The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Tomorrow's Plastic

(Mike's parade of trivial tragedies continues)

Word has reached me that Fantastic Forces (more and more full-dial updates this week, with many dropped there late afternoon and evening today) will be the last set to include Super Rares, at least as we've known them. (ie Identical in point cost and dials to the prize LEs awarded in tournaments.)

Apparently the limp venue weenies, cut-throat game sharks and secondary market, collectible plastic profiteers in general have whined long and loudly enough that WizKids has decided that Super Rares are making the LEs less of a draw for venue action, threatening global stability, devaluing the currency and generally bumming everyone out, man.

My expectation is that they'll see that now that they have some LE/SR pieces offering something significantly better than what's seen in the REVs (the Sue Storm and Kurt Wagner SRs/LEs to name two) that they'll see that despite being available as SRs the prize LEs will draw in the gamers. A better quality of LE/SR dials will do the trick -- something not seen much in the Mutant Mayhem & Legacy SRs/LEs -- not eliminating SRs. The decision's already been made, though, so some aspects of the future are apparently set no matter what that little, green sonuvabitch on Degoba said.

On the other side, a good source says that all future sets after Icons will be in the same mold as that one. That is to say, smaller sets with a reduced number of uniques, so the potential will be for someone to buy a case and instantly (or, with a few trades) complete his set -- aside from the LEs, which will be one or two mail-aways and the rest of them tournament prizes. There's likely to be some other twist to this, though, because something's missing. If they don't keep the level of chase figures available in boosters up people will be able to complete their sets with fewer buys, and all of that runs contrary to the "collectible" game business model.

Another good source tells me that we'll likely still see something like or even still called Super Rares in future sets, but they'll be different in points and dials from the prize LEs. (That's likely the "something missing" I mentioned above.) It'll be one of those attempts at a best-fit compromise that will likely irritate one or both sides. I know it'll bother me unless the prize LEs are especially lame and inconsequential.

At the moment I'm not pleased. Master of the Obvious, I am.

The inclusion of super rares raised the value of an average clutch of boosters. Removing them means reduced value, along with shifting those pieces back into the hands of tournament sharks, envoys and the secondary market. If we're back to the days of Jane Fosters, Ruperts, Clint Bartons, etc. as LEs only, I'm going to be less interested. I mostly ignored them during the first couple years of the game, but after giving us a random shot at them in three sets, to take them away very much has the feel of, well, having something taken away. Reduced value. Will they replace it with something else? Probably. Will it do the trick for me? Right now I'd say probably not.

Maybe this will be the nudge to get me to drop out of new sets. (:: laugh track::)

It's too far off and lacking in detail to make any such decisions yet. I know myself well enough, though, that I'm either all the way in or all the way out of things like this, so it makes no sense for me to pretend I'll just casually pick at a new set at the retail level; if I started to handle it that way I'd soon start in on impulse buys and that would cost a fortune. Sure, I could theoretically assemble much of the set casually over the course of months for relatively little money, but there would be tougher pieces to obtain I'd want and would start to go after. I can smell a credit card heating up already.

They'll likely announce the late-year set before the end of July/early August, as they tend to do so roughly 4 months before release. We'll see what info comes to light by then. Maybe all the details will stay as I've been informed and I'll have simply worked through a fit of pique, the addiction winning out in the end.

In the meantime, Fantastic Forces continues to look like a fun set, however much maligned it is by people who both don't know many of the characters, or at least think they know but don't care about them, and have come to think that most uniques should be game-breaking, high-cost monsters.