Grave & Jaina 2-packThe five different 2-packs of Yomi decks are now available for pre-order. Each pair of decks is $25, and they ship in January along with the complete first edition, and the second printing of Puzzle Strike. I stress that the complete set is a better deal, so let's talk about price, starting at the beginning.
The usual way of making a card game like Yomi is to make it collectable. Yes, the dirty word. If it were collectable, I'd be selling packs of random cards, including rare cards, and causing you to spend a ton more in order to create a full, "real" deck. Constructed decks in Magic: the Gathering cost over $300 on average because this collectability aspect inflates the price and gets in the way of you actually playing the game. I know the makers of CCGs apologize by saying it's fun to play with gimped decks as you go through the expensive collection process, but really it's a hell of a lot more fun to have a full-strength, tournament quality deck from the beginning. I like picking Protoss in Starcraft, not a gimped Protoss until I buy all the units (which come to me in random packs--still waiting on that Void Ray). The same goes here, it's great to get the complete game without the garbage.
Grave & Jaina 2-pack, from the backSo anyway, the more normal way to sell the complete set of Yomi would be to not sell it at all! To instead, sell only random packs, so that the entire set of 10 decks could come out to around $3000. Or heck, let's cut the price all the way down to $1000. You wouldn't get a rulebook, playamts (those are worth $10+ bucks each), or the beautiful packaging of the 10 deck-boxes and the big black box it all comes in. You wouldn't get that stuff because you'd really get the cards from the secondary market where they are selling you just the (uncoated, CCG quality) cards themselves, without even real packaging. Somehow, the complete Yomi set isn't $3000 or $1000 though, it's $100. So if you bought that, and threw both the awesome playmats in the trash, along with the nice box, the expanded rules, and the life counters, you'd be paying $10 per deck. Or like $8 if you don't throw the playmats in the trash. (I stress again, those mats are pretty awesome).
The 2-packs get you two different Yomi decks for a total of $25. Yes, $25 is less than $100 and the cheaper price-of-entry is certainly a reason you might want one. But if you chip in with a friend or something, the complete set is the better value. And either way, this game is so absurdly cheaper than the CCG I *could* have made it, that I hope that doesn't go unnoticed. I hope you sing the praises that this game costs $100 for the *entire thing* and not $3000 with psychological tricks of rares in random packs that has somehow become acceptable.
So here you go, the complete first edition is here, and the five 2-packs are here. The 2-packs let you try out the game for cheaper than the full set, if you're not sure about it. Of course, you also try it out for free in the early online version (www.fantasystrike.com/dev). All flavors of Yomi, as well as the second printing of Puzzle Strike, ship in January.
Friday, January 21, 2011 at 8:01PM 
Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower did his top 10 games of 2010. Puzzle Strike made #8 and Yomi took the #1 spot! Game of the Year, wow!
