I have noticed a lot of complaints about the set retirement deal and i would have to agree with PC Chapel about it hurting players who enjoy faction purity. I think Storyline tourneys should be faction pure hence the whole "storyline" idea. If they do not promote faction purity why bother with it all just paint all the units the same color if the factions do not matter and people cherry-pick the uber units. Want an example? this past week I played in a tourney where three players fielded SSw Arrow IV with the DF counter part 3 DF atv squads, Mason Dunne and pick a VTOL cannot remember right now. I mean come on what is the explanation behind that force. All of those guys have nearly every unit in existance do they play pure... nope. Enough ranting i am off to play Galactic Civilizations.

No I do not play Highlanders. I normally do not play faction pure but usually limit my army to 2 factions in it. It all depends on my mood. I have played faction pure on several occasions.

About the discrepencies with newbies in the faction pure arguments, why don't veteran players help the noobs with figures...

Wow, somebody actually believes the company line on set retirement. Do you work for WizKids??

Set retirement is not really supposed to help new players. Its main goal is to force veteran players to buy more figs. At the same time, and here is the brillance of this plan, it reduces WK's development costs. They can re-issue the exact same units (not sculps) in upcoming sets. Brillant.

Faction Purity requirements would drive sales and improve player involvement in a big way. Unfortunately, WK is too out of touch to see this. Large organizations often have trouble seeing the forest thru the trees.

Their monthly schedule should look something like this:

1) Faction pure hth (w/sideboard)
2) all star hth
3) sealed booster
4) Storyline battle, faction pure, with new factions featured every month.
5) occasional unrestricted, encourage large battles

A tournament schedule like this would push everybody's buttons. Tie it all into the fluff and you will have a very energized and competative player base. And competative players will buy boosters.

And THINK about the singles/ secondary market. Where does all this product come from?? Boosters, what else. Most of the local stores around here get an extra case or two just for single sales. An active secondary market in non-LEs does benefit WK.

Set retirement will kill booster sales and this game. Why buy boosters if you know all those pieces will be "retired" (notice how they never say banned) relatively soon? Now I will go staright to the singles market and pick up the dozen or so must ahves from each set. I don't want anymore JES II missile carriers.

Wow, you really believe WizKids is out to destroy itself? How naive do you have to be?

Wake up and smell the coffee, pal, this move was financially driven. That's a fact. No one disputes it. Problem is, a stupidly vocal majority of this community finds it reprehensible that WizKids wants to continue making money. What they fail to realize is that WizKids is a BUSINESS. They exist to make MONEY. Oh good lord, I said it.

However, it was not a PURELY financially-driven move. Another big reason for the change was, in fact, a desire to give new players a reasonable jumping-on point. If new players only have to buy from three expansions and one base set to be competitive, they'll feel much more safe jumping in than if they're going up against players with ten expansions' worth of pieces from which to draw. New players buy boosters, WizKids makes money. Veteran players probably continue to buy boosters, WizKids makes money. MechWarrior continues to get made and supported, and -- you guessed it -- WizKids continues to make money.

One good way that WizKids could get themselves even more cash, while making a concession to the players, would be to allow venues to buy extra prize support for venue-supported events. That way, venues can run whatever type of events they want to run, players can run whatever pieces they want to run, and they can still win prizes. Venues can charge entry fees for the tournaments to offset the cost of the prize support (and even make money off it) and everyone walks away happy. This would be in addition to the standard two or three events a month WizKids sponsors out of pocket.

Oh no, that's right. WizKids is out to destroy the game that they spent so much time and money to build up. That's right, what was I thinking?

Ok to answer Ian-DV8, If you are a republic player answer me this what kind of effective infiltrators do you have? What kind of mortars do you have? What kind of fast transport do you have?
The answer is none.

With being left out of CA and being a late comer to the game in DFA we dont benefit from these new developments. Here was my force.

Mason Dunne
3 Rots Balac Vtols
4 DF ATVS
1 BR Saxon
1SW mortars
1BR trike

I have no 1 cap hover tranny which would be nice(any type of hover tranny actually), dont have any type of effective infiltrating infantry and Rots is hardly the kind of arty powerhouse that needs to be denied such a unit. I also hope everyone gets mortars eventually it is such a basic unit.

No, Wizkids just doesn't know what its doing. This is what happens when biznussmen (and I use that word "men" loosely) who don't really know the market start to make decisions. Its refered to as a "bad call" in MBAspeak.

Companies make bad decisions all the time and this is probably going to be one of them. Its easy to see where WK is trying to do with set retirement. I just don't think its going to get them where they want to be. They have managed to loose the collectable part of the game. Its now more like disposable.

There are so many add-ons that WK could sell at a tidy profit:

1) 3d terrain
2) scenerio books
3) optional rules
4) battle maps

These would just be the tip of the iceberg. But they would require a little work and creativity. Set retirement is the easy way out.

Ok... I've tried to stay out, but I keep getting dragged back in.

Cmd Steerling. Do you know what ROTS will get during FP? Or the next set? NO. Neither do I, nor ltrain, nor anyone else. Except the designers at wizkids. According to the chat, they are very aware of which units will be retired, and where the factions stand on type, adn number of units per faction per set. Can you actually say what you have right now will be all that you will have in the next 2 sets? (which is probably when we will feel any type of set retirement)
Again, I believe that set retirement is the best choice of the limited options that wizkids has. I really appreciate the fact that they have given us at least a years notice to these proposed changes.

Ok dude adorabilly you i was just answering the idea behind Rots players taking other types of units in a campaign in which Ian-DV8 thought there was no reason to have units from other factions in there forces.

I think you jumped the gun on this dude I personally think SH and Rots will get some serious lovin or rather better get some in FP.

I dont however think retirement is at all nessesary. Frankly there are so many more things to keep this game going.

1) new units/ scupts
2) more of the old favorite sculps
3) new SEs and new SE combination-nothing is unfair as long as you pay the points.
4) Campaigns as Unrestricteds(a compromise I suggested)
5) TrevortheOkays BMs suggestion- Pay for play in additional tournaments aka a fee for prize support
6) Requiring Faction Purity(although i dont support this fully faction pure events would help and increase collections)

Things Retirement will not do.
1) Level the playing field for new players-yeah maybe for a day but, a vet will take a new guy nine times out of ten.
2) Stop power gaming....the ebay warrior will still exist and the cheese will always be found as long as the player who thinks of it is still breathing.
3)It will NOT get WK more buisness look at STORMFOX's poll 70+% will lessen or cease their purchasing. Only six out of the several hundred people polled will buy more.

All that did for them is lessen the amount of people that will quit or qre quitting outright.

If anyone remembers the Battletech CCG, they had a good idea. The CCG had just about as many factions as MW:DA. The CCG had a specific faction starter and all the boosters were random. The major way they could get around the "I bought a booster and only got one card I could use" problem was the levels of factions. They broke it down into Generic - Clan/IS - Specific Faction.

Personally, I play mostly for fun so I make sure to play faction pure and to include at LEAST one 'mech. I think it should be called Tankwarrior if anyone plays without mechs.

So once I my DA base set is retired what do I do with my 5000 Figs? Decorate the wall? Donate them to charity? Kiss the money, hard earned I might say, goodbye.
To stay competitive dish out more?

I like the idea of attracting new players. It keeps it fresh and fun! But cost is an issue with me, after the buy in with the base set I buy about 1-15 boosters of the others as time goes along. It gets me new units and gives me new options for force design.

But retirement has me leary of buying new peices with 80% of my forces slated with retirement. Yes WizKids is in business, but my wallet can only support so much.

@ Cmd.Sterling
Hey ived in hawaii for thee years man that place is nice, but back to the matter at hand. O.K. so your a ROTS player and your major concern was thier lack of infiltrating, hover transports, and mortar units well the Highlanders have two out of three of those and they are allies sooo. Look my major complaint is cherry-picking the Uber units from faction to faction and using them even though you have plenty of units to form a Faction pure force. I have no problem with someone who has a hodgepodge collection if thats all they have, hell at my venue I give away blocks of my stuff to noobs (Faction Pure blocks) to get them started. I have found that Faction purity increases trade amongst players as they try to get this unit or that unit. For example I know that if i pull anything Highlander i can trade it because that is all one of the players at my venue will play. On a unrelated note anyone else ever notice that when ltrain posts or starts a thread he seems to get everybody riled up one way or another, I think he may be Drow. Always stirring the pot. Oh well it makes for interesting reads.

I disagree with set retirement entirely, its the reason why i stopped playing Magic. whats the point in spending lots of money on new figures if there only going to get retired later. what are players going to do with all their previous figures, retirement is nothing more than a way to make extra money out of people.

Any way as more expansions come out the more new figures for each faction come out meaning purer armies, it would allow a Steel Wolves player to actually have a Steel Wolves army rather than Wolves, Mercs and a smattering of other units.

Also if that each expansion the units get slightly stronger and the points total for games increase you're gonna need more figures and doesn't make sense that you would want a varied assorment rather than having the same form the current expansion.

As well there are going to be some players who the prevoius figures. Personally I like the Steel Wolves Mist Lynx (Koshi) but if it's set is retired i'm not going to be able to use it anymore and heve to settle for something like the Wasp instead.

I've stated this on another thread. I do not have a problem with set retirement if it means never having to see br trikes and kenneth medchelke ever again. ;)

I think that WK is going to far though when it comes to the events that will be affected by set retirement. If they did an unrestricted HTH and a restricted HTH once a month, to me, that would be fine.

Storylines/Campaigns have their own problems. I don't think faction purity fixes the issue because it forces new players to play an army that they might not have viable pieces for. I think the best thing for storylines is some requirement within the rules (army must contain 1 mech of the faction, army must consist of at least 200 pts of the faction, etc). This lets the old players play the models that they have, and doesn't place a burden on the new players that might not have enough playable units for faction pure.

Skaven13