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 sigkill wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I honestly don't know, but is the Edition Churn also disliked by the D&D crowd?

(They are the only other group that I can find that seem to have a sparkly new edition every time I visit the FLGS)

While some D&D players get annoyed with edition changes and prefer old editions (which is easier to do when you play with closed groups), the comparison with GW is not very good - the D&D edition cycle seems to be about ten years, with 3.5 a bit of an outlier.

Are there any other RPG/wargames that have such a quick edition turnover?

Magic the Gathering to a lesser degree might work as it likes to invalidate older cards as new ones are released.... kinda like GW making models into the Legends category.

So ToW might be one of the "big 4 IPs" but it really, definitely, so far isn't one of the "big 4 sellers"

Sounds like a dud year if all you have in the July slot is ToW

 Lathe Biosas wrote:


Are there any other games that have such a quick edition turnover?

I've stopped playing it some years ago, but (while the core rule stayed mostly the same), Magic the Gathering had an insane edition churn if you played using the Standard format which was 2 years of cards, with a yearly rotation of editions (not sure if the format changed since).

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

Are there any other RPG/wargames that have such a quick edition turnover?

Magic the Gathering to a lesser degree might work as it likes to invalidate older cards as new ones are released.... kinda like GW making models into the Legends category.

I don't know of any game with such a short cycle for the core rules, as while MTG has their seasons to phase out older cards they don't really touch the core rules that often.

CorwinB wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:


Are there any other games that have such a quick edition turnover?

I've stopped playing it some years ago, but (while the core rule stayed mostly the same), Magic the Gathering had an insane edition churn if you played using the Standard format which was 2 years of cards, with a yearly rotation of editions (not sure if the format changed since).

Does Magic still follow the new release invalidates old cards method, or have the changed their system?

Magic the Gathering churns on product but the actual core rules remain broadly the same. A new set might introduce a new mechanic or bring back an old one but the whole structure of the game is basically the same. This is why their extended versions can work where you can take almost any card ever released to build a deck with (minus a few brokenly powerful cards).

GW on the other hand re-writes the rules ground up all the time - there's a few things like how to measure and how to roll a dice; but anything and everything else can be chopped and changed.
Scatter dice have come and gone; whole stats on unit profiles have appeared and vanished - eg movement distances have flipped between being unique per model to being a fixed distance universal to all models etc...


Magic is playing a decades old game that they refine and tweak; GW is playing a 3 year game at best (at present) which they chop and change purely for the sake of change alone.

 Overread wrote:

Magic is playing a decades old game that they refine and tweak; GW is playing a 3 year game at best (at present) which they chop and change purely for the sake of change alone.

Eh, I think 40k is still a decades old game at heart. It's just one where refreshing existing content takes priority over creating new.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Magic is playing a decades old game that they refine and tweak; GW is playing a 3 year game at best (at present) which they chop and change purely for the sake of change alone.

Eh, I think 40k is still a decades old game at heart. It's just one where refreshing existing content takes priority over creating new.

Here's the thing you can take generation 1 MTG cards and play them in modern format games and they work.
You can take a player who played 20 years ago and they can play the current game very quickly with a few pointers; reading the text on the card for new ability names and a few practice games.

With 40K you can't really do that. 1st and 2nd edition were fundamentally different games to what we have now and even 3rd edition is quite different on some key points. Heck the entire way psychic powers are used has changed considerably over the years. The current edition alone we've lost points on upgrade parts; lost the psychic phase entirely etc... GW doesn't refine the core they outright change it each time.


MTG changes are cumulative; a new ability doesn't replace or swap with an old one; it doesn't re-write how the core game works. It just adds to it.
Now this is a bit of a simplification as they have had change, but again these are more steady course changes than outright "lets take tapping magic out and instead this edition you roll a dice for each land card you have to generate mana - - also this edition every card can block and attack in the same turn, no tapping"

In MTG the basics are still the very same , while in 40k, if you stopped in 7th and come back now not even the basic are the same.

Same for the Story, MTG adds new ones, 40k changes the existing once.
3rd Edition Lore is different from the current to a point you could say it as a new game in everything but name.

To be fair MTG lore is - I mean its there but its not any way nearly as heavily promoted as GW lore.

The Codex and Big Rule Book approach GW has works fantastically for spreading casual information and access to their lore to gamers.

MTG however doesn't really put anything but a tiny bit of flavour text on some cards. If you want the actual lore you have to go hunt for it. They don't even do a book in the starter-sets for a new expansion style release.

Lore for MTG is honestly a bit like lore for fighter games at the arcade. It's there, someone wrote it and it can be very extensive. But its not a product they push very much.

Well, I enjoyed the MTG Novel during my time playing it, as I did the 40k and Warhammer Novels and in both you don't need it for the game.

But it is still different when everything but the most recent Codex is outdated

Thing is with MTG? Your old deck may not be invalidated the way 40K and AoS might a given army.

But boy can it be utterly outclassed by more modern cards.

The set churn and prices are also extremely offputting to me,

Oh 100% MTG has its own problems all to itself. It's by no means perfection on all fronts.

Indeed I'd argue that one of its failings is the power-disparity possible between decks. At the pro end you've decks that will win in 2 turns doing insane card combos. It makes the game very hard if you're not a "pro player" or playing the current meta-decks.
I'd also argue that the internet does take some of the fun out of it in that you can buy any card (at least from current sets I'm excluding those stupidly expensive ones for extended play); you can read any deck list from the masters of the game and copy them.

However I also accept that I'm fundamentally not a MTG target market. I'm much more of a casual player looking to recapture that "school yard card game" feeling where card pools were more limited by local supply; where people were more muddling out their own decks and hitting a kind of intermediate skill level with that one or two "local masters".

I'm also not a current new-age MTG target market of being a prospecting card investor which I think is what Hasbro wants

The reason there are very few if any wargames with GW's Edition churn is that others failed when trying the same thing.
X-Wing pretty much crashed when they did their 2nd edition and wanted people to buy new cards. Warmachine, among other things, failed when they introduced their 3rd(?) edition.
Even within GW I'm not sure the new lotr edition, which changed more than the numerous editions in the 20years before it (edition counting in lotr is kind of silly, as hardly anything in the core rules changed until War of the Rohirrim, they just introduced some new profiles or playstyles and did an FAQ on some things), really took off or just alienated the already small player base and only kept the tournament community following the new rules.

 Overread wrote:
Oh 100% MTG has its own problems all to itself. It's by no means perfection on all fronts.

Indeed I'd argue that one of its failings is the power-disparity possible between decks. At the pro end you've decks that will win in 2 turns doing insane card combos. It makes the game very hard if you're not a "pro player" or playing the current meta-decks.
I'd also argue that the internet does take some of the fun out of it in that you can buy any card (at least from current sets I'm excluding those stupidly expensive ones for extended play); you can read any deck list from the masters of the game and copy them.

That differs from a GW game how?

The How of MTG Power Decks is easier to grasp than the How of a model based wargame, due to fewer random factors.

For instance, a leaf blower list in denser terrain is different to the same leaf blower list on Planet Bowling Ball. How does it counter another leaf blower list? What do you do if a vital component (unit or character) gets annihilated early on?

Which isn’t to say someone can’t just carbon copy a Tournament Dominating List and experience success. But compared to MTG? It’s harder to know why it’s successful.

MTG? You just need the right cards in the right quantities, including Land, and hope the shuffle of your deck doesn’t hide the good stuff down the bottom.

Arguably worse? If you’re assembling such a MTG deck from the singles market, it becomes a case of He With The Deepest Pockets Has The Greatest Advantage.

Now there are elements of that in 40K. Sure, average armies might weigh around the same price point. But something like Knights, which require pretty intensive investment on a few models isn’t the same budgeting prospect as say, Marines. You may end up spending the same across both armies. But Marines, as your individual units are cheaper, are easier to budget for when buying.

ccs wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Oh 100% MTG has its own problems all to itself. It's by no means perfection on all fronts.

Indeed I'd argue that one of its failings is the power-disparity possible between decks. At the pro end you've decks that will win in 2 turns doing insane card combos. It makes the game very hard if you're not a "pro player" or playing the current meta-decks.
I'd also argue that the internet does take some of the fun out of it in that you can buy any card (at least from current sets I'm excluding those stupidly expensive ones for extended play); you can read any deck list from the masters of the game and copy them.

That differs from a GW game how?

I wasn't really drawing a comparison to GW in that instance and was more just highlighting something that I saw as a negative within MTG itself today.

The vast internet card pool to buy from means that you lose a bit of that gambling element of random card pack buying. Yes its all artificial rarity, but it kind of "spoils" the illusion created - and yes we can 100% argue that its a strange thing that we tolerate this kind of sales mechanic since it is inherently unfair/predatory.


Meanwhile the power disparity between a good and a great card deck is vastly greater than most good to great army lists. Plus wargames have a lot more moving parts - deployment; terrain; movement choices and so on; whilst card games are much more mathematically structured in an overall direct way.

Also? Points.

MTG’s main limiter is of course Mana. Which means it’s all fine and well stuffing your deck with Horrific Great Gribblies, or Nasty Nuke Cards. But those tend toward higher Mana cost, and in many examples, Mixed Mana.

But….dual lands which can provide more than one colour of Mana help there. As do various Mana Acceleration techniques.

This is why I’m not keen on Commander (I don’t want to play three other people), and prefer a standard game done via Draft when playing in a group. There, I’m cobbling together my deck from whatever the Card Gods deign to provide. And so is everyone else.

There is still an element of luck there of course. But once the dust of the Draft is settled and it’s game time? It’s much more about your skill and ability to adapt rapidly, including finding unexpected synergies in your almost certainly wobbly deck.

But once some goon turns up and insists on only using their Netlist Deck? I’m out. Because all sportsmanship goes out the window. It’s like cherry picking a Five A Side Football Team at a local charity event, picking solely from the top league teams around the world, when everyone else are just fielding blokes from their local pub.

Sorry. Wasn’t meant to be a rant!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
MTG also, on occasion, adds an unfair advantage.

I fell out of regular play when a set introduced the option for Black Decks to attack my library, and it took ages for them to add cards which would protect my library. And even then, they were at least initially few and far between.

Stuff like that just put me right off it.

Competitive Magic and competitive 40k are very different from each other

For MTG you need to know how you play your Deck, for 40k you need to know how any other list plays that you might face.
Gotcha moments are much more decisive in 40k

On the other side, building a super competitive deck in magic can't happen randomly by buying a Deck and some boosters, you need to know the cards and search for them.
For 40k, you don't need to hunt down a net list to end up with a competitive list at casual gaming night.

I would say competitive Magic is much more of a rabbit hole than 40k, but at the same time it handles casual gaming much better also because core rules don't change ever 1.5 years but also because starter boxes work better against each other