Developing a Game Worth Collecting
Card games give a unique and playable space for collecting but what makes them worth collecting and why do we wish to design our game to be collectable? Here we discuss our philosophies on the imperative values of primary and secondary markets, rarities, Collector Events, pull rate transparency and more.
At Blood and Salt Studios, player experience being enjoyable is at the core of every discussion and idea we formulate. This includes all parts of our TCG, not just the gameplay. One of the avenues of enjoyment that we are taking extra care with is providing value to our game through designing it to be collectable from the ground up.
As the secondary market for a trading card game is where the TRADING aspect of the game comes into play, we believe it is imperative that we develop a healthy market both for product values for stores to sell and profit but also to develop organic growth for the game that keeps social interactions healthy. It is with every intention that Blood and Salt TCG will be around for years to come for players to digest and enjoy and these are some of the steps we believe will get us there.
Rarities
The first step to designing cards that hold value is to make the cards flavorful, visually exceptional, and full of quality. Beyond our design and development that is intending to bring visual and asthetics to life in new and refreshing ways, we are planning to develop rarities that not only add to the flavor of the game but bring the cards alive. Our goal here is to make rarities that even a new player experiencing our product openings will organically know when that exciting, elusive card has been pulled and can enjoy that moment to its fullest.
After studying some eastern card game philosophies, we have decided to follow suit with high end chase cards that are unique in design, are given special foiling or artist signature treatments and other art changes including extended art cards, alternate art cards, and 1st edition special foiling to bring that exclusivity and uniqueness to the cards.
Note: Importantly, chase cards will not be gated by any event or paywall and will be functionally identical to a lesser rarity of this card if one currently exists. We want players to be able to obtain our cards not lock them away.
The card rarities, rarity letter, rarity symbol color, and pull rates of cards are as follows:
Token (T) - {Grey} - 3 per pack; Token cards are commonly found cards with art on the front and back hosting Captain cards, Captain weapons, warships, Philosopher’s Stones, Settings, and other commonly needed tokens for play. When a premium foil card or an alternate art token card has been pulled in a pack, it will replace a token in that pack.
Ordinary (O) - {Grey} - 8-10 per pack; Ordinary cards are commonly found cards that flush out both world cards, ones that can be used by all classes, and class-specific cards, ones that can be used by only a specific class of Captain. Packs should typically have ~3 world cards and ~6 class cards split between classes found in that set.
Formidable (F) - {Royal Blue} - 1 or 2 per pack; Formidable cards are the rarity where most character cards will begin to appear in as well as more powerful world or class cards. Typically, there will be 1.75 formidable cards per pack with a lesser chance that a card of higher than formidable (F) will replace one of them.
Elite (E) - {Amber} - 1 per 4 packs; Elite cards are the rarity that will replace a Formidable card slot in packs when found. These cards will be a mix of characters and other cards of both world and class specific cards.
Renowned (R) - {Crimson Red} - 1 per 12 packs; Renowned cards are the rarity that most of the distinctive cards will begin to appear, cards that are specific to a Captain, warship, weapon, setting, or other lore and flavor building cards. These cards are intended to both build upon the personalities behind the characters as well as give insights into Captains’ specialties or possessions that have given them and their flags their reputations.
Legendary (L) - {Seafoam Green} - Rainbow foiling: 1 per 80 packs; Legendary cards are cards that uniquely change the way a character or the playing field are interacted with and even at times may change the functionality of Captain’s themselves. You may find that a frontline tanking Captain who’s main role is to guard all of your characters can now be a backline commander who is commanding your Crew with leadership buffs. When a Legendary rainbow foil card has been pulled in a pack, it will replace a token in that pack.
“There is something unique and zippy hearing from someone with a smirk on their face that they pulled a, “…Formidable weapon, a… Frying Pan?”, that really strikes a different chord when enjoying opening packs. Realizing your Captain can smash that frying pan upon their enemies or cook them food with it is what makes Blood and Salt TCG unique.” — Gage B. Bacon, Creator of B&S TCG
Early concepts of the Frying Pan. A 1-handed weapon from design in 2023.
Additionally, here are the pull rates for some of our planned high-end cards:
Legendary (L) - {Seafoam Green} - Premium foiling: 1 in 192 packs; These Legendary cards are functionally identical to rainbow foiling but have premium foiling instead that will only be found in 1st edition products. When a Legendary premium foil card has been pulled in a pack, it will replace a token in that pack.
Ancestral (A) - {Burnt Orange} - Premium foiling: 1 per 960 packs; Ancestral cards are a higher rarity card that typically are alternate art versions of cards in the set. Most often, these ancestral cards will be Captains, Philosopher’s Stones, warships, artifacts, weapons, or other cards that only require 1 of them in a collection as to be usable over several decks. When an Ancestral premium foil card has been pulled in a pack, it will replace a token in that pack.
Chaos (C) - {Blackout + Accent Color(s)} - Premium foiling: 1 in 96,000 packs; Chaos cards are a line of extraordinary cards that will exist simply because we believe they would be badass. Designed for collectors, chaos cards are currently being designed with what we refer to as “blackout foiling”, layering mat and foil black layers accented with selective colored foiling to create a uniquely beautiful and sleek card. On top of this, these cards will be foil stamped, each with unique signatures by the artists that made them to bring that extra exclusivity to the cards. Most often, these chaos cards will be Captains, Philosopher’s Stones, warships, artifacts, weapons, or other cards that only require 1 of them in a collection as to be usable over several decks. Chaos cards are planned to be split into hex (amethyst purple), corrupted (maroon red), and noble (gold) categories with accent colors dependent on category. When a Chaos premium foil card has been pulled in a pack, it will replace a token in that pack.
Note: More on full pack constructed to come in a later article. Rarities, their contents, and pack rates are subject to change.
Primary and Secondary Markets
The next step is to keep healthy and high margins for our collectors, stores, and partners. If we can increase the margins on products while designing sealed product to have quality, high end contents, it creates a positive feedback loop from distribution to stores to players that brings up all parts of the game. This is why rarity pulls have been distributed as they are to provide a layered mix of sealed content value while also giving huge payouts to those who do come across large chase cards. This benefits the primary markets and secondary markets.
There are several other ways we intend to support this. One of the best ways B&S Studios can help is by holding an amount of each of our products internally to be stored and released in cadence as the market needs it. As product increases in price at an unhealthy rate, we can release more to lower it. If product is dipping too low, we send those products to be shredded and recycled at our own loss. It is in these honorable practices that we hope to do our part in creating a fair market by reducing any product dumping at the risk of us holding some of our product. This is a method that bets on ourselves and also drives us to make quality products.
One more way we intend to help the secondary market is to remove any limits on minimum orders. We want the market to be as real as it can be so that we can best estimate order amounts and deliver on those amounts at the timelines we set. It is the trust between Blood and Salt Studios and our stores and distributors that we wish to build the foundation of our business upon and get cards out into the secondary market.
We believe these processes are an important aspect of our responsibility as a card game company to attempt to keep a strong market rather than inflating it more to make quick and short term profits. We have every intention of standing the test of time while making the best decisions for the game and its players.
Transparency
After product as been moved from us to distribution to stores to players, we want everyone to be able to see the population of each product in our card lists. While this is non-traditional for card games, we believe that it is not only useful for our players and collectors to see the rarity of their cards and if they will be reprinted but also the correct way to approach a card game that is so dependent on player and collector markets to succeed.
For this reason, cards at all rarities will be varied in strength as well as given an estimate on their populations as best as we can provide to bring up the overall value of sealed products to heighten the margins of products while giving the holder of a card the insights to that card’s maintained value. The idea is to reduce the amount of high rarity chase cards that are also staples in the meta of our game as that promotes a horrible feeling having to pay an astronomical amount just to play a deck that had won a major tournament or to switch between Captain decks. Rather, we want our game to be dependent on the skill of the players playing it and therefore we take from western card design here and have designed a game with many options to enrich your personalization. This line of thought on overall card value and flexibility of cards helps to promote our wish of our players succeeding off the back of their skill at Blood and Salt TCG and not their wallets.
We believe this will both achieve viewable card value as well as give the player full transparency on what cards they have pulled in conjunction with specific card design.
Collector Events
One of the areas of Organized Play that we are extremely excited to explore are Collector Events!
Collector Events are events planned to be ran in tandem with our larger scheduled 2-Day Events and are designed for players and collectors both to come together to win grand prizes! The idea is for this to be an event that brings together the community! The competitive players, the collectors that have an amazing collection or chaos rarity to show off, and the solo or cooperative players that love to play the game’s Player versus Environment (PvE) at their local scene or within their own homes. All have a place in this event!
Day 1 of 2: There will be a collector card list revealed that will direct participants as to which combinations of their card collections will combine to give them points. Changing with each event, combinations containing certain ordinary play sets, elite foils, color strip sets, multiples of cards, all Captains, alternate arts, and many more will give varying points towards a point total. Participants will then attempt to maximize their entered collection’s total points based on the card list revealed.
Note: Need a card to complete an ordinary rarity playset? Perhaps your friend brought that card for their competitive deck or one of the multiple Vendors on-site is selling that card that you can use towards your collection combinations! Meet up and help each other out! Its all about working together.
Day 2 of 2: Participant’s collections will be checked by staff and the sum of its total points will be recorded and given to that participant. The top-3 participants that entered collections with the most points will be announced alongside the top-3 winners of the competitive side of the 2-Day Event to win this event’s grand prizes! Though do not fear, you may even find that just by entering the competitive deck you have brought could net you a prize.
More on Collector Events to come in our Organized Play Roadmap article coming soon.
Map Policy
While this will be further expanded on as products release to more specifically communicate product specific Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Policies, we wish for our products not to be listed any lower than 20% of their official advertised price set by Blood and Salt Studios. After a specific timeline or for specific products, we then would be dropping this to 15% of the official advertised price set by Blood and Salt Studios. More to come on our policies page about MAP Policies for Blood and Salt TCG soon.
