I recently heard that UDE is dropping the card count per pack to 9, and also increasing the price per pack.

WTF? Anyone have any insight on this?

Thanks,

G1

I doubt this will seriously happen. You can no longer draft with 3 packs. Sealed will also be more or impossible since you only have 45 cards and you MUST use at least 2/3 of them.

I doubt this is true, unless UDE lowered the price as well. (and of course kept the 1 Rare and/or 1 Foil per pack).

And yes, drafting would be hurt...severely.

Is it possible you're thinking of Avatar or the upcoming WoW ccg? I think Avatar has a lower card per pasck count, and I suspect WoW will have a lower one too.

well if that is true it would suck royaly!!! but all they would have to do is kick the packs up to four for drafts and it would be the same #. as for sealed...maybe add 2 more packs? but if this is true im not sure i could afford to keep my level of play up to where it is now. If it slipped that far i may end up just giving up the game and sure there will be others that will be in the same boat.

Well, my local retailer confirmed this with me yesterday. I had noticed that the pre-order price for booster boxes of Infinite Crisis was slightly higher than before. He then informed me that they were dropping the card count and raising the price, just like they did with Yugioh apparently.

If it is true, then Infinite Crisis will be my last VS purchase. I put up with this crap with Games Workshop until I had enough, so I won't do it with UDE.

He lied to you. I looked at an image of a booster box, indeed there was a number 14 on the booster packs. The price might have gone up but you have the same number of cards. You have no need to worry.

I seriously doubt that they will do this. If they do I think that most of the people who do play vs will go to magic.

Maybe they dropped the total number of cards in the set down and not the pack. Something like 180 instead of the 220 or so.

Yeah check this image out. I highlighted the important part:

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/1...precopy3tf.jpg

So I'm not sure how your local retailer "confirmed" this to you.

The information that was sent to retailers from one supplier(Diamond) had Crisis listed as 9 cards per pack. But others had it as 14. But both had it listed as a 110 card set.

I believe it's called "talking out of your ass." :grin: The price on packs goes up periodically, whatever the game is. It goes up as the price of paper goes up. It's really that simple. Look at the price of novels and the like, they are insane. It's all because of the internet.

"Wait. What? I thought that supply and demand worked differently, and with there being less demand, that the prices would go down?" you may be asking yourself at this moment.

Well, normally that is true. However, paper products are one of those lovely rare economic exceptions that show you how supply and demand can sometimes interact in unexpected ways. When the massive move from paper to electronic forms of storage began in earnest, the demand for paper began to plummet. This in turn caused many paper mills and other portions of the (paper) industry to go out of business, thus lowering supply faster than the decrease in demand. With that, demand began once again to exert its influence, causing the price of paper to INCREASE as demand was going DOWN.

Well, that, combined with the increased costs associated with the wood industry in general in modern times. Many of you may not know this, but as far as the wood/paper industry is concerned, we are winning the war for conservation. We actually grow more new trees in this country than we use each year for wood and paper and the like. The costs to recycle paper and to keep the trees outgrowing the demand for them increases the costs. So that's another economic factor.

So there you go.

What does that have to do with some retailer talking out of his ass? Nothing. But it does explain why the prices on ALL paper products keeps going up each year. :)

Oh, and as a comic/game retailer, let me tell you a little secret (and this is for all you fellow retailers out there): NEVER TRUST THE SOLICITATION INFORMATION YOU RECEIVE FROM A SOURCE OTHER THAN THE COMPANY THAT MANUFACTURES IT. When we get our UDE retailer flyers, it will have the ACCURATE info on the set.

Because knowing is half the battle...

As a veteran Raw Deal player ... I DO know about the 'number of cards in a pack/price ratio'.

In general ... odds are EITHER they'll increase the cost OR reduce the number of cards per pack.

Considering that Raw Deal was able to keep the cost 'the same' by removing one card per pack during a set, I DOUBT they would cut 5 cards out of a pack AND increase the cost of a box [UNLESS they cut packs down to 9 cards and increased the number of boosters to 36 per box ... which increases the number of rares. Of course, they likely would have to reduce the number of commons in the set since they'd be giving less commons per booster]

So, I can buy a price increase.

I can buy a single card per pack 'drop'.

The only way there is both ... especially with a 'cut MULTIPLE cards per pack' is if they ALSO increase the number of boosters in a box, thus effectively reducing the price of the boosters even if they increase the cost of the box itself.

Still ... it would mess with sealed and draft quite a bit.

Guys. We cleared this up a MONTH ago. There was a misprint in the Diamond Previews catalog. Its 14 cards- as usual, though they printed 9. Its 220 cards in the set- not 110. Just a mix up.

Completely untrue about pack sizes, pack sizes are staying the same and will never change. We would never reduce our pack size.

There is a tiny distributor price increase (I think 10 or 20 cents) to compensate for cost of living, increasing art costs and general increased oil costs, which affect manufacturing costs.

Vs. System has never been more profitable, thanks to the success of the Avengers and JLA sets and we have some major announcements about cool stuff coming out in the next year for Vs. System.

And that's the bottom line, cuz Stone Cold said so.

- Jeff