nationals all prospective customers ought to have another opportunity to purchase the set after nationals?  I guess I am not really following your justification here. Moreover, There didn't seem to be too many people who wanted to buy Roj packs and could not because they were all sold out, and obviously, like you say, people could have bought packs at the beginning.

If "Ringers" are put in check that's fine, but don't expect people to buy more boxes when the 1 box limit is lifted.

I just realized that if CoW AB gets re released and so does RoJ AB, we can have an AB draft party!

The Nationals supply simply did not meet demand, and it's frustrating that people are opposed to allowing others to buy more packs on the basis that the perceived values will be decreased.  The market for full sets might be "flooded" but that's because hardly anyone is dropping $400+ for a set right now. If they are going to spend that money, they would rather spend less $ to get 3 sealed boxes and end up with 288 new cards (plus the extra cards) as opposed to 129.

Sure its because the perceived value decreases, yet we are not having this conversation if the appropriate supply is perceived by Cactus Games or if there was a fall back plan implemented and announced before nationals to release more cards after. Say, selling excess packs after or re-releasing, a plan seemingly welcomed by both sides for future sets...  I'm glad you did not use your insider trading to your advantage, but it's really not appropriate for information like that to be disseminated to you in the first place or realistic to expect people to handle such information fairly. In anticipation of a potential re-release people might not buy as many packs, but perhaps this is offset by reducing the price from $5 to $4.

  The market for full sets might be "flooded" but that's because hardly anyone is dropping $400+ for a set right now. If they are going to spend that money, they would rather spend less $ to get 3 sealed boxes and end up with 288 new cards (plus the extra cards) as opposed to 129.

Yeah, and this is what made me vote for option b with the assumption that TLG knew about the re-release. In hindsight, I feel this to be an interesting assumption, but basically the people who would be buying the re-released whole boxes would not buy complete sets otherwise. Moreover, I don't know anything about the demand for re-releasing the sets, but am skeptical of whether this would be profitable because of the low demand for alternate boarder cards on the boards from people who did not collect them at nationals... and even less profitable if you release the cards the next Christmas.