I think this will change though.
As above, I think we’ll be looking at a final deluxe in 2015 and then a rigid 2 cycles/yr release schedule going forward.
My tip is for the final deluxe to launch at GenCon and it will introduce the Corp-owned and neutral runners, as well as a multi-player format, along with the NBN cards of course.
I couldn’t agree more. Even when I was a starving student I could spare $15 a month to do a Magic draft, and that just bought me an evening of entertainment and a bunch of garbage cardboard.
Compare to LCG I can have a playset of the game and play competitive? It’s absurdly cheap to the point where a year’s worth of cards costs less than the hotel room at one tournament.
Sure, eventually a card you buy will become obsolete. That’s a hell of a lot better than the current system, where most of the card pool is obsolete at release because there are better alternatives in the pool already.
OK, $16.25 a month then. Not exactly a dramatic difference.
And that is exactly what rotation will achieve. Legacy cards are expensive exactly because they haven’t been printed in ages. If FFG did not instigate a rotating primary tournament format, it would eventually be impossible to keep everything in print and an MTG-style secondary market would be created for tournament play. This is undesirable. The creation of such a market is inevitable some time way in the future for a potential eternal nonrotating format, but rotation keeps it out from primary tournament play which is a huge driver for prices.
Because it would be impossible to keep all original product in stock. This way, Jackson can rotate out, but if they think the Standard format needs Jackson, they can reprint Jackson (and Jackson alone, not the whole Future Proof pack) in some new data pack, and it’s part of the 5-8 cycles and a limited number of fixed products that are easy to keep in print and for retailers to keep in stock while they are tournament legal. Jackson sees reprint, you can easily use your old copies in your Standard deck.
I am a competitively minded MTG player of 8 years. I understand planned obsolesence and what it does to a customizable card game plenty well, thank you very much.
This. Thisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthis.
Please, have a look at some MTG cards:
A crappified version of the famously broken Black Lotus, LED was in the junk card binder for TEN YEARS before Infernal Tutor broke it to hell and back. In the process, Infernal Tutor itself basically turned into Demonic Tutor, another famously broken (and banned) card.
Where LED and Infernal were patterned after famous broken cards, Grindstone and Painter are both completely innocuous. Turns out they’re a kill combo together. Took only 11 years for a random, benign printing to break an obscure piece of crap.
Again, two innocuous cards that are pretty much crap alone and were promptly forgotten. Until someone found out that Sword makes Foundry’s effect repeatable and thus a way to gain overwhelming inevitability and board presence really easily. The combo ended up being banned from the Extended format where it was part of the top deck.
This, people, is why rotation exists. Things like these will happen to this game too, it’s inevitable. No one can catch all of these in advance, not when the card can be completely forgotten crap and ten years old crap at that.
I like how everyone is speculating how they feel about this in 3 years…
I like how people don’t have a damn clue about what rotation is and will speculate wild doomsday scenarios, attributing things that would happen with non-rotation to rotation and thinking non-rotation would keep everything rose-tinted and saccharine.
It may not seem like a big difference but if you are collecting two games (which I am) it can be.
I don’t think the economic argument is valid. As others have demonstrated, the ANR/LCG model will remain the most economic card game model on the market. You get the most value for your dollar, which averages about the cost dining out once or twice a month.
I can understand not wanting any of your cards to become obselete, but those complaining about obsolescence must not have much experience with card games. This LCG model gives cards much longer lifetimes than most rotation models. We are currently almost completed with the third cycle, and 2 deluxe expansions. By the time the first rotation happens, there will be 7 complete cycles and (at least) 4 deluxe expansions. That is twice the amount of cards we currently have access to. I personally cannot comprehend a card pool getting much larger. I think it will be a welcome change by the time it actually rolls around, and I think within a few weeks the issue will be out-of-sight, out-of-mind for most players, as it should be.
I think two rotation models would have been a better idea for ANR. “Legacy” (or some cyberpunk-flavored version of the word, maybe “Retro”), in which all cards are legal (save a possible restricted list), and “Modern” (or some non-MTG related word), which would be a smaller set of cycles than the proposed 5-7, maybe 3 to 5.
A straight up banned list is preferable to a restricted one. Otherwise decks end up being half restricted cards like they do in Vintage. And up until such a time that half the decks are broken singletons, there’s a good deal extra luck in who draws their restricted broken shit first.
EDIT: I was just informed on Reddit that the AGOT restricted list is a brilliant piece of work where you choose one card from the restricted list but can play it as a 3-of. This circumvents the stumble-into-singleton stupidity but allows to break combos while still providing access to borderline broken engines. A+. With a bit of tuning so it has a gradation mechanism it could be pretty much the best thing ever.
An idea for a cool legacy format would be to have all cycles legal but for deck building purposes, you can only include cards from core 1 deluxe and two cycles. Then limiting the cycles you can use eg cycles 1-7 or cycles 8-14 to avoid any broken combos That might occur after the effective reboot.
This would be my preference as well. I’m just very disappointed in the decision to simply throw out whole chunks of the card pool. I understand the alleged point of rotation, but the option to keep using your old cards in certain events should be available if people want it.
Dude, go to your FLGS when rotation happens and ask them to run a tournament with a GNK that has all card legal. Run it yourself. There is literally nothing to stop you from doing that.
for the record, I was using restricted as synonymous with banned. the AGOT system sounds like a good take on restricted list
Hmm, interesting that since the best runner cards are core set cards, that runners wont be hurt as much by rotations as corps will. Also Jackson AND NAPD rotating out will be enormous. Even if Andy/Sucker won’t be a thing Gabe/Sucker still works, Especially when all of the following Key runner cards are core/deluxe cards
Datasucker
Parasite
Yog
Mimic
Corroder
Grimore
Medium
Clone Chip
SMC
Diesel
Procon
Atman
Special order
Siphon
Legwork
Security testing
Passport
Femme Fatale
Desperado
Daily Casts
Sure gamble
Same old thing
Dirty laundry
Meanwhile the first rotation willl be the DEATH of fast advance as an archetype. Losing Project Beale/Vitruvius is pretty much lights out for those decks unless those get reprinted in a deluxe. Maybe CI could pick up the slack if there is another card printed that combos with efficency comitee to score agendas out of hand.
They have SanSan + three more cycles to print more 3/2s, I’m sure it’ll happen. I’m sad Weyland still lacks a second, but even so, we’ll see them eventually.
Alas, poor Fetal AI! I’ll miss the evil baby when it’s gone.
Didn’t FFG go on record saying there wouldn’t be anymore 3/2s?
That was before Philotic Entanglement. The vibe I got is that they’re going to be very careful printing 3/2s, not avoid them altogether.
What everyone else said…they’ll probably print more 3/2’s. That said, I rarely used the vitruvius ability in my HB FA deck (same for Accelerated Diag), so having them rotate out for something else would probably be a boon.
I was mistaken and remembered an old post that FFg made saying there would no more 3/2 agenda’s
If so, I missed it. Not… entirely sad about it, although it’s frustrating that’ll leave Weyland still the only faction without until rotation.