I really try to understand what's the logic here...

Basically we have a game that works like a CCG/LCG, excepted that you don't get to choose what mechanic your deck will be using. And you don't get to chose how good your deck is either.

Decks are assembled randomly form a pool of 350+ cards with 4 degrees of rarity . and FFG states in the FAQ that " If a deck wins too often in an Organized Play framework, there are processes in place to handicap and eventually retire that deck. "

So basically, you get to spend 10 USD countless of times until you get something decent/likeable to play while considering that each deck you don't like is 10 USD purely wasted as there is nothing else you can do with those cards. And if by chance you get a really good combo, well you will see YOUR deck banned or nerfed to "balance things out" (not like a card is banned, for everybody, here, it's joust YOUR own deck you and only you spend money on it). So you will be spending likely hundreds of dollars for nothing basically. In a regular CCG/LCG game at least you can use the cards for something but here you are not allowed. I had serious issues with the CCG sealed random booster packs business model but here that's even worse. You can get an awesome really rare card mixed in between 35 other garbage ones and it will do you no good. This screams lottery and pay to win to my ears like never before in a board game environment. I cannot imagine how this game can seriously be considered for Organized play.

Considering the creation of the decks is entirely procedural and not coming from a human design there is no way to tell in advance who's deck is OP and ban / handicap actions can actually be taken only after this was noticed. Meaning, the harm will be done, and once an OP deck will be banned, another will show up, because there will be no way to predict their arrival.

Remains the kitchen table play, and even here, I don't see the point. Having the same decks facing each other will get old fast, and throwing 10 bucks on a regular basis on random decks without any idea on how they will perform is not appealing. The pleasure being in the unknown of what the opponent has... playing with the same players over and over will not keep this fresh at all.

I'm not trying to bash the game pointlessly, I try to understand how is this supposed to work. Am I missing something? If yes I'm all ears and I will be glad to her other opinions and explanations.

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From a competitive standpoint the only thing that makes sense with the informations we have is sealed. You show up at the tournament with your tokens, pay $ 10,00 plus some bucks for price support and enjoy games against random decks where you have to adapt to your deck and make decisions on the fly against random decks.

If you let people bring their deck, you can be sure that people either buy decks until they get good combos or pool decks with other players, resulting in a worse CCG experience.

There will be certainly cards or combinations that are better than others, but I don't think that they will ban/restrict cards. More likely they will only allow the recent set + core decks.

Yeah, you are right, this concept seems like a really bad idea. Don't wanna bash either, but I hope it's a late april's fools joke from FFG... there is just no way that u can really create THAT many decks that are all more or less balanced and have a unique way to play them... Either this is just a very weird idea and smne said why not try it out or it's a money grab....

11 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

From a competitive standpoint the only thing that makes sense with the informations we have is sealed. You show up at the tournament with your tokens, pay $ 10,00 plus some bucks for price support and enjoy games against random decks where you have to adapt to your deck and make decisions on the fly against random decks.

If you let people bring their deck, you can be sure that people either buy decks until they get good combos or pool decks with other players, resulting in a worse CCG experience.

There will be certainly cards or combinations that are better than others, but I don't think that they will ban/restrict cards. More likely they will only allow the recent set + core decks.

But that is the worst part, you will not be allowed in any way to change the premade deck that you bought. There is absolutely no decision making or deck adaptation, so you don't draft and choose cards like in Magic, you just go there and you get one deck and boum that's it...

1 minute ago, Ignithas said:

From a competitive standpoint the only thing that makes sense with the informations we have is sealed. You show up at the tournament with your tokens, pay $ 10,00 plus some bucks for price support and enjoy games against random decks where you have to adapt to your deck and make decisions on the fly against random decks.

If you let people bring their deck, you can be sure that people either buy decks until they get good combos or pool decks with other players, resulting in a worse CCG experience.

There will be certainly cards or combinations that are better than others, but I don't think that they will ban/restrict cards. More likely they will only allow the recent set + core decks.

Would indeed make a bit more sense as a sealed format for organized play but that still does not answers the question: why would you keep on buying stuff outside tournaments since you cannot bring it in?

Feels like each deck is disposable and single event use only. And int that case the whole app thing with the "evolution of the meta" and the banning and handicap system they talk about in the FAQ makes even less sense.

3 minutes ago, Hellvlad said:

Would indeed make a bit more sense as a sealed format for organized play but that still does not answers the question: why would you keep on buying stuff outside tournaments since you cannot bring it in?

Feels like each deck is disposable and single event use only. And int that case the whole app thing with the "evolution of the meta" and the banning and handicap system they talk about in the FAQ makes even less sense.

This is honestly a question I don't have an answer for. I think that we are missing important informations, but I fear that the system won't lend itself to competitive players.

16 minutes ago, ArinRahl said:

Yeah, you are right, this concept seems like a really bad idea. Don't wanna bash either, but I hope it's a late april's fools joke from FFG... there is just no way that u can really create THAT many decks that are all more or less balanced and have a unique way to play them... Either this is just a very weird idea and smne said why not try it out or it's a money grab.... 

...OR the cards ARE very same-y after all and all have a very standardized power-level, but then the game would just be boring? Anyways, there might be a world where this works but there would have to be an enormous amount of work behind a game like that!

14 minutes ago, Hellvlad said:

Would indeed make a bit more sense as a sealed format for organized play but that still does not answers the question: why would you keep on buying stuff outside tournaments since you cannot bring it in?

Feels like each deck is disposable and single event use only. And int that case the whole app thing with the "evolution of the meta" and the banning and handicap system they talk about in the FAQ makes even less sense.

Maybe sets have a very large pool of cards and you can vote out cards for the next printrun that get replaced by new cards.

11 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

Maybe sets have a very large pool of cards and you can vote out cards for the next printrun that get replaced by new cards.

The quick play rules at the end, in the "unique deck game" section metion that the pool ise " more than 350 cards" Nothing really extravagant.

Well it's by Garfield, well Richard Garfield... He has some great hits: MTG, King of Tokyo, Netrunner, Roborally...

It's just that when goes"meta" about card games that he comes up with weird stuff.

Anyone remember that binder game ? (Yeah didn't think so)

It's a game where the binder is part of the game!

It's probably worth looking at what Garfield wrote at the end of the rules ref about jungle vs amusement park for the driving concept behind piloting a deck with 'weaker' cards rather than having to play on meta or be stomped.

While you're there, read about 'chaining', because that seems to be the prime way they shackle a powerful deck. I can imagine in competitive settings that if you go on a win streak, you'd get chained and piloting skill / adapting to that would really kick in.

6 minutes ago, zooeyglass said:

It's probably worth looking at what Garfield wrote at the end of the rules ref about jungle vs amusement park for the driving concept behind piloting a deck with 'weaker' cards rather than having to play on meta or be stomped.

While you're there, read about 'chaining', because that seems to be the prime way they shackle a powerful deck. I can imagine in competitive settings that if you go on a win streak, you'd get chained and piloting skill / adapting to that would really kick in.

It is clearly written in he rules that the chaining system will not be used in Organized Play

4 minutes ago, zooeyglass said:

It's probably worth looking at what Garfield wrote at the end of the rules ref about jungle vs amusement park for the driving concept behind piloting a deck with 'weaker' cards rather than having to play on meta or be stomped.

While you're there, read about 'chaining', because that seems to be the prime way they shackle a powerful deck. I can imagine in competitive settings that if you go on a win streak, you'd get chained and piloting skill / adapting to that would really kick in.

Interesting, but chaining handycaps are optional (what if your opponent says no?), and how would you determine who has the "stronger" deck during the first match?

3 minutes ago, Hellvlad said:

It is clearly written in he rules that the chaining system will not be used in Organized Play

And I'd add that the suggested use of chaining in casual play is tracking the results of each deck against each deck, which will be a chore to do, even with an app.

This game has "casual" written al over it. And that is good . I Always play mtg casually. Fryday night magic was not really a good idea : In the worst case scenario it turned a normal enviroment into a dead serious prize grab pit fight with people all netdecking the one oP deck rather than coming up with their own.

Doesn't the FAQ mention some sort of handicap for decks that win consistently in official tournaments?

55 minutes ago, RedMageStatscowski said:

Doesn't the FAQ mention some sort of handicap for decks that win consistently in official tournaments?

It does, but if it is a sealed format I don't really get how they will pull that off

Maybe their app and website would have something to do with it, given each deck has a unique archon tied to them.

I'm confused at that as well. I haven't read the posted rules documents yet. Maybe it's covered their, but I suspect (as the article alludes to) there will be an upcoming OP article to discuss that sort of info.

I'm wondering if it's always sealed or if in some tournaments you are allowed to bring any deck from your collection. I would assume it's the latter and not the former which means some decks will be disallowed in organized play eventually. Though as pointed out in the original post that means for OP that purchase was more or less wasted, which is a definite feel bad.

This game seems to be trying to capture a different crowd than normal considering many people play these card games to exercise some creativity in their deck design or constantly evolve and tweak an existing deck design. This game completely removes that element in favor of putting all the emphasis on pilot skill and deck selection. Though I have seen a vocal minority of people mostly on sites like BGG talking about how they dislike making decks and just want to play games. I guess this game is for them. People who just played the starter decks in Ashes (or MtG duel decks) and don't mind blind purchase. I'm not sure if that person is me. I like playing the Sentinels of the Multiverse, Ashes starter decks or the pre-generated Summoner Wars decks, but the idea of blind purchasing a deck feels not great to me. Also all those games had a deck that felt thematically cohesive. Hopefully it's the same here and not just a mix of more or less generic cards.

I'm happy they are trying something different. I doubt this will compete with their existing LCGs considering the model. I don't know if I'm sold on it. Though it is nice that the game has a low barrier of entry it seems. A deck is 10 bucks + a core set purchase of 40 bucks USD. Seemingly that entrance fee into the game will be more or less flat. That's very reasonable compared to entering an LCG even at launch. Makes this game very casual friendly, and also makes it easy to be someone's second or third game if they dig it. Hopefully I'm right about that and there isn't more hidden costs, because in my mind that's this game's current biggest virtue in the FFG stable of card games. That said if you are the sort of person that will need to hunt for a particular deck I think this game will destroy your wallet.

The more I think about this game, the more I find the idea interesting. My first reaction was like all of you. However, I think it "might" be interesting to open a completely random deck, sit down with someone without looking at the cards in the deck, and mash it out with someone else. It surely isn't a competitive setting or concept, but might work really well with my wife, for example. Sure, it's relatively expensive, but not that much worse than drafting. My only concern is the ridiculous level of pollution though.

I don't really understand people losing their mind about this. The game seems casual and completely friendly to new players. Want to get into agot? Sweet, drop 600 bucks on the set and you can! Want to play MTG with relative success? I hope you have 400 bucks for 1 deck!

The main draw point about this game is going to a game shop, dropping $15 bucks to enter a tournament, getting a brand new deck and off you go. Anyone can do that even if they have never played this game before. After the tournament, hold on to your deck and play with buddies for fun or to master it. The tournaments you can think of with this game are endless. Make a constructed tournament, pick an archon you have and build with the best you have or make a tournament where you buy a new deck, then at the end of every match, you exchange with your opponent and move one. Winner of the tournament will have played with 4-6 different decks depending on the amount of players. That would truly be a test of skill piloting a random deck that is randomly bought and randomly generated and still coming out on top.

There are alot of things to look forward to with this game.

I think what people don't get is the feeling, and forgive me if I'm wrong or putting words in someone's mouth, that this should be a game for competitive players but it might actually be for non-competitive and/or causal players. It reads to me a whole lot like what I hoped Magic would have been when it came first came out. I haven't played Magic since the '90s, but this has me interested.

15 minutes ago, RARodger said:

It reads to me a whole lot like what I hoped Magic would have been when it came first came out.

Not surprising considering who it's from.

And Garfield even gave a little blurb in the rule book. It feels very much like he is trying to capture his original vision of magic. He can make strong cards like the power 9 and they don't automatically go in every deck. They become these rare things that people can treasure and trade and collecr.

20 minutes ago, Radix2309 said:

And Garfield even gave a little blurb in the rule book. It feels very much like he is trying to capture his original vision of magic. He can make strong cards like the power 9 and they don't automatically go in every deck. They become these rare things that people can treasure and trade and collecr.

and without a cost on the cards there is no need for resource (land) cards so there's no mana screw.