I think you would end up flooding the market with secondary cards that are discards from the 'collectors' and your $30 main pack would end up looking really over priced. To prevent this the boosters would need to contain cards not found in the main pack.

I think it would be a hard thing to sell, considering the 'collectible' cards in a normal CCG are collectible because of their power, not because of the rarity or artwork (though rarity is a side effect built into the design).

I think you would end up flooding the market with secondary cards that are discards from the 'collectors' and your $30 main pack would end up looking really over priced. To prevent this the boosters would need to contain cards not found in the main pack.

That a good point. In Magic: the Gathering, a lot of common, uncommon and junk rares come in bulk for cheap. Perhaps there could be a US$20 set of rares and ultra-rare cards, and a separate US$10 set of commons and uncommons?

CCG distribution is hard... >___<

some deck-building will be preferred too, if the cards are reasonably balanced people wont feel like they either have to invest a lot in different cards or get a preconstructed deck

CCG is also copy written by wizards of the coast, so technically you'd have to pay them royalties as well. I don't know what the cost is, but you'll want to keep that in mind with the distribution issues.

http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&f=S&l=50&d=PTXT&Query=%22Wizards+of+The+Coast%22

Thanks for bringing this up.

The key part of the patent is the mechanics (turning cards sideways - "tapping"). Discussions and cases over the years suggests no infringement as long as we have sufficiently different mechanics, especially avoiding turning cards sideways to "tap" them.

Also, I spoke to a patent lawyer and was told that patents aren't as legit/strong as copyrights or trademark. Obvious copyright/trademark infringements is almost certainly a loss. But outcomes for even obvious patent infringements is often unknown. Having a patent does not mean it will automatically hold up in court, unlike copyrights and trademarks.

some deck-building will be preferred too, if the cards are reasonably balanced people wont feel like they either have to invest a lot in different cards or get a preconstructed deck

This is exactly the same as the Magic: the Gathering model: you have card sets from which you can build decks. You can buy booster packs containing random cards.

The only difference is that you can buy a full tournament playset of every card in a set for US$20-30 (say 4 of each card). You still have to build a deck from these cards.

There are no preconstructed decks.

a precon is a must, you cannot expect a (potential!!) player to both grasp the deckbuilding and playing the deck in one go, not to mention that even veteran players sometimes just want to play a game without any hassle

powerneg, on 27 Jan 2013 - 21:49, said:
a precon is a must, you cannot expect a (potential!!) player to both grasp the deckbuilding and playing the deck in one go, not to mention that even veteran players sometimes just want to play a game without any hassle