IMO, it was slightly silly of them to venture into it. It's a completely niche market, and they won't survive in a closed box CCG set, let alone trying to hold boosters etc. Literally your market is your obsessed fans, and maybe a few enthusiasts to the genre. They raised $140,000 on preorders, but now none of these people need to pay for in-game SC (since they basically gave away $140,000 worth of SC), and they've invested god knows how much money in just getting these cards to print and with all the extras involved. And the work hasn't even begun yet if he's planning on actualyl publishing and distributing it. Ignoring the fact that the game won't translate to physical cards well at all (resources, turns to keep track of for cards like eladwen's ability or clinging webs, durability on armor/weapons, mixing decks with dimension ripper, persistant damage, clouded judgment on what exactly triggers
IGG, etc etc) and you've got yourself a mess. I know my card stores around here won't bother with it. If they package it as a closed CCG with 6x of every card and 2x of every card -- MAYBE. But TCG's just don't work, look at VS and how it just... died. For no reason, other than WoW was coming.
On top of that, now any changes that need to be made for the good of the game cannot be made due to the first set being "locked in". And now you'll have to venture into the physical market with the expansions even if the payout isn't worth it, to stay consistent. It's just sort of awful.
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