Carbonite – Success or Fail?
By now, everyone that has been tuned into Star Wars Unlimited knows that Carbonite packs exist for Jump to Lightspeed. Similar to Collector’s Boosters in other games, this new method of packaging brings us so many cool things from guaranteed hyperspace cards, easier to pull legendaries, much higher drop rate of showcases, and of course the Prestige variants. The main selling point of these are the Prestige variants which are unique to Carbonite packs, along with the chance to open a valuable serialized version.
With all of this, have the Carbonite packs been a success?
Prestige Cards
There is little debate among the community that these cards look beautiful. The art is a step up from standard cards. The card layout is excellent and emphasizes the art in the full card frame. The serialized versions are stunning. From a visual perspective there is little argument that Carbonite packs are a success. Can’t wait to see what they do with force users in Legends of the Force.
Also the Prestige cards at least gave us the idea to run a March Madness bracket here at Porg Depot. If you have not already, go check out the content here and make sure to vote in the finals.
Print Run
To measure out a success vs. fail for this new product it’s helpful to figure out how large the print run actually was.
Some facts… We know that it is limited to a single run and will not be printed again. Another certainty is the number of serialized Prestige cards which at 250 per card and 36 total unique units that got the special treatment, gives us 9000 individual serialized cards.
We’ve also seen approximate numbers of the different Prestige rarities pulled from boxes and cases. The rough breakdown per case seems to be 31 level ones, 16 level twos and 1 level three. Your mileage may vary and actual numbers may be different.
Extrapolating from that base data and from those approximate real world pull results we can estimate that there were maybe 36,000 boxes produced. Exact numbers may never be known, but this should give a fairly reasonable floor. Based on the boxes our Porgs opened, serialized cards don’t actually exist and everyone is pranking us.
This begs the question, is this a good number, not enough or too many? Wizards of the Coast prints somewhere around 250,000 Collector’s Boosters for their sets, but Magic the Gathering is a much bigger game. The initial perception is perhaps 36,000 was too many for the SWU player base. Accessibility is great, but with that comes a decrease in value, and with a limited run they could have printed less in order to maintain value.
FFG
From the game development and publishing side, Carbonite almost has to be viewed positively. With an initial retail price of $300 per box barring any discounts, that totals up to an awful lot of money. If there are markups from the publisher to wholesale and then again to retail that cuts into the publisher’s take home per box. There are also the costs of manufacturing, promotion, art, development, etc. For a round number, if FFG ultimately takes home $100 per box that would be $3.6 million just from Carbonite boxes of Jump to Lightspeed. Even $75 profit per box would net $2.7 million.
The other piece to factor is the marketing aspect. The extra collectibility of the cards with different artwork and varying levels of rarity unto themselves is an easy selling point for advertising.
For FFG, the excitement around the game that Carbonite boxes created and the money they most certainly earned, this was almost certainly a success.
Collectors
A master set of the first three sets required a collector to acquire a base version, foil, hyperspace, and hyperspace foil of each card, plus showcases, organized play variants, and other promotional cards. Forgetting about the serialized cards, Carbonite boxes still added another two variants for each unique ship.
This of course makes it more difficult to collect a full master set, however from the collector’s viewpoint this may be a fun selling point in that it becomes more of a quest and ultimate accomplishment to put the entire thing together. Bonus points if somebody really goes full whale style and gets a serialized of each unit as well. Even more bragging rights if the serialized are matching numbers across all 36 cards, and you just win this round of being a collector if you somehow nail down all 36 of the number ones.
Our resident Porg collector has found the extra variants to be a fun chase, and considers this a success overall.
Players
The new Carbonite product may not do a ton for the players. A 1 in 250 serialized version of a card has the exact same playability as the standard non-Prestige, non-hyperspace, non-foil version.
In some ways the new box types could be viewed poorly from the player’s side. Given that foil cards tend to curl due to lack of humidity and other environmental factors, those cards would be marked in a deck during many competitive events. Players then tend to play with non-foil versions of things competitively. Of course the level one Prestige cards do still work in that capacity while continuing to look pretty cool.
This is most likely neutral to positive for the average player. Some cards have been cheaper and easier to attain, and the more expensive ones can be avoided for more affordable variants.
Bling
For those people that want to bling out a deck as all hyperspace, or even all hyperspace foil, the new product packaging is potentially very nice. The rates to pull higher than standard variants well exceeds the standard boxes.
Even if a person is not opening the packs themselves and instead going to the single card markets, the new Carbonite boxes still help. Loads of them were opened very quickly at release which flooded the market with all kinds of card variants. This has happened with other sets previously as well, however the amped up pull rates for variants massively accelerated the numbers of those variants getting into the singles market.
Carbonite has to be considered a success in the bling department.
Card Values
Perhaps it is because the print run was a bit more than the player base could absorb, or more Carbonite boxes were opened initially than people expected, but Prestige variant values have dropped significantly. The most expensive one, Devastator, started at nearly $60 for a tier 1 and is now down to $28. Many of them are under $5 each. If Prestige variants are supposed to be the main draw for people to buy Carbonite packs, they need to hold more value. The only way to get value from your packs can’t be limited to pulling a Showcase or Serialized card.
Another side effect is that regular foil variants are often cheaper than non-foil versions. As mentioned above, some people don’t want to risk playing with a card that could bend, but also, a ton of foils were pulled and put on the market because of all the foils in each Carbonite pack. This may be great for players, but if something isn’t supplying value to its customers, then people will buy less.
Closing Out
Whether Carbonite boxes are a success or not may be subjective, we can most likely say for a fact that we will see more of them for future sets. In our opinion, the Prestige cards look great, but there is still room for improvement overall. The number of base foils in each pack could be reduced, even if it meant the packs going to 12 cards instead of 15. It would also be interesting to see the serialized cards go to 200 of each and slightly reduce the print run in order to maintain better value. Then, for a super mega awesome chase, a 1 of 1 version of each Prestige card would be amazing too.
There’s certainly space to increase the level of variants. Unsure if the regular foil treatments do anything for people. Would be great to see less of those and just more variety overall. There could be blacked out non-foil treatments similar to the 2024 convention exclusives, the World between Worlds circle backgrounds that we’ve seen recently, the fade border organized play pack borders, plus what we’ve already gotten and anything else FFG might have percolating. There really could even be inserted variant versions of cards from prior sets. Imagine a Spark of Rebellion Falcon with the JTL Prestige treatment, or Luke and Vader from that set with an OP fade border.
Love them or hate them, the Prestige variants are likely to be here for at least the next few sets. Speculatively, Legends of the Force is more apt to have variants for Jedi, Sith, and other force users instead of unique ships.
