Hey everyone, as a bit of housekeeping, the past two weeks have been pretty content light around here. Which isn’t to say that there wasn’t a lot going on, I just ran into technical difficulties. Y’inz, squirrels ate my internet. Well, they ate the cables, which supply the internet, but functionally, they ate my internet. It was additionally frustrating because “maybe it’s squirrels” is literally the thing my wife suggested as the potential problem at the start of our Comcast communication a couple weeks ago. Yet, somehow it took five different techs on five different visits to identify and fix this problem (yeah cartels!). So I’ve been doing internet off my phone for a while now, and updating this site via phone is utterly miserable. Hopefully, I can get back into the swing of things in this coming week.
Anyway, now that I’m back up and running, I want to push out an abbreviated article that probably would have been a longer piece if I had been able to push it out a week ago, but, again, squirrels. What I want to address is the emergence of unlimited preorders for Monarch, why you should buy them, and where you should buy them from.
Why You Need to Order Unlimited Now
If you’re reading this, you likely already know that first edition Monarch is perordering at $250-350 a box unless you have a hookup from an LGS that is keeping prices down for locals. Honestly, I think that, if you believe in FAB being healthy for the next five years, a first edition Monarch box will make better than 7% a year on average during that time period even if you buy said box at $300. But if you’re looking for boxes to actually open, you’re probably buying unlimited at this point. Why should you order now instead of just waiting until the set releases?
With first edition essentially being sold out already, you can be assured that a lot of people are going to be buying unlimited as their only Monarch purchase (pretty much every person picking up the game in the next three months, for instance). This has never happened before in FAB. Every other set was available for MSRP at launch, so we’re in uncharted waters, but consider that the player base is bigger than it’s ever been. A ton of first edition is never going to be opened or at least won’t be opened at launch, and the singles prices are going to be brutal. People who actually want to play the game are going to need product to open, and that product is going to overwhelmingly be unlimited.
If we accept that the demand for unlimited Monarch will be high, it’s also safe to assume that LSS will not be able to print enough Monarch to meet this demand. If they could, than the hyper-constrained first edition supply would be particularly egregious, but I don’t think that’s the case. What we’ve seen with unlimited ARC and WTR is that they’ve had trouble staying on shelves (and there were already thousands of first edition boxes worth of cards on the market and in the hands of players). The scarcity of these unlimited products has caused prices to fluctuate from sub-MAP to upwards of $150 a box. Simply put: you don’t want to play around here. As soon as supply starts to look constrained, expect MONU to be selling over MSRP (I honestly assume some retailers will be opening with $120+ unlimited boxes for pre-orders). Who knows when additional waves of MONU will drop in relation to the other unlimited sets, but, what I can say with confidence is, if LSS ever manages to catch up on unlimited printings, the market will crash on unlimited singles (I’ve been saying this about WTR and ARC for a while). You really don’t want to be in a position where you either bought MON singles at inflated rates or opened boxes at $120-150+, so just get that whole business squared away now.
It’s Team Covenant
As ever, I am pointing to Team Covenant as the online retailer of choice. While I certainly don’t begrudge any LGS selling boxes at what they can get for them, if you can manage to not pay that, then that’s what you want to do. Given that the best price you can get for current sets (outside of unadvertised prices) is MAP, you want your MONU at $76.60. And guess what? TC is offering it right now. I’m a verbose by nature and inclined to draw this out, but that’s actually all there is to it. You can go to TC’s site right now, “preorder” however many boxes you want via subscription and then just not think about it until May when they email you a reminder that you have an upcoming charge on your card (remember, you pay them nothing until your cards are a couple weeks from shipping). This is a zero risk opportunity. If something changes between now and launch, you can always reduce or cancel your sub, but, if, as with first edition, demand is high and supply is starting to look insufficient, you’ll likely see MONU prices climb over MSRP as we get closer to launch date. With no money down, I’d rather just lock something in now and be safe, which is what I did –adding a couple unlimited cases to my first edition case orders, since I doubt I’ll end up opening as many of those as I would have liked. A lot of people out there have first edition woes from missing out on MSRP or less MON, don’t put yourself in a position where the same thing could happen to you with unlimited.
*Header Image – A god damn squirrel (https://www.pexels.com/photo/nature-animal-cute-fur-47359/)
FAB with Freyja 