So, i was contemplating the new greyjoy expac and thinking about the furture martell one and it led me to this thought: is there anyone else besides me who would like to see Arryn and Tyrell actually brought into the game as their actual houses in the future instead of neutrals and bara/lanni cards? i mean, i could see them easily being able to release expansions featuring the houses, but then again adding two more houses to the game would probably throw a wrench into the way the chapter packs are balanced between houses. at the very least i think Adgends could be done for them. again, something id like but probably not likely considering the number of arryn/tyrell cards these days (even though we did finally get jon arryn.)

When i brought this prospect up with my local game group another point came up. The whole point of the LCG format was the manage the size of the card pool and keep the game easily accessable to new players. well, now we're almost gonna be at the 20 chapter pack mark when this cycle is complete. thats not really that easily accessable, taking account of the cost. what are the chances we will be seeing more rotations in the future.

The idea of House Tyrell, House Arryn and House Tully (and even The Night's Watch) being redesigned into their own playable Houses comes up every so often, kind of like how a 6th color in Magic used to come up every so often. Personally, I doubt we'll see them as their own playable Houses any time soon. The Agenda idea might happen, though (kind of like the House card attachments from House of Talons).

As for rotation and the size of the card pool, I'm thinking no. Originally, when the LCG was announced, they said that CP cycles would have one printing and when they were gone, they were gone. So I'm thinking "attrition" might be the new "rotation." And anyway, it's not like the older CPs are hard to find (yet), and there is the added bonus that if you want a particular "old" card, you know exactly what to buy. You don't actually have to buy all 18 CPs to get the cards you want. The LCG model does not have the same availability problems CCGs have, and any availability problems have certainly not turned into advantages or disadvantages during play. Rotation becomes necessary in CCGs when newer players feel outclassed by older players' card collection instead of their ability. I don't see that happening in the LCG for at least another 12-18 months (if the Song of Summer and Winds of Winter packs ever become hard to get ahold of, I think that will be the first test of whether rotation is necessary).

The cynic in me also says that rotation is only necessary when you have a strong, active and well attended tournament program that extends beyond the local level. These last two years of AGoT don't particularly indicate we have that, or will have it anytime soon.

Just my two cents.

BTW Could you please explain what exactly the rotation is? Old cards are banned or something? (I played SWCCG, so I don't know about the idea)

Wulfen613 said:

YES, me, for sure!

Tyrrels are the best candidates at that, lots of interesting and developed characters in the narration...

But I think that, at the moment, the game is truly harmonized to be played with the 6 houses we already have...

Having more than 6 houses would stretch things too much to be sustainable in my opinion, but agendas that made all House Tyrell cards count as having your house card affiliation (to protect from MwnK : ) ) could work.

I'd think we need one more chapter pack cycle after the current one before the card pool gets to the typical "standard" size at which point organized play typically starts rotating stuff. Like ktom alluded to though, unless FFG changes course and stops printing season cards, Song of Summer and Winds of Winter are going to need to stay in the format so a system of rotation would be difficult.

I could be wrong, but I think one strategy FFG seems to be using to prevent the ever growing LCG card pool from producing overly powerful decks is to base the sets off of heavily insular themes. A Time of Ravens had a ton of cards that require you to build a deck somewhat dedicated to a summer or winter theme. Kings Landing Edition encourages you to play deck with lots of shadow crest cards. Of course hybrid decks are possible as well, but you can only fit so many linear themes in one deck. I guess we can only wait and see what the themes of subsequent chapter pack cycles are, but it seems like it might be possible that a deck based only on the cards from the next two chapter pack cycles plus the core set could be close to competitive with a deck that access to the full LCG card base if the sets were designed carefully (with "close" meaning good enough for casual play). Obviously, there is the entire CCG history of larger formats producing more powerful decks to prove me wrong, but I don't know that those games were designed to keep the power level in check as FFG might be intending to do with this LCG format. I'd be curious if anyone else had thoughts about this theory. It's hard to extrapolate on any trend at this point because A Clash of Arms and A Time of Ravens weren't really conceived of as LCG expansions.

Rogue30 said:

Depends on the format you play and what you mean by "rotation."

FFG officially supports two formats; LCG and Legacy.

- The "LCG" format consists of all cards that have been released as part of the LCG model; essentially anything released since about February os 2009. Specifically, it consists of the Core Set, the Kings of the Sea expansion, the 6 Clash of Arms chapter packs, the 6 Time for Ravens chapter packs, the 4 King's Landing chapter packs released so far, and anything else to be released. There has been no "rotation" announced in this format as of yet. All cards (except the 2 banned cards, Pyromancer's Cache and Jaqen H'gar) released under the LCG model are legal in this format. Another way to look at this is "all white border cards, plus the Clash of Arms CPs."

- The "Legacy" format consists of all cards that have ever been released under the name A Game of Thrones. (There is a banned list in the support section.) Only one card - by title - is allowed per deck in the Legacy format. There is no "rotation" because it consists of everything.

The only place where "rotation" - as a set schedule of cards leaving the generally accepted card pool - matters is in a format that FFG has not supported for the last year. It corresponds to the CCG "Standard" format. The rotation "rule" used to be "last three base sets and their expansions," so roughly every Gencon, a "block" would rotate out and the newly released one take its place. For the last year (8/08 to present), many people continued to play this format under this rule (so the card pool was the Iron Throne block, the Five King's base set, and all the LCG cards). Whether or not people will continue to play this unsupported format (or modify it to "5KE + LCG" based on the old schedule) remains to be seen.

Of course I'm asking about old times. So, cards not "standard" legal were banned in tournaments. What about casual play? Did you not use them also? If yes what did you do with these cards? Sold them? Nobody wanted it I suppose, because they were not legal, right? So they were useless? This is crazy. All cards should be legal to the end of the world in my opinion. And one more thing: if rotation exist then there are some reprints, then you have less new cards, right? (you buy the same cards again)

Rogue30,

I'm guessing you have not participated in much organized play of a game with a large card pool. What tends to happen is that as the format grows larger decks become more and more powerful and can be built on combinations of cards which when played together can win the game very quickly (often immediately). Also, older cards tend to go out of print and become scarce/expensive. Because of this, new players experience a steep barrier to entry because they are severely disadvantaged against the older players who have been collecting cards for several years.

What generally happens is that multiple formats develop -- one that is something like "standard" featuring only recent and readily available cards and something like "legacy" allowing all the cards ever printed. So people hang onto all their old cards so that they can play with them in the legacy format, but people also play the standard format because newer players entering the game are more interested in it. Also, once a card pool becomes very large, new releases tend to have little impact on the most powerful decks so the legacy format becomes a bit stagnant. Many players find standard more interesting because it is constantly rotating and thus what is good and what is not is constantly changing.

In my previous post, I was wondering if carefully designed insular themes might allow the card pool to grow without some of these outcomes I've described here being so pronounced.

All that said, you can do whatever you and your friends want casually.

I agree that all cards should be legal at all times - and I hate rotation. But realistically, schrecklich is correct that new players can't get into a game when they can't get hold of old, power cards - especially in Thrones with its limited runs and what not. I'm not even talking about westeros or Sea of storms which commanded extremely high prices - within a year it became almost impossible ot get hold of anyhting from House of Thorns or House of Talons.

In a CCG you have to have rotation or the game will die. I'm hoping this won't be an issue with LCG.

And as for the arryns and tyrells - I want them to be their own houses. Period. I am not even that jazzed about agendas, but I'll deal with that if I have to - the way the Arryns were handled in HoTa was pretty solid. But ideally I would want them to be separate Houses available in stand alones like dobbler was proposing - though as I said in that htread, i know the likelihood of that ever happening is small. But from the beginning I wnated each of the seven Great Houses available for play individually + Targaryen (such as it is a"House" anymore).

Stag Lord said:

That's not true. I played some CCG and never heard about rotation.

And yes, I have participated in much organized play of a game with a large card pool (5 years - no rotation - the best experience in my life). But that was SWCCG. Large card pool means a lot of combos constantly developed by players. There is no 1 powerful deck which beats all, because there are constantly new cards and new combos - game lives.

But you may be right that this is the case in AGOT, I don't know yet, it may be because of AGOT mechanic. But if this is true for AGOT, then it's hard to imagine that next year or two you could not use seasons or shadow mechanic.

schrecklich said:

Ok, but then are the reprints, right? So, older players must buy the same cards again, new players buy them anyway, and old cards still are banned - I don't get it.

Rogue30 said:

Reprints are usually isolated to particular sets or products. The old cards are not banned from tournament play if they are exact reprints. Cards with the exact same text, stats, abilities, etc. are still fine, so older players are more than welcome to play the copy they got 3 years ago instead of the reprinted one the newer player got last week. But in AGoT there are also multiple versions of a lot of cards. An old version is not legal if there has been any modification.

Rogue30 said:

There are lots of mechanics that have come and gone so I wouldn't be at all surprised if those mechanics do get rotated out. That's what makes the game more alive. I'm sure in SWCCG there were certain decks that were possible from day 1 all through year 5 eventhough it might not have been the strongest all the time but the cards were all still there. In AGOT that's never the case. The deck that one day wins Worlds will the next day be rotated and new mechanics are developed. That way all players use new decks to compete rather than it merely being new decks competing against old decks...

Actually, according to the forums, all old cards were banned from the Call of Ctulhu LCG this year, even exact reprints. So that kind of thing can happen.

Personally I'm hoping that AGoT doesn't get any rotation, at least in a while. The cardpool is just getting large enough to be truly interesting for deck building. Unavailability of the summer/winter chapter packs could become a problem at some point - I think the idea of having multiple ways of making it summer/winter would fix this nicely.

Rogue30 said:

But SW:CCG had a kind of passive rotation, it´s true that there were still a lot of the old cards played, but the newer cards saw an extreme increase in the power level and so older cards rotated. My usual example here is Han Solo, of course he´s one of the most popular charachters in the SWCCG universe, so everybody wanted to play him, almost every Han Solo version was a little better and/or had some more game text, stats etc., however today he´s used rarely in most of the SW:CCG decks, because there are just better charachters, like any non-unique Jedi with a lightsaber, there are even better pilots than Han. Another example is Boba Fett and broken Fett from Ref3 if you know what i mean, Chewie was also a charachter which hasn´t been played in a decade in a serious deck.

Another thing about SW:CCG is that the whole game system was so much more complex, so you had really different and specialized versions of charachters. Examples: Farm boy luke was a pilot, Luke with lightsaber wasa hit&run charachter, Son of Skywalker was the Jedi training Luke, Commander Luke was good in snow speeders, Jedi Luke was THE tank and the most resistent version against darkside decks that tried to cross him to the darkside. Leia was even more versatile, like there were two Prisoner Leias (Death star and Jabba´s palace), one undercover spy (Boushh), a senator version, one fighting version (Leia with blaster rifle), Daughter of skywalker (jedi traing and ewok friends version), ...

@Ingsve: I can´t remember any deck that was viable in earlier editions as well as in later editions in that game. However there were some strategies, but they were pretty much solved when Decipher introduced defensive shields, defensive shields were 10 additional cards for your deck (of which you were allowed to play 3 a game) which mainly included silver bullets against "popular" strategies. "Popular" because most of the strategies where considered to be NPE.

Back to the topic of AGOT houses. I would like to see more house Arryn, Tyrell cards in the chapter packs, but i wouldn´t like to see additional great houses, that´s because i also fear that the cp won´t deliver enough cards to have 8 houses at a comparable power level. I would prefer house specific agendas for these houses e.g. a house Arryn agenda card could be limited to "house stark and house baratheon only".

sorry, double post.

Old Ben said:

Yes, but you decide which cards to use (no banned cards). If you wanted to use old Han becuse of your strategy, you could. If old cards are not powerful then why to ban them? That's not logical.

Old Ben said:

Ok, but that's absolutly normal situation. We have a lot of Arya, Catelyn, Ned etc.

Now if you say that Han is not used because he's weak, then aren't you contradict yourself a little? Aside from designers ideas/errors, you can use any version of Han if you like.

Old Ben said:

Bobby is standing machine, Ned is a drawer, Catelyn Winter defender etc.

Old Ben said:

Of course, bacuse game lives (without rotation), moreover it changes more, because card pool is so huge - more options, more ideas.

Let me ask two test questions:

1. You are a new player. You don't want to play in tournaments. Are you worried by a huge cardpool? Remember that you can take only ~60 cards in your deck.

2. You are a new player. You want to play in tournaments. Are you worried by a huge cardpool? Remember that you can take only ~60 cards in your deck.

Second question may be a little harder, so I'll tell you what I do: I go where old players play. I play with them. They use all old cards (x3). Effect? I learn very quickly what "Paper shield" is for example. All in all they can take only ~60 cards into deck...

There are always good cards and weak cards (in opinion of players) - rotation or not, it doesn't matter.

Also remember about a very common misunderstanding: "players = collectors". That's not true. You don't need every ever printed card x3. So, huge card pool don't hurt players. (I don't care about collectors if they want to collect, then it's theirs problem)

Why do you want to limit card pool?! It limits also your creativity. Are these "big card pool problems" even confirmed? Or maybe it is just business decision? (I'm aware that testing new cards is much harder)

And one more thing: I know that you don't want "rotation" now, but when? Mostly I read here that the card pool is too small, that LCG lacks some tactics, there is no attachment control, too little location control, that expansion coming too slow (!), that we don't have House Arryn, House Tyrell, Night's watch etc.

[Rogue30 said:

You are right. That´s not logical. However that was the special case of SW:CCG, i think it´s different in AGOT. Compare old and new charachters in AGOT and you´lll usually find out that there isn´t an incresing or decreasing power level. Almost every main charachter had a very strong charachter over the course of the game, but also a lot of waker versions which only saw play because tehre wasn´t another charachter version available at that time. And i don´t think that AGOT carries such big themes as SW:CCG once had, just remember all the deploy and play restrictions from that game e.g. Ewoks could only deploy to Endor, Ben Kenobi could only deploy to Tatooine etc. And i was referring to one charachter and it´s different versions, of course every AGOT charahcter does different things, but there are only few unique charachters which do totally different things.

Example: Every Eddard had renown, strength 3 or 4, a military power icon, gold cost 4 and usually some game text that give shim some advantage in a military challenge. Luke had a deploy value from 3-8, had a power range from 3-8, different forfeit value, some version scould only deploy to special places, all the game texts very usually very different from each other, some Luke´s were good pilots others not, and the ability value was also sometimes 4-6. Which also had a lot of consequnces for otehr cards which were looking for these stats. I don´t think that there is a single unique charachter in AGOT history which has so many total different versions.

Rogue30 said:

I started playing in Valyria time, just when I&F was still legal, i desperately missed some of the very good and rare cards from the I&F block, such as King´s hall, seal of the lion ... these cards were very hard to obtain and dominated the tournament scene. So of course i didn´t worry about my own 60 cards, but about the others players sixty cards.You could also say you are going to a car racing competition with your twenty year old street car and face some other drivers which use the latest Ferrari and Porsche cars. Of course these cars only have 4 wheels, one motor ... so why worry about their equipment they could also only use the equipment you have.

So in an average CCG it´s not only about wheter old or new cards are better, but also about the possibility to gather the best 60 cards of all collections together for your deck. Shame on me, i didn´t mention that at first hand, but i thought it´s a basic assumption. Maybe i was wrong. ;-)

Rogue30 said:

I´m not a fan of rotation either and i don´t want limited card pools, but i can see two reasons to do it. No1. rotation is a good access point for new players, that´s undeniable in my opinion and a good thing. No2. Design failures can be corrected, which is not a good thing in general, but often necessary.

Old Ben said it excellently and there is little I cna add. i am not a fan of rotation, i fought hard against the way FFG implemented it. Later, I argued passionately that ti dind't need to be expanded when the competitive players were arguing for 2 year roatation policies (down from three) - but I have to concede that you need to do ti at some point if new players are going to have a chance competitively.

Streets, Seal, king's Hall, Pyromancers (!!) - even freaking Golden Tooth Mines all became very hard to find and very expensive to obtain. It defintiely kept players from showing up at tournaments.

Now - we have a different paradigm and I don't know if rotation will be necessary for a couple of reasons. I hope we don't have to deal with it. But i am 100% positive that we never even would have gotten to the LCG format if we didn't have rotation - the game would ahve been cancelled sometime in the middle of winter Block in all likelihood.

A few things are being mixed together in this discussion -- mostly the arguments for why a CCG should have rotation and the question of whether the AGoT LCG should have a rotation.

I don't think anyone is calling for rotation right now. To match the card pool size of three year's of CCG releases, I think there still need to be as many six more chapter pack cycles after Kings Landing Edition (if a year of cCG releases is defined as a 240 card big set and two 120 card small sets). That's to match the card pool size just in straight numbers. The number of releases needed to match the effective card pool size might be smaller since with the LCG format certain cards do not needed to be printed (ie there is no needed to make cards geared for limited, or to make new variations on the fiefdoms each year, etc.). In any case, I think most people feel the LCG card pool is closer to the "too small" side than the "too big" side.

Another part of the justification for CCG rotation is card availability. Right now there are no availability issues with the LCG since there are no rarities and all the chapter packs are readily available. If for example Song of Summer goes out of print and becomes hard to find online a few years from now, then card availability might become an issue if the White Raven or other means of making it summer aren't printed in subsequent chapter packs. Also, if it ever became the case that all the most powerful decks used cards that were each 1x in different chapter packs (so you needed to buy 60 chapter packs to be competitive) that could be a justification for rotation but that seems a bit far fetched.

Related to the availability issue is the concern that new players will be discouraged from joining the game if they can't be competitive with older players. This concern assumes that new players want to be competitive. Given the low attendance at the GenCon tournaments and the lack of much organized play structure right now, the game is pretty much casual focused. The concept of rotation only really applies within an officially sanctioned tournament structure. You can always do whatever you want with your friends. I'd think most casual players would want new friends to play with them so if card availability ever became an issue they would give cards to new players or impose their own "rotation" on themselves so that their games would be fun and interesting.

Lastly, I just want to reemphasize that rotation only applies to one specific way of playing the game. Most games can sustain interest in several different formats simultaneously. For example, this year at GenCon there were joust tournaments for both LCG only and legacy (all cards legal). On these boards, people post deck lists for legacy, standard, and LCG. The main question is what format the people who want to play together find mutually preferable.

Personally, I'd much rather impose a rotation policy myself than have it effectively forced on me by power creep like Old Ben described. I think most of this discussion will not be relevant to the AGoT LCG for the immediate future. So far we haven't seen any indication that any kind of rotation will be imposed (cards that require the seasons mechanic printed outside of the A Time of Ravens cycle, cards with shadow crests in the Greyjoy expansion, an epic battle card in Refugees of War, traited plot cards in the Greyjoy expansion when most cards that care about traited plots are in A Clash of Arms -- if anything, it seems like so far FFG has been trying hard to make the sets interdependent, whereas a rotation system needs independent sets. Otherwise the rotation is pretty clunky), and we also haven't seen any kind of organized play structure that would impose such a rotation. All that said, rotation does work well in some cases (take a look at Magic for example where the standard format is infinitely more popular than the more open formats).

Rogue30 said:

But one problem is that some old AGOT cards are very powerful and anyone that has those cards would have a distinct advantage over someone that only has newer cards. So the issue isn't the size of the card pool per se but the amount of ultra powerful cards that one player has access to that other don't have access to.

The fact that there are alot of very powerful old cards is the reason why the supported tournament structure for Legacy is only Highlander deckbuilding where you can only have 1 of each card in your deck instead of 3. That lessens the possibility of very NPE heavy decks in legacy.

The only way to make a CCG work without rotation is to make cards more and more powerful in future sets. That also has a drawback in that it creates moer and more NPEs which is also someone that we want to avoid and that can be done by rotating cards.

Power creep is terrible, and forces its own rotation. Sure it is a velvet glove over a steel fist, but a steel fist none the less. Unless a new card comes out which creates a combo with an older and more often weaker version of a character no one really uses that card. There are simply better cards to use and that means you have dozens (if not hundreds) of cards that will never see play now.

most companies recognize that the only way to keep new players in a game viable in OP is to choose between power creep and rotation. SWCCG chose power creep... end result was changing the rules to prevent said power creep from ruining the game. Pretty much every other CCG chose rotation and has not had to change their rules.

Trust me, if we were playing in a Classic environment with no restriction on card access and enforced x1, I'd put your best deck up against a Lannister Story Event deck in a heartbeat... I won't even mention the gruesome Melnick style Lanni-Targ decks drawing to the cap every turn, kneeling or burning every character and discarding all your locations in Marshalling phase.

BTW papershield is hard to come by for any player who just started in the last 6 months to a year.

As to LCG rotation, printing new Summer Winter cards and answers would prevent the mechanic and Chapter packs from needing to be rotated. A variant on the Carrion Bird could keep seasons in check and some variant on the White and Black Raven's could be made, possibly with an alternate effect rather than the +/- gold for the Season. These could still be balanced with the previous versions, but offering a different path for deck building.

Old Ben said:

So, maybe this was business error (not gameplay)? SWCCG was in shops all the time. (Don't forget that even old players didn't have key cards, because of booster model, ultra rares etc., so this can't be reason for rotation I think).

Funny story: I asked some people about some fiefdoms few days ago. Imagine my surprise, when they told me that they don't have it, because if you bought a box, then you had only 3 copies of given common.

Old Ben said:

Core Set are excellent access point now, so I think this is no longer true.

Old Ben said:

Errata or counter cards can correct this.

ingsve said:

Hopefully this will not be a problem in LCG. Also, this might be a design/testing problem. Rotation seems to me like poor excuse for poor tested game.

ingsve said:

I don't agree. There is a saying: "There is never much time to make something properly. There is always much time to make something from the start."

BTW Anyone wondered how many people abandoned the game because of rotation?

dormouse said:

Yeah, with rotation you don't have hundreds of cards that are not banned...

dormouse said:

? What are you talking about? Rules were expanded, just like shadows and seasons. Rules were clarified just like moribund concept, phase charts and actions/framework windows. Wait a minute, so you are saying that AGOT also changed the rules because of power creep. That's ridiculous.

dormouse said:

You know, it seems to me that you are just used to rotation, that you treat it like something normal. Just like those guys who defend boosters concept. You are willing to buy again the same cards just like those guys are willing to buy boosters.

Here's the thing: rotation is necessary to keep the card pool in the competitive environment from growing both unwieldy and stagnant. Every block has had power cards from Westeros to the LCG; if ALL of these cards were legal the game would be entirely too difficult to keep any semblance of balance, not to mention incredibly difficult and unjustifiably and prohibitively expensive to get into. In the casual gameplay environment this is all well and good; nobody cares if a specific meta wants to play classic, in fact, more power to them and I'm impressed that they can do so.

Without rotation, decks tend not to evolve very much or change very often and the competitive environment would look eerily similar from one Gencon to the next. Also, there's some downright abusive cards in the older sets if you couple them with newer cards. Now maybe you're thinking "well, the game developers and testers should take that into account when they design the new cards," and that may be so, but with rotation it allows for the game developers to take cards in entirely new directions without having to worry about some dork like me looking to exploit a broken combo with a new card and an older card. Rotation isn't a bad excuse for a poorly tested game, it is a good way to let a game evolve and change over time rather than letting it sit on its laurels and have year after year of Lanni-Targ and OOH-Stormraiders running the show.

Seems like a moot point anyhow, since there hasn't been any indication that rotation will occur in the LCG anyhow. There's nothing around that would seem to warrant it other than maybe an overly large cardpool a couple of years down the road. Even if it does occur, it won't be the end of the world. It will change some decks, but rotation hasn't ever really destroyed the metagame (aside from screwing over my Targaryens =P).

Also, in my experience, rarely would I get a booster display and only end up with three of ANY common. Generally it was 5-6 in a base set, more in an expansion and if anybody ever asked me for fiefdoms I'm more than happy to oblige them...(or 1 of my seemingly hundred's of Crossroads and Fallow Fields).

So far rotation doesn't seem to be needed:

How many cards out there not in a core set are good by themselves? I've noticed Ravens had mostly summer or winter related cards that without the seasonal alignment would not be as good. KLE focuses on the shadow mechanic. ACoA had epic battles, bannermen...

I also think more than likely cards that become too powerful in the LCG environment will become banned in LCG rather than rotating everything. At least until the older chapter packs become hard to find and necessary to play. (Even then reprinting the Fury Herald and To Be A cycle would fix the issue).