Ever since the death of My Cards many years ago, I've periodically brought up that the system should be rethought and relaunched. Past discussion has always been philosophical: if we relaunch My Cards, how should we do it? Most recently was 2 years ago on the PC discord, where I had quite a bit of discussion with a few members of the PC. Ultimately, a complete overhaul of My Cards is a lot of effort and the PC isn't willing to prioritize it over other things. I think this is something worth working for though, so over the past few months I've worked out how to move forward on my own. Now discussion can be practical: I am relaunching my cards, what do you think? I have most of it figured out, the few minor gaps I'm planning to fill in along the way. Suggestions are still appreciated
OverviewMy Cards will be a long-term way to play the game without having access to all the cards. While players can and should play to win, it will strive to be the sealed equivalent of casual constructed play. Players will have more and more of their decks completed as time goes on, meaning the meta is constantly and naturally evolving as decks contain more and more of the best cards. To prevent players from eventually having all the cards they could want, My Cards will always take place during a "season." Collections are reset at the start of every season, currently planned for around 11 months. In addition to the long duration, two key distinguishing factors between My Cards and any other way to play: The Merchant and Daily Swiss Tournaments.
The Merchant will be the primary way that players acquire cards for their decks. Players will have a weekly allowance to buy packs and cards from The Merchant. In addition to the money, free packs will be given out every week to bolster collections. The price of packs will stay the same throughout the season but the price of a card price will rise as more players buy it and fall the longer it goes without any purchases. For the first season I have set prices based on a few tangible metrics, but for future seasons the initial price will be based on the card's sales from the last season.
Daily Tournaments will be the primary way to play My Cards. Rather than create a table whenever you want, twice per day a swiss tournament queue will open up for 3-game bouts. The format for these tournament queues will change from day to day: first they are both Fellowship Block, then Movie Block, then Fellowship again. For now, these are the only two formats that My Cards will entertain.
Alright, there's my plan. Here are the details for anyone who wants to know them.
Currency and Collection RebootCurrency will be reworked: "gold" will be singularly for My Cards and "silver" will be turned into "tickets" for everything else (currently only used to cover event fees). Existing gold and silver amounts will have to be cleared out. I had considering doing something with the gold amount as a kind of "years of service" award, but I dunno anymore. Nothing really makes sense except figure it out later and move all gold over to tickets pending a ticket rework. Ticket income will carry forward the same as the current gold income, though new accounts will start with nothing instead of 250. This will serve only to cause a minor delay in new accounts joining a league to make abuse a tiny bit harder.
A new personal collection simply called "Collection" will be created and everything currently in the My Cards collections will be moved there without loss. I have a separate plan to rework this "Collection" into something fun, though I suspect it'll take longer to create.
My Cards RebootMy Cards will run for a "season," current plan is for them to last around 11 months. Players start with 60 gold (packs cost 10 gold), both non-deluxe starters in sets 1 and 7, and one of every pack from 1-10. Latecomers (new accounts) get the same cards without any starting gold. With the possible exception of this starting pool, anything added to My Cards will no longer pop up on Gemp so that those who wish to ignore it can ignore it.
The season will kick off with a My Cards league, either Fellowship or Movie depending on which is next up in the usual Sealed rotation. This will last 2 weeks. Daily swiss tournaments will be changed back to using My Cards (likely with adjusted times). At the end of the league, these daily tournaments ("dailies") will be the only way to regularly play My Cards. Fellowship and Movie will continue to be the only two supported formats.
When the season ends, prizes will be divvied out based on how the season has gone. Most decks should be "completed" for My Cards by then: they won't have everything, but the end result will still be something players can be proud of. Rather than start a new season immediately after, we'll have a 1 month post-season. In the post-season there will be no more income (gold or pack) and the merchant will close up shop. Daily tournaments will continue so that players can enjoy their creations for a time.
While the economy goes home for the holidays, players will get cards from Shadows+ every week and a My Cards Expanded league will run for the whole of the post-season for those interested. Pivoting to a totally different format may seem odd, but there's a lot of upside to this. First, players can continue progressing towards a better deck without creeping the Fellowship and Movie block decks over into full-blown Constructed or slowing the progress in prior months. Second, players can take the smallest step into that format using decks they are already familiar with against other players doing the same. And third, it throws a bone to the players who really enjoy Expanded. Besides all of that, breaks are good.
After the post-season, a new season starts with a reset. Anything obtained in My Cards will be moved to the appropriate place ("Collection" for almost everything, "Trophy" for any lucky masterwork pulls), gold is set to 0, and the cycle begins again with a clean slate. The new season's card prices will be set based on the number of times the card was bought from the merchant and the maximum price the card reached.
There's just one thing: I don't know what to call "My Cards." The name worked great when it was the only personal collection, but now there's 2 and with this reboot there will be 3. "Season" is descriptive and
fine, I guess. Better would be to make something up. Anybody got any LotR-ish concepts in mind? My best idea is that some sort of low nobility would be nice; it isn't "poorman's" format but it certainly isn't "king's" format either. Calling it a "Steward" collection has a negative connotation, though otherwise it would be quite fitting -- we are caretakers of these cards for a time
The Merchant RebootThe Merchant will sell packs and individual cards up to set 10. Pack prices stay the same while card prices can change based on demand. Buying a card indicates that the card is in demand, and will cause the price to go up a small amount. A card not being bought for an extended time indicates that it is not in demand, causing the price to go down a small amount. There will be no way to sell your unwanted cards, for every reason why packs are part of the income plus it's a chore.
I have set the initial prices of cards based on a few metrics which, while not exactly realistic, will allow them to be close enough for a start:
- Booster packs are always 10 gold
- Reflections packs are always 20 gold
- Starter decks are always 30 gold
- Initial prices are set per card within these bounds:
- R+ prices are 15-150
- Rare prices are 12-120
- Uncommon prices are 4-40 (Premium rarity stops at 16 instead)
- Common prices are 1-10
Other than Premium, each rarity has 10 steps of prices. For example, rare base prices are 12, 24, 36, and so on until 120. Oh, and the starters from sets 5 and 6 will have random rares in The Merchant instead of AI rares.
Every time a card is bought, its price goes up by 10% of the
initial price. The merchant will keep track of cards worth a fraction of a coin, but players will always pay in whole coins. A common at 1 gold will sell for 1 gold the first 5 times, but the 5th sale will push the card up to 1.5 and the next player will have to pay 2 (or wait for the price to go back down). There will be no upper limit on price. If a card hasn't been bought in the two weeks, its price will go down by 1% of the
current price at the start of the week (following the same rounding rules). The price increase is what players get for being bold, the price decrease is what players get for being patient.
The main criticism against price changes has been that it isn't fair. The purpose of the merchant isn't to be fair though, it's to be realistic for the meta. If I pay 60 for Goblin Armory and you'd have to pay 70, you may say that's not "fair." However, if I pay my first 60 for Goblin Armory I am not able to pay for Relics of Moria. Or Goblin Swarms. Or Scourge of the Black Pit, or Savagery to Match Their Numbers, or Aragorn's Bow or Secret Sentinels or anything else. You are! And when you do, I will be stuck with the higher prices on those cards. Meanwhile, if Goblin Armory is that much better than any other rare, I
won't be able to pay 70 for my second copy either. Someone else will see that 70 gold is an opportunity and the price will continue to go up.
I think some people will be surprised at how little some of these "power rares" are actually worth on their own, especially compared to filling in 5 core uncommons or buying 6 packs to get a culture established. I wager that doing well will have less to do with having the right cards and more to do with finding the right alternatives.
Income RebootWeekly income will be 20 gold, no longer dependent on logging in. In addition to the gold, every week the server will hand out a free pack cycling through the sets: first FotR, then Mines, and so on until Siege of Gondor, then Mount Doom, then FotR again. A few Reflections packs will be given out over the course of the league too. Late accounts will not get any of the missed gold income, but will get all packs distributed up to the point that they join.
Why do give out pack instead of just increasing the weekly income, you ask? Two main reasons. First, it unifies the community: Fellowship block is more popular than Movie, and this way all players will have a Movie collection whether they want one or not. Since the daily tournament format alternates, may as well put something together with the cards! Second, it makes it easier to balance the costs of rares. This is a year-long event: people need enough cards to make good decks by the end of it. And yet, giving the full amount of gold per week means either allowing players to buy any deck card by card (undercuts the desired environment of My Cards and is probably a losing tactic anyway) or making the most coveted rares so expensive they may as well not be for sale.
There are smaller reasons too. For example, it allows continual progress regardless of merchant strategy, which enables players to save their gold (either for a big rare or in anticipation of price decreases down the road) without necessarily stalling out in the meantime. Players with a terrible merchant strategy are protected from themselves. It also, along with the starting card pool, provides a foundation for players to build on. If I spend my first 150 gold on FP cards and decide to start looking at beefing up my Shadow, I still going to try to buy that Goblin Armory when I've already got 2 rare Nazgul and a few decent supporting Ringwraith cards? Or would it make more sense to spend half as much gold on the Nazgul starter deck and lean into those? I don't
want every player to start with 400 gold and an empty collection. That could be a cool way to play, and those sorts of things can be built up because of My Cards, but it isn't My Cards. A blank slate does not make sense for this environment.
Daily Tournament RebootI don't know why the daily swiss tournaments were created the way that they were. I suspect that they were intended to be, well, tournaments: competitive proving grounds. I won't be using them as a way to determine "who is best" (though that will be known as a result), rather as the way to play My Cards at all. Given that they're not really tournaments in this case, a rename is in order for the dailies. I propose simply "Daily (My Cards)" (whatever My Cards gets renamed to). The on-demand tournaments will stay All Cards. There's another plan for those, but it will have to wait until after the Collections rework
Daily My Cards will always be 3 rounds rather than a "proper" swiss tournament. I think we'll use the "championship" timer, 20 minutes per player? Seems slim, maybe I'll make a new timer with 25 or 30 minutes just for this. We'll see if anyone has trouble with timeouts.
Using these daily tournaments to keep My Cards going is probably the most controversial part of the proposal. It has a lot of positives though. Above all else, my goal in this is to recreate that "local card shop" community. Being on a budget and competing with other players also on budgets is handled fine by the merchant, but that alone is just Sealed+. Gathering in person to play, you get to know your opponents a little bit as the weeks go on and you see the same faces. You tune your deck to the meta, which is changing all the time as players get new cards and tune
their decks to
you. You can't wait to see the look on their faces when you play a
third copy of Ulaire Cantea, and you're surprised yourself when that guy who always bids 0 changes his start and bids 2. Obviously we're not local to an area, so with this we're all "local" to a time.
I know that in a way Gemp already does this: if I can play from 15:00-20:00 and you can play from 19:00-23:00, we will probably run into one another from time to time. The difference is that these overlapping zones of availability don't really give a sense of community. We're just names to one another, playing together because we both happen to be online. If we are specifically meeting at the same time to play the same thing day after day, we're playing together because we are both part of something. I'm not saying that anyone is going to suddenly start saying "gl hf" at the start of every match or anything. Community is not pleasantries. It's not even necessarily getting along -- it's working towards the same thing in spite of the fact that we
don't get along.
There's another big benefit to this too, for everyone: by largely restricting My Cards to particular times a day, we reduce the competition between My Cards and sealed. Or even competition between My Cards and constructed, since this is really the fusion between the two. LotR is uniquely split amongst about a dozen ways to play the game, adding one more to the pot is to split players further. Again, the purpose is community: coming together, not splitting apart. Obviously I want people to play My Cards, and at the same time I don't want them giving up anything else. If anyone else can think of a way to thread this needle, I'd be interested to hear it.
Some would say this is doomed to fail, pointing to the fact that daily tournaments don't run even when people advocate for them in chat despite some attractive prizes. That's true
now, and it's true because the current daily tournaments are essentially pointless. They ask the question: do you want to play a game now, or wait around and play a game later? Prizes generally aren't enough, even before it was easy to get them in other ways. Daily Tournaments were originally created for My Cards, and My Cards died off long before the tournaments did. Changing them to All Cards renewed interest despite their pointless nature. They're just plain neat. I have no concerns about the daily tournaments being a hindrance to My Cards, and I'm actually considering bringing the number of required players from 4 back up to 6 once things get going.
If you still hate the idea, that's okay. It's my idea, not yours
The merchant provides a unique experience, of course, but without the "meeting point" of daily tournaments I don't think My Cards will live up to its fullest potential. Besides, My Cards isn't really "restricted" to the dailies anyway. You can still coordinate casual games and just use My Cards decks.
The thing not quite set here is the timing. There are 3 major regions involved - Europe, Brazil, and US. Right now there are 2 times for the swiss queues, 19:30 and 0:30 GMT. They were done to be evening EU and evening US, which is perfectly reasonable but perhaps not the most representative of when people play... whether they're supposed to or not. I suspect that there are in fact 2 peak server times though, one sometime before 19:30 and another perhaps around 0:30. I'd like to use those for the two daily tournament times, perhaps adding a third time as far away from those two as possible if there's any decent-size player base there.
Prize RebootThe old system used prizes to feed My Cards. There's one obvious problem with this: those who win get prizes to help them win. It had many legitimate reasons for being, but none of them fit the new system. Therefore no cards will be awarded to My Cards. Pending the collection rework, packs and "regular" cards from sets 1-19 will simply be removed from all prize pools. Other than that, I have no interest in reworking league prizes. Pending an All Cards tournament rework, I don't care what happens to those prizes either.
So that's what I'm not doing. What is it am I doing? For the daily swiss tournaments, they are simply "the way to play." Prizes for participating are not necessary. Still, it's not "bad" to have prizes attached even if it isn't my inclination. The current prize structure doesn't appeal to me since players should never be "left out" for performance in a casual setting. If we do prizes, I'd have small prizes distributed by point totals only. As with leagues you will get 2 points for a win and 1 point for a loss. Every 10 points (across multiple dailies, since the max points per daily a person could earn is 6) you will get a prize, about a 50% chance of a foil and a 50% chance of a more traditional "trophy" (both Decipher and PC alternate images, masterworks, tengwar, etc). Foils will go to the "collection" for now, I'm keeping them on only because the merchant will no longer be foiling cards for anyone.
The main rewards will be handed out at the end of the season. I plan for all players to get some loot based on about as many different categories as I can think up: # wins, # games played, value of collection, anything. I'd like to do some kind of ELO to determine who the top players by format, we'll see if that's doable. What will the prizes be? Eh. I dunno. I believe that prizes should be special. The PC believes that everyone should be able to get everything they want. Seeing as the PC runs Gemp, it's pointless to bother fighting on this point. But it means that there's not much left for me to award but more of the same. It's excessive and not very exciting, yet I don't know of any alternatives.
Of course, it's true that there's a world of possibility for customization: adventure path tokens is one I've thought would be neat. The PC has expressed interest in wound tokens, burden tokens, card backs, playmats, anything and everything that one could look at. The trouble is that since these are things that the PC wants to do anyway, they will never stay special as the PC takes them and distributes them out as they see fit. I don't feel I have much choice here but to hitch onto the PC Prize wagon, we'll get whatever they give. The "prize economy" I have no control over, all My Cards prizes will ever be is another way to earn the same things.
There is one thing I plan to do though: badges. Just a little icon to say "thanks for playing My Cards, here are your season statistics: X wins, Y games, Z collection value." A memento. There's that blank "My Account" section waiting for something like that, and I think that even if it won't be a particularly noteworthy "trophy" it'll still be something that players will appreciate.
Okay. I guess that's everything. If I'm able, it'd be nice to do a "partial season" that starts within a few months. In fact, we only
need about half the stuff done -- create a new collection to replace "My Cards", rework The Merchant, move currency around a bit, and change daily back to My Cards. Next most important would be the income rework, then removing the "regular card" part of all prizes (to reduce confusion, they won't go to My Cards anymore regardless). I think once those things are done, My Cards will be successfully relaunched. Everything else is improvement on that base and can wait for the first proper season.
I welcome any and all discussion on this. Fair warning, that doesn't mean I'll be easily persuaded to go a different route. I'm steering this ship now
In the coming days I'll start with the merchant rework and we'll see how it comes along.
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