Happy PQ Season and 2025!

Yesterday, we were treated to a lovely livestream from our good friends at FFG, featuring Community Manager Xander, Design Lead Danny Schaefer, and Visual Design Manager Mercedes Opheim. It was an informative look into a hotly debated topic amongst SWU faithful- Carbonite Packs, this game’s version of MTG’s Collectors Packs that were themselves fairly controversial.

Lots has been written on this subject- I wanted to use this space today to dive into what the packs mean for the everyday SWU player. This means me! I ain’t no whale, I’m just a dude who likes card games and lightsabers. And I’m all out of lightsabers, it turns out.

Here’s three things that struck me coming out of the stream and the discourse surrounding it today:

1. The Numbers Break Down Pretty Good, Actually

There’s a few things going on here that directly feed into what I think is a major takeaway, and perhaps a surprising one- it now seems likely that at or around MSRP, Carbonite Packs will have a better Expected Value (EV) than a regular pack.

For starters, they’re limited in quantity, which means that assuming something truly wild doesn’t go down, overstocking shouldn’t drive down the secondhand market. There’s also several card variants within them that are serialized, giving players access to genuinely unique cards for the first time in SWU history. Your 5/250 Firespray is the only one in the world, thank you very much, and historically that’s gonna mean a good payday if you decide to part with it.

On top of this, the nature of the pack structure contributes to the value as well. Hyperspaces sell well, and you get 5 of them in each pack, plus 2 guaranteed Hyperfoils. The rates for Rares and Legendaries are substantially better, and on average you’re gonna pull quite a few of them.

But the big winner here is Showcases- a Carbonite pack is five times as expensive as a regular one, but a Showcase is twelve times as likely to appear. We figured Showcase numbers would be juiced, but I don’t think many of us had Carbonite Packs being more than twice as cost efficient for Showcase hunters on our bingo cards.

All this adds up to a pretty reliable purchase if you want to feel good about value for the dollar on the secondhand market, a major win for this product.

That said…

2. It’s Totally Valid To Think This Is All Silly

I’ve seen a lot of interesting discussion today about the nature of buying shiny cardboard and the sort of inherent grossness of artificial scarcity and collector culture.

I think all of that stuff is totally valid. Let’s get real- in terms of things to spend money on, card games don’t exactly hold up to scrutiny. Like most collection endeavors, solid returns on investment are the exception rather than the norm. The closer to the line of treating SWU as an investment you are, the sillier things get, and so for average folks, “value” in card games must be derived from the joy of play. That sounds cheesy, but it’s 100% true. And lucky for us, it counts a lot that SWU is so well-designed and enjoyable to actually get to the table.

Carbonite Packs are, almost empirically, a step away from that philosophy. While there’s certainly a unique brand of joy to be derived from what’s inside them, if you take a step back and put “playing the game” on it’s rightful pedestal as the best reason to be buying SWU stuff, these packs are dumb as hell.

If that’s as far as you need your personal evaluation to go, let me reinforce what you probably already feel- you’re for sure not going to miss out on anything. You can comfortably compartmentalize Carbonite Packs as Whalebait and go your merry way. Your wallet will thank you, and you’ll certainly be no further away from cleaning up at your local PQ with a deck full of glorious, affordable, guilt-free standard issue cards.

3. …But Also You’re Not Crazy For Being Intrigued

All that said…I don’t actually think you have to be a whale to be interested in what’s going on here.

First of all, visual appeal and bling isn’t only a whale thing. The art and visual treatments shown were pretty awesome, and Mercedes mentioned that the higher MSRP of these packs let them spend more on artists specifically for Prestige cards. Brian Matyas, the cited example, is actually a Lucasfilm Limited concept artist, and to my eye it shows. Things like horizontal framing and cards with paired art are genuinely just very cool, and I think it’s reasonable to assume that most SWU players would find them cool to own.

So given that there’s probably a base appeal, it just kind of comes down to price, right? And there’s been a lot of hullabaloo about that.

Here’s my angle- everyone is different, and everyone’s threshold for value is their own. What I’ll say is that with every set so far, I’ve ended up personally buying a fair bit more product than I strictly needed. Part of it is that I end up drafting after I’ve got most of what I need. I might stumble upon discounted product or a loose Prerelease Kit, I might go in with friends on a secondhand case. Sometimes it’s just that I like opening packs and I have a little extra money to blow.

Maybe you have more self-control than I do. But if you’ve ever been in the spot where you wanted to buy SWU product that you didn’t really need to fill out your collection, I don’t see how Carbonite Packs aren’t the way to go. There’s about $150 worth of product I picked up in each set that (more in Set 1…I way overbought that one) didn’t really benefit me at all. Assuming the money was going to SWU anyway, I’d much rather have put that into Carbonite Packs, where my EV would be better and I’d be getting fewer cards, but cooler cards.

What To Do?

For me, the answer to this question ended up being really easy- as luck would have it, my family just added a second childcare bill to our books, and so I’m going to be sitting out from purchasing any product during Set 4 for Adult Responsibility purposes. No Carbonite Packs for me this time 🥲

But for you, dear reader, the choice may not be as simple. As we’ve discussed, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to totally disregard this product, and I also simultaneously think it has broader appeal on several levels than many of us are giving it credit for.

Given those things existing in tandem, I think it’s possible to reach one last conclusion- that overall, the combination of cosmetic focus and appealing value means FFG have done a pretty darn good job speccing out this product.

For those of you seeking to grab a few come release day…may the force be with you!