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Basically games like Netrunner will begin cycling out Expansion packs. Standard lifespan will be three to four years. The Core set and deluxe expansions will always be legal.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the changes. I'd like a reason to perhaps go back as it were to earlier expansions, however local communities or tournaments can always specify specific cycles. I know it's stopped me expanding into a lot of their LCGs heavily, and had this announcement come sooner we might still have Warhammer Invasion, so I can see myself getting heavily into Thrones and Cthulhu now.

Zond wrote:
Overall I'm pretty happy with the changes. I'd like a reason to perhaps go back as it were to earlier expansions, however local communities or tournaments can always specify specific cycles. I know it's stopped me expanding into a lot of their LCGs heavily, and had this announcement come sooner we might still have Warhammer Invasion, so I can see myself getting heavily into Thrones and Cthulhu now.

Maybe they will bring Warhammer Invasion back given this new information?

It would make me pretty happy, Invasion is still my favorite of their LCGs.

I'm pretty okay with this change. I've often wanted to check out GoT, but unlike Netrunner or Conquest, it's absolutely daunting to attempt to get into.

The local Netrunner group I'm in on Facebook has been a little concerned with the rotation, but I'm sure it's like most things. A little hemming and hawwing over change.

Well, they are going to cycle out whole cycles of data packs at a time- people who really enjoyed the game and bought them all aren't going to be very happy about it. They don't currently plan to support an eternal format, and there is no secondary market to sell them to. They become a pile of dead cards if you enjoy going to events, and balance will start to really go out of whack if you keep using the older cards(since the newer cards won't be designed with cards from over six cycles ago in mind). The possibility for the balance of the game to get really screwy will increase for kitchen tables with any veteran players.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

Well, they are going to cycle out whole cycles of data packs at a time- people who really enjoyed the game and bought them all aren't going to be very happy about it. They don't currently plan to support an eternal format, and there is no secondary market to sell them to. They become a pile of dead cards if you enjoy going to events, and balance will start to really go out of whack if you keep using the older cards(since the newer cards won't be designed with cards from over six cycles ago in mind). The possibility for the balance of the game to get really screwy will increase for kitchen tables with any veteran players.

This just meens that you can't play in official events with cards that have cycled out... Use them to play with your friends and I'm sure if the demand is there that stores will run legacy events.

My second point was that since FFG has no interest in legacy formats, they probably won't design newer cards with the older ones in mind which could possibly make some weird or powerful combos/interactions. Which would not be healthy for kitchen tables, unless they go to the trouble of making their own banlist.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

Well, they are going to cycle out whole cycles of data packs at a time- people who really enjoyed the game and bought them all aren't going to be very happy about it. They don't currently plan to support an eternal format, and there is no secondary market to sell them to. They become a pile of dead cards if you enjoy going to events, and balance will start to really go out of whack if you keep using the older cards(since the newer cards won't be designed with cards from over six cycles ago in mind). The possibility for the balance of the game to get really screwy will increase for kitchen tables with any veteran players.

No matter your distro model, most card games are going to leave players with piles of extra cards. I sold my collection of magic cards from Return to Ravnica to Theros, and I easily had 2000+ cards. I kept my three decks. I mean I'm looking at my Netrunner stuff right now (because Blue Sun was just released for Netrunner, so I'm contemplating a new deck) and I literally have cards I'll probably never touch because I'm not a fan of the faction or what the card does. Rotating cards out will make the game more accessible for newer players as a core set, an expansion or two, and the latest data packs are far less of an investment than core, 6 expansions and 72 Data Packs (using GoT as an extreme example).

And most kitchen table players are probably less concerned with stupid good combos designed to take advantage of old cards interacting with new cards than a tournament player.

I mean, Sinful you play Magic do you share these same concerns with the magic rotation?

I mostly play Modern so I only worry about stuff rotating in, not out.

 Sinful Hero wrote:
I mostly play Modern so I only worry about stuff rotating in, not out.

*Sigh* you durned kids and your "modern" Magic. I was going to say, we'd have to see how Game of Thrones reacts to this rotation scheme, but they're announcing a GoT 2nd Edition for the LCG, so uh... there goes that thought process lol.

Hey, I used to play extended when that was still a thing, albeit not supported very often.

Mostly I have a friend or two who got heavily invested in it. They assumed unlike magic they wouldn't have to worry about their stuf becoming useless. It sucks to drop a bunch of money and time just to have it all become wasted.

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Hey, I used to play extended when that was still a thing, albeit not supported very often.

Mostly I have a friend or two who got heavily invested in it. They assumed unlike magic they wouldn't have to worry about their stuf becoming useless. It sucks to drop a bunch of money and time just to have it all become wasted.

I'm not going to lie, I assumed that my Netrunner cards would be "legal" until the day I stop playing (assuming it's after Spring 2017 when Netrunner starts rotation). But at the same time there are currently 282 individual cards in just the Core Set and the 3 expansions (including the as of yet unreleased Order and Chaos). Add in three cycles we're up to 642 cards in the card pool. By the time rotation starts, we're going to have 5 more Cycles and boxes which at this current rate will add 700 cards to the Card pool before rotation starts with Cycle 8. That gives us about 1350 individual cards to choose from. By that point, there may not be decks that revolve around Plastcrete Carapace, Jackson Howard, Tinkering, NAPD Contracts, etc... Rotating out those first two cycles will make it easier for new people to come in. It's basically going to give all players about 1100 cards to use. Though that will increase as they've stated that Expansions will never rotate out, but those make up only 55 of the 175 cards added every cycle. And they may even lengthen the time between expansion boxes.

*shrugs* we'll have to see.

Well as some said, it will allow players to get into it easier rather then needing to deal with cards from the oldest sets, meaning that they won't need some strong cards.

Yugioh had that issue, cards from older sets made it much harder to win without a banlist.

I've worked over most of my issues with rotation, but there's just one left that I'm still worried about.

Due to some of the "Silver Bullet" design that sometimes plagues FFGs LCGs I'm not sure they're gonna be able to get around doing either reprints or "effective" reprints of some necessary cards to keep the stuff that won't rotate (Core/Deluxe Sets) in check.

I'm just not sure how willing I'll be to purchase Jackson Howard, Jason Holland , and Jenson Howland over and over just to get new cards in data packs. Or even just multiple Jackson Howards for that matter. I mean that's just an example but I think you know what I mean.

Boxes and boxes loaded with the same common cards is a large reason why I dumped MTG.

Will a 3-4 rotation cycle really be less daunting? Nterunner hasn't even been around that long ... so if Netrunner is daunting now, this rotation scheme will not help.

On the flip side, since you can find out the contents of every datapack you can buy the specific ones for your deck(s). The overall card list is large, but the cards you would need for a deck is a much smaller number. If they have access to an online database(like Gatherer for MtG), they can narrow the cards down to Weyland or Anarchists or whatever they want to look for. Not as big a problem as with say MtG where if you want to play in an older format, the booster boxes are no longer produced and the card's prices are jacked up sky-high.

Mr.Church13 wrote:I've worked over most of my issues with rotation, but there's just one left that I'm still worried about.

Due to some of the "Silver Bullet" design that sometimes plagues FFGs LCGs I'm not sure they're gonna be able to get around doing either reprints or "effective" reprints of some necessary cards to keep the stuff that won't rotate (Core/Deluxe Sets) in check.

I'm just not sure how willing I'll be to purchase Jackson Howard, Jason Holland , and Jenson Howland over and over just to get new cards in data packs. Or even just multiple Jackson Howards for that matter. I mean that's just an example but I think you know what I mean.

Boxes and boxes loaded with the same common cards is a large reason why I dumped MTG.

We'll have to see what happens with the 8th Cycle to see if we get reprints of cards that would rotate out. The meta might be entirely different by that point. We're talking at least 4 more cycles before we have to worry about rotation. But I am concerned if auto includes from the first two data packs will be reprinted down the road. If they're reprinted with the same name, I can just hold on to my "legacy" Jackson and feel cool for once . It wouldn't make sense to reprint a lot of these cards. I mean FFG is planning these packs 18 months to 2 years ahead, so they're not concerned about the current meta (but it does seem odd that Netrunner seems to be releasing cards to reign in current "top teir" cards lol ). We'll see.

Manchu wrote:Will a 3-4 rotation cycle really be less daunting? Nterunner hasn't even been around that long ... so if Netrunner is daunting now, this rotation scheme will not help.

As I've been thinking about it, probably not. I was thinking we'd have a pretty consistent card pool of about 1100 cards every time rotation begins, but I had forgotten about the part where they said the expansion boxes will never rotate. So after the 5th Expansion Box comes out (so after the first cycle after rotation) we'll have 1155 cards (or so). Then after the next pack we'll be at roughly 1210. Since my knowledge about this really only skirts around Netrunner, I decided to go check out the other LCGs and how rotation affects them:
Game of Thrones: Being re-released as a second edition creating a "Legacy" and "Standard" games. First planned rotation after this is several years down the road (FFG does not speculate this date on their website, but will follow new rotation model)
Call of Cthulhu: Currently Contains Core, 7 full cycles, and several big box expansions. The plan for rotation is to not release an 8th cycle, make all "Asylum Packs" print on demand once they sell out, and grow the game via big boxes. (No rotation)
Star Wars: Currently Contains Core, 2.66 full cycles and 3 big box expansions. The game will rotate the first two cycles somewhere around Spring 2018 (follows FFG's new rotation model)
Android Netrunner: Currently Contains Core, 2.66 full cycles and 2 big box expansions (will have 3 by end of 2014). The game will rotate the first two cycles somewhere around Spring 2017 (follows FFG's new rotation model)
Warhammer 40k: Conquest: Currently Contains Core, 0 full cycles (no packs available atm), and 0 big box expansions. The game will rotate the first two cycles somewhere around Fall 2018 (follows FFG's new rotation model).
Lord of the Rings: This is a co-operative game and is not subject to FFG's new rotation model.

So out of the 6 games they have, 4 of them will follow the new rotation model. We'll have to wait until next year's In Flight Report at GenCon, but their report from 2014 said that Netrunner was the(ir) best selling card game YTD, and that it is continuing to grow. I'm would not be surprised if they did not revise this model in 5 to 7 years as the cardpool begins to reach 2000 cards per game. But their thought process is that newer players will not have to sink 500 bucks just to get into a card game. They'll probably suggest buying the core, the latest big box and latest cycle, which is just over $100 USD. But you're right, it's still going to be daunting. I've been trying to grow Netrunner at my FLGS, and it's tough to get the MTG kids to buy in because cards don't have resale value (and you might buy a pack for 1 playset of a card rather than just buying the playset even if the pack is cheaper >_< ), and the few people I've convinced to play are being very slow to buy in all the way because they're unsure of which packs to buy to get which cards. So we'll see.

Sinful Hero wrote:On the flip side, since you can find out the contents of every datapack you can buy the specific ones for your deck(s). The overall card list is large, but the cards you would need for a deck is a much smaller number. If they have access to an online database(like Gatherer for MtG), they can narrow the cards down to Weyland or Anarchists or whatever they want to look for. Not as big a problem as with say MtG where if you want to play in an older format, the booster boxes are no longer produced and the card's prices are jacked up sky-high.

This is probably the best thing that the LCG model has going for it right now is that if I want the Jackson Howards or the Tau Earth Caste Riptide boatrace card, I can find exactly which pack I need for that card and spend 12-15 bucks buying it. But at the same time I spent 15 dollars on three cards I wanted and got 57 more I didn't need.