We have gotten all kinds of new factions (7) and with the exception of Davion and Steiner, they have some rediculos faction abilities, Awesome heat dials/vent ratings, utterly strange huge hikes in damage.

Anyway, I just read the new Shiro review and it only confirmed my thoughts. New stuff is completly blowing away things before it, not just marginally. Power creep is severely accellerated.

So...Why should I, Dr. Consumer, buy in to this set if the next set is going to make mincemeat of my figures?

how does wizkids, over the course of half a dozen expansions, continue to introduce new units without making things get slightly better each time. Without some sort of creep, you get set after set of he exact same thing, different scuplt. Mistakes are made, some units are too good, and others are junk, but in the end, I don't think oyu can make a game like this without some creep. Set retirement is the way to deal with it though. It continues to clear out some older designs while making way for those stats to essentially be reused on a different sculpt. There's only so many combos of SE's and stats. If there was no creep, sooner or later everything would just begin to look the same.
I think it's just a fact of life in a game of this design.

I hate to say it ... but this is one reason why set retirement is a requirement. I was intially dead set against retirement like most folks. But think about it. If you release a new set and none of the pieces are in any way better than before then you really don't have much reason to spend a large sum of money getting the new stuff. Thus you will have to make units better and better for every single set. With no end in sight. 5 years from now mechs would have a defense of 30 and have attack values of 15 (before adding a pilot with a +5 attack rating). It'd get pretty nuts. With the intro of set retirement ... at least some of the currently-legal power pieces will get phased out ... making room for lower-power pieces to become more useful and thus new units don't have to be uber pieces in order to be powerful and sought after. It helps to keep power creep in check. It might not totally kill it mind you ... but at least put it on a leash. Plus it also is a way to get rid of broken pieces from the past (DF DI Schmitt, SS A4, etc) which weren't costed right for their capabilities or were otherwise broken in some fashion.

It also allows the game to evolve possibly over time. Want to add mechs with three gear slots instead of two? Fine ... the next set and every following set thereafter could be made with the new slots and eventually all the older pieces are phased out thus allowing you to change some fundemental mechanics of the game without requiring a total re-release of the game.

Retirement does stink in the fact that if you play almost exclusively in tournys that a lotta pieces you paid good $ for are now sitting and collecting dust ... but that is the price we will all have to pay from now on in order for this game to remain stable.

Doc,

Usually I agree with you. However, here we're going to be split. While the new stuff is cool, it certainly isn't better than the sets before. Some of the older units are just as powerful, though in different ways. Let's take easy examples.

Speed-
Sylph vs. Hoverbike.
Sylph is faster, VTOL. Hoverbike is harder to hit, cheaper, comparable dial, no Salvage. I can get two Hoverbikes for one Sylph. Identical? No. Comparable? Yes. Which is better? Depends on your situation.

Mechs-
Dereck Hasbani vs. Alpha
We all know Dereck's points, having seen them for 2 1/2 years now. 14" Streaks for 6, 8" Alpha Strike for 5, 23 Hardened, bad heat, 286 points.
Alpha is the new puppy though.
For the example, I added Anastasia for a total of 233 points. There are 6 gear options that either add 38 or 44 points.
So, now we have a 12" Energy for 2-3, a 16" ballistic for 2-5AP, 2 clicks of SU Evade, and a 19 - 21 defense. Better heat. A 10 attack. She needs to roll a 13, and she can't hurt Dereck unless she charges.
On the other hand, Dereck hits her on a 9, and deals her 6 damage, right past her sweet spot, and to a Repair marker. Boom. Now she can hurt him shooting, if she can roll a 12.

How does this contest go? Depends on the players. But in no way is Alpha so completely overwhelming due to being "shiny new"

I have also never heard that any of the Sea Fox, or CJF units were the unit you had to have to be unbeatable.
I like that the fluff gives us a reason for some power creep though. The initial set was farmers and mechanics piloting the ICEs or family heirloom battlemechs that had been hidden in silos. Now as we go along and things are mobilized for war we are seeing New Avalon trained Mechwarriors in modern, new, Battlemechs. They deserve to be somewhat more powerful.

I would rather have power creep than retirement. Retirement is forced upon the players by the company. Power creep is gradual, de facto retirement that hinges on the choice of the players. In that case, if I want to use my old stuff, that's my business if I think I can compete with old equipment when there is better available. That sounds more player friendly. Why should I care if numbers gradually get higher? They are only numbers.

And when you look at the armies of the people who own both units, which do they field in competitive games?

So the answers become:
No.
No.
Sylph

Power creep and retirement both make previous units unusable.

Retirement at least allows your older units to still be usable AND competitive in unrestricted. Power creep just makes them unusable period.

It's also more difficult for the company to continue to keep the game balanced with continual power creep. With retirement they just need to make units that are equally powerful as the ones that are being retired, and they have all the evidence in front of them about just HOW powerful those older units were. Power creep has much more room for error, and you get things like the DF Donars, SS Arrow IVs, BR Sprints, ATVs, pre-vehicle infiltrate nerf DF SM1s, pre-'Mech infiltrate nerf BR Legos and Bart Bradshaw, pre-pog stacking nerf SS Towed AAAs and SH Towed Artillery, etc. Power creep is inherently more likely to result in a small set of broken units in a set, rather than a balanced set. Falcon's Prey and Age of Destruction were both designed with set retirement in mind, and they are both much more balanced sets than previous ones.

-= Lunatic

So you can make mincemeat of people playing with pieces from the last set. ><

LOL, j/k.

What is a competitive army then? Would real competitive armies ever field either one now in todays enviroment? HBS can't be used in restricted events and a Sylph really isn't that great when you can get ATVs for less points. Would I rather have 2 HBS or 1 Sylph all depends on what type of army I am building.

Back on topic, I don't think there is a massive power creep going on. Retirement is what will save this game from massive power creep. And the Shiro isn't broken, an agility mech will cause it fits in base contact(can anyone say Arnis?). At least WK is trying new things with factions. I highly doubt that we will ever see faction ablities again as Faction Pride cards preform the same function. Where is the power creep?

Who needs arnis? Plenty of cheaper options. Heck, you can get 2 Mjolnirs for less than the price of that shiro, and they'll rip him apart.

-Nick

1st, Units in this set are not any more powerful than previous sets. Where is the broken artillery unit? Where is the broken infiltrator? There are definitely some powerful mech/gear/pilot combos but nothing earth shattering.

The overall most powerful mech (IMO) from AoD would have to be Caber + Tara Campbell + AA Targeting + HL Faction Pride card = 320 points for a walking behemoth of death. However, put this mech up against similarly costed Bounty Hunter and who would win? My money would be on Bounty. Like Xyberbratt pointed out, these are just new twists on old ideas.

And I also agree 100% with Topgun, the issues you raise prove why set retirement is necessary. Without retirement, WK would eventually run out of "new twists on old ideas" and their only option to entice you into buying the new set would be an overall power creep.

Well, I think the SC Mjolnirs would have a hard time cracking the Hardened, but the point stands, that there are plenty of options for dealing with this kinda 'Mech. Most of the basic DA-era tactics are still viable now. TrackBikes, Sylphs, and Saxons to lock 'em down, artillery or RHDM to knock 'em out.

I used Arnis as it seems to be the mech everyone thinks of when they want an Agility mech. Plus it came to mind quicker and is easier to spell than Mjolnir :)

So to have a competitive army (or even a tourney legal army) I will need to continue to buy new units because WK can not balance the new units they release.

Retirement ensures that WK will not fix or change their playtesting. Unbalanced units will continue to slip through.