Видео

Wow that's actually really good! Thank you for the kind words. Although I know the future, let's hope I get some too.

same to you!

However that maybe isent worth it… 😂

Cases are definitely not the way to go! I mention in the description that in the end it could have been a lot worse, as just 2-3 Krayt+Poe would have swung it to being close. Or a showcase of course. I've definitely heard a lot of stories like yours where random boxes have been very good! Congrats on the sick showcases. Maybe next set it will be even better :)

It sucks because it's a fun game and the opening experience for set 1 was really great for it's EV possibilities. Set 2 is in a weird spot where supply is hard to get for many people at a local store, but somehow the market is flooded and cards are worth very little.

😂

Assuming this is a good faith comment, if you watch the channel you should know that I mainly open for EV. Plus if you watch the full case opening, hopefully you can see why it's disappointing to get the same low worth legendaries over and over again. 5 Legendaires + Maul, and it's still only $82.

I don't really sell singles currently, but I should do it more!

Definitely a rough case so far :(

Congrats! I really do think the best way to open Star Wars Unlimited is random boxes. Cases just don't seem to work, especially with the bad duplication from box to box this game has.

Maybe blame the people who printed the product and set up the distribution of them product before blaming the buyers? Whether you want to believe it or not, there are hidden millionaires in every single TCG that buy up insane amounts of product. RUclips channels that open 20 boxes are nothing. 100 boxes is nothing. You are mad for a legit reason but you are blaming the wrong people. Without local games stores good luck playing and growing a game. Amazon selling does nothing for the future of a game, but yes you will get better prices in the short term.

@@iopentcgs You have a point. Increased supply would help all around. That is FFG's fault. And I do believe there are hidden millionaires buying up insane amounts of product. I think those people deserve blame as well. I'm new to TCGs and what I've noticed since April is that the world of TCG gaming is very different from board gaming. It seems to me that the TCG gaming community is intently focused on itself -- there's a lot more gatekeeping and there's not a lot of respect for or understanding of what I will call casual TCG gamers. I have no interest in playing competitively, I play with friends for the purpose of having fun. I also like collecting the cards. Part of having fun for us is having options to choose from to build our own deck. Here's where I'm having an issue: A) You're complaining that people buying product on Amazon is "ruining the game," when in many cases it's the only way a new casual player is going to get their hands on the game. Can you please explain how more people playing the game is ruining the game? I legitimately don't understand that point of view. B) 20 boxes is $2400. 100 boxes is $12,000. You could get a used car for that. That's not "nothing." Those are significant amounts of money for a game of printed cards. Ultimately, it comes across like you don't want people like me playing "your" game, and if we don't belong to the competitive LGS community we don't deserve to even purchase the product. Maybe that's not what you meant, but that's how its coming across.

If you come from the board game world and this is your first TCG, I can understand your perspective. I don't mean this in a mean way, but it is just a very naive perspective. If you come from the board game community, you should know that FFG TRIED to make competitive card games by taking out the randomization and the financial incentive, and relied solely on gameplay. EVERY multiplayer Living Card Game died and none of them even came close to the popularity that a TCG can get. They also made FFG a lot less money. Can you guess why they changed to a TCG? Your anger should be at least 80% focused at FFG. But let me try and explain why you are wrong about the other 20%. For your example A) what you don't get is that Amazon selling boxes does not get more people playing in the future. It might allow you to buy more boxes right now, but you would have been able to buy those boxes anyways because stores would have them. If stores had more supply, then the price would never have shifted up to $150. But the major thing is that games grow because of game stores. Even when boxes are super easy to get on Amazon, just two clicks away, if you don't have boxes at the store for immediate impulse buying to interested parties, then you have lost a lot of your momentum. Some games can overcome that issue, like One Piece TCG did, but you can just look at the singles market and see that there is NOT a lot of new players coming into the game and a lot of that is the supply of set 1 and set 2 boxes at local game stores. For your point B), to you spending $12,000 might seem like a lot, but for many people in this world that is just another small hobby for them, especially when the cards can/may/are worth money. This happens in ALL TCGs and Star Wars is no different. Honestly, there are probably far fewer whales in Star Wars than most. You might have a point about ALL TCGs and how whales block out casuals, but there is one way to combat that and it is having adequate supply at launch. Usually whales are huge fans of the game. They play, they exist in the community, and they are generally helpful. It's the scalpers that you should be mad at, and guess what, scalpers exist when supply is limited. Scalpers (and scalper stores) don't care about the game, community, or anything else. They just want to make money. RUclipsrs opening 20 boxes is NOT the issue. For a TCG to last in the long term, they all need a mix of whales + casuals. The cards need to be worth some money and people need to continue playing the game. You hatred of whales is fine, but they are necessary for a game to last in the long term. This is true for TCGs. This is true for any games as a service if you are familiar with video games. You are completely mistaken about the point I'm trying to make and I hope this wall of text helps. If not, then I'm sorry. Once again I'll reiterate that the boxes being sold by Amazon WOULD STILL EXIST and WOULD STILL BE SOLD except instead of FFG getting all the money, the stores that help grow and advertise the game would get the some money. There would be product IN the store for people to buy. And if they don't have the full supply to make that happen, then it would STILL help the community as a whole to get what they have out there to stores. Me saying the Amazon selling is bad is NOT about preventing people from buying into the game. It's entirely about how unfair this is to good stores that put in the work for this game/community, and do not get the benefits of it.

@@iopentcgs Thank you for the well thought out and thorough response. I would like to apologize for calling you out in such a harsh manner, it was wrong of me to do. I think you are right on in that my perspective of this game is rather naive given this is my first TCG. There's a lot of negativity in the world and I'm sorry for adding to that and making you a target. Edit: I should mention I really loved the Star Wars Living Card Game. I understand it didn't make them much money, but I loved having all of the cards.

Sad to hear! Flesh and Blood foils do have this issue sometimes and it’s also printed in Belgium. But at least from my case, the differences in general quality are night and day.

They do curl up that's true. Also saw upside down cards and print lines, bad centering. Though I must say I have the feeling the foil cards are more vibrant than the ones in Spark of the rebellion

If you know anything about the history of FFG, they have great designers but are absolutely terrible at publishing card games. Their track record is terrible, which is the reason set 1 sold so poorly in the very beginning because stores didn’t trust them. The game is absolutely great. And it’s definitely holding this game afloat. But they are absolutely NOT a great publisher for multiplayer card games.

I’m not sure which countries got the Belgium made boxes. I know Germany did. But I also ordered from the UK and they were US made boxes.

We have the Belgium made ones. Which is only logical. I checked on opened packs which I had laying around and it states made in Belgium on the back of the packs.

There are bad stores, but not all stores are bad. Did you know Asmodee CAN actually punish bad stores and yet they seem to have not really cared to do so? After many many stores were selling set 1 OP packs and showdown promos, the community was sure that Asmodee would crack down on that for set 2. Guess what? Set 2 comes out, they ship the product 3 weeks early, many stores and streamers are selling product early, selling OP kits, selling promos. There will always be bad stores. It's partial up to Asmodee to police it and enforce their rules. Flesh and Blood does this very well.

You have mentioned multiple times that it must be in the contract like it's an inevitable thing that nobody has blame or control over. If it is in the contract, they drafted, signed, and agreed to it. It does not absolve them of blame. You are correct that Star Wars margins are way better, but your store getting 300 boxes means they are probably in the top 5% of stores. That's not the normal experience for most stores. If a store can only get 40 boxes of star wars and make 25% margin, but 400 boxes of magic at 10% margin, crack open boxes to sell singles, and still have stock for the entire run which game would you prefer to spend your time on? Yes, the stores that are huffing and puffing right now and saying "I'm not going to buy set 3" are definitely trying to be noble. They are doing what I'm trying to do, which is signal to others that this is not a great path for a TCG to be on. But again. Look at the overall singles market. Do you think a lot of new players came into this game for set 2 across the country? Not just at your local spot? Set 1 singles are almost at the lowest it's ever been after 3 MONTHS of being out of stock. Set 2 barely bumped them up. This Amazon/stock issue is just another cog in that machine. Getting new players is the entire endgame of a TCG.

Thank you for letting me know your perspective. To my knowledge, I haven't had a single store in my big town do draft or sealed because they never have product. Could that just be bad stores being bad? Maybe. But when asked they just say that they barely have enough for pack per win weeklies. It is a good point that at least they aren't dumping it, but the question for me remains what happens when they have ample supply. I have a feeling they are slamming the print more button right now and they will overcorrect on supply in the future. Especially if demand doesn't pick up. If that happens, the Amazon dumps (now that they know they are barely getting any backlash) will come. But that's just my pessimistic take. Will see what the future holds...in the future.

@@iopentcgs i dont know if its bad stores being bad or just stores making their money. Cant really fault them for that. Typically in drafts a store doesnt make hardly anything. I can say from my POV that we have money tied up in lots of revenue streams (magic, pokemon, warhammer, and so on) Being that there is a new magic set every 52 mins, you gotta make hey when the sun is shinning.

@@iopentcgs My LGS is definitely a good store (they sold Shadows preorders at their regular markup rather than the 100% increase every other store was doing) but after the release of set 1, they received a total of 2 extra boxes. They used them for a draft and for a May 4th tournament prices. If they received "a couple boxes a month" we would have people driving in from miles out of town to buy some.

@@iopentcgs That's hard to say, if they're doing a pack per win in an event that's probably eating up most of their product as we usually had enough for 2-3 drafts a month with smaller turnouts. We did get lucky and get enough to do a 19 person sealed event for the Showdown but ended up not being able to accommodate everyone we would have liked. The ample supply question is where I hope to be sustainable in comparison to stores that raise their prices drastically, as I'm hoping the community I build chooses to continue to shop with us over other options if we have the supply and I'm happy to sell boxes at a 90 to a hundred as that's where I was the first few weeks. I don't think they will do massive dumps on other platforms, but they will sell some to get eyes on the product from people who don't frequent game stores.

I assume you live in a small area as you only have 1 LGS. Either way, what you are doing is totally fine. You arnt shorting your LGS, get your cards how you can and play AT the LGS. The issue arises when people buy off amazon oppose to their LGS.

Personally, I highly doubt that's a thing. It would be extra bad form to take a bunch of preorders on product in the hopes of fulfillment. Especially directly from the producers of the game. I assumed that they had a bigger wave planned to release in early August, hence the ship date on Amazon, but stores are telling us they are barely getting any. Maybe it's all going to Amazon.

@@iopentcgs it made no sense to me amazon was getting boxes when stores werent. I brought this up on reddit and ppl were like yeah expect that order to be canceled or massively delayed. It will be interesting to see if my order is again pushed back the closer we get to Aug 5th.

@@imanujakku Unfortunately that's just the massive amount of copium the SWU community has to always look on the bright side. I know I'm the opposite and I always assume the worst, but it's funny that the two options are them selling on amazon (which some think is bad) vs them fake selling boxes they don't have (which is also bad).

I'm sure holding back product for Gencon and other cons is standard practice. I'm less concerned about them selling directly via Cons than the online selling as cons have a cost associated with them inherently. There's a lot of things that they need to figure out by set 3, and unfortunately there are no signs that any of it is getting better. But I understand being hopeful and wanting to trust in a game that you love.

Both stores and players need incentives. Not just stores. 😢

This is true. Stores need incentive to stock/run the game. The incentive for players should be a great product that's available. FFG has failed on supply (which is not entirely their fault). But they have also failed on communication, quality control of product, and now selling on Amazon in direct competition to the stores they failed.

Thank you for providing your experience!

As mentioned in the video, there are bad LGSs out there jacking up the prices. There are also many good LGSs that kept the price at MSRP or lower for locals. What about them? They can't make any money? It is precisely this reason that the video is made and still it goes over the player base's head. Again, the only reason the bad LGS's can jack up their prices is because of Asmodee's own supply issues. Of course you would rather buy boxes at $120. I said I would myself in the video. Unfortunately, I didn't do a good job of explaining why this is not great for the future as many are not understanding.

@iopentcgs if a lgs is not making money, they are doing something wrong, but just like restaurants, only a hand full actually make it and don't close in a year from opening. Just like I said the distributor sells inventory to a store, and if they sell at msrp, they will make money. When a lgs goes over msrp it is all just greed, because they want to make more money. Honestly Amazon selling as first party seller is a good thing, it almost cards to be in people's hands to be used for play, and it allows people to not get ripped off by over paying. Blaming ffg for distribution is the easy scape goat, these cards were printed and ready to be sold back when set 1 was out, and ffg did not expect the game to blow up the way it did, and the fact that they are doing reprints is ensuring that players can get cards without being ripped off by over paying

In your analogy, if a restaurant suddenly can't get Coke from Coca Cola because of shortage issues but it's easily obtainable on Amazon, isn't that bad for the store's business through no fault of the business? Your assumptions about the business shows that you don't know anything about the business. Generally, LGS needs products to make money and in return they provide advertising and an environment for the game to be played. That's the implicit agreement between TCGs & stores. Again you completely are ignoring everything except for the bad faith LGSs and are only looking at things from the consumer standpoint. I hope you can take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

i would NEVER play or buy at a shop that sells anything over MSRP. If your LGS is charging 200 for a box, simply dont shop there. Thats bad business practice and they already dont care about their player base only their bottom line.

@iopentcgs my analogy was not about the product being sold, it was to point out that most restaurants don't stay open past a year, and same can be said for card shops. Now let's go look at your example, yes if a restaurant ran put of coke and people could buy coke from Amazon, that then means that the restaurant should fail because it is relying solely on coke to make all of its money and not the food it makes. LGS don't rely solely on one game, it takes lots of games to make a store work. Not that it matters, because no matter what I say you won't believe me, but I know multiple store owners, some that have successful shops some that have had shops close up, and I do know way more about the business than the average person. This is because I was going to open a LGS but did the actual research needed to learn about what needs to be done to keep it open. Now let's go and look at my other comments about distributors, they are the middle man that sells to a LGS, and they do not charge secondary market prices they sell based on quantity, but any order bought is bought at a lower price so the LGS can make money if they sell at msrp, and that cost of buying actually goes down the higher the quantity they purchase from the distributor. So this tells us that shops that sold at or below msrp bought more product and got it cheaper, but they run the risk of running out of product faster because of the price, LGS that charge more are doing so for selfish reasons, and buying directly from Amazon will force those LGS to lower the price to what it should be to compete with the market, and if any LGS is solely relying on this one game to keeps its doors open, it will fail.

100% fix the supply problem. Those boxes that they sold themselves? It could have gone towards helping solve the supply issue. It's not going to magically fix it, but it's a step forward.

I don't think it's a desert everywhere, but I do think you have a great local community that not everyone has. For the record, selling on Amazon doesn't instantly kill the game. It's a boulder that gets pushed off the ledge and has future consequences for the game. I'm also not sure where you are seeing all these content creators causing a fuss. All the big ones I've seen say nothing but positive things.

@@iopentcgs for the record, I am no expert, and your video makes sense.. I am not pushing back on your thoughts, and appreciate the content you create.. I am curious how my area actually does stack up against other areas. We have certainly had supply shortages here.. and there has been barely enough stock to keep locals healthy.. I really do hope FFG doesn’t ruin this game with things like this. And you’re right most of the bigger content creators say it’s good 🤙🏼

Im with you. I live in a city thats about 150k people. We have several LGS, set 1 I went to 6 showdowns, all in different stores all within 30mins of my house. All of them were packed (30+ people). My shop that i work at, we have casual play on tuesday, even now 18+ every single tuesday. We sold out the first weekend. (300+boxes). Which product is only found on TCG player, we have a TON of players and are very competitive.

As a consumer I would do the same, which is the problem. The point is that it’s bad for the game in the long term to withhold stock from stores just to sell direct. It would be different if there was plenty of stock to go around.

@@iopentcgs it reminds me of Sorcery with Team Covenant holding all the stock and LGS not having enough to build the game, but you and myself bought there all day long without really complaining.

There was a lot of complaining from the community, from stores, and from me. However TC is not first party, but they ended up as a pseudo exclusive seller of the product due to a bad distribution model from Erik’s Curiosa. But if you have been paying attention to Sorcery, it’s a great example of exactly what I’m talking about in this video. Look how hard it is to get new players into your game when you can’t find product in stores, you pissed off stores because of your distribution issues, and stores aren’t really incentivized to run events or promote the game. It’s a different situation because it’s a super indie TCG and it’s one set a year, but the parallels are there.

no, as he stated, foils and hyperspace cards are not mapped.