I looked over the rules section and I cannot find any explaination of the standard format. At what point does the next set rotate out of Standard? Does AGOT rotate in blocks (i.e. will all 3 Iron Throne sets drop off together, or 1 at a time)?

no more standard from FFG's point of view. If you want to play it as a format (nothing wrong with that by the way) then you can set you own parameters (i.e. it keeps going or it stops before/during/somepoint after the core set).

If you want to know what FFG supports I believe it is on the support page of the minisite. The 2 formats are Legacy Higlander (all sets legal, only 1 copy of a named card per deck) and LCG All cards found in chapter packs or with LCG printed on the box (core set Kings of the sea Princes of the Sun)

tjstyles said:

The document you are looking for is here .

Long and short of it: There is no Standard Format. There is only LCG Format and Legacy Format.

- LCG Format is just the cards sold in the Chapter Pack, Core Sets and Small-Box Expansion fixed format.

- Legacy is any (unbanned) card, LCG or CCG and is played "Highlander" style (1 per deck by title).

FFG-sponsored events are run in the LCG Format.

ITE "rotated out" in October of 2008, along with 5KE, when the Standard Format was retired. There has been no rotation policy announced for the LCG Format, but there are indications that FFG is going for a "no rotation" policy for the LCG format, with strategic banning of older cards.

Thanks for the information.

I don't get why the Highlander format is suddenly so popular in TCGs. WOW made it's last raid be Highlander format to try and balance certain cards that can wreck their raid decks. I like it every now and then as it makes for some interesting games, but for the most part the game becomes extremely watered down when you go with 1 per deck. You have no synergy with any of the cards and you can't really build any kind of theme or flow in the deck. I always find that when I get to about 45-50 cards or so, I start just adding cards to fill the rest of the deck out, even if they don't have any real reason to be in the deck. AGOT seems especially vulnerable to this since you would be unable to include any dupes and 3 copies of save cards would not be allowed. Might as well crack open starters at that point.

But, that does answer my question. I will probably just stick with LCG cards then, cause if we decide to play in tournaments, we will go with what FFG supports. Let's see if they stick with the no rotated sets in a year or two. Most TCGs say that when they start out, then they change their minds when they get to 3 or 4 blocks released.

Basically, FFG sees LCG format as the focus (probably sole focus) of its design now. I think they named highlander format for legacy because they don't want to bother with regulating difficult interactions between cards from different eras and allowing one copy per deck makes evil combos rare. It's an easier way to avoid problems.

tjstyles said:

You'll do yourself a favor if you stop thinking of AGoT as a TCG at some point. The fact that there is no collectibility and everyone has pretty much the exact same card pool makes it a very different animal. The LCG has a very different feel from a TCG in a "metagame" sense.

On this subject, and I've been a little reluctant to bring this up......

I can't see an infinite card pool working. But, at the same time, rotation doesn't seem to fit the LCG model.

I would personally enjoy seeing (in the future) a deck building system like this...

LCG legal decks can consist of cards from the following:

1) The Core Set

2) Any Expansions (Kings of the Sea, Princes of the Sun, etc)

3) Any cards from 4 (or 5, or 6?) sequential Chapter Packs (Example using 4: ACoA, AToR, KL, and DotN. Or..... KL, DotN, CP Cycle #5, CP Cycle #6).

I think this keeps the spirit of LCG, but also allows Nate to design cards without worrying about everything back to ACoA when he's designing CP Cycle #8 two years from now. It also allows people to jump into the game without jumping into a potentially huge card pool. If I'm not mistaken doesn't V:TES run a system similar to this with Group #'s for the Vampire cards in order to limit which Vampires one can have in their crypt? Not really sure, never played that game much.....

The only problem with this is that there's no real numbering system to make this easy for players to understand. Most people probably won't know the order the CPs came out in years from now.....

Anyway, that's what I'd like to see down the road. I realize I hijacked the thread a bit..... sorry. Anyone like/hate this idea?

Deathjester26 said:

Hate.

ps. New FAQ and tournament rules are out.

Rogue30 said:

~Am I the master of generating conversation or what?!?

I'm assuming you'd prefer an infinite card pool, as most players probably would? Heck, even I would. I just don't think it's possible without creating a bunch of problems. Time will tell....

Deathjester26 said:

Just to clarify this a bit, ALL chapter pack cycles would ALWAYS be legal, you'd just only be able to use 4 (or 5, or 6) sequential cycles.

Ok.... I'm done quoting myself.

Deathjester26 said:

I just think that becomes too complicated and near impossible for the average player much less TO's to actually track throughout any sort of event.

Deathjester26 said:

I agree with you that some system like you outlined would probably be my preferred way of playing once the card pool gets pretty big (certainly in other games like Magic I hate playing the large card pool formats). I think we should just count ourselves fortunate if we ever get to the point when it becomes necessary though. Up until now, Nate has been really conservative with the LCG card pool. The power level is pretty flat and low, and many cards have built in restrictions (do this once per turn, do this only when this thing that's hard to do more than once happens, etc.). Also, the set themes have had very little synergy (Seasons, Shadows, and NW/Wildling are all themes that are pretty hungry for deck space) so the addition of new cycles so far has served much more to increase deckbuilding options, rather than deckbuilding power.

However, I still agree that deck power can only increase with time as new cards are added to the pool. It would just take longer than with a traditional CCG (where sets are based around skewing the power curve in different directions with the understanding that each new push in power is accompanied by an older set rotating out and its push in power being removed from the environment). For this to become problematic for new players, there would probably need to be a strong cross-meta community honing deck builds; otherwise, I think new players would probably be able to be reasonably competitive because the cards are for the most part of pretty even power and in a casual setting having access to a limited amount of the card pool wouldn't be too big of a handicap. So for this to ever become an issue we need 1. the game to survive and thrive for another year or two and 2. an organized cross-meta play community to develop.

I think your system is a little two restrictive though. For one thing, I'd definitely go by entire cycles to make the system easier to check (you can just look for the cycle's symbol on the cards if you're not sure). For another, I think you want to give players more flexibility than 5 or 6 chapter packs. I think most veteran players didn't really switch from the old Standard format to LCG until a couple packs into KLE. Limiting players to just 4 or 5 chapter packs would probably frustrate most people. I'd suggest something more along the lines of all expansions plus cards from any 4 (or so) cycles of chapter packs (do you think the current LCG card pool is already too daunting for new players?).

Using the above idea, you can always color code the cycle's set symbol.
Let's say you want to keep 4 cycles "Tourney Legal" for example: You can have Red, Red, Blue, Blue cycles legal for tournament this year, then a year or two (or more) down the road it could be Red, Blue, Blue, Green or simply bump off the Reds and go Blue, Blue, Green, Green.
The identical color pool for cycles can be increased or decreased to designate a rotation group.

Does power level need to increase? I've never felt that power creep needed to be necessary for a collectible or living game to survive. This games makes it even easier to keep creep in check with multiple versions of uniques (which of the many Joffreys will I play in this deck), and creep can be controlled by cost of ability. ITE the second to last base set was a great set, well balanced, and I don't think it was a huge increase in game power. If we get to the point with a 3 cost Red Viper that kills a character after being declared as an attacker and can bounce back to your hand, then we might be having some power creep problems.

Vampire The Eternal Strugle (Jyhad) doesn't have a rotation policy. And this game has been around since the mid 90's (around the same age as L5R and almost as old as Magic).

AFAIK:

They do limit your crypt cards (vampire personalities you have in a seperate deck)... there is a number on them, and you can't have crypt cards where a number is more than one away from any other number in the deck or something like that... but this is a 12 card deck. And I think i've seen newer sets release some cards with lower numbers than others... so it may not be exactly a rotational thing. Not sure.

I think given the smaller card pool releases we could have no rotation policy. Just every 3-4 years they may need to reprint/release earlier key cards (Which Whitewolf does for vampire).

schrecklich said:

Oh, I definitely agree it has to be CYCLES not individual CPs. Sorry if that was unclear.

I certainly would love to see the card pool constantly grow without any deck building restrictions. I agree with JerusalemJones, in that I don't think power creep has to happen to keep a card game around. I'm just afraid of the number of erratas or bans we would see if Nate wasn't able to keep his brain wrapped around every single card. But like someone else said. This problem, if it becomes a problem, is a long way off.

Totally, totally agree with JJ - i do NOT assume that power creep of effect creep are inevitable and I think staregic bannings like we saw this past weekend will keep design space flexible. One of the big selling points of LCG for me is that the cards will be aorund pretty much forver in sanctioned events. I always, always hated rotation and since we ahve broken teh M:tG paradigm in so many ways - i hoep we can break that one as well.

The only disadvanatge is that soem potential player, a year or tow down the road might have trouble buying in as Clash of Arms gets scarce. tehn, given the local play group, i think deathjester's model would be a good one. And yeah - Vampire never ahd rotation -a nd its fans love it. There is an active playgroup in NYC and a CG w/o rotation has always tempted to em. If I was ten years younger.....

Stag Lord said:

Oooo~
White borders!

Ruvion said:

Me, I'm more of a no-borders guy.

But I agree with you regarding consistency.

See - I don't think so. This is a while back now, but i'm pretty sue that when the LCG announcement was made, the stated policy was going to be fixed print turns for all Chapter Packs - to save on costs. Once the run was gone - ti was pretty much gone. I doubt that policy has ever been changed - i'm pretty sure it would have drawn comment if it had.

I think they already reprinted some of the asylum packs for the Cthulhu LCG... At least the coming products shows reprints coming of the first 2 asylum packs, and also some of the first complete cycle. So at least the policy isn't being strictly enforced. Could be that they do reprints if they feel that there's a market for them, or some such.

Must be due to the success of the LCG model. =)

Stag Lord said:

That had been the running assumption, until some of the earlier Asylum Packs & Battle Packs (the Call of Cthulhu's & Warhammer: Invasion's version of Chapter Packs) were recently slated to be reprinted again.

Stag Lord said:

I hope not! I think the whole LCG model is to not "deny" cards to players. If a chapter pack sells out, that is exactly what could happen - some cards sell out and prices go up on the secondary market. Imagine a new player trying to get 3 copies of a "To Be A..." card if Sacred Bonds ever goes away?