There are a lot of people saying it is hard for new players to get into the game because the last few sets are critical to own yet impossible to find. This has prompted a lot of ban talk. I would like to propose that a better solution to this problem would be to construct a new tournament format specifically for people who are just entering the game, a block format much like other CCGs adhere too. It would be comprsed of only the latest block of cards (in this card 5 point shurken).

The format would exist for a year untill the next watermark was introduced and then the cards would fall off into standard rotation for another year (where they were legal at the same time as the block rotation). This gives entry level players a great oppurtunity to get involved in the game and mantain competitiveness with a limited card pool. After a year any player would then be ready to go into the standard format without any expendature to catch up needed.

I for one know back when I played Magic I had like 4 decks with me at all time, one for each popular offered format. I know for certain if we had an official and supported (IE Block tournamnets at major cons, prize support, and at least one coolest prize in gaming awarded) "Block" format I would totally have a deck for it at all time with me, as anyone who's played set 12 only games can attest that it is balanced and fun as hell. This would also help squelch any talk about banning a card due to availabliity, because all the cards would be readily available for the format. You could leave the big budget bank account games to standard format and legacy. Hell if a new player has no desire to play in standard and only wants to play in block, they could easily sell all of thier cards from the current block every year once rotation hit to finance thier block decks. The cards that they have would be of great value to a standard (still legal for a year) or legacy deck.

One problem - it still doesn't fix the main problem with the current rotation system - Some cards only see one tournament season. An attempt to fix the problem was made with regionals, but honestly not a lot of people come out to those events unless they are few and far between (which they aren't).

Wait, disregard that, it does. 1 year is good. It's really the later sets that are screwed though.

BTW: One of our players has already switched to block 4. No, I am not kidding.

Homme Chapeau said:

Block 4 would be the proposed solution though, at least in this case.

Protoaddict said:

I know. However, the company already struggles to maintain 2 formats (to be fair, it's not like Legacy is really supported) and an argument could be made that in certain markets Standard format support is pretty much a joke.

I personally like the idea and am slowly amassing B4 cards but I can't help but feel that there's something missing.

Our shop when i first started had lots of "common ground" tournies and other "limited" formats.

Common ground (all commons) is good because it not only gives newplayers the same cardpool to work from (and they can easily trade vet players for older commons from still legal sets) but it also shows them some card interaction and synergy.

I can attest that when I started July last year I was pretty much playing decks that were only block 3. I had intended to only buy block 3, but after deciding to do worlds in August I went and got enough block 2 to round out my collection.

As much as legacy is cool and all, it is always the most recent (and accessible) stuff that new players are going to have. It can be frustrating losing repeatedly to older stuff (even in the standard format, see Realm of Midnight Stuff atm) that isn't that easy to get your hands on as a new player.

I would suggest however, that new players be leant cards or given the ability to proxy to whatever extent at store tournies, at least if I was Scout I wouldn't have a huge problem with this. I know that our meta is fine with lending whatever is needed for new players decks as long as we aren't currently needing said card for whatever deck we are running (we being the older players, although after only playing for almost a year I feel like the newbie still whenever any references block 1).

- dut

This sounds like a cool idea, but I do not mind taking my licks as a newbie.