The long-awaited North American restock of The First Chapter Booster boxes is finally starting to hit stores – with TWO big changes. The box comes sealed, and certain cards with errors/errata have been corrected.
Update: We can confirm the new booster packs also contain reprints of cards with errata card fixes.
Stores should be getting their allocations in over the next week or so, as confirmed by multiple stores. When stores will get stock largely depends on the distributor and area.
The First Chapter Booster Restock Arrives
Ravensburger has made it clear there were both restocks and reprints happening for The First Chapter. We wrote a whole article that covers everything here, but in summary: –
- October – Booster packs restock in North America for LGS. Only booster boxes, and possibly sleeved packs were announced. No other product was expected.
- Holiday 2023 – Booster packs and starter decks reprint to come in Holidays 2023.
The Holiday reprint is basically confirmed as being ready for the release of Rise of the Floodborn on Nov 17th in LGS, and Dec 1st for large stores. This means you should be able to get set 2 and fill in some of the blanks for set 1 at the same time.
A few of important notes for these: This restock and reprint is for North America only. Europe has seen some small restocks previously. The reprint was announced for Europe to come in January – though that may be pulled forward to the RotB release too.
The restock is only boosters (likely to be mostly boxes). The reprint is boosters and starter decks. No troves, gift sets, or accessories seem to be being stocked. There is a difference between a restock and reprint.
The restock is likely just the last part of the initial printing run that’s now been boxed up and shipped out. Or, it’s a slightly later print run from the initial order, but printed with the exact same card details as sent to the printers in the first run.
The boxes turning up to LGS in North America now seem to be from this restock. So there should be no differences to the cards or packs. We have pictures of the newly-printed cards with errata fixes.
A reprint specifically means a new print. However, it has been confirmed multiple times that there is no first edition, and there will be no changes in the reprint to indicate this is a second edition, or later run – apart from fixes to errata. More on that later.
Booster Boxes Have A New Tape Seal
The First Chapter booster boxes now come sealed with clear plastic tape on the bottom and two sides. You can see it in the video from Arithon Hanzo below and pictures above, and the tape patches looked specifically made – not just pulled off of a roll of sticky tape.
(Note: The photo of the underside of the box above has an extra barcode on the left which is from the store and isn’t present on all boxes.)
We’ve compared the video to our opened boxes, and literally everything is the same. All of the printing and text, including the EN01 mark and the barcode details match exactly. The only difference is the added tape.
The Problem With Lorcana Booster Boxes
This fixes the issue where it was possible to pull packs out of a sealed booster box simply by lifting the side. There have been videos of people from sticking the glue on one side to open the box at the back without damaging the seal.
From the day of release at Gen Con, it was clear that the booster boxes weren’t sealed enough. At the back right of a box, the glue holding a tab to the side very commonly comes unstuck. Most other TCG companies use a full plastic wrap.
The new seals are a quick and easy way of making it clear when a box has been tampered with. It’s reassuring for buyers and discourages flippers from buying just to pull expensive cards and sell everything else.
We really believe that reducing plastic usage is incredibly important. Ravensburger did that with the starter deck wraps and the gift set oversized cards, which come in recycled paper. However, the booster box clearly needed a rethink.
We did know this change might happen because of a video from Arkham Chronicle, who got an early look at Rise of the Floodborn products a few months back.
You can see the same clear seals on the side of the booster boxes from the next set. It looks as if these two, plus another on the bottom, will be used going forward.
How To Check Your Early Booster Box
If you are buying an early print run booster box and are worried about the box being rifled through, here’s a tip. Every booster box in the box should have the same code on the back. It’s not the same code as the booster box itself, but the packs inside should match each other.
Errata Reprint Fixes Confirmed
It has been confirmed that at least some of the cards from the new print in the restock have errata print fixes. There are around seven cards in the English language print that have errata on the app. There are six on the French cards and five on the German cards.
Take a look at Every Disney Lorcana: The First Chapter Errata Card for what might be being reprinted with a correction
We will update as we confirm more cards.
to chosen character’s“, this new version specifies “another“.You can find the cards with errors but going to the app and scrolling down on certain errata’d cards. We will be publishing an article with all of the errata cards shortly – plus ones we think may also be changed.
Error/Errata cards are where a rule was worded incorrectly, a name or word was misspelled, the wrong artist was credited, or incorrect stats were printed. These are commonly corrected in an official “errata” and when reprinted are given the correct text.
Ravensburger were keeping this very close to their chest for a while in order to avoid speculation. Every time someone asked about print differences, the blanket anwer was that there wouldn’t be print differences. Until very recently, that is.
We always took that to mean there would be no edition stamps, number changes on packs e.t.c but we always thought that errata on cards would be fixed. It’s how all games work. If a card isn’t worded right, it can lead to problems in games where players don’t know about the errata.
This could affect prices for those cards or for sealed products. There is nothing glaringly obvious or bad, but some people (like us!) love collecting error cards. Befuddle should say “chosen”, some of the Support cards are missing the word “another”, and Work Together has Pacha spelled wrong.
In the German and French errata cards, there are rules clarifications. The big issue for those languages is that Stitch – Carefree Surfer (not the Enchanted version) has one lore instead of two. That’s a pretty big problem.
Those two cards are fairly expensive as they are already very good cards in their own right. Adding an error has just bumped the price. The English version doesn’t have this issue.
We can expect reprints of The First Chapter to be coming consistently for quite a while. We’d expect at least a year of sporadic reprints and restocks to keep the game healthy and let players get staple cards. That means the population of errata cards will be fairly limited.
Overall, we expect the cards with errata to be fun collectibles so prices for these cards – especially the Foil versions – may rise. It may also have an effect on the sealed prices, meaning more hoarding.
How Will This Affect Prices?
There are two things that could happen because of this. It’s a mix of good/bad but overall it’s definitely for the best.
Firstly, people buying just to pull expensive cards and resell the remaining packs will be discouraged. That’s good and it will mean more availability in stores, and less on the secondary market going forward.
Secondly, these boxes are clearly made later than the very first run as they have sticker seals and stamp changes. For some people who collect complete products, they’d prefer the earliest runs. There is no first edition, it’s just a completionist thing.
However, if you’re looking to collect or play with the actual cards – would you rather have a sealed box or a box that was potentially tampered with? Given the cards and packs inside are nearly exactly the same, we’d prefer a sealed one.
There is probably a huge amount of first-wave sealed boxes out there that were never going to be opened anyway. This likely solidifies that as current eBay prices are out of control.
It does make it more likely that people looking just to collect sealed will probably be less likely to buy this latest wave. That means players going into local game stores regularly may have a bit more of a chance to get the cards they need.
