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BattleForge screenshot

VideoGamer.com: How much will the cards cost?

SN: This is going to be a very low price point. We haven't decided on the exact pricing yet but it's going to be a lot cheaper than the physical cards that you would buy in booster packs from Magic the Gathering.

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VideoGamer.com: Some fans are concerned that the more you spend the better your deck will be, that the more money you've got then the better you'll be at the game.

SN: That's something that from the start we paid real attention to. That actually doesn't happen. A deck only consists of 20 cards, so despite the fact that your collection might include all 200 cards the only advantage that you have is you can choose from those cards, where a player that didn't buy any additional booster packs has only 120 cards to choose from. It's still a lot of cards to choose from and there's no advantage in having more cards when you don't know the strategy and how to use those cards in one of the scenarios or in PvP.

VideoGamer.com: But if you pay for them you save time having to obtain them by playing the game...

SN: How you get cards, except for buying them, is by trading with other players. Also we incorporated everything that we know from the real world, we replaced eBay for the Magic players with our own auction house that is in game. We have player trade where players can get together and trade their cards, trade messages, where they can post, 'I'm trading this card for this card', or 'looking for someone to trade with', and also attach those to in game mails. So we're giving the players every opportunity to trade cards as easily as possible and get their preferred cards.

VideoGamer.com: So if you've got a card are you able to sell that card or can you only trade it?

SN: You can put it in the auction house if you want to.

VideoGamer.com: And then another player will be able to buy that with real world money?

SN: It's what we call BattleForge points, that's the monetary currency that we have in BattleForge. We do also have BattleForge gold which is the experience currency that you get by playing the game, but auctions are usually paid with BattleForge points.

VideoGamer.com: So if you buy a card with real world money and put that card on the auction house you won't be able to make your money back from another player?

SN: No.

VideoGamer.com: What's your plan for post release? I assume you're going to be introducing new cards on a regular basis.

SN: Yeah definitely. BattleForge is an online service rather than a boxed product. We'll release new maps in a monthly cycle, these will be for free, everybody can download and play them. Then we have new card editions on a regular basis, like Magic does, they have release cycles for new card editions. We don't know yet when we'll launch the second edition.

VideoGamer.com: Am I correct in understanding that if you defeat a unit in the game you then get that unit's card?

SN: No. That's a misconception. We never take cards away from players. When completing scenarios you can't win cards, you will win card upgrades, which is our way of rewarding players. It's kind of a reward that actually matters to gameplay. At the moment we have three kinds of rewards, depending on the difficulty level of the maps. We have the epic card upgrade for completing the 12-player maps for instance. You've got low upgrades from additional hit points to high value card upgrades which will add another special feature to the unit. Also, the card upgrade allows you to bundle another card. If you have a card twice you can also apply this when you're upgrading your card and it doubles the charges of one card. Charge means the time you can play out the card in one scenario.

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