First, no flaming or trolling please. I can see why Kerensky left now.

People are complaining about what Wizkids feels they have to do as far as retirement goes to keep themselves a viable entity. For some of you, you do not buy any of the reasons that were stated, including the design control that this game desperately needs.

Well, I am throwing down the gauntlet.

If anyone has a better idea to give the tournament players that already have most everything already a reason to buy more figs, rather than use the best of the best that has already been made, ideas that will not run out eventually like new SECs and Faction Abilities, without overly complicating the game, and without power creeping, then I would love to hear it.

Lets see what you got.

Personally, I think set retirement is the way to go to keep the game viable. I'd rather have retirement than constant powercreep.

How Wizkids implements it and how they have handled the release of information about the set retirement... that is where I think the main problem lies.

Lack of information (when exactly does it come into effect, when is the new base set scheduled, will Wizkids guarantee a set # of unrestricted events a month, etc) and condescending and repeated statements (ie. this is not banning, when in all effects it is) have led to the paranoia about the coming change.

If Wizkids had done a better job of handling the release of the info, then it would of been a much more palatable thing for the average player to handle.

As it stands now, it is the ROTS being featured in CounterAssault fiasco all over again, on a larger scale.

So I think Set Retirement is the best option, but I would of handled it differently and presented the players with a fait accompli, listing all the info, instead of allowing all this negative speculation and then having to go into damage control on the PR front.

PS: @ ltrain: What's up with Luftvier? Was he banned or did he voluntarily take a break from the boards? I've seen posts that imply both options...

iTrain--in which context are we talking about retirement...on a per-set basis, or on a per-figure basis?

I believe that instead of this retirement method that WK is employing, it should instead go the route of making all Tournaments require faction pure forces, including the use of mercenaries.

This would limit the use of cheese, because people would not be able to throw together an army of SS Arrow IV, Balacs, DF Donars, Arnis, and a BR Lego. Each faction has a few powerful units, but I believe that the real 'cheese' happens only when multiple factions use their uber units together. Each faction also has a good method of countering other factions, making it a fair environment where everyone can have a chance with their faction.

In order to help people play faction pure...they should offer boosters or starters that are pure faction, and you get to pick the box of the faction you want. The contents of these boxes should be random, but there should be no uniques. With no uniques, people would be able to buy faction pure so they can get forces put together, but if they want random units or uniques, they can still go the standard booster route. That way regular boosters still have uses, and faction-pure starters/boosters are still beneficial to buy.

Using this would promote more faction nationalism (for lack of a better word right now), make the game look better, make mercenaries have a bit more of a purpose, (why call them mercenaries when your entire force is of 5 factions anyway?), be more purposeful in terms of fluff reasons, and get rid of all this 'cheese'. And with the faction pure packs, new players can get a tournament, faction pure force put together in a more cost effective way, which will draw more newer players to the game as well as keep the older ones still interested.

I believe that in an attempt to solve these 'cheese', and game-entry problems, WK is overreacting. They are essentially treating the headache by chopping off the head.


And to make the game fun and interesting still, I believe they should make Run and Charge 1.5 the movement, instead of double (reflects CBT), put in new SE/Special Abilities, and introduce weather effect cards, like they have in MK 2.0. But that is other rambling for other threads.

I move for Faction Purity. force them to adapt to a faction, and if make them, buy more boosters to get stuff they need for said faction.

Faction pure always struck me as good for the game, except for newbies. If adopted, there would need to be faction starters/boosters, which is unlikely to happen so there are so many factions. Odds are, certain factions will be taken, but not some of the others. This bad for WizKids, which is why I believe this idea will not work. I still wish it was faction pure, because I am allowed to wish for things like that.

Forcing Faction purity is not really an option IMO. Selling faction boosters, while it would be nice, isn't an option either. The cost overhead for something like that I would think would be tremendous. People need to realize the difference between a good idea and good business decisions. Faction boosters are not a good business decision, some factions would not get bought, it would greatly raise the cost of packaging etc.....

I don't like the idea of set retirement but will it be good for the game? I can't answer that right now, I'll have to wait and see. Will I continue to play and buy boosters, yes. Will I buy more or less, I don't know.

I agree that forcing faction purity would be a good thing in reducing the amount of cheese played in tournements by effectively banning allstar armies.

But it would have the detrimental effect of being harder for newbies to become competive.

IMHO, I would like to see wizkids do something to encourage faction purity, but I don't want to see them make it mandatory. Perhaps make storyline events faction pure, perhaps give all the factions abilities like liao if the "real" Davion, Kurita, Wolves etc replace the splinter factions, something along those lines.

But I had pondered the idea of faction pure boosters and starters in the past and talked about it with other players, and we couldn't see how it would be a financially viable option, as much as we would like to see it.

As for retiring specific units as opposed to whole sets? I'm against that, with the exception of broken units that everyone agrees are too powerful. And even those can be fixed by errata'ing the cost of the unit instead of banning it. If Wizkids banned a lot of individual units to drive booster sales, think of how much work it would be for BM's to go through a list of a 100 or so banned units instead of just looking at set insignia. And would it be all snipers banned, or just the merc sniper? Basically, I feel that individual banning would just be more complicated and not worth the effort considering the # of units that would have to be banned in order to spur competitive players to buy more boosters.

If power creep is the issue

-I move to ban specific units from play.
-I would not support mandatory faction pure play, except if the scenario called for it.

If WK wants to move towards set rotation

-Support at least weekly events with the option to have more(5 max)
-Make set rotation optional(at the BMs discretion)
-Give us back Participation LEs(even at a higher cost, say 7.50-10.00 per LE)
- Make Campaigns unrestricted events.

At the very least, make more than two events availible per month. It should be at least 4, or weekly. 1 sealed, 1 restricted HtH, 1 campaign, 1 unrestricted. Something different every week.

Here's my belief:

I believe that MORE events per month may sway the player on the fence who is about to quit, and encourage them to stay, despite set rotation, since there would be more reason to do so than 1-2 events per month.

I say WK should meet us halfway on these issues. The thing about the Approved Play System is that it benefits both sides(we buy product, WK organizes play), and if there are more benefits to both sides for doing so, then I think there is a chance for Approved Play to flourish, despite set rotation.

At the present, with only 2 events to sign up for in April, i think a lot of players feel that the negatives about WK's approved play outweighs the benefits.

I know this thread is supposed be about other ideas instead of retirement so I'm sorry.

I just can't see any other possible alternative that makes sense. Besides WK's has already made up their minds about it. I haven't seen one really decent idea in all of the threads that have popped up since the announcement last week. WK's needed to do something to keep the game fresh. Was retirement the best option? Who knows, we don't have any idea what other options they considered. Talion made a good point, would a list of banned units or errata'd units be better? To someone who has a large collection that started in Dark Age it might sound better but it really isn't. I wouldn't want to be the BM that has to verify every piece of every army at every event, it would be even worse if they just changed the cost. The BM would then have to add up everyones army total. OUCH! I have a large collection myself and will be very sad when retirement does take effect, oh my poor Scorchers, but I also "trust" the makers of the game to do what is in the games best interest regardless of what "we" might think is in "our" best interest.

@Fenris

Nice suggestions, especially about the # of events and the return of participation LE's...

My only issue is "-Make set rotation optional(at the BMs discretion)"

If they did do this officially, why would anyone play at a venue where the BM was using set rotation? Assuming of course they had a choice of venues, I know I'm spoiled somewhat with the multiple venues in my area. But why would a BM choose to implement set rotation if it was a voluntary option? IMHO, this one point would invalidate the whole concept of set rotation, which is to drive sales and provide a means of rebalancing the game and introducing new factions.

i feel everyone has jumped the gun i they said that a basic set is good for roughly 2.5 years and the they would rotate sets out as new set came available then at the earliest we would have any thing to worry about would be February 2005 when the set after jade falcon came out when they would make DA &FFE non turny legal except for unrestricted which would a new basic set so people just sit back and wait to see how this playes out

Timmy,

After re-reading the chat transcript and original announcement, I did find the part that the base set would be good for about 2.5 years, but none of your other statements. They did make the statement that the latest 3 expansions and latest base set would be good, but if your assumption that the set after Jade Falcon is the new Base that would retire not only DA and FFE but also DFA. I am waiting to see how, and when, they implent this before makeing any judgements. I do agree that increasing the number of sanctioned events (and including 1 unrestricted) every month will help smooth over some of those ruffled feathers and would be good for the game, as would returning the participation LE's (even at the cost of the championship ones - which would also limit the amount of "cheese" played). I hope you don't take this as a flame, because I don't mean it as such, and I too am adopting the wait and see additude. Hopeing for the best, weele

In order to sell more boosters, I would never exclude any faction from a new set. In fact, I would add new factions while at the same time increasing the number of units per set. With 2 sets per year, I think it would be alright to have more units. I would also give each faction, new and old, roughly the same number of units per expansion. At least it would keep oldsters buying. When LI came out, SC only got 8 or 9 units total. I ended up not buying that much from LI, maybe 10 boosters tops.

On the subject of new faction introduction, I think the choice of the first major House introduced into MWDA (Liao) was a mistake on WK part. House Liao was not as popular as some of the other great houses/clans in CBT. Just imagine if WK brought out the JF first instead of Liao. Maybe they would have sold enough so that we wouldn't be in the predicament we are today.

On a related note, I would also bring in sculpts from CBT that people would actually want to see (i.e. Highlander, Raven, Loki, Daishi, Nova Cat, Fafnir....). The fugly sculpts of past sets (i.e. ICE mechs like the dumptruck mech) can be a great deterrent for buyers, especially if the chance of pulling such a POS is high.

I would also quit making crappy units as well as uber units. Increase the number of at least semi playable units and the buyer is happy. CA improved on the other sets in this regard; I ended up buying a whole case of it, my first case of anything.

Faction purity would be good for the game itself, but I don't think it would push more boosters. Faction boosters would definitely sell though, especially for newbies and vets alike.

Intead of faction starters (wich I'm for) they could sell Core Faction Starters, faction pure, where the is no randomness. You should find the basic units af a faction (who chooses is a problem) , lets say 2 mechs, 2 or 3 vehicules and o infatries. Always the same (this is not to be producad at large scale). This shall help newbs getting into the game and pple like me who cannot find the BR repair vehicule (wich is a core unit to BR) being sure to get one.

Those peices are taken from the retired sets and are legaly playable.

I know that it could be costly but it can be managable.

Regards Xtatika