[MidnightLich]

Hello folks! We're back. The last time I came here and asked you a First Edition Friday Question was December 2020. A lot has happened since then, and I do apologize for dropping this program when things got busy. But I'm happy to report that we're starting up the Friday questions again, and this time, I have help. Check out this thread for all the details.

One of the things that has consumed the bulk of my time over 2020 was the 1E Long Term Plan. This document outlines our department's current view of First Edition and the issues facing the game, as well as developing plans for how to tackle those issues. It's a big document (twenty pages, I believe), so to help explain it, we've also published a YouTube video presentation.

Today's question is: have you read the plan or watched the video?

There's been some good discussion on the information contained in this plan, but I want to make sure as many people as possible have seen it. I know that a twenty-page document and a forty-five minute video are big asks, so I completely understand why engagement might be down. But is there something specific we could do to help you consume this content? Would a live Q&A / chat session help?

And if you have read/watched, what did you think? What worked for you, and what didn't? This game is your game, and we're just here to keep it running smoothly and evolving. Your feedback is essential to that, so please keep in coming - when and where you can.

I can't wait to read your responses to this, as well as to the future questions my colleagues in the 1E leadership team will bring you. Welcome back, 1EFQ. Here's to more questions, answers, and great discussion.

Until next time, live long and prosper.

-crp

[Iron Prime]

I read it when it came out. At first glance there was nothing major I disagreed with. I've been meaning to re-read it more thoroughly but life and work have prevented me from sitting down to do a more detailed review...

[Smiley]

Does helping out reading through it and commenting before publishing? =)

But yes, I did want to go through it again with all my players to see what nice ideas would float to the top while discussing it.

[winterflames]

I listened to the video. I was driving, so I couldn't watch, but I like a living game, and that appears to be the plan, so we are good.

[BCSWowbagger]

I read it and did not intend to watch the video, but it was pretty slick so I did anyway.

I like the plan, but I'm behind the scenes and helped shape the plan, so that's not surprising and tells you nothing useful.

[Hoss-Drone]

I read this and I can't help but think that my cube draft actually meets a significant amount of the criteria.

I don't know how you're going to meet some of these benchmarks without completely overhauling the game. Not that I'm against it per se (lord knows I've soap boxed about how magic should have bit the bullet and redesigned to eliminate it's draw dependant resource flaw)

Unpopular opinion: I think 1e might be a better game if it had a rule of 3 or 4 in the draw deck.

[Professor Scott]

As a staffer, I got to read the plan before release and made my comments at the time. Very pleased with the overall direction and honored to be a part of it in my official capacity.

[AllenGould]

(Having done the video edit, I have seen it, multiple times )

I read this and I can't help but think that my cube draft actually meets a significant amount of the criteria.

I don't know your cube specifically, but I think having a curated draft/sealed environment is a Very Good Idea.

Personally, I see a lot of the plan as aspirational, rather than benchmark. By which I mean there are elements that are going to be very hard to get 100% of the way there, but if we only get 90%? 70%? 20% of the way there we've still improved the game. There's benefit to having a direction we know we're moving in, because then at least we're not moving *away* from it.

[karnstein]

I read the plan; I liked the content and appreciated how well-written it is.

As I read it, I reflected on my own experience. As a long-time, on-again-off-again, causal player, most of the games I’ve played have been either starter deck or Official Tournament Sealed Deck (OTSD) games.

The starter decks have been a great way for me to introduce new people to the game. I’ve built physical decks by printing out all the PDFs. For a while, most of my engagement with the Continuing Committee (CC) involved checking the Web site to see whether a new starter deck was available. My friends and I would be excited whenever a new starter deck was added to our collection. We’ve missed that excitement now that starter decks are no longer released with the new expansions.

Similarly, for me and my friends, OTSD has been a great way to play the game causally. With OTSD, we had fun building decks from a very small pool of cards, which made deck building easy. Now that the game has moved far beyond the Premier-Alternate Universe-Q Continuum (PAQ) era—and OTSD boxes are hard to find—we long for a modern sealed deck experience.

Given that the plan seeks to recruit new players and support intermediate players, I think both new starter decks and a beyond-PAQ sealed deck experience could be important considerations for the CC moving forward.

[Hoss-Drone]

(Having done the video edit, I have seen it, multiple times )

I read this and I can't help but think that my cube draft actually meets a significant amount of the criteria.

I don't know your cube specifically, but I think having a curated draft/sealed environment is a Very Good Idea.

Personally, I see a lot of the plan as aspirational, rather than benchmark. By which I mean there are elements that are going to be very hard to get 100% of the way there, but if we only get 90%? 70%? 20% of the way there we've still improved the game. There's benefit to having a direction we know we're moving in, because then at least we're not moving *away* from it.

As much as I wanted block to work out and be awesome I think the proof is there that it works for design but it's not in demand for actual gameplay. I think that a constructed variant of my cube would be a good replacement. My initial thought would be to take my cube list, impose a rule of three and then formulate and impose a "columns list" - ie: the carpool is broken into 4 sub lists. List 1 is all the cards you can use all of them in any amount. Then lists 2 is cards that you can only use 1 copy. Lost 3 you can only choose 1 card but use the full 3 copies and list-4 you can only use 1 card, 1 copy. This would provide the appropriate restrictor plate to prevent abuse.

The list would then be rotating and expanding as sets come out. Not all cards get into the format. Only the fun and/or totally benign cards.

[winterflames]

I think that a constructed variant of my cube would be a good replacement. My initial thought would be to take my cube list, impose a rule of three and then formulate and impose a "columns list" - ie: the carpool is broken into 4 sub lists. List 1 is all the cards you can use all of them. Then for lists 2-4 you can only use 1 or 2 from it. This would provide the appropriate restrictor plate to prevent abuse.

This is too hard. Tell me what cards I can use, fine. If there is a way to filter in the search results on the site. Telling me to pick 2 cards from this list, 2 cards from this list, one card from this list, and one card from this list? No. That complicates the deck building too much and I won't get past the first choice step. I have problems enough in a limited format finding a theme for my deck to start the process (see my one Excelsior format deck), adding choice hurdles in the middle breaks the process.

[JeBuS]

As much as I wanted block to work out and be awesome I think the proof is there that it works for design but it's not in demand for actual gameplay. I think that a constructed variant of my cube would be a good replacement. My initial thought would be to take my cube list, impose a rule of three and then formulate and impose a "columns list" - ie: the carpool is broken into 4 sub lists. List 1 is all the cards you can use all of them in any amount. Then lists 2 is cards that you can only use 1 copy. Lost 3 you can only choose 1 card but use the full 3 copies and list-4 you can only use 1 card, 1 copy. This would provide the appropriate restrictor plate to prevent abuse.

The list would then be rotating and expanding as sets come out. Not all cards get into the format. Only the fun and/or totally benign cards.

I'm not opposed to this, but it really is just a more complicated "block".

[Hoss-Drone]

I think that a constructed variant of my cube would be a good replacement. My initial thought would be to take my cube list, impose a rule of three and then formulate and impose a "columns list" - ie: the carpool is broken into 4 sub lists. List 1 is all the cards you can use all of them. Then for lists 2-4 you can only use 1 or 2 from it. This would provide the appropriate restrictor plate to prevent abuse.

This is too hard. Tell me what cards I can use, fine. If there is a way to filter in the search results on the site. Telling me to pick 2 cards from this list, 2 cards from this list, one card from this list, and one card from this list? No. That complicates the deck building too much and I won't get past the first choice step. I have problems enough in a limited format finding a theme for my deck to start the process (see my one Excelsior format deck), adding choice hurdles in the middle breaks the process.

It would be the only way I can see reasonably replicating the cube format. Excelsior was a good idea at it's core - the problem was that 2e doesn't lend well to be restricted since it's already imho a distilled down game.

The experience weve had with my 1e draft cube is that 1e gets MORE fun when you have access to the power cards but in a strictly limited to non-existent fashion.

To be clear though: I'm thinking of this as more of a trek ccg 1.5 - which is what I had in mind with my cube. I ripped out draws and plays mechanics and injected more of 2e's sense of balance in how much you play and draw. Then ripped out anything in 1e that can lock out while injecting back in a lot of 1e's original power cards. The idea of the columns is so you can't have it all, just like you won't have it all in a draft.

The ability to have it all is 1e's achilles heel imho.

[winterflames]

I am just saying that every additional hurdle in the deck building process is a point of no return. The more steps in the process, the fewer decks will actually get made. A flat limit of number of copies is something I can accept since I had that in most of the game's, but it hampers some 1E cards which were intended to be played in multiples. Wormhole and Rogue Borg come to mind. If I can only have 3 Wormholes in the deck, I can't even count on using them once in a game unless I use kahn, STP, or wormhole missions.

But I admit that my Funness Value for games is How Many Played, not How Often Won.

[AllenGould]

I think we probably need to retire "block" anyway, because that includes a few more things (combined theme, etc) than I think we strictly need.

What we have right now is an "eternal" format - cards come into legality, they never leave. Which means the pool will just get bigger and bigger, more and more complicated, more and more powerful.

And that's *fine*, as long as we're aware that this means we're continually increasing the cost of entry. "Hi, come play this game - here's the link to the 30-odd plus expansions dating back decades. You only need to care about a tiny fraction of them, but good luck picking those out!"

All a rotating format does is add an exit point. Cards come into legality, and at some point in the future will fall out. And that gives us a couple easy wins:
1. Assuming we have a steady rate of production, that means our cost of entry stays static. When you rope a new player in, there's X many cards they need to care about, and all of them are our most recent - which theoretically means easiest to understand!
2. Cards leaving reduces the need for a ban list - unless it's cray-cray broken, you have the option of just letting it be good for a couple years and then go away. (Defining the line between "really good" and "cray-cray broken" is left as an exercise for the reader).
3. For established players, this gives them an unsolved format. Right now it seems we're constantly having to invent new factions so that players just don't sit on their old cards and just swap in incremental improvements. Stuff goes away, you have to learn to adapt.

What I think we got wrong about our first try at Block was that we had our window too narrow. Two years works for one of Magic's formats, but they also support every "faction" in every set. (Yeah, you might not get your specific tribe, but every color is in every set.)*

We don't have Magic's thousand cards a year throughput, so we probably need wider window so that if you wanna play Bajoran, you can *always* play Bajoran. (Solving how to maintain some level of support for our seventeen affiliations is also left as an exercise for the reader.)

Point being: we do need some sort of competitive format that isn't full-eternal, because casual players are unlikely to try sorting through thousands of chaff cards.


* except for 2002 when they tried messing with it for two sets (Torment/Judgment)