Cost for printing cards (PoD/LCG/...)

I'd like to see the cost per card decline with volume. If I buy 500 cards, I should pay less than someone buying 5. (This is ignoring shipping, of course.) Charge less for bigger purchases and you'll incentive players to spend more money overall.

Also, I think, as several people have mentioned now, that it's worth looking at this in terms of cost-per-deck than cost-per-card, and to ask how much a new player would realistically pay to buy a deck of 78 library and 12 crypt cards. $20 + shipping seems a little high to me, frankly, given the much lower cost of WW pre-cons.

1.) I belive the mix of two is optimal - starters + fully customise POD
2.) OFc starters must be cheaper - maybe 10$maybe 20$
3.) There will be one change with new starters - I remember my atempt to start play acunanse. In order to play reasonable deck I needed to bay 4 preconstructed Acu decks. The price of one was 10$. But my budget had to be 4x10=40$.
4.) We will have now much greater freedom in createing starters. Wy should starters have 90 cards ? For example new starter can have 120 most important cards for a specific clan, and proposion of three different decks base on these cards, for the price 20$. For this price we can deliver really all necessary resourcer for new player. It was not possible in old times with crippled starters for 10$.

Larger starters designed to give players options is an excellent idea.

Starting players still have great options, including the playgroup support kits:
www.sites.google.com/site/rosetatuproductions/playgroup-support-kits-1

Those things are going for somewhere around $0.06 per card. How cheap can a POD company provide that service? Or a single-player-kit version?

Migalart wrote:

For example new starter can have 120 most important cards for a specific clan, and proposion of three different decks base on these cards, for the price 20$. For this price we can deliver really all necessary resourcer for new player. It was not possible in old times with crippled starters for 10$.

I can understand this approach, though I look at it differently. A total of 102 cards (90 library and 12 vampire) conforms to rules and should be viable.

I suggest.

1) Have a recognized, high-quality player design a 90 card starter based on the old one starters. Use some pre-established boundaries if needed (e.g., it's OK to put up to 2 Villeins in the deck), though in the new age of PoD, I would even suggest putting in what makes the best sense for function (e.g., if it needs 8 Villein, go for it).

The new decks should highlight the strengths of the clan. You should already have a better starter than the previous version.

2) Run the new pre-constructed decks through the already-existing (highly qualified) VEKN playtest groups, in head-to-head games against other precons. See where decks are greatly lacking (e.g., the !Brujah only colllected 8% of the cumulative VP, instead of the 20% they should be expected to). Send those under-performing decks back to the designer for modification.

3) Playtest those decks again, if desired (may only be necessary to test re-worked vs re-worked decks). If the designer is good and receives accurate feedback from the first run, re-testing is likely unneeded.

4) Lock the contents in place and use that as a POD "template" - basically a 1-button push to buy a clan pre-con. 90 cards + 12 vampire, but in a good (relatively focused) deck and done. Charge a lower-than-a-la-carte price for the pre-configured deck, if printed completely unchanged.

5) Let people modify from the template if they desire - but charge them the higher a la carte price per card for all 102 cards, even if they change only 1 card in the precon.

As an extension to that, I can easily see doing something like the MtG Pro Tour decks......every new deck added to the TWDA automatically gets templated for 1-button purchase PoD.

Want John Bell's or Hugh Angseesing's latest winning design? Follow a link from the TWDA, pay your money and receive it as they played it (all at the a la carte price, since winning decks vary in library size).

Darby.