Fortune Cards, we just received a preview

[thalmin]

We just received a preview box of D&D Fortune Cards.

There are three types of cards: Attack, Defense, and Tactic. There are 8 cards in a pack; 5 common, 2 uncommon, 1 rare, plus a card called Initiative Tracker with an ad on the back.
In the 2 packs I opened, only the rare card had artwork on it. Otherwise the Tactics cards have a battle banner, Attack cards have a sword, and Defense cards have a shield. The display box has a sheet explaining how to use the cards. There are 24 packs in a display. Cards are standard (Magic) sized cards.

edit: There are 80 cards in the set, and the cards are numbered.

 

[thalmin]

The card effects are like mini-feats. The effect is like a feat (i.e. Careful Aim - Play when you use a close or area attack power. Omit one creature from the power's area of effect.) but is used only once, then you discard the card.

 

[Nikosandros]

Thanks for the information. Are there rules on how you build your deck? What happens with the discarded cards? Do you shuffle them again when you run out of cards?

 

[thalmin]

The extra sheet tells how to build a deck, but does not say what happens to discards.
It says there is an FAQ at DungeonsandDragons.com/fortunecards but that link didn't work when I tested it.

 

[blalien]

Hey, I go to your store. What are you doing with the cards?

 

[Nikosandros]

The extra sheet tells how to build a deck, but does not say what happens to discards.
It says there is an FAQ at DungeonsandDragons.com/fortunecards but that link didn't work when I tested it.

I actually just looked up the product description in WotC online catalog and it seems that you shuffle the deck at the start of every encounter.

 

[thalmin]

Hey, I go to your store. What are you doing with the cards?

We are going to try them in our Encounters games, and maybe in a couple of others as well. We were not expecting these, so we haven't fully decided. We cannot sell them or use them as promotions. But WotC does want our feedback.

 

[Ahrimon]

In the 2 packs I opened, only the rare card had artwork on it. Otherwise the Tactics cards have a battle banner, Attack cards have a sword, and Defense cards have a shield.

See, this annoys me. The cost per card is pretty high compared to regular CCG cards. And the fact that there's no art on most should mean that they are even cheaper to produce. So why are they so expensive?

 

[The Little Raven]

See, this annoys me. The cost per card is pretty high compared to regular CCG cards. And the fact that there's no art on most should mean that they are even cheaper to produce. So why are they so expensive?

If you're talking 100 different cards in the randomized set, that's 100 different pieces of artwork, along with the increased cost of printing due to small print volume (probably an order of magnitude smaller than a Magic print run, at the least). The cost of that could get out of hand, particularly with the rocky reception the Fortune Cards have been getting from the community, and a lack of sales could have made them lose money on it.

I know they don't want to run into some 1990s TSR issue with making products that end up costing them more than they make off of them. This is their first foray into a random card element for D&D, so I think they want to test the waters before diving in.

 

[Lancelot]

See, this annoys me. The cost per card is pretty high compared to regular CCG cards. And the fact that there's no art on most should mean that they are even cheaper to produce. So why are they so expensive?

Scale, and predictable revenue.

Pokemon, Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh cards are sold by the tanker-load. You can do massive runs and be guaranteed of a return (within a certain range; some sets may turn out to be more popular than others). Also, you can spread the fixed cost of the artwork, tools, etc over a much larger run of packs.

D&D Encounter Cards are a niche product. The (large) fixed costs have to be spread over a much smaller run, and the guarantee of profitability is much lower than CCGs.