Altered has over $6,000,000 in funding for it's Kickstarter. Is it worth trying? Patreon: / mastersetmadness TCGplayer affiliate link: tcgplayer.pxf.io/9gaoO0 #alteredtcg #kickstartergames
I have been playing a lot online and with the print-and-play. I have been surprised how well my brain has filtered out the QR codes. I simply do not notice them anymore, which is a huge 180 from where I started on them. Gameplay is wonderful and a delight. I enjoy the puzzle of trying to figure out where my units are best suited, how can I advance, and can I block my opponent from also advancing. And every turn is almost completely fresh as units typically don't stay on the board, which is another fresh change-up for me. And makes the entire reserve system so compelling. As I'm sure you can tell, I'm very excited for what Altered is offering and I'm looking forward to seeing how everything finally gets implemented.
Exactly, the QR codes don't bother you for long if you play for a bit. I'm enjoying the gameplay as well! I am excited that a bunch of people I know who won't play other cad games are more open to Altered due to the theme and playing 1 card at a time aspect.
I'm much in the same boat. They have a very intriguing way to handle permanents on the board. And the fact they make it a strength in multiple ways (kinda preventing unfun accumulation of board advantage and also having a key mechanic that's very fun to interact with based on that with the reserve) really sells me. The gameplay is so good. The reception atm partly shows that TCG players are kinda dense, just play it and you'll know very quickly it's a strong game to be taken seriously. What I fear is that just a lot of people are just in it to flip it atm without actually having the slightest clue how it plays or what to expect in a wholly new secondary market environment.
@@gorganiangranola I'm optimistic that backed aren't just here to flip since a good majority are at the 1 box level. That's a good sign that people want to play the game. Certainly there are those who want to flip as well.
I think you did a pretty good job of formulating some well rounded thoughts about it! The unique system seems well thought out and the identity it gives to your own decks and exploration in playing against new ones all the time seems to outweigh the fear of busted sidegrades quite a bit. These 3 uniques won't pull your deck as much as the strong out of faction rares. And there's so many of them that playable ones will 100% carry a secondary market along with OP. The printing devaluing physical cards is harshly misjudged imo, you won't buy new prints all the time. You will buy newly printed cards into a tournament season en masse and your buddies not owning them will loan the licenses for the tournament season, that's it. You won't suddenly trash each card and order new ones every week, that's still impractical. And what really sells this game is that it's just good. Lorcana has the non-combative system but is just derivative and boring. Sorcery has the exploration of unique strong cards but it just shit the bed hard actually being more than a finance bubble investment collectible even in beta. SWU seemed interesting getting to play in two zones simultaneously but this game has an intriguing way of doing that too. And it is handling permanents in a similarly cautious way to FAB and its regulating mechanic the reserve is actually a key concept that's incredibly strong as the interaction with it is very fun and multifaceted. This is a winner through and through if you're not blinded by big IPs pushing mediocre games. And it's actually discouraging to see people even in the FAB community kinda dense and badmouthing it without trying it and reflecting on its strengths and possibilities aside of the risks that of course come with such a project. FAB had a long way to go not being called a cashgrab despite being an incredible game from day 1 and Equinox seem like play experience and OP take a similarly big role in their concept.
You make a lot of good points. I like the gameplay, and expect to like it more once you have uniques and the full card pool at your disposal. I'm excited for the deck building possibilities and trying out 2v2! I should have talked more about it in the video, but choose to stick to 3 main points. It doesn't bother me that some people react to it so negatively without giving it much of a chance, as it happens with everything. I think we are hearing it more with Altered in part because of how many people are excited for it. Like you said, the same negativity hit FAB, often in part because of how passionate people were for the game. The more people like something, the more others dislike it. The negativity might actually be a good sign :) Altered has legs if Equinox can manage the business aspects of the game well.
@@mastersetmadness2v2 really seems like an interesting twist on the multiplayer approach and goes along well with the non-combative thought. And good call on the parallel to negativity in FABs early days, really gets people worked up if others like something a lot 😂 Yup I think it is the most promising of the new ones and Equinox seems more trustworthy than other publishers. But I fear many people just pledge into it to flip it, especially the divine tier I only know of people doing that for scalping reasons and I'm not sure that does the game good in the first release cycle, it really has to pull players then.
I wasn't initially excited for Altered, but after playing it and mulling over the QR code system more, I am super excited. It seems like a great secondary TCG for me. I didn't like the QR code system at first, but the ability to sell my cards without having to go through a market place or ship to someone random I met on discord is great. It also solves the counterfeit card issue. At worst, even if I end up hating the game for some reason, I can sell all of my cards digitally pretty easily and I still get to keep the physical cards for casual play.
I very excited to see how the marketplace works out. And like you said, love that I can sell digital ownership of cards and keep playing with the copies I have.
Sell to whom if noone wants them? What if the company fails? What if the tcg fails? What if the qr, printing or marketplace system fails? So many reasons for this to fail, I dont see how someone can be so naive to think that the worst thing that could happen is that they would sell their cards on a marketplace noone knows if it will ever work. Im not saying that it cant work, just that it has a LOT of hurdles to jump over and a lot of things it can fail at.
@@mastersetmadness How can any widely printed card be worth more than 1 buck + a bit of margin? If printing a card is 1 buck, reselling nonunique physical cards is dead. If everyone is selling off their digital rights and keeps the physical copies, maybe the value of the digital version is very low?
@@ypsilondaone Nobody knows exactly how the market will turn out, which is exciting to me. Common cards aren't worth a $1 in most games anyways. At that rate, it makes way more sense to just buy packs than print commons. Rares will be interesting to see. Two big factors are how popular tournament play is, and what print runs look like.
@@ypsilondaone If everything fails, you have physical cards to play a TCG with, just like every other TCG. I think almost $5 million in kickstarter sales is a pretty good indicator that there is demand to play this game. Any business can fail, I don't see any good reasons to single this one TCG out as highly likely to fail more than others, especially considering the team, quality, and initial following.
I agree with your 3 points - thanks for laying them out so concisely! I find it ironic how a few people I know that are into crypto and NFTs are AGAINST the Altered digital marketplace and QR codes just because they aren't on a blockchain they use (BitCoin, Etherium, etc) lol I see Altered like a physical/digital gatcha game hybrid - cool to see and excited to get my pledge!
I know some people are afraid of the idea of the game shutting down and the online marketplace no longer being available - but at the point of a game failing, whether or not I can sell the cards digitally loses a lot of importance to me anyways.
Fortunately there are only 3 allowed in a deck, so you want be seeing that many of them in play. I already gave up trying to keep track of all the Magic cards 😂
I wonder how vulnerable this game is to hacking 🤔 Once your digital account gets compromised, your entire collection is gone. If there's an outtage with the digital platform, does that mean that you can't join/run tournaments? Or is this just like NFTs where everything is decentralized? (The concept is interesting though, and the attempt to innovate is respectable.)
Is this not the same for every digital game? I wouldn't avoid Marvel SNAP or MTG Arena just because they can be hacked and you can loose you collection. At this point, all of the big games run tournaments through digital platforms. The risk is the same for not being able to run a Flesh and Blood or Magic tournament as an Altered one would be.
I think they can restore it, they can see what at what points what cards were in ur collection and if u report something missing they can track where it went and take it back. I feel they are very competent. I'm hoping the cards are awesome can't wait to open a few boxes
I’ll be honest, I definitely have some doubts about Altered. They lean into the digital aspect in a way I’m not sure I like quite yet. There’s also the fact that in my limited experience it feels better online than in person. And the unique cards we need to wait and see if they’re good or not, so it’s exciting yes, but also concerning. But there is A LOT that I like. The art is amazing, and I stopped noticing the QR code after a few games. The gameplay feels really good. I like the idea of print to demand. I’m backing the Kickstarter, but I definitely think they’ll have a bumpy start.
I gotta say, I can't believe their designers made the qr codes black on white. That is the most jarring part of the card, and the black print just draws the eyes right to it. If they had made the code gray (even dark gray) or some color that works with the unique card coloring, I'd be on board, but I just can't take the cards seriously with that eyesore on every card...
The reason they've done that is for bulk scanning. Their testing found that it was the best way to allow players to scan multiple cards at once, which I think will ultimately be a plus for more people than not.
Have you held any of the cards in hand? It took about 2-3 minutes of play for me at a demo to ignore the QR code completely. Eventually your brain marks it off as information that isn't important and you eyes focus on the rest of the card first.
@@mastersetmadness Okay, maybe I'll try to check it out physically then before writing it off. I definitely wish they had come up with a nicer looking option than a standard black qr code, but fine... I'll give it a chance. :)
This game, more than other tcgs, requires digital and physical infrastructure to support its organized play model. It’s not impossible to do, it’s just harder to maintain than other games in the genre. Questions around how POD will work and whether or not organized play will even exist at a local level make me hesitant to go all in
@@farmgoblin99 Nothing wrong with waiting and seeing on this game (or any other for that matter). Almost every TCG uses a digital infrastructure for running their sanctioned events though, so I don't really see that as more of a hurdle here than elsewhere. If anything, this team is more focused on the digital side than other TCG's, so the digital aspect should have more resources poured into it compared to other games. Only way to get organized play locally though is to try the game out and show up.
@mastersetmadness well, my first concern is it taking away from the beauty of the game. I wouldn't enjoy looking at the table, seeing an opponents sleeved paper that's crudely cut and printed in black and white. I also predict that playing with printed cards you don't own in local tournaments will be greatly abused. I hope the game does well for those who are invested and like to play. I just can't see it myself.
@@mastersetmadness it’s a fun game. I’m in for the starter decks for sure. It just seems like some of the value of your collection is tied to their app’s lifespan, especially if players are ordering multiple copies of their best cards for themselves and friends (it’s a novel idea)
I find it to be a shame. In an era where most ownership is digital, why not do it for TCG? We have Magic and Pokémon offering an online version with thousands of players. I personally think linking the cards you own physically and virtually makes sense and makes it more unique than the QR card at the end of a Pokémon Booster. And not, it's not NFTs, but if it was, what's the problem? You store the ownership of your asset on a database that is shared by several actors ensuring you can still prove ownership if even if the company goes bust. Was the initial NFT bubble just hype? 100% Should we ignore the technology behind it because of it? I'm not sure.
@@joaquimgallagher NFT technology makes a lot of sense, when used in the right context. I'm hopeful the digital/physical combination here in Altered will be a great step for TCG development.
@@mastersetmadnessvery based take. I see a lot of people say NFT's are bad but shilling digital ownership but only with proprietary software. I think the balanced takes are best. Yes, there's gonna be scammers in the NFT world, TCG world, Kickstarter world, etc, but it doesn't mean there's no place for any of this. It doesn't mean that there's no utility for people even if one doesn't see the utility for themselves
@@mastersetmadnessvery based take. I see a lot of people say NFT's are bad but shilling digital ownership but only with proprietary software. I think the balanced takes are best. Yes, there's gonna be scammers in the NFT world, TCG world, Kickstarter world, etc, but it doesn't mean there's no place for any of this. It doesn't mean that there's no utility for people even if one doesn't see the utility for themselves
The game looks fun but with the printing aspect it seems absolutely dead on arrival. I don‘t know how this is in big US cities (I‘m from a smaller European town) buf most people and shops don‘t play organized (my local shop just uses the magic app for every tcg tournament) and people sure as hell won‘t exchange digital rights. They will just print a bunch of their cards and then trade with the others. This will take any value away from cards and boosters. Will be nice if you just want to play but it will cause the game to die quickly.
While I like POD, I think people overestimate how cheap it will be to use the service. My expectation is that it won't be cheaper to print common cards than it is for you to buy your average common or uncommon from most games. It's going to be a similar cost, except the funds will go to Altered and not cardmarket/tcgplayer. I'm not sure how this kills it on arrival, if anything they will be making money on the whole secondary market. They wouldn't be doing POD unless they thought it would be profitable. My experience here in the US is 90% or more of the events I see at game stores are organized play.
@@mastersetmadness ive gone into more detail under another comment, but honestly I have massive doubts about the whole thing. Ofc the lense of me being emotionally and financially invested in fab also speaks out of me, but I still think some people overhype it and dont seem to see the potential pitfalls.
@@ypsilondaone I mean, I'm pretty invested in FAB, but also like multiple tcgs at the same time. Altered will fill a spot that FAB can't in my world. I see many of the potential pitfalls, but trying something new takes risk. If Altered didn't have any risk or potential to fail I probably wouldn't be very interested in it. Nothing wrong with having doubts in a new product! And nothing wrong with just enjoying FAB :)
Two videos in.. and you don't really seem eloquent enough to convince anyone that isn't already hesitating. Not an insult! Just some people are more capable in the way of words, and are far more capable of going beyond the basics.
Or, that there are already a ton of other videos that go over gameplay in depth and I didn't try to put every thought I had on Altered into this video. You can go over to BGA and play the game now and decide for yourself. This is not a "What is Altered or How to Play" video. The gameplay is great, but this is true for a TON of TCGs out there. I'm not going to stake my flag anywhere on how good it is in the TCG totem pole until I get the chance to play with the full set. Pretty sure I don't talk about gameplay in most of the FAB videos I make, but still love it as a game :)
