$6.4M Kickstarter TCG: Where is Altered at now?

Early 2024 the savvy TCG investors were on the hunt. MTG had a spectacular failure with their first ‘Play Booster’ release Murders at Karlov Manor. Pokemon was struggling to get collectors excited about their newer releases. The stage was set for the breakout of a new TCG.

Kickstarter TCGs were an incredible investment opportunity 2020-2021 if you knew exactly which games to invest in and exactly when to sell. Taking for granted those two critical details, many TCG investors looked to Kickstarter in early 2024.

Thanks to an elaborate marketing campaign, Equinox’s game Altered was the clear Kickstarter to invest into in February 2024. Altered boasted a series of innovations to the TCG space. Each card had digital ownership associated with it. Once you owned a card digitally you could order unlimited copies from the printer. Altered boasted unique cards, cards with one-of-a-kind stats. No other card in the world with the exact abilities as a card you owned. Each card could be sold and traded digitally in a world-wide online marketplace. Frictionless opportunity to exchange your valuable cards that you did not find valuable into money.

Over $6.4M USD raised in a month making it the most funded Kickstarter TCG ever. The hype train was leaving the station with almost 15k backers on board.

Plenty has happened since then, but where are we now?

Altered has a strong presence in Europe. Home field advantage.

The US (strongest TCG market by far) has yet to adopt. Stores are selling Altered booster boxes at close to distributor costs, which is the same thing as saying stores are losing money selling Altered products. In my estimation, this is because the online marketplace to Altered cards does not exist yet. Equinox made a statement emphasizing their commitment to deliver the online marketplace, but admitted they underestimated how difficult it is to create a world-wide marketplace. Without this marketplace, it is difficult to sell single cards. Because it is difficult to sell single cards, it is difficult to justify opening boxes for investors and flippers. While normally a new TCG would experience players, investors, and flippers opening packs, Altered would have to rely on players alone. Which is unfortunate since the latter groups can represent a tremendous amount of money for an early Kickstarter TCG.

Altered is scheduled to release set two in January 2025. If that product descends to distributor pricing it could be the end for the game in the US, since game stores would have no reason to order the product in the future. That being said, Kickstarter Altered Booster Boxes have a relatively stable price around $140. The exact price does not matter, but the stability represents enough customers who want to open the packs to support a decent price. When a Kickstarter TCG experiences a series of price drops, then it is all over. But we are not there yet.

Only time will tell. I would wager that if Equinox gets their marketplace online in the next few weeks, things could turn around in the US. Otherwise, I would not recommend speculating on Altered.