What feels odd is that they couched it in the phrasing of 'better metagame' by allowing the choice, when they've outright stated the old one had some weird interactions they wanted to outright fix; the Blinded Pilot critical being key among them.

It also means that the reprints of the old box set won't be getting the new decks in them, because this phrasing means that it's a choice rather than simple obsolescence.

Had they phrased it as "We get it, not everyone has it, so we're allowing the choice for the meantime", it would have felt more honest while still moving forward. The claims of good-for-the-metagame they've made? I'm not so comfortable with it.

It also means that the reprints of the old box set won't be getting the new decks in them,

No, it doesn't. It might turn out that way, but that's not something you can conclude from the current change.

As the article says "for the foreseeable future". That might also mean "until all old decks are phased out from stores".

I apologize if this has been covered in this thread already but there is no way I'm reading through 8 pages of dumb arguments, insults and people getting butt-hurt over silly jokes and sarcasm. There's probably some good posts too but I don't want to look for them.

That being said my hunch on why this change took place is that either A) somebody screwed up and the damage decks that FFG previously said would be distributed to all Worlds participants weren't going to be ready or B) somebody at FFG told the Organized Play folks that they were out of their minds for offering all of those decks for free and that they needed to figure out another way around this little kerfuffle.

Obviously they were trying to do the right thing when everyone started crying about the new deck rules (including the people who don't play competitively but wanted to cry and bang their drums about something anyway). I think it's kind of funny that the backlash from the newest ruling is probably bigger than the original uproar.

Hopefully sanity will prevail and we can move onto the new deck exclusively in the near future.

Umm, why would those have anything to do with the ruling. Considering they are still giving out decks and requiring its use for Worlds.

I apologize if this has been covered in this thread already but there is no way I'm reading through 8 pages of dumb arguments, insults and people getting butt-hurt over silly jokes and sarcasm. There's probably some good posts too but I don't want to look for them.

That being said my hunch on why this change took place is that either A) somebody screwed up and the damage decks that FFG previously said would be distributed to all Worlds participants weren't going to be ready or B) somebody at FFG told the Organized Play folks that they were out of their minds for offering all of those decks for free and that they needed to figure out another way around this little kerfuffle.

Obviously they were trying to do the right thing when everyone started crying about the new deck rules (including the people who don't play competitively but wanted to cry and bang their drums about something anyway). I think it's kind of funny that the backlash from the newest ruling is probably bigger than the original uproar.

Hopefully sanity will prevail and we can move onto the new deck exclusively in the near future.

I think the point you're looking for is over in the next city, you've just missed it.

Your point A is so far wrong it's almost funny how you've missed it in the article. Let me quote it for you.

Please note that in order to showcase the new damage deck and provide spectators with a consistent experience, all competitors will use The Force Awakens damage deck at the 2015 X-Wing World Championship. One The Force Awakens damage deck will be provided for each competitor.

Point B, do you really think that a company willing to ship a single die across the world at no charge would care about 250 extra decks of cardboard?

I can imagine you don't want to look for the good posts in this topic, you weren't willing to read the full announcement article. But your sarcastic, bordering-on-the-insulting, wrong hunch is a valued addition after two days, for that I thank you.

Do I think the new damage deck is better and should be required? - yes

Do I think people should be forced to buy the new core set to get it if it is required? - no

Will I be getting the new core set anyway? - yes

Ffg's big mistake was not selling a rewired damage deck separately. That is what everyone on both sides of this argument should be upset about. FFG screwed this up not the other players.

If selling the deck separately was viable, thats what they would do.

It's the same argument for selling upgrade cards. It's not just whether they can make a profit on the cards themselves, its whether they can also make up the lost profit from the lost sales of the packs they are already available in.

This decision is likely due to either old core sales dropping, or being forcast to drop.

FFG is a business first and foremost. They have to balance gamer happiness against profits.

You all act like flip flopping is new, have you all forgotten faction dials and playmats?

Cause i don't remember people insulting ffg when they flipped on those issues.

When they changed their minds in ways that made the game healthier I didn't complain, but now that they reversed a decision in a way that hurts the game, I have something to say about it. How strange!

For people whining that others don't want to spend £30 on a new damage deck, how would you feel if the only way of getting hold of the new damage deck was to buy a large ship from a faction you had no interest in playing? And then to be told that you would be banned from tournaments until you bought that ship? That is the problem people have been having, not in the being required to buy the new damage deck itself.

This was argued to death when the new core was released, but... (shrug).

The only people with a serious grievance about the way the damage deck was distributed are Scum-only players who are interested in tournament play but not willing to enter the secondary/gray market to pick up a damage deck on its own. That's not a lot of people, and FFG could easily have helped them by including a few new damage decks with each of the winter and spring tourney kits.

Oh, well if it's okay to just leave the game broken if it might cost a little extra to fix it, then by all means!

Of course it's not profitable! You're fixing the design flaws you made when you first created the game. You aren't SUPPOSED to MAKE MONEY for fixing your own mistake!

lol broken? hardly.

they were more likely to lose semi-casuals, who are less invested in the game, over forcing them them to buy the new one, than they are hardcore tourney players by doing the opposite

Business 101: don't lose money.

Maybe my perception has been skewed by playing a game that's actually broken, made by a company that actually doesn't care about their customer base.

If selling the deck separately was viable, thats what they would do.

It's the same argument for selling upgrade cards. It's not just whether they can make a profit on the cards themselves, its whether they can also make up the lost profit from the lost sales of the packs they are already available in.

This decision is likely due to either old core sales dropping, or being forcast to drop.

FFG is a business first and foremost. They have to balance gamer happiness against profits.

They sell dice separately, people make money selling third party tokens and templates I don't buy the argument they'd lose money by selling the deck separately.

They could of released an app or added it to the dice app.

Obviously the tfa core hasn't made the impact they expected and quite probably they've had complaints about making the old core obsolete.

Fans of tfa simply don't exist yet and unlike toys the game won't shift in big numbers until they do, but the OT will always be the bread and butter of this game.

next people will want to make their own damage decks ... mixing and matching the cards they want from both decks.

IMHO The new deck brings balance back to the force

next people will want to make their own damage decks ... mixing and matching the cards they want from both decks.

IMHO The new deck brings balance back to the force

Only Sith deal in absolutes!

Only Sith deal in absolutes!

Yes, only and exclusively Sith, absolutely! Oh wait...

I don't see why so many of you lot seem to be against this.

It's great FFG is giving us customers the choice.

If the new deck is such a good fix over the old then it should be released in a blister perhaps with some missions and tokens so it could be sold along side the small ships

The "choice" argument is lazy at best. In that case, why not just give us the choice whether or not we even want to take crits? Hell, why not give us the choice for how many points we want to bring to the table like in the new WH? Choice!

It is a matter of design. Crits are meant to be harmful and worrisome and avoided. The old deck allows some lists to ignore a full 7th of the crits in the deck. That has the capacity to significantly mitigate lists designed to deal crits while also making the decision to avoid them less of an issue. That is a problem. Full stop.

FFG recognized this with their explanation for the new deck. It made crits once again critical across the board for everyone. Crits are crits again. They are harmful, worrisome, and to be avoided. Except now we have some bizarre "metagame" explanation for allowing players to choose which deck they want...except for Worlds, naturally.

If you want to make some cost argument for having to buy the new core set, I won't stop you (although I find it to be silly) If you're going to make an argument about how a choice of decks makes the game better, then you're going to have to do better than shouting "choice!" from the rooftops like some sort of maniacal free market idealogue.

It is a matter of design. Crits are meant to be harmful and worrisome and avoided. The old deck allows some lists to ignore a full 7th of the crits in the deck. That has the capacity to significantly mitigate lists designed to deal crits while also making the decision to avoid them less of an issue. That is a problem. Full stop.

How exactly? How many lists designed to ignore crits have dominated the tournaments?

If I get hit, if I'm out of shields, if it is a crit, and if it turns out to be one of the few cards that that ship can ignore, then WHOOOOHOOOOO!! Score! I Win!

It's still a damage though, so there's that.

It is a matter of design. Crits are meant to be harmful and worrisome and avoided. The old deck allows some lists to ignore a full 7th of the crits in the deck. That has the capacity to significantly mitigate lists designed to deal crits while also making the decision to avoid them less of an issue. That is a problem. Full stop.

So are obstacles, aren't they? Should we then I disallow Dash players from brining Debris?

Come to think about it Stress is also meant to be harmful and worrisome. Should we then ban Tycho, or at least prohibit him from using Wired?

It is a matter of design. Crits are meant to be harmful and worrisome and avoided. The old deck allows some lists to ignore a full 7th of the crits in the deck. That has the capacity to significantly mitigate lists designed to deal crits while also making the decision to avoid them less of an issue. That is a problem. Full stop.

So are obstacles, aren't they? Should we then I disallow Dash players from brining Debris?

Come to think about it Stress is also meant to be harmful and worrisome. Should we then ban Tycho, or at least prohibit him from using Wired?

Those are obviously very different examples where those items were designed in conjunction (Dash alongside debris fields and Tycho's ability with stress in mind). The crit deck is a bit different, and as someone I know said with regard to this, it's not very thematic in the sense that "Players shouldn't be able to decide how their own ships fall apart." That's setting aside the actual game design involved in the new deck is superior, that is if you still believe recent interviews from the lead designer before this rule was changed. Paired against those comments, the article explaining the rule change sounds down right silly.

I find it ironic the cycle of complaining. Atleast with both decks being included both sides win in one way or another. Congrats FFG for finding common ground in a difficult decision.

It is a matter of design. Crits are meant to be harmful and worrisome and avoided. The old deck allows some lists to ignore a full 7th of the crits in the deck. That has the capacity to significantly mitigate lists designed to deal crits while also making the decision to avoid them less of an issue. That is a problem. Full stop.

So are obstacles, aren't they? Should we then I disallow Dash players from brining Debris?

Come to think about it Stress is also meant to be harmful and worrisome. Should we then ban Tycho, or at least prohibit him from using Wired?

Those are obviously very different examples where those items were designed in conjunction (Dash alongside debris fields and Tycho's ability with stress in mind). The crit deck is a bit different, and as someone I know said with regard to this, it's not very thematic in the sense that "Players shouldn't be able to decide how their own ships fall apart." That's setting aside the actual game design involved in the new deck is superior, that is if you still believe recent interviews from the lead designer before this rule was changed. Paired against those comments, the article explaining the rule change sounds down right silly.

'Thematic' doesn't belong anywhere near X-wing IMO, the game where robots do drugs, imperials and pirates feel stressed for shooting at Rebel Captives and Han or Luke fight clones of themselves.

While I do agree allowing both decks is probably a step backward from a game design standpoint, I think it's a step forward from a balance standpoint. The list that benefit most from using the old deck are generic lists (bbbbz, TIE swarms etc.) which aren't exactly at the top of the food chain. Doesn't this game benefit as a whole if more lists can compete?

I don't see why so many of you lot seem to be against this.

It's great FFG is giving us customers the choice.

If the new deck is such a good fix over the old then it should be released in a blister perhaps with some missions and tokens so it could be sold along side the small ships

The "choice" argument is lazy at best. In that case, why not just give us the choice whether or not we even want to take crits? Hell, why not give us the choice for how many points we want to bring to the table like in the new WH? Choice!

It is a matter of design. Crits are meant to be harmful and worrisome and avoided. The old deck allows some lists to ignore a full 7th of the crits in the deck. That has the capacity to significantly mitigate lists designed to deal crits while also making the decision to avoid them less of an issue. That is a problem. Full stop.

No one complained when debris fields were legalized so that a Super Dash player could completely ignore half or more of the obstacles while still making his opponent have to deal with them. That's ******* ridiculous that that's allowed but no one threw a big god **** fit about that, right?

My academy pilots treating 1/7th of the crits they receive as a plain regular damage is far far less of a problem than Super Dash players plopping 3 ice cream smeared large debris fields down and autowinning against anyone playing a squad of generics that isn't like, BBBBZ.

The uproar that this decision (which is good for the game's community!) is causing is ridiculous. That all you NDDOP's can refuse to acknowledge Super Dash as broken, but will throw a fit when someone flying a generic squadron can reduce the amount of crit effects they take by 1/7th shows that none of you have any sense about what actually needs to be fixed about this game.

I don't see why so many of you lot seem to be against this.

It's great FFG is giving us customers the choice.

If the new deck is such a good fix over the old then it should be released in a blister perhaps with some missions and tokens so it could be sold along side the small ships

The "choice" argument is lazy at best. In that case, why not just give us the choice whether or not we even want to take crits? Hell, why not give us the choice for how many points we want to bring to the table like in the new WH? Choice!

It is a matter of design. Crits are meant to be harmful and worrisome and avoided. The old deck allows some lists to ignore a full 7th of the crits in the deck. That has the capacity to significantly mitigate lists designed to deal crits while also making the decision to avoid them less of an issue. That is a problem. Full stop.

And debris fields allow some lists to ignore a full half of the obstacles on the field!

No one complained when debris fields were legalized so that a Super Dash player could completely ignore half or more of the obstacles while still making his opponent have to deal with them. That's ******* ridiculous that that's allowed but no one threw a big god **** fit about that, right?

My god **** academy pilots treating 1/7th of the crits they receive as a plain regular damage is far far less of a problem than Super Dash players plopping 3 ice cream smeared large debris fields down and autowinning against anyone playing a squad of generics that isn't like, BBBBZ.

I feel like a major difference in the arguments is that no one at FFG ever said, "We feel as if the asteroids are not accomplishing enough with being a nuisance to fly around so we've released debris to help be a large pain in the Buns" While they did state (in some amount of words) that they felt as if the damage deck was underwhelming and needed to be changed....

Which is what they did. and subsequently said... maybe not heh jk guys didnt really think we'd do that huh..

It is a matter of design. Crits are meant to be harmful and worrisome and avoided. The old deck allows some lists to ignore a full 7th of the crits in the deck. That has the capacity to significantly mitigate lists designed to deal crits while also making the decision to avoid them less of an issue. That is a problem. Full stop.

So are obstacles, aren't they? Should we then I disallow Dash players from brining Debris?

Come to think about it Stress is also meant to be harmful and worrisome. Should we then ban Tycho, or at least prohibit him from using Wired?

Tycho is an elite pilot with an ability that he pays points for. Yay, I get actions while stressed. I'm also a 26 point marshmallow shooter.

Dash is also an elite pilot with an ability that he pays points for. Maybe we should have been up in arms about debris+Dash, but never was there an article written saying debris fields would not be allowed due to being broken with Dash's ability, followed by a reversal of said article as we have with the damage deck.

It is a matter of design. Crits are meant to be harmful and worrisome and avoided. The old deck allows some lists to ignore a full 7th of the crits in the deck. That has the capacity to significantly mitigate lists designed to deal crits while also making the decision to avoid them less of an issue. That is a problem. Full stop.

So are obstacles, aren't they? Should we then I disallow Dash players from brining Debris?

Come to think about it Stress is also meant to be harmful and worrisome. Should we then ban Tycho, or at least prohibit him from using Wired?

Tycho is an elite pilot with an ability that he pays points for. Yay, I get actions while stressed. I'm also a 26 point marshmallow shooter.

Dash is also an elite pilot with an ability that he pays points for. Maybe we should have been up in arms about debris+Dash, but never was there an article written saying debris fields would not be allowed due to being broken with Dash's ability, followed by a reversal of said article as we have with the damage deck.

I don't think the reversal is actually relevant.

FFG originally made a ruling that was going to have cons that far outweighed the pros. They then amended the ruling to no longer have those cons. It's good that they flip flopped instead of adhering to a (bad) ruling just for the sake of not flip flopping.

What's actually relevant here is the effect that these things have on the game. And chosing debris with Super Dash has far more of an effect on the game than picking the ODD so your Academy Pilots can take 1/7th less crits.

It is a matter of design. Crits are meant to be harmful and worrisome and avoided. The old deck allows some lists to ignore a full 7th of the crits in the deck. That has the capacity to significantly mitigate lists designed to deal crits while also making the decision to avoid them less of an issue. That is a problem. Full stop.

So are obstacles, aren't they? Should we then I disallow Dash players from brining Debris?

Come to think about it Stress is also meant to be harmful and worrisome. Should we then ban Tycho, or at least prohibit him from using Wired?

Those are obviously very different examples where those items were designed in conjunction (Dash alongside debris fields and Tycho's ability with stress in mind). The crit deck is a bit different, and as someone I know said with regard to this, it's not very thematic in the sense that "Players shouldn't be able to decide how their own ships fall apart." That's setting aside the actual game design involved in the new deck is superior, that is if you still believe recent interviews from the lead designer before this rule was changed. Paired against those comments, the article explaining the rule change sounds down right silly.

'Thematic' doesn't belong anywhere near X-wing IMO, the game where robots do drugs, imperials and pirates feel stressed for shooting at Rebel Captives and Han or Luke fight clones of themselves.

While I do agree allowing both decks is probably a step backward from a game design standpoint, I think it's a step forward from a balance standpoint. The list that benefit most from using the old deck are generic lists (bbbbz, TIE swarms etc.) which aren't exactly at the top of the food chain. Doesn't this game benefit as a whole if more lists can compete?

Thematic rules are still key to good game design (no they shouldn't trump balance or bog down the rules as your examples would were they to write exceptions in), but my point was that this reversal is arguably bad from theme and balance. It's ultimately FFGs decision and it does benefit competitive players who don't want to purchase a new core set, but this is less a balance decision and more a long term profit (they may have lost customers, I'm assuming). Pretending it's a balance issue as they did after their lead designer pretty much explained the opposite when explaining the new deck in the first place is pretty disingenuous spin.