A Time for Reprints: An Open Letter

A Time for Reprints: An Open Letter

In a recent set of auctions on Ebay, the A Song of Summer and The Winds of Winter Chapter Packs sold for $100.00 and $108.49 respectively. It took me a minute to realize I was awake and not just dreaming it: a few people out there actually paid 10x the retail price of fixed Chapter Packs because of how scarce they have become and how necessary they are. One post on the GoT Trade Forums on Fantasyflightgames.com is titled "Paying $100+ for unopened Song of Summer Chapter Pack". Has it really gotten this bad? Apparently it has.

The issue here is really two-fold. The first problem is the obvious one: how friggin’ hard it has become to get these packs. I’m not going to boycott FFG or start a crazy picket line here; I know print runs are tricky things and there are many factors that go into what gets printed when, etc. My intent is not to make Fantasy Flight out to be the Galactic Empire. The truth is that they make a great game, and I feel very strongly about how good the product is overall. That said, these packs have officially disappeared from the Earth and are now practically impossible to find. To put it in perspective, you can purchase an entire 6 Chapter Pack cycle (that had more cards in each pack to begin with) for less than the cost of one of the “Season Packs”. It’s not as if we are talking about the rarest of Magic sets here – these are fixed packs in a game with virtually no singles market that were made only a few years ago.

The second, and in my view most important, problem is how critical these packs are to certain deck builds. If I had to tell people that the Scattered Armies Chapter Pack was almost impossible to find, I wouldn’t lose much sleep over it. Lannister players would have to find a replacement for the 1 copy of Tommen Baratheon they would otherwise play, but life would go on. Unfortunately, the plain fact is that these packs are necessary for many top tier decks to function. Let’s start with the fact that many of the top Regional decks this season will have 3 Carrion Birds in them. These little guys are cheap, neutral characters that are strong for their cost and have a built in ability to deal with other Raven cards, ie. other Carrion Birds and the Black and White Ravens. In fact, there is no card more prevalent in decklists, pound for pound than these little devils. If these were House-specific it would be one thing, but ANYONE can play them – and many decks do. Also guaranteed is the fact that many Martell and Targaryen decks will feature the Kings of Summer Agenda/ Black Raven package for card advantage and gold production.

I’m not even going to get into how useless poor Samwell Tarley is without these packs….poor guy. Better hope your opponent is playing the Raven cards you couldn't get your hands on...

The biggest kick in the pants, though, is The Winds of Winter Chapter Pack, the lack of which leaves Greyjoy (forgive the pun) out in the cold. Greyjoy Winter Choke is one of the strongest decks right now, and the majority of those play with: The Kings of Winter Agenda, White Raven x 2-3, Carrion Bird x 3, and Ice Fisherman x 3. For those of you keeping score, that’s 9-10 cards from a single Chapter Pack that this deck loses out on. Even the Maester’ Path versions of the deck still plays all of these cards except the Agenda. The main point here is that Martell and Targaryen can deal without Summer; they have other builds (Maester, KotHH, etc.) to choose from. Generally speaking, Greyjoy Choke (ie. Winter) is the only top tier Greyjoy deck, and even the Maester variant still uses almost all of the same Winter cards.

We currently have about 30 players in our local meta here in Rochester, and more than half of them have been playing the game for only a few months. For the most part, the game is easy to pick up and cheaper to invest in due to the LCG format. Having to tell players that some Chapter Packs are out of print and kind of tough to get is fine; people understand that not everything can be in print at once. Telling them, however, that there are two packs that are crucial for certain deck types that are now only available sporadically on Ebay for $100 a piece is really disheartening. A new player asked me the other day what he should buy for his Greyjoy deck to help make it more tournament-ready for the upcoming Regional. I wanted to tell him that he could make a top-tier, tournament caliber deck from what was available, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie to him.

What's more, there are cards that reference Summer and Winter for every house. And while Baratheon and Lannister are unlikely to play either anytime soon, the pure fact that so many cards exist that reference the seasons makes their disappearance all the more frustrating. For those of you that want to quickly point out the existence of House-specific crowns that change the seasons, please believe me when I say they are no substitute. I wish they were.....but they are not nearly efficient enough to be considered replacements.This is the one situation where being a Living Card Game is unfortunate . By its nature, the product does not have an active and widespread singles market, which is great most of the time, but when packs become this scarce there is NO WAY to get the cards until it comes back in print. Proxies will only get you so far in life.

Obviously something has to change, and it has to change soon. It's a real shame that this situation had to come up just as the Regionals season was heating up. So.....what's to be done here? As far as I see it, there are three options:

• Reprint the packs. Depending on future plans, current print run times, and concern for the skyrocketing price of the packs in question, the easiest way to go would be to reprint the packs, much like the King’s Landing and Defenders of the North sets.
• Make a special box set of some kind. Other card games do this all the time. Make a Summer vs. Winter box set that has some of these cards reprinted in it. They would not only be cool decks that fit the games themes nicely, they would also be another outlet to pick up some of the cards that can’t be reprinted for one reason or another. The nice part about this game being a Living Card Game is that you don’t really have to worry about hurting the singles market, which is largely non-existent anyway.
• Rotate the format. This one is touchy and could almost have a whole article devoted to it. Those of you familiar with Magic know that every year or so cards “rotate out” of the Standard format to keep it fresh and easier to keep up with. If FFG is not going to reprint the Time for Ravens and Clash of Arms cycles, they could rotate them out of the format and basically create two LCG formats – one where all the cards are legal and more Standard-esque one where these unavailable packs are not allowed. I’m not advocating this, just saying it’s an option. Who knows, a change of pace could do a body good.

The bottom line is this: these are two linchpin packs that most players need to play the game at a competitive level. We have reached a sort of tipping point where something has to give on this soon or the risk of alienating new players (and old ones too) becomes a real problem. Personally, I hope this gets resolved soon one way or another. Overall, this is one of the best card games I have ever played in one of the best environments I have ever played in, and I want to see it continue to grow in a healthy way. So, I suppose I'm really asking two things: That the GoT community be made aware of the problem and openly discuss it, and that Fantasy Flight takes these concerns seriously and strives to remedy the problem quickly, before people start mortgaging their homes for Carrion Birds.

Help us, Fantasy Flight Games, you’re our only hope.