Grip.Cards

Elsa is the New Charizard

From comicbook.com

Incredibly spotty distribution numbers for Lorcana have caused demand to absolutely skyrocket, producing some incredible chaos on the early side of Gen Con.

It's hard to find primary sources, but stores are reporting through the grapevine that they've gotten tiny fractions of their product demand fulfilled, reportedly because Ravensburger printed much less product than expected (though many speculate it's because most of the first printing is going to big-box stores rather than LGSs).

While single cards are fetching high prices, this price climb is mainly driven by speculation — both by scalpers on eBay and in person.

Is Hearthstone worth playing in 2023?

From dotesports.com

"For deep and competitive play, this is not the place to be…"

Betteridge's Law Kind Of Continues To Apply, Including To ‘Is Altered Going to Change the TCG Industry?’

From youtube.com

The person behind Dixit has a new business venture for a TCG called Altered. Quick highlights include mostly stuff about collectibility:

• Each card has a unique ID that can be tied to someone's account through a phone app, like Keyforge.
• This means also that the secondary market is entirely subsumed; it only exists at the whim of the publisher, who owns the database of digital owners.
• Print-on-demand lets them refill cards given proof of virtual ownership, including one traded on their first-party market. Some interesting ideas there about that meaning that there is guaranteed transfer and language-independence, for example.
• This allows for some mechanics that are imported from digital games, like the idea of wildcards or card upgrades (e.g., spending a resource you find in physical boosters to make a card into a enhanced version of itself, which then you own and can be printed and sent to you), or cards that exist in one specific copy.

Of course, a lot of this raises flags about 'pay to win' mechanics and bomb-driven metas — if certain unique cards are mechanically very relevant, what does this do to game balance?

Also, thematically, there's a bunch of handwringing around nonviolence — but no specific mechanical info. It looks like a symmetrical race game? Which begets a lot of questions about, say, how does interaction work mechanically or thematically in this game, none of which are answered. (Gameplay taking a backseat to collectibility/monetary concerns is always a red flag for a new game.)

Magic Presents Incredibly Detailed 2023-2026 Roadmap for 30th Anniversary

From magic.wizards.com

In an unprecedented move, releases for Magic: the Gathering have been publicly detailed not just for the year ahead, but deep into 2026. Surprises include western, anthropomorphic-animal, space opera and multiverse-defying death-race-themed planes, and brand crossovers with Jurassic Park, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed and Final Fantasy, as well as returns to Ravnica (with a murder mystery set!), Innistrad, Tarkir and Lorwyn/Shadowmoor.

It's Like Falling in Love All Over Again

I've been thinking a lot about what pushes me to stay in this godforsaken, extensible-card-game-infested corner of my psyche despite extensible card games being hostile territory to my brain.

I love it, but you have to understand that my definition of love isn't something that just happens. It's not just the longing or the need.

Love is work.

I could've written about what I'm doing with my extensible card game design reference library. Things certainly are heating up in a bunch of ways, after a long summer lull: Lorcana's big moment (and its attendant lawsuit); the union busting at TCGPlayer/eBay; the way Magic seems to be trying to eat up each innovation, good and bad, that comes from other card games, whether it's waifu art or brand crossovers — or the things only it can do, like having Post Malone get his wallet out to the tune of $2.6 million.

But most of my thought in these few months has been about loving the space. Specifically, not why I love the space, because I know that that moment of falling into it, of being incredibly excited and immediately going into my little space to think through all the cogs of a machine, of the pleasure of the sheer kinetics of shuffling a deck or placing a die or counting chits, that's not something I need to quantify in order to want it.

I have fallen in love with this already, and I'm ready to do so again, and again, and again, thoroughly, despite myself.

So, more than the why, I ask myself how I can love the space. Because: love isn't just the falling; the falling itself is work. Love is showing up every day and doing what you can. Despite yourself. Even if things are horseshit. Treasuring the moments that are smooth and joyful. Working through the problems, one at a time. And, sure, there is a good dose of sitting with yourself and asking: is this okay? am I being loved back? (a question Magic: the Gathering resoundingly answered no to). It is a lot of work trying to think of whether things are healthy or not, whether I should stay or go.

But, I know, right this second, that I'm not leaving.

Right now it's Netrunner. Right now it's the testing group that I'm not really part of, but has acquiesced to giving me a spot helping around while I get remotely okay at the game. Right now it's showing up at Gamescape SF to teach and build whatever community one can over here (in a city which is not truly "doom looping" in any particular sense, but whose prospects were thoroughly poisoned before SARS-CoV-2 was in anyone's breathable air).

Right now, work means figuring out my health enough to get out of the rut it's in. Enough to evaluate ADHD medication, enough to lean into discipline and taking notes, in doing the math very slowly rather than impulse-playing very quickly. Enough to not spike into bad anxiety attacks every time I play a game that feels like having any stakes in.

Right now, indeed, it's figuring out whether I should take the space I already have, whether the effort I'm putting in — incorrectly sporadic, badly erratic, too deep into a confused space no explanation really can lift me out of — is worth it, or even appropriate; if I should carve a learning-focused, lower-level niche in a scene that's full of people who are already so good I, right now, cannot compare. And how I myself can bring in that learning experience, since my learning needs seem to be so much at odds with everyone else's.

Love is work. Broken hearts are work. Broken minds are just as much work: I spent more than twenty years of my life shuffling cards, dreaming to be better, and, as sad as it makes me that I'm not, I can easily spend twenty more.

What else could anyone do, with their limited time, if not put the work in?