I'm not saying rotation is a stupid idea, in-general. However, in AGoT it doesn't accomplish what you want it to do. Think about it. If you identify all the things that are frustrating, confusing or unintuitive in Thrones, you'll quickly see past the card pool and notice a inconsistent, fiddly underlying mechanical system, with poorly templated cards and often incomplete or unsupported design ideas. (re: arcane timing windows, no action before dominance… except shadows, and so on)

More importantly, new problem cards enter the pool every cycle. Just last week, debate came up about Darkstar being able to be targeted by effects triggered from cards that discard him into play for their cost. Even if Darkstar were rotated out of the pool, the very fact that this kind of card interaction is even in question so many years into the game's life has implications for so many things to come.

In reality, thrones IS a messy, convoluted, difficult to balance train wreck built on top of layers of of legacy design. The only way to fix that is a total reboot with rules and card functions that are more approachable by the general audience.

That's so expensive and risky it's not likely to ever happen, though there's always a chance it could

I like this guy...

I think, the biggest card pool prior to LCG was VED/Winter/ITE which was about 1740 cards, we're at around 1550 now.

Im still looking for a better online play experience. I dislike OCTGN as i consistently can't get it to run, and my local meta is atrophying slowly but surely. Besides i know everything is profit driven and wheres the profit in players going to a 3rd party, i say FFG should set up their own online card browser and player, and for a nominal fee ($5?) BOOM, FFG monitored organized online play, a free way for new players to get a taste of the game, and stronger meta for all since the online community won't be dependant on having numerous local players (something the us market is losing badly to against the european market) and even open the game to cross country competition without all that pesky overseas flight. Make all the currently printed cards available and as new cards get realeased use the bar code on packs to make them available for you to use online. You could even have the packs for free online after x amount of time passes. On a more related note rotation wouldn't be bad as an added format but the main issue i find is lack of players which leads to a stale meta for me and my steadily shrinking playgroup, so i think expanding the overall availability of the game without restricting card pools would solve many more problems than rotation only formats

Everything you say would be really nice to have, but FFG doesn't have the resources to maintain and manage that kind of system. It's a significant amount of overhead. OCTGN is only possible because it's community driven.

If FFG can create a system that can accommodate all of their card games, it might be enough if they envision a large enough profit margin. Using CP barcodes would work if they were all unique across every printed chapter pack. It also might work if I didn't throw away all of my card boxes once I took the cards out.

Unfortunately, I don't think FFG is a big enough company to take the risk that such an online system won't be profitable and won't generate too much overhead and maintenance.

The card interactions are the real problem.

I'm pretty sure Blizzard did Hearthstone super cheap (though what super cheap is by their standards is anyone's guess). They didn't even build a platform for it. They just used Unity. I think it's like an 8 person team, but that includes ALL the functionality and card interactions. I think FFG might be able to do something like OCTGN pretty easy with Unity.

Where's Kyle... He knows this stuff, haha.

I think, the biggest card pool prior to LCG was VED/Winter/ITE which was about 1740 cards, we're at around 1550 now.

Sets were rotated out after two years, so VED (=Valyrian), Winter and Iron Throne Editions were never tourney legal together.

You are incorrect Morbicizer, but an honest mistake. It is true that for the most part it was 2 blocks.

However after Winter Block was released, FFG decided not to rotate out Valyrian Edition, and so Valyrian, Winter, and Iron Throne were all legal that year. And the following year (the last CCG tourney IIRC) they had Winter/Iron Throne/Kings Landing Edition (which they banned Prince's Loyalist right before Worlds).

Black Friday that year was I think the only environment that had Iron Throne/Kings Landing Edition, and the LCG cards released at the time, as a tournament... which I think was the last major CCG tournament (discounting Highlander).

That year with all 3 sets was my first worlds, and I loved (and still love) that particular environment.

And if you don't believe me, ask any of the CCG players.

Well, I remember it differently. And I am a CCG player, started in 2004.

It looks as though we will get some information about set rotation at Worlds 2014:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4748

Morbicizer, courtesy of the wayback machine... FFG's site back in 2007.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070318051847/http://www.agameofthrones.com/PDF/orgplay0607.PDF

You can also find rules for league play here: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/agotlcg/support/AGoTTourneyRules.pdf On Page 10.

I also think rotation could be messy. ACoA could possibly be cleanly rotated. But AToR has the summer/winter mechanics which... would make too many cards in more recent sets not useful.

i think rotation its a mess for the game, when the lcg format was realeased, ffg said that you can play with all your cards every time, if they do rotation this will be a lie.

Im teaching many players and they buy his cards bit a bit because they believe in the politic of ffg "you can use every time" this people are from magic that they are tired of spend his money and months before released a card wizard said "now that card its forbidden", and were is my money?.

Nathan said that there is a huge amount of cards...and its difficult to control, i believe this its a lie, because if you design a card as new preston and you don´t see that its a too powerfull cards, you are a bad designer, the same occur with long lances, (restricted two months after they see the light), all people saw that this cards are very strong and bad for the game, the same at the new kingsguard ( i saw in every deck the combo preston - jaime).

Then we have another stupid stronger card "harry the riverlands" , there is anyone that dont think that this card would be restricted?, its boring play vs a lannister kneeling deck, they knell all characters every turn with this card and in combination with all.

Cities are the plots that the community shout that they must do something, and you can see in every tournament.

Why rotation? better idea it´s better designers and better playtesters or more playtesters to avoid stupid strongest cards.

another point it´s that they forgot all old themes, (tully, bolton, clashman, nightwach......) and they could do every cicle one or two cards about this themes to do this themes more playable, i had a good bolton deck, but today it´s a rubbish because they dont have reinforcements, p.e.

During all tournaments that i had played all players lend cards to all players, i believe this its the spirit of any game , the player who has more cards help the player that have less cards, but... what occur if you do a rotation? i believe many people quit this game, because i know several of them that have few money and they buy the last chapter every month with an enffort and with the ilusion of the words and politic off ffg "you can use your cards for ever"....but if ffg dont do these, im not strange with it, because in my country all people have learn to dont believe in politics promise.

This it´s my thought , sorry for my poor english.

tldr;

As a new player just getting into the game over the last few months, I would vote that rotation isn't the way to go.

I haven't played in any tournaments, but it seems to me that if I had the opportunity to and could only use the last cycle or two, I would likely not join the tournament. I've bought about 9 chapter packs, 1 core set, and 2 expansion sets to date. However, I got into this game with 3 other friends and we've been trading to make good use of the chapter packs we have all purchased. I have a few Baratheon decks and a couple of Greyjoy decks, so any out of house cards I don't need I'll give to my friends.

I've got a pretty decent card pool going but it is scattered throughout different cycles because I researched the cards I wanted to build the type of deck I wanted. I don't have too much cards from the last cycle and don't feel like forcing myself to buy just them because of tournament rules. I love the fact that the game has such a big card pool, and therefore more variety and endless deck possibilities. I love building decks and trying to do different things. Rotation would really limit the game and the possibilities, and even more so it would limit the ability of players to counter strong decks or card exploits.

It very much isn't the card pool that keeps me from entering tournament play, and not even the "complexity" of the rules. Neither of those bother me very much, it is just the time and travel commitment that holds me back. We (my local group of 4) still follow all tourney rules and keep up to date on restrictions, though.

Truth be told, casual players getting into any game, buy products they see on the shelves. Given that many stores have 1-2 older chapter packs hanging around, these are the first likely to be bought by someone new, as the more recent sets will have sold out to the current crowd.

Do you know why rotation is important? Its mostly to remove problematic cards that interact poorly with the evolving environment.

Does it really matter if say someone still uses Herald of the Sea? Or Dragon Chaser? Its cards like Pyromancer's Cache that are the problem. Or maybe Pentos if we ever get a critical mass in Epic Events. A Song of Summer is problematic because its risk involves someone bothering to counter for ravens. At the same token a recent set of cards trigger off summer/winter.

But we have a restricted list, and FFG can always just rotate out certain cards.

They could also do mini-factions in a cycle, rather than neutral cards. The Wildlings, the freys, and the arryns would make sense as their own mini-houses honestly. While I could see the brotherhood, the night's watch largely "Neutral House" only.

I don't even know where I could buy GoT LCG products on shelves. Walmart has the core set, but that's about it for locations near me. I've purchased all of my products online.

Why not just make more use of the restricted list, rather than ban entire packs/cycles, then?

I don't even know where I could buy GoT LCG products on shelves. Walmart has the core set, but that's about it for locations near me. I've purchased all of my products online.

Why not just make more use of the restricted list, rather than ban entire packs/cycles, then?

If they're paying attention to these boards and can identify a business viable way to not use rotation I'd be shocked if they didn't. It seems to be the right choice as rotation itself isn't necessarily required. It's more that they have to maintain a reasonable entry price to the competitive scene or risk the competitive scene completely dying out. I think a cheap tournament deck in Magic that has a chance of winning probably costs around $350 (for smaller tournaments). They have to pick a target $ amount and shoot for that. Rotation isn't necessarily the answer, it's just one that exists in Magic and is an obviously viable solution.

I think the bigger expense might be buying all the house expansions just to get the plots, and cards like river row.

Honestly if they want a cheap buy in, then make a tournament starter for each house that replaces both core set and expansion set for tournament players.

For a particular deck type, you usually only need to buy one cycle, and then cherry pick cards.

However, their bread and butter are still casual players that just pick up the core set and the random expansion.

I play AGOT since Valyrian edition (CCG), and recently have started to think that rotation is pretty much needed, for many reasons. Here there are some of them:

1. Balancing and simplification: the Restricted List is way too long and variable across the months. FFG could shorten it a little by cutting the gigantic card list available (not only because the rotation would directly eliminate some of the restricted cards, but also because some of the non-rotated cards would have their power balance modified by the rotation itself). This would simplify very much restrictions and additional rules.
2. Variety: FFG is almost forced to print new cards which become slightly more and more powerful than the older, sometimes "masking" this evidence with some malus (i.e. the Prized keyword, which sounds a little like a softened Doomed mechanic from Winter ed.). Rotation would put an effective limit to this trend.
3. New player appeal: as many of you have already pointed out, new players can (and in fact are) discouraged by the quantity of available cards. This is true not only because of the initial money investment (a player of MTG would laugh hysterically), but also because of the number of cards a new player must learn to play competitively.

This said, I feel that a right way to approach the rotation problem would be cutting down some cycles and the old core set (which is 80-85% obsolete) and reprinting a 2.0 core set, which could include some of the rotated cards. In this way, a new player could start with an updated pool of useful cards, while old players would already own every allowed card.

This wouldn't exclude the possibility of some vintage-style tournaments with every card from the LCG, but I think these should be the exception, more than the rule.

My 2 cents.

I think the problem is, out of the older sets only A Clash of Arms and the Core Set could be rotated out (If Core Set 2.0 is there).

A Time of Ravens has all the Summer/Winter mechanics which affect newer cards.

King's Landing Edition could be rotated, but then you lose most of the anti-shadows cards. And there are too many newer shadows cards that would become problematic. Also KLE Eddard is one of the few viable controls against many other deck types, severely weakening both Stark and Baratheon.

Defenders of the North, I would be fine for rotating as I hated the North Agendas, Val, Fear of Winter, that I am OK with sacrificing Melisandre and Seat of Power.

Same with Brotherhood Without Banners and Maesters of the Citadel.

But you see the problem: The sets that most need rotating out are the ones that came after the initial sets. And I also think there is plenty of room to expand, if they rotated... we would yet again see nights watch and wildling sets... and probably they would be just as horrible as every OTHER time they have been visited.

I'd rather see them add a House Arryn card and explore that. Or how about an event cycle for the other crests? What of the Iron Bank of Braavos? What about House Frey?

And in most cases: why should a set be rotated? Because either A.) to get unbalanced cards out of the environment, or B.) to reduce the amount of cards that do the same thing.

The restricted list helps,

reprinting an older card with new errata also helps (Like Jaquen H'Gar).

Remember that rotating and reprinting a part of the rotated stuff would accomplish both objectives, working effectively as an extreme restricted list while greatly reducing the amount of cards in game. The main goal would be to carefully look to the removed sets and choose to reprint in the 2.0 core set the 10-15 cards which can be useful for balancing the new format (such as the anti-shadows cards you are referring to).

Unfortunately, I agree with the point that many problems are derived from the most recent cycles: that's, in fact, due to the long-term anti-rotation policy. For this reason, FFG has to print cards which are subsequently more and more powerful. A good, well-timed and clever rotation policy could avoid this and prevent similar problems in the future.

I have yet to see a format that uses rotation to solve these problems. Power creep still happens, the only time it does not is if you rotate the entire current cycle at once with no overlap (or very little like Alderac does).

Rotation would also pressure FFG to keep revisiting the same themes over and over again. Or leave ned players in the dust as their tribe is not in the current cycle.

Consider the fact that the more popular format in MTG right now is modern, which is 10+ years of cards. They've done fairly well with banning cards to keep things fun.

And rotation does not help new players, draft helps new players.

I would be more in favor of restricting the number of sets/cycles a player can use in a particular deck. This is what both VTES and Vs did.

Something will have to give, eventually a new player will have 10,000 cards to learn/collect.

I just started this game months ago and have bought quite a few already, I would hate to learn that my cards are unplayable, but I also am a long way from playing competitively, I haven't seen 60% of the card pool let alone bought them.

Having 2 formats as OP suggested seems reasonable.

In that case, FFG might create a new "core" set with that in mind.

My favorite part of this game is engaging the characters and situations from the books, and set rotation would limit that. I hope rotation expresses itself as an expansion symbol limit.