I haven't been this excited about an expansion since DFA. The additional rules and the inclusion of pilots and gear sounds insanely cool. The new units look incredible. Parent Houses & Clans entering the arena is sweet. Planetary condition cards sound interesting. I cannot wait for January.

I could care less about set retirement. Tournament play is a small part of MechWarrior for me, so the retirement of the base set + 3 expansions for the year means little when a new base and 2 expansions are coming in the same year.

And to those who feel it necessary to tell the rest of us your leaving the game, please put your units up on ebay -cheap- so the rest of us who actually enjoy playing can fatten our armies up. Thx.

I'll check it out, but man did my RotS collection just get gutted four tournament play.

I hardly play as it is because I'm not big on how the game plays currently, so this can only cause me to play the same if not more.

When you're at the bottom, the only way to go is up. Even with set retirement, I'm looking foreward to this. Sure, I can't play my beloved ForestryMech MOD in storyline events or whatever they will have, but unrestricted tournaments are always an option.

The only thing i don't like about this set )so far) is taht with pilot and gear cards, all our unique and le mechs will be worthless.

#### thing wont let me edit. I meant useless for tournament play. And i just bought Cynthia Kelly and Shin wolf off ebay too.........

Just ask any player, ALL Mechs are worthless for tournament play.

Despite what the minor percentage of uber-elite MW players say, Mechs are useful.

I see a lot of things here that people have been clamoring for for a long time now. Mech M&S, customization, out of base firing. I think they have given us most/all of what we have been asking for. Set retirement is of course old news, you shouldn't act surprised unless you were completely not paying attention for several months now.
Thank you Kevin and Kelly.

*looks through WizKids site trying to find where it says they're not-for-profit*

Of course they're going to be interested in money, they're a BUISNESS! Doesn't nessecerily mean that's all they're going for.

Seriously, I've listened to this dribble for months now and I'm sick of it. So you cant use some of your figs in about half of the tournaments? SO WHAT? You can still use them in unrestricted tournaments or *gasp* playing for fun! And even with set retirement, the are full tourney legal for TWO YEARS! Figure someone spends $300 on a set, thats bascially $12.50 a month to be able to play in essentially free tournaments to win prizes (you could say Sealed and Draft have a cost, but since you get to keep all pieces its basically just like buying a booster like normal). You do 4 tournaments a month, thats $3.13 a tournament. I'm no where near made of money but even I can accept that if it means new players have a better shot of competing and we can get rid of problem units.

Better still, after the two years, I CAN KEEP THE FIGURES! I'm already using a number of them to play CBT with, and I'll be more then happy to spring Bart Bradshaw and Stephani Ehli on some unsuspecting sod at Unrestricted tournaments.

Am I completely happy about retirement? No, as I've said I love my BB and my DF Raidens, but in light of everthing I can accept and deal with it without having some hissyfit that I cant use my DF Schmitt/Maxim combo into infinity. If WK is willing to give out free prize support and be adaptable to player commments (I noticed that a number of the "Believeable" rules seem to have made it into AoD), I'm willing to play by these rules.

And if you're going to quit, send me your stuff, since then it really WILL be 'worthless'

@Stahlie
This might be a poor analogy, but if a man has a leg wound that has become quite badly infected, and the leg can't be saved, would you rather cut the leg off, or simply let the man die?
Yes, losing a limb is a quite traumatic experience, and there is most certainly going to be pain involved, but it at least will leave the man with another chance.

We really don't have enough details yet to know what will happen with it. I'm disappointed I'll only get 3 months to play certain pieces I just traded for, but we'll see how the game progresses.

They seem to hint that current LE's might well end up being very similar to what a base unit plus pilot and equipment would look like. So, you might have a basic Dasher II...if you add the Arnis Drummond Pilot Card and Superior Myomer Equipment Card to it you end up with the price and stats of the current Arnis Drummond. If you add different cards you'd end up with Faisal Rosse.

My guess is that LE's won't be specific individuals if they are capable of accepting pilot cards. They would just be rarer mechs.

Lots of variables we don't know here.

@ BraveSirRobin

You're right... bad analogy. WK had all the solutions, fixes, repairs, and outright Rule sets available on their own, and on this forum. They just chose to amputate because a) They wouldn't be the Doctor that invented it. and b) They don't get a great new marketing ploy to pick pockets with, yet again.

I wish I could shake this nagging feeling that they let the rules go to Hades so they could spring this stuff on us, and make us grateful for it.

All the people who are yelling about quitting were going to quit no matter what, they were just waiting for this to come along so they'd have something to b*tch about.

Seriously, you people who are throwing hissy fits act as if constructed tournaments are the only reason you play the game. Do you never play just for fun games? Or (here's a concept) unrestricted tournaments? MechWarrior is A GAME. It's for fun. Have fun with it. If they retire a few sets in constructed tournament play, that's too bad. Move on.

This could have been a lot worse for you whiners. The new rules could have excluded every set prior to AoD. This really could have been MW2.0, but it's not. This is just a new flavor being added to the game.

And frankly, I like the new flavor so far. To the person who said that we may just as well have all the mechs have the same stats and just use pilot and equipment cards to make the game unique and challenging, consider that we haven't even seen these cards yet. They're not stat changers, from what it sounds like. They probably add dynamic elements to the game, such as that pilot who, when combined with her mech of choice, can fire both her primary and secondary weapons at the same time. This adds a ton of flavor to the game, and I think it's well worth the changes.

Personally, MechWarrior was beginning to look a little dull to me. It needed some spice, and I think AoD is just the spice we need to make this game more unique.

Oh, and shut up about MECH KNIGHT WAAAAH :(, This isn't at all like MageKnight. You might as well say that Hero Clix is just MK with comic books if you're going to go saying that the new MW base set.

People, just shut up and enjoy the ride, or calmly get off and walk away. They told you to "prepare for the future" but obviously some of you didn't heed that warning. Take it or leave it. I'm taking it, and I'm going to enjoy it.

Regarding older mechs becoming useless: I say BS. They said specifically they playtested older mechs against equal PV of Gear/Pilot enhanced new ones and they were balanced. I'm gonna wait and see the set before I cry foul.

MECH KNIGHT. Oh, sorry dude, it slipped out....

Sure... I'll take that bet. If any DDM sets get retired/banned/disavowed with the release of Aberrations, I'll send you a Sixo Novacat. What are you willing to put up?

WoTC has observed the quagmire WK has stepped in with retirement and are reluctant to do the same.