31 minutes ago, Krashwire said:

So on average $350 to just get the distribution of houses you want...

Now to meet the other two I wonder how many times you would have to spend the $350...

That's seems steep if you want to play something in particular, and when reality sets in most players are going to have a preference and not be able to have access to play what they actually want to play WILL push them away.

I play card games with both competitive and casual groups. It is exceedingly rare to find players who just dont care what they play. Sure many people myself included may be interested to play a game or two with whatever, but anything other than just trying it out once or twice and I would want to play a deck I would actually enjoy the aesthetic of as well as the mechanics. In magic I never play green or red. I rarely play white. I like black and blue so that what I play. If I knew I had a better that even chance of never getting to play what I wanted I wouldn't bother.

My wife only ever plays white decks in magic. She simply has no interest in playing the other colors. She is very casual when it comes to card games. But she wouldn't for a instant have any interest in playing a random deck of colors other than white.

Trading. This game might actually bring back trading within groups, and that’s an amazing possibility to me.

1 hour ago, Inksplat said:

Richard Garfield doesn’t like the current state of CCGs. He designed Magic before the Internet and online singles and netdecking were a thing.

I started playing Magic in middle school, and you literally just smashed together what you could back then when you first started. I played so many lunch time games in the library with garbage decks. Cards that probably weren’t any good in my deck became favorites, because when they went off it was awesome.

Later, in high school, decks were better, but they were still super inefficient—you just didn’t have access to 3 of every card, so you made due and had fun with your combos when you could get them, because it was rare and that made it feel more awesome.

Chasing that feeing is why I’m interested in the game—I dropped Magic when I started playing with people who ran an eBay store in the early days. They’d crack dozens of boxes and I had my pick of stuff, and the game just got super boring when every deck is a well oiled machine and you’re just playing to see which one fires off first rather than if you can wrangle either of them to fire off at all.

I've been there and can relate to that exactly since this is how I got into MTG and later in L5R.

The point lots of people seem to be missing is that even if the target audience is not supposed to be the classic CCG/LCG audience, there will be people from these environments that will be getting into this game and will get in exactly the way they get into MTG: they will be looking for THE perfect deck for them, be ready to spend hundreds if not thousands on it and will top tier any event. These will be the guys you will be facing. And all your ideal of a fresh blind quirky deck that pushes surprise and innovation will get stomped repeatedly by these players. This is human nature and it will happen in any competitive environment.

Do you think FFG does not think this guys exists? do you really think they don't count on them for the business model to take advantage of that and make them spit thousands of dollars? FFG will love their money and will let them just do so.

This is why the argument saying that it is "not supposed to be the target audience" is to my opinion flawed.

23 hours ago, Radix2309 said:

Yeah. Most basic would probably be having one of every faction representative. Even more ambitious would be having at least one copy of every card in the set.

I could see collecting one of each combination of faction — that’s only 35 decks. I could even see some trading away duplicate combos to achieve it.

Or just every combination which includes a favorite faction.

14 minutes ago, Hellvlad said:

I've been there and can relate to that exactly since this is how I got into MTG and later in L5R.

The point lots of people seem to be missing is that even if the target audience is not supposed to be the classic CCG/LCG audience, there will be people from these environments that will be getting into this game and will get in exactly the way they get into MTG: they will be looking for THE perfect deck for them, be ready to spend hundreds if not thousands on it and will top tier any event. These will be the guys you will be facing. And all your ideal of a fresh blind quirky deck that pushes surprise and innovation will get stomped repeatedly by these players. This is human nature and it will happen in any competitive environment.

Do you think FFG does not think this guys exists? do you really think they don't count on them for the business model to take advantage of that and make them spit thousands of dollars? FFG will love their money and will let them just do so.

This is why the argument saying that it is "not supposed to be the target audience" is to my opinion flawed.

I doubt any of these decks are that good that they can stomp other decks consistently. Maybe a higher win percentage against the field, but not dominating.

Besides if a deck does that, It is only one player.

You are assuming there are cards at common that just completely outclass most other cards.

1 hour ago, Inksplat said:

Richard Garfield doesn’t like the current state of CCGs. He designed Magic before the Internet and online singles and netdecking were a thing.

I started playing Magic in middle school, and you literally just smashed together what you could back then when you first started. I played so many lunch time games in the library with garbage decks. Cards that probably weren’t any good in my deck became favorites, because when they went off it was awesome.

Later, in high school, decks were better, but they were still super inefficient—you just didn’t have access to 3 of every card, so you made due and had fun with your combos when you could get them, because it was rare and that made it feel more awesome.

Chasing that feeing is why I’m interested in the game—I dropped Magic when I started playing with people who ran an eBay store in the early days. They’d crack dozens of boxes and I had my pick of stuff, and the game just got super boring when every deck is a well oiled machine and you’re just playing to see which one fires off first rather than if you can wrangle either of them to fire off at all.

But you still got to build your own decks, trade cards, and collect sets. I remember the 18-24 months of MtG before netdecking. I remember playing in the library, or study hall. What made decks unique was the player building and evolving them. Players still naturally gravitate to relatively better cards. If a garbage card is in a deck I'm playing, I want it to be because I put it there and see some value in it, not because I'm locked into it. People got tired of being forced to use trash in Star Wars LCG, but maybe the drop off wasn't enough for FFG to consider it a factor.

1 hour ago, Hellvlad said:

I've been there and can relate to that exactly since this is how I got into MTG and later in L5R.

The point lots of people seem to be missing is that even if the target audience is not supposed to be the classic CCG/LCG audience, there will be people from these environments that will be getting into this game and will get in exactly the  way they get into MTG: they will be looking for THE perfect deck for them, be ready to spend hundreds if not thousands on it and will top tier any event. These will be the guys you will be facing. And  all your ideal of a fresh blind   quirky deck that pushes surprise and innovation will get stomped repeatedly by these players. This is human nature and it will happen in any competitive  environment.

Do you think FFG does not think this guys exists? do you really think they don't count on them for the business model to take advantage of that and make them spit thousands of dollars? FFG will love their money and will let them just do so. 

This is why the argument saying that it is "not supposed to be the target audience" is to my opinion flawed  .

While I disagree with some things you wrote earlier in the article, I think you are spot on with this assassment. The good thing is that you probably won't have a lot of those people, because the price support isn't the greatest, but if you get one of those guys in a "constructed" tournament, the odds will be stacked against you.

1 hour ago, Radix2309 said:

I doubt any of these decks are that good that they can stomp other decks consistently. Maybe a higher win percentage against the field, but not dominating.

Besides if a deck does that, It is only one player.

You are assuming there are cards at common that just completely outclass most other cards.

If cards are not a carbon copy of each other and have a moderate impact on the game, no algorithm in the world can prevent some random decks stomp other random generated decks given equal skilled players. And I think it is very likely that there will be a handfull of decks that will have a really big edge against most of the field.

There will absolutely be common cards that outclass most of other cards, given that it is a synergy driven game.

What kind of cards would be so unbalanced?

Characters are probably half the set, and most characters would be reasonably balanced against each other. A decent deck should have enough to be able to contest a stronger deck, especially with luck of the draw in play.

1 hour ago, Radix2309 said:

What kind of cards would be so unbalanced?

Characters are probably half the set, and most characters would be reasonably balanced against each other. A decent deck should have enough to be able to contest a stronger deck, especially with luck of the draw in play.

Do you play FFG games? They are not good at balancing anything. The same cost characters have wild power swings in all their games. They had to create an application for X-Wing just to allow them the flexibility to balance point costs after they see what wins and loses. In this 350 card set there will be something that is more efficient than every other card of its type. In this random distribution model, you will be lucky if your deck owns that card. If you're unlucky and don't own that card then you will be at a disadvantage against someone that does.

I get for casual play, this doesn't really matter. But for competitive, if you are at the mercy of a deck you blind-bought and someone blind-bought a better one, how is that fun? In draft environments you have a chance to build some deck synergies which can overcome someone pulling a great card. In this? Nope, just what you drew is what you play....good luck.

To each their own, and I hope those that buy into this have a ton of fun, but no thanks for me and nearly everyone I know that plays games. I showed this game to my playgroup and not a one is interested in the slightest.

14 minutes ago, gokubb said:

Do you play FFG games? They are not good at balancing anything. The same cost characters have wild power swings in all their games. They had to create an application for X-Wing just to allow them the flexibility to balance point costs after they see what wins and loses. In this 350 card set there will be something that is more efficient than every other card of its type. In this random distribution model, you will be lucky if your deck owns that card. If you're unlucky and don't own that card then you will be at a disadvantage against someone that does.

I get for casual play, this doesn't really matter. But for competitive, if you are at the mercy of a deck you blind-bought and someone blind-bought a better one, how is that fun? In draft environments you have a chance to build some deck synergies which can overcome someone pulling a great card. In this? Nope, just what you drew is what you play....good luck.

To each their own, and I hope those that buy into this have a ton of fun, but no thanks for me and nearly everyone I know that plays games. I showed this game to my playgroup and not a one is interested in the slightest.

That’s partially selection bias on the last part. I told my local store about it and they all thought it was a really cool idea that they wanted to try out. The store is staffed by Magic and 40k players.

Meanwhile, playgroups tend to be of similar mindsets.

On 8/2/2018 at 11:57 AM, DailyRich said:

You can't collect everything because every deck will be different. There's no way for you to have the same deck as someone else. So unless this is some elaborate Highlander-style thing where you have to wrest decks away from other players until there's ultimately one guy owning every single deck, you'll never get a complete collection.

And even then, FFG could just print more