Set Rotation Q & A
Decipher has just announced plans to begin set rotation for The Lord
of the Rings TCG and WARS TCG. To view these announcements, follow these
links:
The
Lord of the Rings
TCG Set Rotation Announcement
WARS
TCG Set Rotation Announcement
Evan Lorentz (Game Designer) and Trevor McGregor (DGMA Events Coordinator)
have answered some questions to further explain these announcements.
Is all of this really necessary? We've been playing with our Fellowship
Block cards for three years now. They are fine and we enjoy using them.
Evan: It's easy to understand why players would be skeptical of
having cards "taken away" through rotation. The possibilities of mixing
and matching cards, exploring the universe of the game, and uncovering new
strategies are the central appeal of TCGs for the majority of people who
play them.
The problem is, there are only so many cards that a player can include
in one deck. There are only so many decks they want to build. There is only
room for the best of the best, the cream of the crop. Over time, as the
card pool of a game grows and grows, it becomes harder and harder for a
new card to compete with older cards. The "I like just this one faction"
player has acquired all the cards in that faction that would ever be worth
using to him. The "art collector" player has found the handful of images
that to him are so great that nothing could top it. The "most importantly,
I seek to win" player has found the cards that lead to the most assured
victory, and will consider nothing that won't get him there even more efficiently.
And so on, for every type of player you can imagine. Each new expansion
set must offer something bigger and better for each of these players. If
it doesn't, the new cards won't "make the cut," and the game will stagnate
and become boring for them.
The answer may seem simple... Decipher should simply release better cards.
And we do our best with each set to provide things for every type of player
in the game. But if we truly offer something that is strictly "better" than
before, just to get a player's attention and stoke their interest, we're
introducing escalation to the game. The new "bigger and better" cards escalate
the power of cards in the game, making it more random and less strategic
because they do more things for lower costs, and with less warning.
They also eventually leave nowhere to go. In a standard deck of cards,
a King is better than a Queen, and an Ace better than a King – but
what beats an Ace? Escalation is ultimately its own Darwinian form of rotation,
because each new card renders any strictly inferior card unplayable to most
people. If you could always choose to be dealt Aces, would you ever choose
to receive anything else? If Card X does everything Card Y does, but better,
why use card Y?
We instead are choosing a more fair and uniform method of rotation. This
sets the game up for a longer, healthier life, one that doesn't follow the
path of escalation to its unavoidable end: a card that says simply, "Play
this and you win the game."
Why does it have to be escalation or rotation? Can't Decipher just
release expansions where the new cards are exactly as good as all the old
cards, not better or worse?
Evan: It's a good principle (which we try to maintain in our design),
but is nearly impossible to do in practice. With over 100 cards in each
new set, and an exponential number of interactions between them and the
larger pre-existing universe of the game, something is going to slip through.
No amount of playtesting would completely balance everything. Even a coin
flip, the gold standard of "even fairness," is not truly balanced –
research has shown that somewhere between 50% and 51% of the time, a flipped
coin will end up on the same face it started on. You can flip a coin 10,000
times before this bias becomes apparent, but it's still there. You can playtest
a card thoroughly in 10,000 games, but some latent bias in its design might
still be waiting to be discovered by the very clever and resourceful player
base.
What's going to happen to the value of my card collection?
Evan: As money-making investments go, there are many more financially
lucrative ventures than TCG cards. The true value of TCG cards is in the
enjoyment they provide both to the collectors who admire the imagery they
depict, and to the players actually playing the game with them. A rotated
card can be admired for its artistic values just the same as it always has
been. And it can be played in a non-Standard tournament or casual, non-tournament
game just the same as it always could be. Plenty of players explore unusual
scenarios among their groups of friends – common-only games, Free Peoples-only
decks versus Shadow-only decks, site paths using more than 9 sites, and
countless others. Games including cards which have rotated out of the Standard
tournament environment will be one more option for everyone who wishes to
try it.
What about Tower Block and King Block? Will they be rotating out of
Standard, too? If so, when?
Evan: The Tower block will rotate out of Standard upon the release
of The Hunters in November 2005. The King block will do the same upon the
release of The Great Eye, one year later.
Will cards from rotated blocks ever be reprinted? If yes, in a new
base set or in expansions?
Evan: Yes, some cards which have rotated out of the Standard environment
will reappear in new expansion sets. These re-issues of cards won't just
happen in base sets at the beginning of a block; they could happen in any
of the sets within in a block. Black Rider will contain some such reprints,
in part because the number of such reprints in Shadows was so low. (Still,
the vast majority of cards in Black Rider will be entirely new.)
Cards may be chosen for reprinting for a variety of reasons. Some will
be "foundational" cards, cards that are very core to the identity or functionality
of a culture. Other "fan favorites" may be reprinted if their gameplay is
balanced and will have interesting interactions with cards in the current
environment.
Trevor: Also, please note that when a card is reprinted, all previous
versions will also be tournament legal.
Decipher produced Star Wars CCG and Star Trek CCG for years and never
had rotation. What is different now?
Evan: Things really aren't that different. You can look at the
cards released in later sets of Star Wars CCG and Star Trek CCG First Edition
and see exactly what kinds of effects escalation had on those games. Star
Wars CCG's escalation was ended by the loss of the license, and Star Trek
CCG's escalation was halted by the release of the Second Edition. But both
showed the strain of not embracing rotation in their later expansion sets.
Will the Open environment be maintained and supported? How much?
Trevor: The Open environment is still being supported now; nothing
has changed with rotation. Standard is still the preferred format for all
Level 2 events or higher but that doesn't stop players from playing Open
or Block formats. In 2005 and beyond, DGMA will try and spice things up
at conventions and run Block and Open format tournaments.
Why did this change happen now instead of when Shadows released?
Evan: Decipher had publicly announced near the beginning of 2004
that we would not be rotating out any sets for the rest of the year, nor
with the release of Shadows. However, we continued discussing throughout
the year the merits of rotation. Ultimately, we came to feel the benefits
were too great to ignore, but we also felt a commitment to honor that earlier
announcement. As a result, we decided to wait until 2005 and the release
of Black Rider to introduce rotation to LOTR:TCG.
How will this change affect The Lord of the Rings Online TCG?
Scott Martins (Worlds Apart): The Standard Format for The Lord
of the Rings Online TCG will continue to mirror the Standard Format
for the physical TCG. However, as always, Block and Open play will continue
to be supported and encouraged.
November 16, 2004
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