Subject: A Modest Proposal: How to stop US from happening again Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 11:16:42 PST From: "Chris Warren" To: mtg-strategy-l@wizards.com I wrote a while back decrying the card pool of Urza's Saga, saying I thought it would kill midrange decks and force people into running a combo deck of some sort, hyperspeed to outrun it, or heavy, heavy counters to try to disrupt it. I think we're there. Only thing I didn't catch is that there would be more or less ONE combo deck, but it was clear from the types of cards being printed that something abusive was going to break. The ban list comes out Tuesday to determine the next 3 months, and those who watch this sort of thing tend to agree that Tolarian Academy's going to be banned in type 2 to try to put a stop to what's going on. I won't hazard to guess what else will be done, but I think it's a pretty safe bet based on what the insiders HAVE mentioned that something's going to be done since the DCI feels that this arrangement is bad for the game. And I have to agree there. Any format that boils down to turn 4 kills or a pile of counterspells just isn't much fun. People get frustrated and bored with the lack of options. When I wrote that rant, I called on R&D to stop making sets until they could see what was going on. I think I have a more constructive solution: slow down. Cut development back to 2 sets a year. This has been suggested before, but largely by people who have trouble keeping up with cardpools and who get tired of sets rotating out. That's fine. I suggest development slow to 2 sets per year to allow the following: * More playtest time. As it is, cards tend to go to the playtesters, get maybe a tweak or two, and then R&D does a final round of modifications based on their feedback and shoots the final versions into production. 3 sets a year over 2 allows 50% more time for testing. This means that ALL CARDS CAN GO BACK TO PLAYTEST before being released. The card playtesters saw for Tolarian Academy is NOT the final card that went to print. There was no external brain trust to stop it. * Coincide the last round of playtesting with the month immediately following the pre-release of the prior set. For example, if Exodus was pre-released at the end of June, R&D's final version of Urza's Saga is stamped at the end of July, for a pre-release end of December. This fits the current scheduling from the end of design to release, it just allows more development time before that. Why? Well, within a week of a pre-release, there's a HUGE braintrust of players ready to give feedback on cards. They're not always accurate off the blush, but by 3-4 weeks out, you have a pretty good idea of the environment. This way, the environment can be taken into account for possibly abusable cards for the next set. The further out you can push this, the better, but I'd say by the time a set's tournament legal (5-6 weeks) the primary contenders are definitely established. Obviously, there are downsides: * Fewer releases per year is less excitement, maybe lower sales? I don't know about most other people, but I don't tend to buy per set. Every once in a while, I get some cards, and just get whatever's newest (usually). Occasionally, a set will come in and then be followed with me getting almost none of it (Stronghold was like this for me). We've been on the 3-a-year plan for a while now, so it's hard to know what would happen to overall sales. Any decline could be made up for by people wanting more of a superior product. And, with more time in development, we should end up with a better finished product. And in the end, that's what we all want. A better product. --Chris ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com