It is the reason why those rules were "expanded" that matters. They changed the game, not because it was an unexplored territory, but because of the NPE combos that come with power creep. Don't get me wrong, it was an excellent solution... but one they would not have needed with rotation, nor with better game design, or more robust playtesting... if you want to go that route.

I couldn't care less about rotation from a personal place. I've been playing since I&F and have more cards than I know what to do with. As a matter of fact I just gave away about a thousand cards to two friends who wanted to learn how to play. They are now the happy owners of my Draft Cube. I still have enough cards to create two more without ever breaking into the new art design.

Obviously I'm not defending rotation because of a lack of cards, nor am I defending it because I prefer a limited environment. I'm simply pointing out that pretty much every game in production uses it for reasons which you don't want to acknowledge. Your come back was a game not actively in print with no company support worth mentioning... so I'll see your question about "how many players quit because of rotation" with probably far fewer than have missed out on SWCCG/TCG entirely because it isn't being produced. Is that because the game became too unweildly to develop for or because it as not attracting enough new players to be profitable?

Anyway, back on topic, as long as the Core Set is being produced and they are willing to update it, the should be no need for rotation. It is a simple and elegant way for new players to gain access to all cards deemed as staples for the game and its various mechanics, and older players will not be forced to buy their 20th copy of a Stormland Fiefdom.

dormouse said:

You have no idea what are you talking.

dormouse said:

You have no idea what are you talking. Unless you are talking about SWTCG

Decipher lost the license, they aren't producing anymore cards. WoC got the license and also aren't producing anymore cards. All cards are now "virtual sets" created by a players council. Are we talking about the same game?

I'm talking about Decipher SWCCG. And they lost license, but it had nothing to do with success of the game.

Are you sure? Was it business practices then? It is very rare for the own of an IP to refuse to renewe the license of a successful franchise operator to turn right around and then turn right around and grant a license to the same IP to a different company producing the same type of product..

yeah dormouse. You have no idea what you are talking.

dormouse said:

Yes.

Meaning you work for Lucas or Decipher? What is your business title?

And you? Working for Hasbro or Decipher?

Rogue30 said:

Of course overall it was a buisness error on the one hand , but about every CCG i know has these kind of buisness errors so on the other hand it doesn´t seem to be a buisness error at all. So i´m indifferent about the choices gaming companies makes to solve the matter. Collectible card games always have the problem that new cards need to attract players and the three basic solutions are a) power creep or b) some kind of rotation c) a combination of both. On a side note, Decipher also tried to establish rotation in SW:CCG, they seperated Episode 1 cards from the classic movie cards, but the format was vey unpopular.

About the not so funny story, i assume that the fiefdom was the Greyjoy one? FFG already changed their print policy for the upcoming set "Princes of the sun" .

Rogue30 said:

Of course you are right, the Core set is the optimal choice to start with the game. But your questions/comments seemed to be about a at least semi- professional game play level. But the chances are about 3720:1 that you could win a game with a deck build from 3 Core Sets against a classic highlander deck, if you know what i mean. ;-)

So, the Core set helps to pick up the game, but it would be still unattractive for a new player to join an established play community which have at least a decent amount of cards from the former sets.

Rogue30 said:

That´s just the second evil of a card game if you ask me. Errata is probably the worst way to deal with design failures in my opinion.And silver bullets are close to it.I´m not aware if you remeber the early SW:CCG decks, every deck usually had 10 Sense and 10 Alter cards, because the cards could literally cancel everything. Than there were some clever game designers which invented cards which are immune to alter and immune to sense and of course Control as the silver bullet counter against Alter/Sense. After a period of galactic peace it showed that there were too many and too strong immune to alter/sense effects and there needed to be special silver bullets for some cards, these cards only functionality was to cancel 3-4 popular cards. After that there were defensive shields as the ultimate all time available cancels. See that´s why i don´t like silver bullets, i should say SW:CCG really affected my point of view about that!

Rogue30 said:

~Well, that´s about the time to end discussing and starting your very own CCG/LCG/TCG whatever. ;-) Seriously, i hae never heard of a collectible card game that´s stil around or has some vital market position without following some active or passive rotation concept. Even the market leader MTG always had this concept.

I also don´t think that it´s fair to just ask how many people left the game because of roation, without asking how many people joined the game because of rotation. Well of course not exactly because of rotation, but more because of the cance to get your own decks to a competive level without investing too many $$$.

One more word about the state of the SWCCG game back in the last Decipher days. I think the game would have come to an end after a few more releases, the aggresive release policy Decipher followed and the power creep level they chose would have almost for certain annoyed a lot of players. I´m pretty sure that my analysis is accurate because the meta i played in was the biggest in Europe with a monthly tournament which had 40-60 players. And a lot of players quit the game with the Episode 1 and Reflection 2&3 releases at that time.

I'm not laying claim to insider knowledge regarding this specific deal, so who I work for is rather immaterial, but I did work in the legal field (paralegal and legal assistant type stuff) and for Intel in their IP department. I've also sat in on a conference call concerning IP negotiations with a friend of mine who is an author (And it also happens to be his birthday today so thanks for the reminder), so I do have some knowledge of the innner workings of these sorts of things.

Since you apparently were privy to information about why Decipher lost the IP to Star Wars and why it was granted to WoC, and it was apparently not financial (according to you) I was hoping you would enlighten us... because otherwise it sounds like wild speculation stated as fact. Mine is an educated guess, since the two main reasons IP licenses are not renewed has to do with poor business practices or monetary

Old Ben said:

~Well, that´s about the time to end discussing and starting your very own CCG/LCG/TCG whatever. ;-) Seriously, i hae never heard of a collectible card game that´s stil around or has some vital market position without following some active or passive rotation concept. Even the market leader MTG always had this concept.

What a frustratingly goofy quote system! Well, anyway:

Yu-Gi-Oh has no rotation, just a fairly sizable restricted / banned list (although a lot of cards on it are what you would consider the equivalent of early Magic's "Power 9" -- cards just TOO good, that had to be banned or competitive play and deckbuilding would suffer).

The WoW TCG also has no rotation, and no restricted / banned list either, as far as I know.

Other examples exist, but those are the two most successful examples that immediately come to mind.

Yu-Gi-Oh's combined list is the same size as some card games expansions. That IS a form of rotation.

WOW is not really the same kind of game as those we are discussing, the Raid Deck and cummulative damage make it an entirely different kind of environment and is just hitting it's third year. A bit early to say it will not have a rotation policy (though given the nature of the game I think they could prbably do without it).

Just in case anyone was still wondering about why Decipher lost the rights to SW and LotR:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-h-PAPqFwk

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/07/game-company-embezzler-gets-6-years-must-repay-910000

This came out fairly recently, and if there may be other reasons, those other reasons probably pale in comparison to this one.

I was a competitive SWCCG player from Dagobah until years after Decipher lost the license, and I had at any given point a goodly amount of trustworthy secondhand info on what was going on in this particular matter. Neither embezzling nor employee incompetence were the reason Decipher lost the license. When the license for a Star Wars collectible/trading card game expired, WotC outbid Decipher by many millions of dollars (hinted at in Warren Holland's testimony concerning the embezzling, and estimated in the tens of millions -- cash Decipher never, ever had), and was favored by Lucasfilm aside because WotC was at that point a subsidiary of Hasbro (which holds a majority of license agreements for the various big name Lucasfilm productions).

Yu-Gi-Oh's forbidden list isn't as much a form of rotation as much as the designers haven't always thought the deepest about how a given card might impact the game - and rather than errata cards (like many games do), they just tend to ban or restrict them instead.

Any game will eventually have problems with card pool and power creep, though, and rotation is one possible way to deal with it. There's no guaranteed method to avoid problems.

My point about the restricted/banned list is that if instead of using rotation a company had chosen to simply remove or restrict the power cards from each set, the ones which simultaneously cause the most problems and empower the top decks, it is a form of rotation. Players are forced to create new decks, discover new strategies, use new cards. A rotation by any other name is still a rotation, just individual cards rather than sets.

One could argue this is a better way, this would allow for resource cards like the fiefdoms, crossroads, etc. and other staples to always be legal... then again one could argue that what you end up with is a rather flavorless unchanging underpinnings, with no ebb and flow among those staples. I'm of two minds about this.

VTES does not have rotation... and it's been around for a rather long time.

What they do is reprint cards in the base sets, and they restrict what vampires you can have in your crypt. (It seems that you can't mix and match older vampires with newer vampires).

The vampires determine what types of cards you can have in your deck.

Not only that... but they also will go for a couple of sets printing minor faction support cards, etc. This means it could be 2 - 3 years sometimes before new cards are made for your faction (directly).

Granted I haven't played too much competitivly. But I brought in a recent deck built from starters and my co-worker brought in his cards when it was called Jyhad. There was not too much power level difference. In fact the broken card he used to beat me early once is also in my deck and in the recent starter.

I used to play the game very competively for a while. The method of restricting cards to your deck based on printings was a very clever way of dealing with rotation, essentially locking you into a cycle. It would be functionally similar to my playing a Westeros deck against a Winter Deck. Each set has its power cards and combos, but by limiting the interaction of cards between sets it greatly limits the abusive potential of thousands of cards that could be put in combination to create an NPE.

I tink that a lot of what works for V:TES could work for Thrones if the players had let FFG move to a melee focused format. Jihad was conceived of as a multi-player game, and while 1v1 is possible, and even fun, it is an entirely different experience in MP. The idea of a House not getting any new cards for a year let alone 2-3 won't fly in a joust oriented game IMO, at least not without some crazy management of expectations and very expansive development and testing cycles.

I could see expansions for House Arryn being offered with the understanding that it was a "one-shot" style offering, that CP would remain how they are now. Putting the 7th Great House in the game would be very cool. I could see an argument made for the banner houses that changed sides, Tyrell, Bolton, Frey. I'd rather not see one for the fraternal organizations and smaller factions, Brotherhood, Night Watch, Clansmen, Wildling, Maester... I'd prefer these be handled in a CP cycle that focuses on some time period or event in the books that would allow for continued development of the regular Houses along side them.

Would people be willing to buy an Arryn expansion in ther vein of PotS if they knew the House itself wouldn't see any House specific cards again until the reprinting or nex expansion 2 or even 3 years down the line?

dormouse said:

ask the question about lanni. If you took what they have now and said you get no more lanni cards for 3 years i bet people would still play it. You have all the basic resources you would need. You have at least one okay to good to great versison of each main character and you would still have access to all the non house x events, neutral attachments, and characters. Even OOH if you are so daring

As long as the base package is solid enough i don't see why people wouldn't want to play house arryn in the model you propose. Now to me that means the base package cannot contain any neutrals or non- house Arryan only events.

Which makes the package unattractive to anyone not playing Arryn... which is seriously limiting your prospective buyers. Maybe include a number of dual house characters (say 6-8) and then a handful of neutral locations and/or events which while useable by anyone fit the Arryn theme or power up the included Arryn cards (e.g. trait stuff).

dormouse said:

In a heartbeat

Stag Lord said:

Seconded. wow i didnt expect this thread to go this long lol. id do it, ive always liked house arryn. and to be honest who says it would have to be that long. these expansions seem to be coming out in a relatively quick time. it will only be like what a 6 month difference between the Kings of the Sea and Princes of the Sun? i could easily see them throwing out another expansion every six months, probably a bit more, if there was an interest in it, i've always like Arryn alot and im sure other Arryn/Tyrell fans wouldnt complain to that. hell, id be happy with just a Core Set level deck to be honest, my group still plays alot of games with just the core set. i couldnt see it that hard for them to make a two house expansion meant to play with the core set decks featuring Arryn and Tyrell. Highly unlikely yes, but far from impossible.

I would be fine with that.

Though there are enough possibilities of dual house Arryn + another house to sprinkle here and there.

I would be fine with it also... This was really to judge how likely the community would embrace the idea. If Princes of the Sun does very well and Greyjoy continues to do well, it is entirely possible with some letter/email writing Nate, Christian, et al, may be convinced that the target audience is willing to both support these kinds of thematic expansions and continue to buy chapter packs. Let's see how PotS does on their end and "ours" and maybe we can start some sort of ball rolling.