]This threads entire purpose is to discuss the pros and cons of creating a cycling system for the V-Sets. I want to know what y'all think about this idea and is it something y'all think could be beneficial for the game and community, as they are separate entities. Please give me your thoughts and feel free to bring up questions about this idea.

It could be done, but I don't think it works like it does for cards. The characters are meant to be played together in factions, and taking away options just creates other problems. Better to work within the system.

Still, we used to run limited set tournaments, those can be fun. They do get weird meta's though that tend to not be any more fun overall than the normal. In fact less generally because after one tournament the cream rises and the meta sucks. But I like the out of the box thinking there.

It's an interesting idea, but I think it kind of makes things more complicated - like if the set with Kelborn and Caedus was shifted out, Mandos and Sith would both be significantly weakened, and I don't think either of those pieces are on anyone's dislike list. I'd rather shift the meta with new pieces or have an errata set (which wouldn't be very big - mainly rapports on Poggle, Panaka, and Vong Scouts, upping CDOs in cost a little, and a few other things).

I know I posted after you, but just to reiterate a point I made, just as in magic, there would be no reason caedus and Kelborn couldn't be returned in future sets. I hope I am making sense, lol

^+1 exactly!! Thank you!

While I'm all in favor of creative thinking, and rebalance or new ideas;
and, I understand "The Map is not The Territory" (magritte, korzybski, chomsky, barthes...)

I dislike the PocketyMonsteriru or MtG 'artificially imposed fashion sense' - I dislike the imposed creative destruction to the game,
which ostensibly is only to 'print more corporate scrip'. Further, this lead to an elitist culture and hipster culture in the player-base, while combining with the 'win at any cost' poor sportspersonship - this lead to an exclusive clique vibe I strive to avoid, and less fun.
Rather, I like the appeal of Chess (which change little in the time since the early Egypt and Nabatae area, which is where the game come from, although some think that Indus Valley may also originate... and a similar game exist in South America...).
- a few piece types, but many ways to compose them.
Something simple that anyone, from any age, gender or background can play, and have fun with.

That said, I prefer SWMinis to W40K or MtG, because SWMinis has more a fun acephalous culture, and is simple.
There is no forced obsolescence, or 'corporate scrip making' any more, yet the game live.

This is just my twocents, and hopefully i don't "rain on your parade" (maybe a sunshower instead if at all?)
and, when you get to making new stats/abilities, or new miniatures, I will be glad to reflect further.

@Jonnyb815
An interesting set of perspective, VSET redux/2.0
a whole clean slate, now there is in the original, 15 sets of 'VSet'
(plus, all the body of other "somewhat less official" custom that are on Bloomilk, either in the Custom thread, or in the stat-search)

Errata won't stop the 'win at all costs' acumen that emerge in the meta-player 'competitive' base,
though some errata to limit squad constructions/composition might help... I envisage something similar to the W40K force composition,
so that pieces can be limits according to the CEs etc...
though,
I also understand the 'simplicity is best' design angle that many customisers strive for in making custom VSets or stats/minis.
The Chess-like appeal, is a huge point of difference and drawcard to the game.

I am with you guys also. THat is part of the reason i quit playing magic.

there is also the issue of time and investment (time) return.

Magic is a professional game made by a professional company. No doubt they spend a lot of time discussing the meta game for each cycle, testing which cards they want in, what mechanics are going to be at the forefront and making sure that the cards they want at the top are actually there.

We barely have the man power to make a 54 card set every 6 months and every set there are unforseen eventualities, intereactions that were unforseen and the usual "OMG, WTF this crap is OP'd games broken etc etc".

If we reduced the number of characters we would have to take an extensive amount of time balancing what was remaining. We don't have that time as a luxury.

In addition, this was tried 2 years ago at gen con in a fashion where certain blocks of sets were used for a set of tourneys. The tourneys were not well attended and the squads plays had a surprising amount of similarity. When you take away synergies its surprising, and often unintuitive, what floats to the top.


I guess i'm one of these people who sees SWM for a massive puzzle, even for designers. You never know what people will gravitate towards because we don't have the time to really understand it. We don't have 100's of people playing it and even when there is as much playtesting as there was for set 10, I'm not really sure what will happen in the coming meta. Balance the figs against their factions and what is released and, if you do your job right, every faction gets some new toys and the meta shifts to what the best players are using in their area.

If we are to cycle sets, the same thing would happen except some factions get some of their better toys than others. In order to balance the field you would have to give things to the factions that lose their best toys and then make sure it does what you want them to. You end up designing the meta game.

Right now, the meta game isn't really designed, its encouraged, but the complexity of the game coupled with the experience that adding something so OP'd that it forces the meta to shift tends to be polarizing and counterproductive to attracting people to play.

So I'm not sure there is an appreciation for just how much work that would entail to create a balanced and fun game with a restricted number of pieces. From some of the responses already it doesn't seem very favorable.

I think Les's point about players not on the boards is a good one for this discussion. I've said it before about errata, disseminating that kind of information to every player is not easy. Lots of people don't visit the boards. They might get on twice a year to PM Jason how many V-sets they need, but that's it. They might not even do that, they might get in touch with him via Facebook or some other way. You can see this when the map lists are changed and somebody shows up to a tournament with a now-illegal map. That's a thing that absolutely does happen sometimes. Usually they just borrow a map from somebody else. If someone shows up with a squad that is mostly illegal because it's been rotated out, that's a harder problem to solve.

Deri also makes a great point about the amount of work involved.

The fact that a lot of people have also said that they would be less interested in the game if this happens makes me really think it's a bad idea also. This is the kind of thing that will immediately lose players, and might or might not gain players in the long run. Nobody will say "Oh they've started rotating sets? I'm in!". At best, it improves the meta and helps retention, but it doesn't really help that immediate exposure, and I don't think the debatable retention bump is worth the immediate loss of players.