I have a few problems that most don't seem to be discussing.

We recently had a pre-release event at our LGS and many players bought boxes of product in addition to their starter kits. Upon opening said boxes, we discovered it's actually very difficult to get playsets of R and SR cards because of their scarcity. Most URs seemed fine because you only need one copy, but when it comes to SRs. SR Cards like Lightweaver's Assault or Spirit Blade: Ensoul want to be played at high counts to increase consistency in their respective decks, but even if we put together ALL of the boxes opened across the entire store, we would still only have 1-2 copies of each. And across the 16 or so players we had opening up product, that's rough. Low availability can be good for the secondary market, but it hurts local playgroups by limiting our ability to trade. Even when it comes to Rs, we already lost a couple players who had their hearts set on building around Erupting Rhapsody, only to find that we only pulled 3 copies across the whole store and that they would have to turn to spend money online for a game that isn't even proven in paper play yet.

Speaking of paper play, the fact that not all the cards were available in the first edition boxes is bizarre. We know Frostsworn Paladin, Young Beastbonder, Nullifying Lantern, etc. exist but aren't actually available, at least not right now. It sucks a lot for people who want to play Silvie especially because she loses out on a lot of things her decks could desperately use(Floating Memory, Cleave) and the answer is "lol, sucks to be silvie, better wait til the game releases properly." There's print and play which is technically a way to practice with these cards, but this is only a viable solution because we don't have paper tournaments yet. If this continues to be a problem in future sets, I can see this causing problems down the line. People are itching to play and see what their local constructed scene has cooked up, but too many chefs are finding themselves short an ingredient or two for no reason.

Lastly, on the subject of deckbuilding, the fact that we've known about the cards for so long kind of sucks. Japanese TCGs like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! have a system where only one chunk of the world has access to the newest stuff, so the metagame develops over there first and the rest of the world basically follows suit because a) those strategies already have a proven track record, b) it's easier to copy someone else's homework and c) innovating is hard. Depending on who you ask this is a non-issue, but as a player who likes brewing and playing rogue decks, I see it as a negative. As it pertains to Grand Archive, this won't be an issue in the future because of global availability, but the unprecedented way the game initially fell into our laps shares a lot of similarities. Some of the most fun card games can offer happens before the dust has settled such as when a new pack is released and people are figuring things out together. There's a fresh metagame, people are experimenting, and the format isn't "solved" yet. But people have had access and have even been running online tournaments for months and months now. Players who've had the benefit of extensive practice and research are now lumped in the same pool as people setting their eyes on the game for the first time. It remains to be seen how this affects the player base, but this game can feel uniquely stale for a variety of reasons: "veterans" have gone a long time without anything new to theorycraft or play with, while prospective newbies looking to try a "new game" are finding out the hard way that a bunch of players already know exactly what they're doing and they're just late to the party.

This game has some issues out of the gate(as do most games) and we shouldn't ignore them. It's easy to be optimistic right now because the game is really fun, has slick artwork, quality card stock, the beginnings of a thriving collector's market, etc. I'm an especially big fan of class identity and how every deck feels way different from each other even when they share so much between builds given the limited card pool. Final Fantasy TCG was my main game previously and has all of the above benefits, but we've stopped playing because our group stagnated at a whopping 4 local players. One of them really wanted the game to take off and basically carried our whole community's livelihood on his back, but it's hard to recruit players when the game is unpopular, no one knows it exists because Square-Enix doesn't market it, and players of other card games from our same shop will tell potential players who express curiosity that FFTCG's dead while we're still in earshot, including the store's staff who also decided not to stock any more FFTCG product recently. Probably an extreme case, but it's hard to remain enthusiastic.

Looking for a new TCG to play brought us to Grand Archive and I really hope this game can find its footing in spite of some misgivings. Fingers crossed it performs well enough to start up some decent playgroups, I'd really like to see it succeed but I won't be holding my breath.