The launch date of the Marketplace and Print-on-Demand Beta Phase 2 is still on its way after announcements during a 30-minute AMA March 7. That’s one topic among several that Eric Dieulangard, Equinox chief marketing officer, covered during the event, which also included updates on upcoming fan content patches, the midseason patch and an introduction to the new organized play director.

Marketplace and Print-on-Demand

Phase 2 of the Beta is still on hold as work is done on the fee transaction system, which has been updated since the first beta. The team is working on another internal patch and test in the next week, Eric said. If that solves the issue, they’ll be able to move forward with Phase 2 of the beta.

When the team is ready to share news on the next steps, Eric will be sharing info likely on social media first; an AMA won’t be expected to come simultaneously (partially because Lokinox will be enjoying his vacation toward the end of March). If there’s not an update worth sharing, more news will be coming in the next AMA planned for March 31 (which also addresses the midseason patch, where Charles will again join Eric to discuss patch updates).

The team has been working on its own internal beta of the Marketplace and Print-on-Demand services. One of the major goals for that beta was bringing the 3% error rate in transactions down to a manageable level for Equinox’s support to handle. Most of those issues, except for the one relating to transactions, have been resolved.

For the first phase of the beta, the system only took fees when money was being added to wallet. That was a temporary system, he said. The new system applies the fees only on transactions, such as when a card is sold. In the example given, the buyer would pay the price shown on the app, and the seller will see some fragment the amount received taken as a fee. This system is causing some issues at the moment in conversion rates, especially between dollars and euros not displaying correctly.

Exclusive cards are now displayed with a special symbol in card collections.

Some Print-on-Demand orders have already been received, but others generally fall into two groups: Those who received cards with errors or who haven’t received them at all. For those who received incorrect or damaged cards, they should open a support ticket for compensation, Eric said. For the rest, there was a failure within the ordering system. Those orders won’t be able to be printed again until the next print starts, with the opening of Beta Phase 2 and the availability of printing at Cartamundi. Once the services are online, printing at Cartamundi will be more regular, but during the testing phases it’s more subject to other scheduling.

Eric provided some additional context around printing capabilities for exclusive cards. The goal is to have the capability to print them once per year. When an exclusive card is printed, the timer starts for the upcoming year and will be displayed in the collection; the card can’t be sold during that timeframe until its anniversary has come around. Each exclusive card can be individually printed. If you have a playset of three, you can choose to print one copy and sell another.

For countries that haven’t been included in the list of available locations for the beta, Equinox is considering providing access to either Marketplace or Print-on-Demand, depending on which is easier to implement. The current plan is to avoid splitting the services, but it might be an option going forward. No specific timeline could be shared, though Eric asked that topic comes back at the next AMA.

Midseason patch

Ozma and Axiom’s version of Haven will both be receiving an errata in the March 21 midseason patch, bringing their suspension to an end. It’s possible that the Bravos version of Haven might also receive an errata, though Eric didn’t provide additional details and did not share about any other cards. While Muna anchored uniques are not anticipated to be in the midseason patch, they and Afanas are being tested or monitored. Eric and Game Designer Charles Wickham talked about some of the reasoning behind the initial suspensions in the Feb. 19 AMA.

The midseason patch itself will be released March 21 and will apply as soon as the article is posted. The application will be updated to match within about a week and Board Game Arena updates will likely take some time as well, Eric said. Tournaments will need to apply the rules as of March 21. Details on these timelines will come in the article, and Charles and Eric will team up again for another AMA on March 31.

Fan policy

An article will be released next week that fully explains what fans are authorized to do when it comes to fan-made content and products (such as could be found on Etsy or Ebay). While many creators have been hard at work, there have been some accounts and sales blocked by requests from Equinox. The rules are designed to allow for a lot of freedom, especially for those who are crafting rather than building a large business, Eric said.

Adventure Pass

Providing an update on a topic from the previous AMA, for the Season 1 Adventure Pass rewards, for every card earned only one copy was received per player. That will be changing both retroactively and going forward, Eric said. Players will be given two additional copies of each card earned, making a total of three copies of each. This update will be coming soon, anticipated to be no later than the closing of the Season 2 Adventure Pass. From now on, three copies of the cards received through Adventure Pass will be the standard.

Eric introduced Cedric Leblanc, Equinox’s incoming organized play director.

Organized play director

Eric introduced Cedric Leblanc, the new organized play director at Equinox, who started March 3. While he’s got quite a task list ahead of him (including the judges program and a world championship), he’s up for discussion and connecting with the community on the official Discord. His primary role is to build the strategies, systems and ideas related to organized play (and eventually tournaments) broadly across the game. However, he’s not meant to be the rules specialist for Altered.

Until now, Eric and Justin Parnell, Equinox sales and marketing director, Americas, were the two people involved in building the organized play system from the start. Because Justin lives in the U.S., it wasn’t very convenient to work efficiently together. He also didn’t have access to the internal resources of the company, which meant that Eric was doing a lot of the work in the last few months. Cedric will be helping shoulder those responsibilities among other goals.

Upcoming U.S. events

Altered and Lokinox will be at PAX East, May 8-11 in Boston, though the full program is still being determined and will be announced before the event. Altered will also be represented at GenCon, July 31-Aug. 3 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Gamegenic product

While it’s mostly an issue for Europe, Gamegenic products will have their orders refilled by April 20, with the exception of the acrylic Adventure Track, which will be restocked in June.

The next update on most all of these topics will be another AMA coming March 31 streamed from the Altered YouTube channel.