Pandafarmer said:

It matters to me. I may not devote deep study or statistical analysis to my card gaming, but I still build decks to win. If a first-turn win exists, anywhere in the metagame, I have substantially less interest in the game. Even if I never find the combo, even if it takes cards I'm unlikely to see: it exists, and that lessens the enjoyment of the game for me.

It's rather like how I find it hard to enjoy chess these days. I can accept that there are people who are better than me at the game: I don't devote much study to it, nor do I have any great innate talent, so that is to be expected. What I have trouble with is that there are computers that are better than me at the game. And not just computers, but slow computers. Even if I don't play against computers, I still know they're out there, and that just ruins my enjoyment.

I think a lot is being made from the dumbing down comment. Originally it was refering to the three card rule, which limits the ability to draw a combo and makes the game more random, and some of the new cards like the truely horrible Coach Grabowski. Nate also made comments about the game shifting towards more casual play and making it easier for newer players to compete with the old players. "Dumb Down" was never intended to refer to existing, casual players in general.

Walter-thanks for your support and comments. Playing ability is a huge factor in winning without question, but having a good pool of cards to play with is what makes a game good or not.

Thank you too, DB. But keeping things secret was for the Worlds. Like I said to the Big Show, different people enjoy different levels of play and competition. Bringing the best deck to Worlds is what everyone strives for. If it is unbeatable, well that's pretty much the point. These decks were only used in the Worlds and we even came up with our own errata to nerf the deck's threat. We never said they weren't broken and should not be changed or fixed. These decks won't ruin the game for everyone if Nate ever get's around to doing something about them, they should make people see the possibilties and inspire better deck creation. Also, there was a large number of players that didn't think "The Rip Off" was a broken card until last it was used last Origins. Some things need to seen to be believed.

DB_Cooper said:

Panda-I think you'll find yourself more alone than you think. It may be a casual game in your area, but others take it more seriously. Why cheat at game you don't take seriously, for example? Big money doesn't equal serious play, the attitude of the players makes it serious or not.. You're an example, but not the only or the perfect one. How you play is dictated by Organized Play, which the more serious players enjoy. I don't recall anyone crying "the end is nigh" after every set, most comments have been about progressively worse card design and mechanics. No one is saying what we have to do to enjoy the game, but when what we do have fun with starts disappearing, we're going to bring it up. No one is handing you a pitchfork, just go back to licking your kitchen table.

Donald

Donald,

Sorry, I missed the conversations about cheaters. I wasn't around when that all went down, so I'm unfamliar with what happened. I certainly don't condone people for doing anything like that, and even in Magic Pro Tour we have seen people fade into obscurity as the "cheater" and little is remembered about them elsewise.

As for the other, I am definately in the camp of "APs" make deck design more boring. It's one of the reasons why I left to begin with. But let's face it, I certainly didn't expect to be back otherwords I wouldn't have sold my large collection for $20. My point is, you can't say what will happen in 2 years that might effect your enjoyment of the game in the long run. Bad design or not (which I may or may not agree), there is just as many COC players who don't post on these boards and who don't follow big metas and don't have the slightest clue that some of these cards have errata even. They just want a fun game, and could care less about all the other stuff. Just because we're the vocal end of the stick, doesn't mean we're nessessarily the majority. It seems that FFG is trying to pull in players from that group with the changes and appeal to Board Gamer types, and since they are unable to throw money behind pro player support, I certainly can't blame them even if it means stepping on some lines for the sake of starting from scratch. I've been playing other cards games long enough to see this type of thing happen all the time, I guess all this talk is just nothing new for me.

Donald said:

• The 3-card rule does "limit the ability" a little, which could be interpreted as "adds additional challenge" to making combo decks. An important part of the "jump tech" decks for instance, is card draw. With the amount of "tutor" effects (cards that allow you to look up other cards) a dedicated deckbuilder would still be able to pull something like that off. Limitations have always been the engine that runs creativity. I'm quite frankly amazed that making deckbuilding more difficult is seen as a sign of dumbing the game down.

• The 3-card rule, and the LCG format in general does make the game more accesible to new players, by making it less difficult to actually collect the cards to make a deck, and replacing the emphasis to actually playing the game. I don't think Nate's comments where about the skill level needed but more towards the access to the actual cardboard. While, for instance, Polar is a pretty linear mechanic, this isn't an unprecedented thing in the game. (Jump tech: Simple Kindness works well with rituals? How non-linear! November Whispers and Adoration of Thoth are rituals too! - FFG has been spelling it out since masks! - And yet I respect the effort put by the PA guys to perfect the engine...)

• As for Coach, it may be a bad card , but it isn't bad design as it was designed to bring across a point . The effect is intentionally something one would normally would achieve in a game, because if you do, you're doing something wrong. While that may be old news to players that have been playing competatively since Arkham and/or since the inception of the CCG, it's something newcomers need to pick up on. And I think people stare themselves blind to the ability; If it was printed without the impossible trigger, noone would have batted an eye as it still would be one out of 6 characters with toughness in Miskatonic, and three of those cost 5 or more. As for Miskatonic and double [COMBAT] - Steve Clarney has that, but has total anti-toughness, Strange Visitors beats it in stats, but has a built-in selfdestruct, and Omega Alumnus comes close. - stats wise Coach is a quite a looker for what you get out of the university.

All in all I think some other factors may have coloured the perception on where things are going right now and put it into a skewed perspective for some. Constructive critisism is always good, as long as you're critical about your critisisms please. (and while I've started with a quote from Donald, my "your"is meant in a general direction )

As a newish player I can empathize with the older players who have invested a lot emotionally and financially. As for the "dumbing" down comments, I agree that the new core set has its share of flaws, but it is also important to understand a couple of things.

I particually agree with Donald's point:

.. different people enjoy different levels of play and competition .

I would hope that many of us new and older players alike understand that Cthulhu LCG/CCG is a niche game. 95% of people who purchase the cards are people looking to enjoy the themes and overall flavor of H.P. Lovecraft's wonderfully creepy world. I would imagine thats why the creator of this game introduced themes like insanity, combat struggles and story cards; to best tell a story while playing a game.

The top tier players of this game might have had good intentions, but they (at least in large events) play abstract decks designed to exploit poor design and development in certain cards. Is this noble? I'm not here to argue that. Again, everyone plays for their own reasons. But like I said earlier, 95% of people who buy the cards and play, play casually. It seems there is a very vocal, great group of players out there that understand the game on another level, which is fine. But they are a minority. I hate to say it, but if anyone wanted a large group of players and a competitive environment with balanced play, they shold play Magic. Frankly, any competitive player who lives in an area with an active meta is going to beat up on the casual niche gamer who plays once a week with his roomate or girlfriend. That really isn't anything special.

I'm not suggesting that competitive gamers have no room in Cthulhu, but I think its important for us new players and old alike to understand that the game was dead. I read that the world championships had less than 20 people. Whatever FFG was doing, it was not working. FFG introduced a core set with a new business model designed to appeal and cater to another base of customers, the board gamers.

The core set has what, 150 new cards? Being entirely realistic, how much strategy could you pack into that? Based on the ridiculous decks on there now, its no wonder that many competitive players hate the core set, it brings the game back to basics. Again, the product is meant to be an entry point to a new customer base. Unforutnately for older players, that mean set rotation. The only good thing I can think of is that the environment should be easier to balance now. I would also bet that in future releases more powerful cards will be introduced, but carefully avoiding the past design errors.

My only gripe so far is some of the cards in the new core set really lack the mood for Cthulhu (Peguines, Cafeteria Lady, Norm Grabraski). Other than that, my small group of friends enjoy the game, and hope to play for years to come.

So new players, hit me up in AZ if you wanna play with us.

ccgtrader99 said:

And nothing has been announced about set rotations, or how the old card will be handled in the future. And even if there was anything set in stone right now, prize support for "unofficial" tournaments can easily match those of the official ones. * looks at Stahleck *

ccgtrader99 said:

Cafeteria Lady and Norm, I can kinda agree but at the end of the day they are fun cards. However, giant albino penguins are a part of HPL's writing. Check out At The Mountains of Madness and you'll see that they make an appearance. While they may not be big nasty tentacled horrors they are part of the lore.

Pandafarmer said:

This is nothing like that, I and those who are speaking of changes have been around and involved with the evolution of this game, more so than the people currently working on it now (cough.. cough... nate). At the core most of us aren't quitting because of the changes, but it's more like the changes leave us no other choice. FFG has ruined this game. They should have just came out with an Arkham Horror LCG and just dropped Cthulhu all together, or kept more of the creative strategy elements that were core to the CCG version and not dull the game down to "Cthulhu uno".. lol

Walter Corbitt said:

No problem. The deck will propably suffer from the 3x rule but it was never even close to tier1 decks. Anyway, it's a fun deck to play with. Just add some more controllish stuff and it should do allright.

I found the deck list and it had 4x Lair of the Deep Ones but otherwise it was as I told. I am myself a huge fan of discarding so you'll propably see another controll-milling deck at Stahleck if I make it there this year.

Master of R'lyeh said:

So you (or perhaps y'all, for clarity) keep asserting. But as someone new to the game, I see three possibilities:

1) FFG has nerfed your first-turn-kill decks, and you're mad about it.

2) FFG has reduced the card set, which has reduced the available options.

3) FFG has created a game where you can use any random cards and win.

Frankly, I have trouble believing #3 is true; if it is, new players like me will figure it out soon enough. And while #2 is a regretable consequence of rebooting the system, it will get better as new asylum packs are released. But regardless of the reality, it's just coming across as #1's sour grapes on this thread.

Stop asserting that FFG has ruined the game, and say how. Saying that they are removing deck types doesn't help, when some posters seem to define any deck that doesn't win on the first turn as "random" or "Cthulhu uno". And even if they are removing deck types, my option #2 above makes that inevitable. Instead, show us how there is really only one deck type, and we might as well make a big pile out of our starter sets and play out of that. My total investment in this game is practically zero at the moment: I don't have a vested interest in defending the game. But I would like to get real information, not "ZOMG teh sky is fallin".

I don't see that FFG have ruined the game at all. I find it the same fun card game that I've enjoyed for a few years now.

Tarota said:

Good luck with getting that info, as noone seems to be able to say more then "ZOMG teh sky is fallin"

Lets look at your theories:

• 1) FFG has nerfed your first-turn-kill decks, and you're mad about it.

This is true; There used to be a limit of 4 copies per card, now it's 3. Also, a cycle of very broken cards became banned - The rituals. These where IMHO bad for the game and harmfull to the game on the long term. How this "dumbs down" the game is debatable; At least it makes finetuning a deck far more difficult.

• 2) FFG has reduced the card set, which has reduced the available options.

So far no set rotation is mentioned. Besides the banning of 8 cards (The Rip-off, and a cycle of 7 identical cards across factions) nothing has been reduced.

• 3) FFG has created a game where you can use any random cards and win.

This is where people get contradictory. I read people saying this is possible now while saying that the new cards are inconsequential to the top tier metagame. Which one is it? That seems to be anyones guess.

I would go by the theory that there have been a lot of changes (change to white border, change to new card back, change to fixed boosters) that people lost their perception on what's happening in the game. Then a vocal part became offended by a judgement call at the last Worlds tournament and seem to be directing their anger at the overall game. So, yeah, your theories seem to be close enough. People are confused, upset and/or angry and now the sky is falling. ZOMG!

The problem is game developement at many levels..

I've never played Turn1 kill decks and I've never liked those kind of decks (I've ALWAYS been AGAINST that decks). So, personally, I do not bother about that aspect.

I don't want to repeat what I've already wrote in this thread but, essentially, the thing is: card pool is not underpowered or nerfed, it's just "bad". Cards are created without ANY good new idea. I like some of the AP cards. I've always used AP cards on my decks, but if we're going to play in a LCG only environment (and believe me, it's going to happen), we lose EVERY interaction or depth in deckbuilding.

We've just 30 chars/14 supports/6 events decks, with no flavour nor inspiration. Even the most basic building, in the old state of the game, needed a fine tuning or a right choice. Now, I see just "more" cards that doesn't give anything new to the game.

I've played and seen lots of fine decks: Yog/Shub, Cthulhu/Hastur, Mono Cthulhu, Mono Syndicate, Agency/Syndicate, Mono Shub, Shub/Hastur, Hastur/Syndicate, even with a small card pool...

But there's somethin...

As I said, the NEW FRESH START that FFG was talkin' about, is just a matter of cards borders, cards back and new "filling" stuff.

In the first 2 asylum packs we saw Nodens and Mentor hit our tables. That's the biggest reason why people say (me too) that those are the best decks. But, at least, in those decks there were something really PLAYABLE.

Conspiracies was a flop (even if I like the concept and I'm still trying to make them work). Polar doesn't seem to be a revolution.

BTW, if I have to be honest, FFG has had different ideas that I'd call FLOP. Brotherhood mechanic (characters that come out free from the deck), Tranisent (resources with double value that are destroyed when used) and so on.

So, let's count.

Ap cards, right now, are 120.

Collectible cards are something like 1400.

Core set cards doesn't count, cause it's reprints.

TOT 1670 (ca.)

That's not bad, but not so enormous. If in this card pool, Agency and Hastur are pretty unplayable on a serious level, a couple of hundred cards are useless and everything they can do is a bunch of reprints and the Polar mechanic as NEW FRESH START, I think there's something wrong.

They were able to create TOO POWERFUL cards (see Assistant, Mentor, Nodens) that are something really near autoincludes (and that's an error, IMHO). At the same time, the SAME COMPANY, IS NOT ABLE to create anything interesting, they invest on GREAT singles and POOR mechanics.

It means that Call of Cthulhu is a GREAT GAME, with a great mechanic and a wonderful concept...with a very bad develpoment team.

They've simply LOST the challenge. They aren't able to keep at a high level a high level game.

Sorry for some misunderstandable sentences, but this concepts are hard for my english. :-)

Marius said:

Start with the old "Milquetoast" discussion and work up the old boards from there:

http://www.cthulhulcg.com/cocforums/posts/list/11019.page

Read all the discussion about the quality of cards and failed mechanics such as Masks, Avatars, Brotherhood and Conspiracies.

as for the rest of the tripe

1) We support and suggest fixes for the broken decks, having made them is enough, we don't want to keep them around. Marius fought harder against the banning of the Rip Off than any one.

2) Aside from Nate saying at GenCon the game is going all white boarder.

The Change to white border, change to new card back, change to fixed boosters are all part of what is causing the disatifiaction and loss of player base. And again Marius, you weren't at the Worlds, you don't know what happened. It wasn't an "Offense" about a "judgement call", it was bald face cheating that was let go due to Nate's incompetence.

ZOMG, people have opinions and thoughts that don't tote the party line!

Tarota said:

People are not mad about turn 1 decks nerfing per se (after all here Donald states that they even proposed a nerf for their decks as soon as they came public). People are mostly befuddled by how the removal of rituals and the sudden 3x rule (which at least one playtester says he wasn't informed about, here ) were a rushed decision (and I agree with the feeling for 3x given how even in AP 5 there are cards that show hints of having been designed with 4x in mind, and, if I am not making a mistake, even parts of the core set rules refer to 4x), which removed many non-broken but yet strong decks from being tournament viable (e.g. Mono-Shub ritual-refresh-fatties is not viable anymore, resource destruction became a joke, Mono Hastur had gone from being on the brink of tournament viable to completely useless, Behind the Pallid Mask decks have lost a lot of their edge, Mono Yog-Sothoth struggles a lot to keep going...).

Moreover the nerf 3x brings forward (I am not saying that the game was made 3x for nerfing purpose only), seems to have been born out of the combo decks domain of Worlds 3. I am willing to say that those decks (esquisitely crafted as they were) won because they were absolutely beautiful and the metagame, at large, wasn't prepared to deal with combo decks on a consistent basis. Ron Kowitca, one of the authors, with Graham, of the jump tech deck, steered away from the build just before Worlds ( here ). A sufficiently deep analysis of the jump decks (I'll focus on Shub-Misk jump, but I think the same could be applied to Yog-Misk. I don't know Hastur-Misk enough to comment) reveals a few criticalities that can be exploited against it:

- Jump tech, like many characterless, event driven decks is extremely vulnerable to resource destruction / drainage.

- The winning condition of Yog-Misk and Shub-Misk jumps is putting out enough cost reducers to be able to play Historic Discovery multiple times. Once cost reducers are dealt with (Deep One Assaulted, Burrowed Beneath, Independent Operator), jump has somewhat an harder time going through the deck multiple times and, for sure, it cannot gain a single token (well, excluding some extremely lucky Basil Elton rush ) before T4.

- I am pretty sure there are more ways to deal with jump, but I am not such a good player to be able to find them all.

If instead we consider Yog-Shub messenger decks, any deck with enough removals (Mono Cthulhu, to say one) can make the drain deck cringe, targetting Ithaqa selectively (for a bonus, it can blank Y'golonac and Ancient Guardian for added fun).

Of course, being both the decks unknown before worlds, no countermeasures could have been taken by Worlds 3, but I guess that the metagame could have been adjusted to take Combo decks in consideration.

I can suppose that hearing one of the playtester saying "Combo decks needed to be nerfed cause they were too powerful, and 3x is an answer" makes it look that the 3x decision was, by large an afterthought.

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2) FFG has reduced the card set, which has reduced the available options.

Well, two main problems are percieved under the "less options" stamp.

While, right now, only 8 cards have been banned from competitive playing (and many more have been nerfed into uselessness, but I digress), there have been hints (no proofs, just hints) that there will be a block rotation pretty soon. For once one of the playtesters claimed that Nate (the lead developer of CoCLCG) had informed him that rotation will happen ( Here ). Then AGoT got rotation, then the new borders and backs. Some people (me included) think that all these hints will bring forward rotation. Of course rotating out a thousand cards would severely limit the available options.

The other cause of less options is that 3x nerfs combo decks greatly (and I am not saying just turn one decks, but combo in general). While this may not be apparent a combo deck, in Cthulhu, needs to have triggered its winning condition by turn 2 the latest, otherwise any rush deck (the best of them are designed to win by turn 2.5) can walk over it. Now, I hope some AGoT player can cofirm this, but at 3x combo decks in AGoT are almost unheard of, right?

So the environment has become biased against combo, control took a small hit (after all there isn't an infinite number of removal cards) and rush came out almost unscathed (there are still enough high quality, low cost characters to run a rush deck). Since with 3x many combo decks do not work anymore (because they trigger turn 3 or more), some player feel this has reduced the available options.

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3) FFG has created a game where you can use any random cards and win.

No, this is the strawman version of random play argument.

Cards in the next 2 APs are much more random mainly because they are extremely situational: I don't know which games you came from, but there is a reason why in Magic Kaervaek's Torch is a good card and Karma isn't: the first does its job (damaging) as soon as you can pay for it; Karma, while being more efficient (it deals damage multiple times) works only if the opponent has some specific cards in play.

Since situational cards seem to be the new design goal (after all AP 5 & 6 are chockfull of them), some players cannot see how those cards can be played with preference over non-situational cards -in a competitive context, mind you, casual play is anything goes by definition- without all non-situational rotating out. The random play which some of us are railing against is the perceived future of the game where only situational (hence, random) cards are left, after multiple rotations.

That should be it. I hope this wasn't ZOMG! the Sky is falling enough

Carioz said:

as a long time AGOT player i can confirm ... that its the other way round ;-)

i remember combo decks during the Valyrian Edition phase, when a well-designed Baratheon deck could win in the first round. i faced such a deck once, where my opponent won before i could do a single action (also because of a bad starting hand).

and this is no fun neither in AGOT nor in COC (where i made the same experience).

so while of course combo is nerfed with 3x, it doesnt mean its completly removed. honestly, i prefer control decks, that are winning slowly, mainly because i am re-acting to what my opponent is doing. i like to have an answer in my deck for every situation, and then try to work for the solution during the game.

for me this is much more PLAYING the game, while combo driven environmant is more about DESIGNING a deck. both needs a lot of skill, and both can be done on a very high level. just a matter of flavour ...

Carioz said:

I hope this wasn't ZOMG! the Sky is falling enough

No, indeed, this is what I was looking for. Thanks! It'll take me a while to dig through all the jargon on point 1, but I've got some questions on the others.

Carioz said:

OK, so it sounds like rush decks are expected to dominate then, if combo is crippled? (Honestly, I find a turn 3 rush win almost as unsatisfying as a turn 1 combo win, but that's another discussion I suppose.) But as someone pointed out above, 3x in a 50 card deck isn't that much different from 4x in a 60 card deck; Magic still has combo decks in the abstract, even if I don't know how they stack up in this year's metagame. I can see where an arbitrary or poorly-though-out nerfing of combo could be worrisome. OTOH, if several combo decks dominated Worlds then perhaps a systematic approach was desired. (As opposed to banning specific combo-enabling cards.) I guess I'll need more data on this one.

Carioz said:

I think the non-strawman version was that rush decks should always win, but no one had articulated it that way, so I didn't know how to phrase it either. If I understand it correctly, the worry is that you can just pick a faction or two, throw all the cheap characters into a deck, and expect to do reasonably well? Or is there something else?

I also actually like the 3x rule. You can still make combo decks (I have one that works pretty well, averaging maybe a t2,5 win), but it just isn't as easy as it used to be. As many mistakes as FFG has done, this is one of the rare cases where I feel their move was the right one.

About the future of control decks: It doesn't look very bright. If you take a look at the new cards, it's obvious that you aren't going to be able to remove dangerous threats. No combo cards means no combo as well. All that was of course with the rotation in mind.

OK, so it sounds like rush decks are expected to dominate then, if combo is crippled? (Honestly, I find a turn 3 rush win almost as unsatisfying as a turn 1 combo win, but that's another discussion I suppose.) But as someone pointed out above, 3x in a 50 card deck isn't that much different from 4x in a 60 card deck; Magic still has combo decks in the abstract, even if I don't know how they stack up in this year's metagame. I can see where an arbitrary or poorly-though-out nerfing of combo could be worrisome. OTOH, if several combo decks dominated Worlds then perhaps a systematic approach was desired. (As opposed to banning specific combo-enabling cards.) I guess I'll need more data on this one.

Well, the rock-scissor-paper of control-combo-rush would say that without valid combo decks control should be advantaged. Then again, given the small numbers of players in the game it would be difficult to predict what will be the new trend. For sure, combo decks that trigger their winning condition (which might be: stall the game until my opponent has run out of cards) after turn 2 are dead meat.

I won't comment on the comparison with MtG, there are a lot of variants which would make such effort very hard from a mathematical point of view (average game lenght in turns, mulligan, types of control effects, etc...): suffice to say that 3x removed many decktypes in Cthulhu from existance due to their newfound ineffectiveness.

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If I understand it correctly, the worry is that you can just pick a faction or two, throw all the cheap characters into a deck, and expect to do reasonably well? Or is there something else?

I think the worry is more: if rotation comes, since surefire effects would be removed in favour of situational effects, we are bound to get more cards we cannot decide when to play, but that will trigger only on specific situations. Hence the random: the more situational and narrow the card effects become, the less chance you have to decide when to play them, because they might well sit unused in your hand ( Here 's a test with new situational events called Polars). But if a sizable chunk of your deck can randomly become useful or not, your deck becomes pretty random.

Some players are afraid that if this newly introduced randomness will propagate (with rotation, bannings et al), the focus of the game will drift away from deckbuilding and decision making and will instead focus on card flipping hoping to fish the right card to use.

On the random deck should win, there have been a few posts by CoC Lead Developer (Donald should already have given you the link) which explicitly stated that his objective is to make competitive tournaments accessible to casual players. Now different persons have given different meaning to these words, but the "ZOMG Sky is falling" crowd -of which I am a proud member- mostly intended that they meant: "The skills involved in the game (Deckbuilding, Card analysis, Decision Making, etc...) will be so dilute down that even a casual player could compete in official (hence competitive) tournaments and hope to win"

Donald said:

The funny thing is, however, that Masks, Avatars, Brotherhood and Conspiracies where taken as an example of Nate's design and thus of the future of the game. This conclusion has been inacurate at best, since it was based on incorrect information and false assumptions. It could still be that the sky is falling, but it would be nice to critisise for the correct factors, instead of assumptions.

Donald said:

Well, the less gets banned the better. R-O's main problem was that it could happen turn one, due to the rituals. I still think there is a place for such an effect in the game, though proposed that the Rituals needed to be gone first. Then the meta could show whether R-O is still a problem. Now that the card is gone, though, I don't mind really, since other changes came as well and the meta has changed such that the R-O may not be needed at all.

Donald said:

Maybe it means "new releases are going to have white borders" ? I have some indicators that the black border CCG cards will still be around, though I must admid there is no definative answer either way, or info on what shape future formats will have. It's all up in the air right now.

Donald said:

That's correct, I wasn't there. But from what I've heard there where other factors as well. Like people showing up late for the match, and accepting the randomisation. Furthermore the offer to replay was taken as an admission of guilt. Investigation into the matter lead Nate to the conclusion there was no cheating, though. Even if the conclusion is wrong, the TO is always has the final say in these matters. After the fact I've read about threats of violence and other such behavours that much like cheating doesn't have any place within the realm of sportmanshiplike behavoures.

Also, TO skills are a completely different skillset than being a designer. Even if Nate didn't come to the right conclusion in an emotionally charged situation, that doesn't have any bearing on his design skills. These are seperate events that some here have presented as a cohesive whole.

Ofcourse I do have some concerns as well - If the descision is made known that, for example the new format will be Highlander only, I'll be severly displeased. But I rather cross that bridge when we get there, and not jump to conclusions right now based purely on speculation.

Donald said:

Reading the forums, my opinions don't seem to be the popular opinion either. But I hope to present my opinions providing relevant facts , not (mis)interpretations of offhand, ambigious comments. My personal agenda is to do everything I can do to keep the game alive and make it better. This puts me nominaly on your side. The comlaint that "Teh Sky Is Falling" isn't something I can use constructively though. Neither does pointing fingers to "people hellbent on ruining the game" (If anything, your comments have been rather counterproductive in keeping the game alive so far...)

R-O's main problem was that it could happen turn one, due to the rituals.

This is not correct: the correct view should be R-O main problem was that it could happen turn one due to cost reducers and resource manipulators . It is an extremely oversimplification that a T1 Rip-Off could have happend only with ritual-ritual-ripoff. If we take into consideration 3 resources gone by t1 instead we foind out thet a ritualless deck can do this only better than a Rip-Off deck ( Here 's the math).

Banning rituals without banning T-Ro would have not only not resolved the problem of t1 all resources out, but prompted even more players to use the more evil version (by the way, I am pretty sure there was a build around which managed to get to a 0.70-ish chance of t1 all resources out, ritualless, of course)

How about rather than remaining negative, we wait and see how the next 6 AP's (Julia's story) work out.

Well, to me wait and see means not buying, and you cannot be more negative to a product than refusing to buy it

Carioz said:

Sure you can. You can try to convince others not to buy it.

Carioz said:

I give up. How is that helpful and less negative?