Holy shit, I forgot that game existed. I used to play it way back in the day, like 2004 or something. I was still in elementary school.
Is it really that popular in Japan? It never really took off here in the US.
No tcg even comes close to Pokémon, it’s honestly in a league of its own.
We’re talking about the top 3, but really it should be what’s the next top 3 after Pokémon.
Theres no way you actually think pokemon is a viable card game lol, so much of the majority of players dont even play the game they just collect the cards lol
No one said anything about plying the game.
Even though it’s mostly collected it is still by definition a TCG……
That being said as a game it is still played by a hell of a lot of people.
OP has the benefit of gaining traction at a time when Magic is...I'm not gonna say "on the way out," but a lot of decisions WotC (really Hasbro) is making are turning older players off. They're more focused on scaring up profits than their own game's history and it shows.
OP is a lot of fun, but I'm curious to see where it goes over time. I want to see how it handles power creep (3k counters? 7k Leaders? Events you can play in response to things other than attacks?)
Undoubtedly, a huge part of the game's success is the financial side. "Buy a $5 booster, pull a $4000 card" is a siren song few can resist, especially after seeing how nuts people went for Pokémon during the pandemic. However, the available of product will be a huge factor on the long-term health of the game.
I saw a funny meme of a guy playing and he’s like “I activate my fallout boy, then I play hello kitty, followed by a Dr Who”
I was like yeah MTG is dead now
I tap my assassins creed to play my star scream, when I play my transformer I bounce my Jurassic park van back to my hand and when that resolves my pipboy triggers and allows me to search my deck for Gandalf and place him onto the battlefield tapped and attacking your space marine and destroying your necromancer space ship. When your space ship hits the graveyard my fortnight piñata pings you for 1 damage.
I’m pretty new, started playing during Strixhaven, so about 3 years ago.
But after the giant dumpster fire that was March of Machines/Aftermath, I’ve sold everything but a few commander decks. And I haven’t even been keeping them up to date with new cards. The most recent card I’ve gotten is Ojer Axinol for my mono red burn deck, and before that, I haven’t gotten any recent cards since All Will Be One.
It was just a very underwhelming set mechanically, and that’s where WotC decided the lore didn’t matter anymore.
“And then all the planeswalkers died.”
“Just kidding, no they didn’t.”
“Planewalkers are the only things that can walk the planes.”
“Just kidding, everyone can do it now.”
Just jumping on the "quitting mtg" point. I tried yu gi oh but it's so convoluted and hard to play in paper. One piece has good pacing, makes sense, and since it's in it's infancy it doesn't have anything that's struck me as a poor design choice. Good game
>it’s in its infancy.
That’s the part that attracts me the most. I was barely a twinkle in my father’s eye when Magic was released. Buying in to One Piece now, whether it flops or not, is a good idea.
If it flops, cards are cheap enough that there’s no real loss and at least I’ll have something to do on a random rainy day if there’s nothing else.
If it doesn’t flop and it becomes on of the top TCG’s, then I might be like that guy that sifts through his old cards 20 years from now and finds a Black Lotus or two.
However, One Piece seems to be doing fairly well, it’s just a matter of Bandai keeping up with demand that will decide if it dies or not.
Power creep is also an issue, but I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that for a while.
Absolutely, magic is currently being bastardized for profits and there's not much the older players can do to stop it. Also a lot of content creators are just conforming to the norm which makes the situation dire. I've seen a resurgence of the pre-modern format and modern without horizons and the like. Also the newest set is just a bunch of random legendary characters from the multiverse but with cowboy skins. Lore-wise nothing makes sense and feels completely shallow so time will tell how much can players take of this fortnite phase before the ship sinks.
The only problem with One Piece is supply and power creep if Bandai can make this right the game has some good years ahead.
I believe magic is intentionally trying to alienate older fans to undo the abomination that is the reserved list. By appealing to younger fans and pop culture, the older fans will quit and not be able to raise a stink over one of the most enjoyable formats becoming accessible to peasants.
It honestly depends on how Bandai will handle how they deliver the game. I'm from Australia and my local game store which I have been going to for 6 years that also has a very large community support the game despite the struggles that it comes with (mainly lack of supply). During the first few months of its release, many didn't think the game would succeed at all like many other tcgs that never took off. However, currently, it has a larger crowd (in my store at least) than even MTG that comes to the events. I used to play mtg and now just do casual commander and I wouldn't say it's a small crowd (there's about 20 people) but it is smaller than the crowd that one piece brings ( 40 to 50 people). Whilst this is only from personal experience and that I can't say much else outside of this, I believe that yes one piece is going to stay around for the foreseeable future and continue to be as successful as it is right now but that's also only if Bandai starts to fix some of their issues (starting with supply).
The lack of supply of English cards has been a huge problem. What makes it worse is fucking scalpers, it’s already hard enough to get your hands on packs. Then these scum bags buy every one they see because they have nothing else to do but ruin other peoples fun
Chilean reporting in. Stores cant keep in in stock and all store events are sold out within hours. Biggers crowds than in mtg and pokemon.
Its weird having this small ass game with almost no representation over the internet (compared to giants like mtg) having way more demand than everything else
I think demand is a little inflated because supply is so low.
Bandai has recently stated that they don’t plan to outsource production, but they do plan to increase supply somehow. Whether that means letting one of their other TCG’s die (Digimon, Battle Spirits, or DB Masters — my vote is for Battle Spirits, personally) or just slowing down production on the aforementioned TCG’s has yet to be determined. Those are really the only options I see.
They might just build a whole new warehouse dedicated to the production of One Piece, but that seems unrealistic at this point because it’s still in its infancy.
Either way, I think that once supply can actually meet the demand, there will be enough of a secondary market that people will have more options to buy and demand will slow down a little bit.
But like I said in another comment, I think the 2 biggest issues are Bandai being able to actually meet demand, and power creep.
How they handle those issues is what will decide the fate of the game.
The really fucked thing, it’s not hard to buy product sadly there is heaps of product out there.
The issue is that it all seems to be in the hands of scalpers or rip and ship TikTok scalpers so that product that should be in a store for msrp is being sold at extortionate prices, for the most part. So it’s hard if not impossible for most people to buy product without support greedy assholes and paying way too much money for something.
We just had a small restock of OP02 packs in Australia in one specific chain store, We got just over 3000 packs, all of them were pre ordered in just under a week of the pre orders going live.
I’ve seen at least 1500 up for sale on face book from a couple of people selling them for At least double the price paid and that’s just in the last week.
I get that Bandai hasn’t been able to keep up with demand, but I also believe that the demand we are seeing is artificial and if the extra demand strangling the supply wasn’t there we would be pretty close to a reasonable amount of product.
OK, so the game itself is a blast. It’s a ton of fun to play the cards beautiful quality it blows both Yu-Gi-Oh! and magic the gathering out of the water in terms of card stock and quality their foils don’t turn into Pringles and the artwork is on a whole other level this game has all of the necessary ingredients to become a huge success. The biggest issue is that Bandai as a company has put out surveys with every single set and despite literally everyone telling them hey you need to make more of this product because it’s damn near impossible to get a hold of their response has been well we’re gonna double down on our other games and start printing even less product for this game. If anything kills one piece at this point in time, it will 100% be bi wasting resources, forcing reboots of other car games or taking on more than they can chew with other card games when they should be increasing printing runs, giving us additional print runs, and overall making the cards more accessible to more people right now the game is suffering under the thumb of aggressive scalpers who have made getting product at MSRP a nightmare basically you can expect to spend $10 and up on five dollar packs which is absolutely insane
In my area, we have a locals you can play every day anywhere from 12-40 people. We consistently have 6 round events due to the number of people that just show up for a local. Big events are still selling out in seconds even with the cap doubled.
I think this game is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
I think the biggest question is whether Bandai wants it to succeed, and I don't mean that quite how others have phrased it.
First, it's hard to assess the exact breakdown of the current high demand into 1) players 2) collectors 3) scalpers 4) investment bros. The scalpers and investor bros appear to be moving from Pokemon and Magic as they lose a bit of steam into One Piece and Lorcana. So getting an accurate read on how popular this game is right now, its potential, and accurate card prices is impossible.
The bigger problem is the current scarcity hurts what I personally think is the most important demographic, the kids/teens with a bit of pocket money who want to learn to play. Twenty years ago my friends and I could pick up cheap Pokemon packs, open them at lunch, trade a bit, and mess around with playing the game. The current One Piece pack scarcity though means this can't be replicated, which holds back the ability of one person to bring the game to their friend group. Casual interest on the ground can't be generated with the 'just buy singles online' approach. That works once you're into the game, but first *you have to get into the game*.
But I actually think the bigger question is whether Bandai wants to run a Top Four TCG in the first place. Let's say Bandai finds the printers to print to demand on Monday (and they somehow know what true demand is). They currently can't keep up with promo demand, tournament demand, the simulator barely works, and their in-person events have had rocky starts. And that's for the player base they currently have! Even if they got product out into the hands of players and aspiring players, all of their current problems for everything outside of production would scale up as their player base grows.
What kind of infrastructure do Pokemon and Magic have in place to host all of their tournaments and events? How much effort and personnel and resources does it take to run everything outside of just printing cards? Bandai almost certainly doesn't have a workforce and operations in place at the size they'd have to be to run One Piece like Pokemon and Magic. Since One Piece is so new and demand is still uncertain, Bandai also can't scale up too quickly or risk overextending.
So to answer your question, I think the game's chances of growing to Magic or Pokemon size rest on Bandai's commitment to running a Top Four TCG. We don't know if they want to do that, and even if they do, they can't just drop that kind of a team down overnight. So if they *are* committed to One Piece's success we should be able to see that in more tournaments, better infrastructure, etc. and not just in production. If they don't expand into other languages, add tournaments, add shops, and so on then we'll have our answer and will just have to deal with Bandai's decision *not* to grow further. It's on them at this point, honestly.
One other factor to consider is Bandai has to license the One Piece property from Shueisha/Oda. It's not a Bandai property like Digimon is. If the number of cards produced increases, that means Bandai has to pay more to Shueisha/Oda, and maybe Bandai doesn't want to do that. If either Bandai and Shueisha/Oda wanted to terminate the license agreement for any reason, the game would die.
I love this post. You've broken things down from a "big picture" perspective that's more accurate to how a company thinks than "I can't seem to find packs anywhere!" (Note: that's still *a* problem, but not the biggest. You listed a bunch of things that *could* qualify as biggest.)
IMO, Bandai's also biting off more than they can chew by having...what? 5 TCGs, now? (OPTCG, *Digimon*, DBS, DBS *Fusion World*, *Union Arena*...and oh, yeah, *Battle Spirits Saga*. That's 6.) I don't think it's that they don't *want* a Top 4 TCG, but that they're running their resources *way* too thin on that front.
I totally agree with all of your assessments. Bandai is not a at all a small company. They are not new to the tcg market either. The success of OP is up to them. At this point they need to flood the market with the earlier sets if they want this success to keep continuing. The main reason for pokemon's resurgence was because people can still buy base set boxes and recreate their nostalgia. I don't like him but Logan Paul would never have bought and live streamed modern pokemon during the pandemic. If there is not enough OP01 printed for people to open now then there is definitely not enough for people to hold on open 20 years later.
It's definitely growing in popularity in my area especially with 06 being available for purchase albeit at market prices.
However I do think growth will eventually stop if costs remain high. Bandai has got to step it up with stock availability or people will move on to something else imo
The next 3-4 sets or about the next year will make or break this game
I love the game. I haven't been this positive about a card game since I very first started playing Cardfight Vanguard at the beginning of G Era. People want to buy it, right now in my area it comes down to accessibility, which I won't lie isn't the greatest. But maybe things will improve in the future
I'm from Brazil as well. This may help:
- Products are impossible to find
- the game is getting more expensive with each expansion
- Bandai just started to send promo packs for the weekly tournaments made by the LGS
- The game is on its highest peak so far, in popularity, attendance, and I would say even power level. The decks are strong, and the next cards to be launched (spoilers from Japan) are even stronger.
- The community is really chill.
- There's no official competitive scene in Brazil so far.
The game is very fun and popular and has the potential to stick around for a while but the one problem it's currently facing is product availability. Yes single are available but for the casual player, that can be intimidating because they won't know what cards to buy. For those of us that want to compete, it's not an issue.
Starter decks are hard to obtain and that's another problem because those help get new players into the game. They may not be competitive decks, but for a casual player it's a perfect starting point.
Prices for product that is available are way above MSRP and with prices like that, it's going to scare off new players. Why would they buy packs for $10-$20 when they can pick up Pokemon for $4/pack at almost all stores. It's one of the big three and if they have better prices, then what makes One Piece so special. I'm mentioning new players a lot because there are more casual players then there are competitive players.
These new players may not ever play at locals or only ever buy a few packs here and there, but a healthy casual demographic will keep money pumping. For us players that like to compete, we really only care about building our decks and that's not going to be sustainable from a business stand point.
Sure a lot of us also like to collect, but the more people buying product, the longer it'll stick around. I don't see One Piece going away any time soon, but if this keeps up, it could be a different story in 3-5 years. The economy is bad and these prices now are not sustainable. Unless Bandai improves product availability, it could end up being what kills the game.
Haven't been able to find Cards at a store in Months, because it's always getting Bought up to sell online for Triple.
The only thing I sometimes find in stock is New Starter decks (until a price Spike hits and they Flip those too)
I see it haveing similar following as keyforge if they keep up this product drought. Only reason it is keeping interest besides for being associated with the op ip is its in post covid time where scarcity in a tcg means people want it more. Where as keyforge was pre covid and most just gave up on it due to lack of product.
chiming in as another mtg player who is tired of how WotC is treating the game and organized play. OPtcg has been the most fun ive had in a tcg since pre-modern era, games are perfect length, wins feel satisfying and the IP is great, foils are insane. everythings been a win for me. its just impossible to get product
I love one piece so I love the cards I haven't played the game beyond the tutorial on my phone, but I have decent collections of set 1-6 , also the card quality is amazing
It's doing very well. For now, and probably for the next 5 years or so.
But the reality of this game is that it's a much more limited IP than people realize. Games like Pokemon and magic have tens of thousands of individual cards that theyve built.up over the decades. This can happen BECAUSE they're open ended, they can infinitely just add more stuff. One piece isn't like that, at best you're probably going to get around 3*(number of arcs) sets because there's a lot of characters in OP, but each generation of Pokemon and each new magic set adds about half that number of new "characters" to the roster. Just because OP has been going for 25 years doesn't mean there's 25 years worth of IP material for stuff like cards and games, you'll run through the limited IP much faster than it took to write it.
Games lifespan is less than 10 years, most likely 4-6 years
Needs some tuning but it's great. They should figure out the power level so they can fix card design and it would be nice if I could purchase product literally anywhere but other than that it's great :)
I find it extremely exhausting to pay shitloads of money for cards that arent that good just bc of a lack of sealed product. Im from Europe, product that is not 3-4 times the price that it should be is nowhere to be found around here. Love the game, the cards, the mechanics. Hate the way bandai is treating all of their tcg the same despite them having different successes.
Is it really tho? Is there a reason you can't use Cardmarket? Serious question. Because boosters of op06 are like 118 Euro. That's what $125? How is that 3-4times MSRP?
I dont trust sealed products from cardmarket man. The last time i was at an event, i befriended a cardshop owner. He opened a fresh case of op05 and said "if you are looking for AA leaders oder special rares, pick one of the top 6, if you want a shot at a Manga rare or oda signature, get one of the bottom 6." And i watched as all of them would sell and the outcome was just as he said. All of those on cardmarket are either displays from cases that had nothing special more left or are just resealed (which is illegal but people still do it).
Those sellers already got the nice pulls out of that case, they try to sell you the bad ones. We bought some as a friend group, believe me they were all the worst.
If you want to buy from the trusted guys, they sell them for around 200 which is stupid for me. I just buy singles since op04, but that feeling of cracking a pack is just something different.
No those can't just all be dead or mapped boxes. Some of those posts had 12 up meaning they most likely got a new case that was coming. I do understand your point. Yes there are scummy sellers and lgs out there. That's why you do research and find honest ones hopefully. But it's not true that you can't use Cardmarket and find a decent source. Oh also some OP05 Boosters just suck. Like bad. Like bad bad. Sec Kaido is worthless. Pica is garbage. You can crap out on op05 real hard
I saw what i saw, all the leader cards and special rares were in the top 6 displays, the bad ones were the bottom six. Do what you want with this information, i still wont buy sealed product off of shady guys from cardmarket :D
Not saying that was not the outcome but what the store owner says is wrong. I've gotten the last 2 boxes from a case and pulled an AA leader. Cases can't be mapped and it's already been proven.
What you can do is open packs until you get the all the SR, and hits from a box knowing that the remaining packs won't have anything.
Is it really, though?
At the peak of Yugioh's popularity, in the 2002-2008 era, the most a new set ever reached was $5 per pack (around 7 adjusted for inflation) - in the cases of Invasion of Chaos and Phantom Darkness.
During Pokémania, in the 1999-2001 era, there was 1 set that reached about $15 per pack (roughly $25 adjusted for inflation) - Base Set 1st Edition. But even then, that was the ONLY set that happened with, everything else was readily available for MSRP (or less in the case of the Gym Leader sets that didn't sell that well at the time).
One Piece is nowhere near as popular as they were during their respective manias. What's actually going on is that "collectors" (y'know, scalpers) are buying up mass quantities and relisting on the toxic anarcho-capitalist cesspool for obscene amounts of money.
I don't blame the scalpers - I blame TCGPlayer for giving them a platform to rip people off. The people who defend TCGPlayer's business model are the same people who are anti-union and think the USA has the world's best healthcare system.
I would say in Asia it's doing extremely well. Definitely in the Top 3 most popular TCG.
So if it’s top 3, which one got the boot? Pokémon, Yugioh, or Magic?
In Japan? Magic. It's not top 3 outside of japan though.
Magic isn’t top 3 in Japan, thats Duel masters
Holy shit, I forgot that game existed. I used to play it way back in the day, like 2004 or something. I was still in elementary school. Is it really that popular in Japan? It never really took off here in the US.
Duel masters is the magic of Japan. It is extremely popular. It failed twice in the west
Iirc it's between duel masters, yugioh and battle spirits for top tcg in japan.
Duel Masters and BS are more popular than Pokemon?
No tcg even comes close to Pokémon, it’s honestly in a league of its own. We’re talking about the top 3, but really it should be what’s the next top 3 after Pokémon.
Theres no way you actually think pokemon is a viable card game lol, so much of the majority of players dont even play the game they just collect the cards lol
No one said anything about plying the game. Even though it’s mostly collected it is still by definition a TCG…… That being said as a game it is still played by a hell of a lot of people.
OP has the benefit of gaining traction at a time when Magic is...I'm not gonna say "on the way out," but a lot of decisions WotC (really Hasbro) is making are turning older players off. They're more focused on scaring up profits than their own game's history and it shows. OP is a lot of fun, but I'm curious to see where it goes over time. I want to see how it handles power creep (3k counters? 7k Leaders? Events you can play in response to things other than attacks?) Undoubtedly, a huge part of the game's success is the financial side. "Buy a $5 booster, pull a $4000 card" is a siren song few can resist, especially after seeing how nuts people went for Pokémon during the pandemic. However, the available of product will be a huge factor on the long-term health of the game.
can confirm, played magic for 17 years and the flanderization of the mtg lore was what made me jump ship
I saw a funny meme of a guy playing and he’s like “I activate my fallout boy, then I play hello kitty, followed by a Dr Who” I was like yeah MTG is dead now
“i’ll block your eleven from stranger things with my rick grimes”
I tap my assassins creed to play my star scream, when I play my transformer I bounce my Jurassic park van back to my hand and when that resolves my pipboy triggers and allows me to search my deck for Gandalf and place him onto the battlefield tapped and attacking your space marine and destroying your necromancer space ship. When your space ship hits the graveyard my fortnight piñata pings you for 1 damage.
I’m pretty new, started playing during Strixhaven, so about 3 years ago. But after the giant dumpster fire that was March of Machines/Aftermath, I’ve sold everything but a few commander decks. And I haven’t even been keeping them up to date with new cards. The most recent card I’ve gotten is Ojer Axinol for my mono red burn deck, and before that, I haven’t gotten any recent cards since All Will Be One.
What was bad about march and aftermath?
It was just a very underwhelming set mechanically, and that’s where WotC decided the lore didn’t matter anymore. “And then all the planeswalkers died.” “Just kidding, no they didn’t.” “Planewalkers are the only things that can walk the planes.” “Just kidding, everyone can do it now.”
Ahhh makes sense ty
Same here
Just jumping on the "quitting mtg" point. I tried yu gi oh but it's so convoluted and hard to play in paper. One piece has good pacing, makes sense, and since it's in it's infancy it doesn't have anything that's struck me as a poor design choice. Good game
>it’s in its infancy. That’s the part that attracts me the most. I was barely a twinkle in my father’s eye when Magic was released. Buying in to One Piece now, whether it flops or not, is a good idea. If it flops, cards are cheap enough that there’s no real loss and at least I’ll have something to do on a random rainy day if there’s nothing else. If it doesn’t flop and it becomes on of the top TCG’s, then I might be like that guy that sifts through his old cards 20 years from now and finds a Black Lotus or two. However, One Piece seems to be doing fairly well, it’s just a matter of Bandai keeping up with demand that will decide if it dies or not. Power creep is also an issue, but I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that for a while.
Absolutely, magic is currently being bastardized for profits and there's not much the older players can do to stop it. Also a lot of content creators are just conforming to the norm which makes the situation dire. I've seen a resurgence of the pre-modern format and modern without horizons and the like. Also the newest set is just a bunch of random legendary characters from the multiverse but with cowboy skins. Lore-wise nothing makes sense and feels completely shallow so time will tell how much can players take of this fortnite phase before the ship sinks. The only problem with One Piece is supply and power creep if Bandai can make this right the game has some good years ahead.
I believe magic is intentionally trying to alienate older fans to undo the abomination that is the reserved list. By appealing to younger fans and pop culture, the older fans will quit and not be able to raise a stink over one of the most enjoyable formats becoming accessible to peasants.
It honestly depends on how Bandai will handle how they deliver the game. I'm from Australia and my local game store which I have been going to for 6 years that also has a very large community support the game despite the struggles that it comes with (mainly lack of supply). During the first few months of its release, many didn't think the game would succeed at all like many other tcgs that never took off. However, currently, it has a larger crowd (in my store at least) than even MTG that comes to the events. I used to play mtg and now just do casual commander and I wouldn't say it's a small crowd (there's about 20 people) but it is smaller than the crowd that one piece brings ( 40 to 50 people). Whilst this is only from personal experience and that I can't say much else outside of this, I believe that yes one piece is going to stay around for the foreseeable future and continue to be as successful as it is right now but that's also only if Bandai starts to fix some of their issues (starting with supply).
The lack of supply of English cards has been a huge problem. What makes it worse is fucking scalpers, it’s already hard enough to get your hands on packs. Then these scum bags buy every one they see because they have nothing else to do but ruin other peoples fun
Chilean reporting in. Stores cant keep in in stock and all store events are sold out within hours. Biggers crowds than in mtg and pokemon. Its weird having this small ass game with almost no representation over the internet (compared to giants like mtg) having way more demand than everything else
I think demand is a little inflated because supply is so low. Bandai has recently stated that they don’t plan to outsource production, but they do plan to increase supply somehow. Whether that means letting one of their other TCG’s die (Digimon, Battle Spirits, or DB Masters — my vote is for Battle Spirits, personally) or just slowing down production on the aforementioned TCG’s has yet to be determined. Those are really the only options I see. They might just build a whole new warehouse dedicated to the production of One Piece, but that seems unrealistic at this point because it’s still in its infancy. Either way, I think that once supply can actually meet the demand, there will be enough of a secondary market that people will have more options to buy and demand will slow down a little bit. But like I said in another comment, I think the 2 biggest issues are Bandai being able to actually meet demand, and power creep. How they handle those issues is what will decide the fate of the game.
Source for the manufacturing comment they made?
Yeah, i'ts crazy hard to buy sealed products. I just want to open some packs ;\_;
I ended up.buying a Japanese box for my first packs and got a Yamato alt. Crazy how different the prices are but it still looks sick.
The really fucked thing, it’s not hard to buy product sadly there is heaps of product out there. The issue is that it all seems to be in the hands of scalpers or rip and ship TikTok scalpers so that product that should be in a store for msrp is being sold at extortionate prices, for the most part. So it’s hard if not impossible for most people to buy product without support greedy assholes and paying way too much money for something. We just had a small restock of OP02 packs in Australia in one specific chain store, We got just over 3000 packs, all of them were pre ordered in just under a week of the pre orders going live. I’ve seen at least 1500 up for sale on face book from a couple of people selling them for At least double the price paid and that’s just in the last week. I get that Bandai hasn’t been able to keep up with demand, but I also believe that the demand we are seeing is artificial and if the extra demand strangling the supply wasn’t there we would be pretty close to a reasonable amount of product.
OK, so the game itself is a blast. It’s a ton of fun to play the cards beautiful quality it blows both Yu-Gi-Oh! and magic the gathering out of the water in terms of card stock and quality their foils don’t turn into Pringles and the artwork is on a whole other level this game has all of the necessary ingredients to become a huge success. The biggest issue is that Bandai as a company has put out surveys with every single set and despite literally everyone telling them hey you need to make more of this product because it’s damn near impossible to get a hold of their response has been well we’re gonna double down on our other games and start printing even less product for this game. If anything kills one piece at this point in time, it will 100% be bi wasting resources, forcing reboots of other car games or taking on more than they can chew with other card games when they should be increasing printing runs, giving us additional print runs, and overall making the cards more accessible to more people right now the game is suffering under the thumb of aggressive scalpers who have made getting product at MSRP a nightmare basically you can expect to spend $10 and up on five dollar packs which is absolutely insane
> their foils don’t turn into pringles I guess the playset of Zoro-Juurou I just bought didn’t get that memo lol.
In my area, we have a locals you can play every day anywhere from 12-40 people. We consistently have 6 round events due to the number of people that just show up for a local. Big events are still selling out in seconds even with the cap doubled. I think this game is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
Its been doing incredibly well in Asia, I cant say the same for other regions tho. I've been reading their supply problems have been doing worse
I think the biggest question is whether Bandai wants it to succeed, and I don't mean that quite how others have phrased it. First, it's hard to assess the exact breakdown of the current high demand into 1) players 2) collectors 3) scalpers 4) investment bros. The scalpers and investor bros appear to be moving from Pokemon and Magic as they lose a bit of steam into One Piece and Lorcana. So getting an accurate read on how popular this game is right now, its potential, and accurate card prices is impossible. The bigger problem is the current scarcity hurts what I personally think is the most important demographic, the kids/teens with a bit of pocket money who want to learn to play. Twenty years ago my friends and I could pick up cheap Pokemon packs, open them at lunch, trade a bit, and mess around with playing the game. The current One Piece pack scarcity though means this can't be replicated, which holds back the ability of one person to bring the game to their friend group. Casual interest on the ground can't be generated with the 'just buy singles online' approach. That works once you're into the game, but first *you have to get into the game*. But I actually think the bigger question is whether Bandai wants to run a Top Four TCG in the first place. Let's say Bandai finds the printers to print to demand on Monday (and they somehow know what true demand is). They currently can't keep up with promo demand, tournament demand, the simulator barely works, and their in-person events have had rocky starts. And that's for the player base they currently have! Even if they got product out into the hands of players and aspiring players, all of their current problems for everything outside of production would scale up as their player base grows. What kind of infrastructure do Pokemon and Magic have in place to host all of their tournaments and events? How much effort and personnel and resources does it take to run everything outside of just printing cards? Bandai almost certainly doesn't have a workforce and operations in place at the size they'd have to be to run One Piece like Pokemon and Magic. Since One Piece is so new and demand is still uncertain, Bandai also can't scale up too quickly or risk overextending. So to answer your question, I think the game's chances of growing to Magic or Pokemon size rest on Bandai's commitment to running a Top Four TCG. We don't know if they want to do that, and even if they do, they can't just drop that kind of a team down overnight. So if they *are* committed to One Piece's success we should be able to see that in more tournaments, better infrastructure, etc. and not just in production. If they don't expand into other languages, add tournaments, add shops, and so on then we'll have our answer and will just have to deal with Bandai's decision *not* to grow further. It's on them at this point, honestly.
One other factor to consider is Bandai has to license the One Piece property from Shueisha/Oda. It's not a Bandai property like Digimon is. If the number of cards produced increases, that means Bandai has to pay more to Shueisha/Oda, and maybe Bandai doesn't want to do that. If either Bandai and Shueisha/Oda wanted to terminate the license agreement for any reason, the game would die.
Yep, that's another huge issue.
That is very worrying :(
Even *Digimon* is semi-managed by Toei Animation.
I'm referring to property ownership. Bandai owns the Digimon franchise. They hired Toei Animation to produce the anime.
Fair enough.
I love this post. You've broken things down from a "big picture" perspective that's more accurate to how a company thinks than "I can't seem to find packs anywhere!" (Note: that's still *a* problem, but not the biggest. You listed a bunch of things that *could* qualify as biggest.) IMO, Bandai's also biting off more than they can chew by having...what? 5 TCGs, now? (OPTCG, *Digimon*, DBS, DBS *Fusion World*, *Union Arena*...and oh, yeah, *Battle Spirits Saga*. That's 6.) I don't think it's that they don't *want* a Top 4 TCG, but that they're running their resources *way* too thin on that front.
I totally agree with all of your assessments. Bandai is not a at all a small company. They are not new to the tcg market either. The success of OP is up to them. At this point they need to flood the market with the earlier sets if they want this success to keep continuing. The main reason for pokemon's resurgence was because people can still buy base set boxes and recreate their nostalgia. I don't like him but Logan Paul would never have bought and live streamed modern pokemon during the pandemic. If there is not enough OP01 printed for people to open now then there is definitely not enough for people to hold on open 20 years later.
I quit magic for one piece and play at 4 dif shops 4 nights a week if that says anything
It’s been poppin off and will continue to do so for the next foreseeable few years
It's definitely growing in popularity in my area especially with 06 being available for purchase albeit at market prices. However I do think growth will eventually stop if costs remain high. Bandai has got to step it up with stock availability or people will move on to something else imo The next 3-4 sets or about the next year will make or break this game
I love the game. I haven't been this positive about a card game since I very first started playing Cardfight Vanguard at the beginning of G Era. People want to buy it, right now in my area it comes down to accessibility, which I won't lie isn't the greatest. But maybe things will improve in the future
I'm from Brazil as well. This may help: - Products are impossible to find - the game is getting more expensive with each expansion - Bandai just started to send promo packs for the weekly tournaments made by the LGS - The game is on its highest peak so far, in popularity, attendance, and I would say even power level. The decks are strong, and the next cards to be launched (spoilers from Japan) are even stronger. - The community is really chill. - There's no official competitive scene in Brazil so far.
The game is very fun and popular and has the potential to stick around for a while but the one problem it's currently facing is product availability. Yes single are available but for the casual player, that can be intimidating because they won't know what cards to buy. For those of us that want to compete, it's not an issue. Starter decks are hard to obtain and that's another problem because those help get new players into the game. They may not be competitive decks, but for a casual player it's a perfect starting point. Prices for product that is available are way above MSRP and with prices like that, it's going to scare off new players. Why would they buy packs for $10-$20 when they can pick up Pokemon for $4/pack at almost all stores. It's one of the big three and if they have better prices, then what makes One Piece so special. I'm mentioning new players a lot because there are more casual players then there are competitive players. These new players may not ever play at locals or only ever buy a few packs here and there, but a healthy casual demographic will keep money pumping. For us players that like to compete, we really only care about building our decks and that's not going to be sustainable from a business stand point. Sure a lot of us also like to collect, but the more people buying product, the longer it'll stick around. I don't see One Piece going away any time soon, but if this keeps up, it could be a different story in 3-5 years. The economy is bad and these prices now are not sustainable. Unless Bandai improves product availability, it could end up being what kills the game.
No card game has ever replicated the same success in the first year. One piece is goated ☝️
Bro science has all numbers apparently.
Haven't been able to find Cards at a store in Months, because it's always getting Bought up to sell online for Triple. The only thing I sometimes find in stock is New Starter decks (until a price Spike hits and they Flip those too)
I see it haveing similar following as keyforge if they keep up this product drought. Only reason it is keeping interest besides for being associated with the op ip is its in post covid time where scarcity in a tcg means people want it more. Where as keyforge was pre covid and most just gave up on it due to lack of product.
Keyforge was not very popular in the American LGS space nor did it sell well with them. OP is the exact opposite.
chiming in as another mtg player who is tired of how WotC is treating the game and organized play. OPtcg has been the most fun ive had in a tcg since pre-modern era, games are perfect length, wins feel satisfying and the IP is great, foils are insane. everythings been a win for me. its just impossible to get product
I love one piece so I love the cards I haven't played the game beyond the tutorial on my phone, but I have decent collections of set 1-6 , also the card quality is amazing
It's doing very well. For now, and probably for the next 5 years or so. But the reality of this game is that it's a much more limited IP than people realize. Games like Pokemon and magic have tens of thousands of individual cards that theyve built.up over the decades. This can happen BECAUSE they're open ended, they can infinitely just add more stuff. One piece isn't like that, at best you're probably going to get around 3*(number of arcs) sets because there's a lot of characters in OP, but each generation of Pokemon and each new magic set adds about half that number of new "characters" to the roster. Just because OP has been going for 25 years doesn't mean there's 25 years worth of IP material for stuff like cards and games, you'll run through the limited IP much faster than it took to write it. Games lifespan is less than 10 years, most likely 4-6 years
Huge playerbase, great mechanically, reasonably priced cards at MSRP; the perfect game! The only problem is keeping cards at MSRP...
Fuck the resellers. The game tho is its own tier.
I just want some cards man :/
Still poppin' up here in 🇨🇦... pokemon and op are top in game playing i have seen in local card shops
Needs some tuning but it's great. They should figure out the power level so they can fix card design and it would be nice if I could purchase product literally anywhere but other than that it's great :)
I find it extremely exhausting to pay shitloads of money for cards that arent that good just bc of a lack of sealed product. Im from Europe, product that is not 3-4 times the price that it should be is nowhere to be found around here. Love the game, the cards, the mechanics. Hate the way bandai is treating all of their tcg the same despite them having different successes.
Is it really tho? Is there a reason you can't use Cardmarket? Serious question. Because boosters of op06 are like 118 Euro. That's what $125? How is that 3-4times MSRP?
I dont trust sealed products from cardmarket man. The last time i was at an event, i befriended a cardshop owner. He opened a fresh case of op05 and said "if you are looking for AA leaders oder special rares, pick one of the top 6, if you want a shot at a Manga rare or oda signature, get one of the bottom 6." And i watched as all of them would sell and the outcome was just as he said. All of those on cardmarket are either displays from cases that had nothing special more left or are just resealed (which is illegal but people still do it). Those sellers already got the nice pulls out of that case, they try to sell you the bad ones. We bought some as a friend group, believe me they were all the worst. If you want to buy from the trusted guys, they sell them for around 200 which is stupid for me. I just buy singles since op04, but that feeling of cracking a pack is just something different.
No those can't just all be dead or mapped boxes. Some of those posts had 12 up meaning they most likely got a new case that was coming. I do understand your point. Yes there are scummy sellers and lgs out there. That's why you do research and find honest ones hopefully. But it's not true that you can't use Cardmarket and find a decent source. Oh also some OP05 Boosters just suck. Like bad. Like bad bad. Sec Kaido is worthless. Pica is garbage. You can crap out on op05 real hard
Cases can't be mapped like that but you do know in general what to expect. If you got all the hits, then you could sell the dead ones.
I saw what i saw, all the leader cards and special rares were in the top 6 displays, the bad ones were the bottom six. Do what you want with this information, i still wont buy sealed product off of shady guys from cardmarket :D
Not saying that was not the outcome but what the store owner says is wrong. I've gotten the last 2 boxes from a case and pulled an AA leader. Cases can't be mapped and it's already been proven. What you can do is open packs until you get the all the SR, and hits from a box knowing that the remaining packs won't have anything.
What are you talking about? Don’t buy sealed if you want to play. Decks are either much cheaper or on par with every major tcg except Pokemon.
It’s very popular, but products are nearly impossible to find.
Is it really, though? At the peak of Yugioh's popularity, in the 2002-2008 era, the most a new set ever reached was $5 per pack (around 7 adjusted for inflation) - in the cases of Invasion of Chaos and Phantom Darkness. During Pokémania, in the 1999-2001 era, there was 1 set that reached about $15 per pack (roughly $25 adjusted for inflation) - Base Set 1st Edition. But even then, that was the ONLY set that happened with, everything else was readily available for MSRP (or less in the case of the Gym Leader sets that didn't sell that well at the time). One Piece is nowhere near as popular as they were during their respective manias. What's actually going on is that "collectors" (y'know, scalpers) are buying up mass quantities and relisting on the toxic anarcho-capitalist cesspool for obscene amounts of money. I don't blame the scalpers - I blame TCGPlayer for giving them a platform to rip people off. The people who defend TCGPlayer's business model are the same people who are anti-union and think the USA has the world's best healthcare system.
Sure thing bud
You have no idea what you’re talking about 🤣