Apparently Aegon has never played Type1 MtG.  If he had, then he would know that it is the exact opposite of fun.  It tends to end in the first two turns, and is usually won by the player who happened to go first.

rings said:

Big difference with Agot is that this game is story driven unlike MTG for example - so you don't have to make power creep too strong to sell new cards since people will buy them because they have their favourite characters or themes. I'd assume that competitive players are small minority and majority are casuals who want to play a bit with chars from favourite book/series.

Also considering noone has trouble to find a bunch of perfectly playable cards in those two cycles and/or core set that are worth playing then surely power creep is not that bad.

To avoid intimidating new players FFG could reprint those cycles in 120x1 for 30$ which would be friendly for completionists and casuals and not worse than current Chapter packs for tourney players. Also retailers surely would be happier to stock single item than 6 different ones.

Here's my take.

This game is possibly on the threshold of actually having Organized Play take off and be successful. We are reaching a point of player base and card selection that has created a field where the options are many. FFG appears to be ready to commit resources to creating a successful OP for this game, something that we haven't seen since the switch from CCG to LCG. Do we want to start rotating cards out of the environment, and upset (and possibly drive out) a group of the people who have helped make this possible? Just so that the high level tournament players can have fewer decks (and cards) to worry about while designing their decks? Or, do we want to keep an open-ended playing field that requires more control over the cards that we are allowed to play?

I can't get behind set rotation without a long lead-in time, and by long I mean well advertised for about 12 months - - say the 2013 tournament season. And even then, only if we get some of the required mechanic cards reprinted in an upcoming deluxe expansion, or even an all-new Core Set. While there are benefits to rotating sets out of the tournament environment, there are also going to be some drawbacks. And what exactly gets rotated out? Are we going to include the first Core Set, which has cards that are still not worth playing? What about Deluxe Expansions? This would then mean that every three years we rotate out two cycles of Chapter Packs and 2 Deluxe Expansions, with the newest DEs replacing the houses that rotated out. Or would rotation occur every four years? Should it only affect Chapter Pack cycles? We don't want to card pool to decrease to a point where only a handful of decks are viable on the tournament scene. The decision to rotate needs to be though out and properly implemented, and not be an impediment to the format.

I think there is a strong need for this discussion now, about the adaptation of set rotation in the future. Either it is going to happen and people need to be prepared, or a decision to keep all sets and start expanding the Restricted and Banned lists needs to occur.

The first two Chapter Pack cycles were bastard sets, stripped from their initial design as ccg expansions, shrunk down and forced into a mold that wasn't fully crafted yet. The first Core Set, and to a degree the first two DEs, we also created at a time when the game's future was still uncertain and the design philosophy was different (more melee mechanics, bring in board gamers, etc.). But even with their flaws, we are still growing on mechanics that they introduced. The thing I don't want to see is Time for Ravens rotated out just to introduce Time for Ravens II that just rehashes the original themes just to keep the Summer/Winter mechanic. And how much will Shadow decks be hit with the rotation of Kings Landing, and Night's Watch decks (which may just be ready to become effective on the tournament scene, maybe) with Defenders rotating, and so and so and so on.

Set rotation may likely be inevitable. Otherwise cards will become "unplayable" either by banning or becoming obsolete via power creep. And I'm not even sure which side I come down on in this debate. But without the conversation, these decisions will be made (or not made) in a vacuum.

I own all but 2 of the 60 card packs and I'm strongly opposed to rotation, if I don't have a card, I'm usually OK with that in any game.

What is terrible in AGOT is that the entire summer/winter mechanic requires the 2 packs that are almost impossible to get and this is unacceptable. People are saying don't rotate becuase it will make non-rotated summer/winter cards useless. Well that situation we have now is that those cards ARE useless, but only to half the play group.

Is it fair to my meta that none of us can play black raven + carrion birds + samwell? Sure. Is it fair to us that one person was able to buy the last song of summer pack and can use that combo when the rest of us can't? Hell no. It's made even worse by the fact that it is designed to be uncounterable except through the very packs that aren't available.

In general no-rotation is perfect for the LCG format, but letting a set go out of print when the only way to counter it is the out of print set is just rediculous. Every time that one player with his kings of summer agenda comes in and guarantees himself an extra card every turn I just feel like slapping him. Mostly because I have about 20 cards I just can't use.

bane2571 said:

Emphasis mine.  So, basically, in this one scenario you're OK with set rotation?

Just one other relevant thought since Summer/Winter/Ravens keep coming up. There are a variety of Crowns and one character now which can turn on a particular season and a recent event (Ill Tidings) that can target and discard Raven attachments. While the majority of the support of those themes were indeed in a cycle that is becoming more scarce, saying that players who only have access to the newer cards are SOL isn't really accurate.

Kennon said:

I don't know about that- Cotter Pyke is somewhat reliable with all of the GJ saves, but the crowns seem WAY less reliable than the ravens. They cost 2, are just regular attachments which every deck seems to be able to deal with these days, and go on characters who are fragile themselves.  Further, the crowns are house-specific, and thus even more expensive, AND they don't provide the gold adjustment.  For Summer that's not as big a deal- Targ is decent at getting attachments back, and they might not need the + gold, but trying to play GJ choke with the crown is pretty impossible.  Also it's not JUST the birds- if they don't have the packs with the birds, they don't have the agendas either, so even if they 'can' play seasons, they have significantly less reason to do so.

I wish there was a simple way to come up with a "floating card pool".

For example, take the useless "F" (I know it stands for fixed) next to each card number and put it to use.  Start printing cards with "G" and make a ruling that says your deck con only contain cards with 2 neighboring letters (i.e. "F" and "G", or "G" and "H").  That way all cards stay legal, but only select cycles can be used together.

There a many problems with this idea.  First, the Core Set has "S", "L", "B", and "T" on the cards.  Second, we already have so many cards with "F" on them, and I can't imagine a card pool twice the size of what we have now.

Maybe the letter thing doesn't work so well, but there's got to be a way to do something like this.

This is the only system that would provide all the benefits of rotation, without going against the spirit of the LCG model.

^ Get this man a job.  He thinks real good. :)

Well FFG could try and simply promote more prize support for a new limited tourney format to get things rolling. So instead of announcing any kind of rotation and anger some fans, just give the people more options. Then, sooner or later we will see which format attracts more people and they can still decide to make one of the formats to the standard one if it's too difficult to support two formats.

bane2571 said:

Well, this can easily be redeemed by FFG by either reprinting those chapter packs or by publishing a deluxe kind of product featuring the most important cards.

ALL IN ALL, my point is, Eternal Formats (that's WotC official name for Vintage, Legacy and Modern) do exist in other CCGs and can be fun formats if solid banned & restricted lists are applied (actually I really don't care for Vintage, by the way). 

Part of MtG's success is that your cards never become worthless due to those formats. You don't have to say goodbye forever after two years.

The problem with AGOT is, due to the more restricted player base, FFG at this point will most likely only really support ONE format.

Now, if I would have to choose between

a) an eternal format where two dozen or so cards are on the banned / restricted list and

b) a format where I can put half my collection in the trashcan every other year,

I always would prefer the solution a) where 95 % of my cards remain playable. Really, I do not believe there are many here who have seriously played with their old CCG cards recently. You do not get much for those on ebay, either. Might aswell throw them away.

The argument which has been made that everybody can play with any cardpool he likes, holds no ground for me. It is a fact that due to the existing community, most players want to play with the same cardpool as the vast majority does. Otherwise, you are not really part of the community. You would not understand what moves the community and not really be able to compete and follow discussions about certain strategies and cards in the context of the environment, which is part of what makes this game so great.

For MTG you have different formats but AGOT already has two formats: Joust and Melee - how are you going to squezee two more tourneys into same time space ?

Deathjester26 said:

Vampire did exactly that. When building a crypt, which was your selection of personalities, the deck could only contain characters of two adjacent groups. It was a way to prevent running too many really good characters for a focused deck.

My only thought about that in a game like this is that it seems that many themes in Thrones were not fleshed out beyond their introductory CP cycle, so the card pool is very obvious when looking for which cards to run and which not, and grouping cycles would really limit these decks to being either one version or another unless it was something more scattered like you can run any cards from core, deluxe, and up to three cycles of your choice. It would bothersome to keep track of decklist legality but otherwise not bad.

L5R also does something similar. Cards are "bugged" with certain symbols seperate from the actual set they are in, and this bug denotes tournament legality. This way, a card can be printed in one block and have the bug for that set, but also the bug for the next set, allowing them to rotate the majority of the cards, but keep certain ones legal for the next round. Of course, this takes quite a bit of preplanning and would probably be a real birch to retroactively add to AGOT now. And I really wouldn't want to do something that required another reboot.

michaelius said:

This is spot on. ANd to counter the argument that "casuals" will not be affected by rotatuion, it has always been my exeperience that:even casual players get turned off when they find out that sets are no longer "legal" As Aegon puts so well:

AegonTargaryen said:

When they rotated out Westeros back in 2004, I tired to keep the set legal for NY tournaments for another year. But we lost 80% of the palygroup anyway - and they were msotly casual, non travelling players. Rotation just is not a good idea in my opinion, and especially not in this format, adn esepcially not when we have the Rsetricted List