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In my area Teams is an extremely popular event. In fact, most players will choose Teams over T1-2P. Here, we've found Intro Prep to be a burden that offers very little actual benefit.

• Because this phase is unique to this one event, we always have players that get confused about Intro Prep resulting in wrong play and/or questions
• It adds 2-5 minutes of play where the game doesn't progress. We usually have tables time out, which makes the extra time taken for intro prep appear to be a detriment to the game

In addition to my observations locally, it seems that different regions use different rules for intro prep, playing it differently across the country. This adds problems when we play together at Nationals.

In case there's any question, I'm fully in favor of eliminating Intro Prep from the Teams format.

It really doesn't add 2-5 minutes of game play at all. Usually people have nothing to play and pass. Usually it takes under a minute in my experiences. And players are always going to be confused about rulings, gameplay, and situations honestly I don't think that's the categories fault. Finally its so unique to TEAMS and I have never heard anyone complain about it, where is all the disapproval coming from all of a sudden, I haven't heard any.

It certainly helped in that regard, but intro-prep has been a part of TEAMS since before Mayhem was even made.

If you read my original post, please see edits--I should have been more clear on a few points.

--It keeps the team that goes second from being at a disadvantage in terms of set up. For example, to me it would be frustrating to watch the other team do a bunch of drawing on their two turns while I'm sitting in the last seat with Golden Cherubim in my hand because there was no intro-prep for me to activate it.

I am one of the proponents of removing intro-prep, and honestly don't feel that this particular issue is an 'issue' as is being put forward.  This is not a unique situation to TEAMS, it is in all categories, and part of the advantage of going first (hence the shift of who draws first).  Further, it relies on anecdotal cases where the player has their counter or key piece and yet is also chosen to go last due to soul count (which often would not be a choice their opponents make, due to the ability to draw on turn 1, so almost always this would be the holder's team's choice).  We can always imagine cases where there is a disadvantage being the last player at the table to go, but that does not necessitate a rule change and is not actually based on a consistent pattern in-game, due to the need to actually draw said counters and be put in the four-hole.

Further, I put forward that intro-prep actually benefits the speed decks and perpetuates their use in TEAMS more than anything.  Last year, my brother and I played super-speed-Disciples, and the games where I started my first turn at or near max hand size was incredible, and greatly aided by an intro-prep phase.  As with all categories, your opponent still has to draw those counters, and my ability to use all of my crazy drawing in an intro-prep to set up further drawing in the following upkeep phase, which made sure I had everything I needed by my first actual prep phase and I had whatever I needed for that first battle (and every battle afterwards).

I don't see an actual benefit to the category from having intro-prep (except with old-school Mayhem plays), and see more benefit in removing it (limits speed's options, does not actually cause constant counter-strife, alignment with normal play, etc.).

Whoa... seriously? So what will be the determining factor? Majority wins? Two-thirds of the House? This seems a bit drastic out of the blue, and believe me this is coming out of nowhere for people like me.

The team that wins TEAMS at Nationals gets to decide.

Just kidding... 

I believe it was brought up as part of a concerted effort to continue streamlining the game and the rules. We have a pretty good level of Elder/playtester involvement right now and several projects are being worked on to iron out some of the wrinkles that still exist within the rules as well as issues that come up with outdated wording for special abilities on older cards. Why it was presented now is because if a change were to be made, we would want to start the new rule right after Nationals.

As far as I know, any change like this would need to be approved by Rob before happening. He has informed the Elder group that he is open to eliminating it. I will let Gabe expand on any other input Rob shared as he was the one to contact Rob before presenting this proposal.

If that's what this is about then that's fine but then consideration should be taken to streamline rules so that the second and consecutive players always draw first.

Quote from: The Guardian on June 23, 2015, 03:55:30 PM

--It keeps the team that goes second from being at a disadvantage in terms of set up. For example, to me it would be frustrating to watch the other team do a bunch of drawing on their two turns while I'm sitting in the last seat with Golden Cherubim in my hand because there was no intro-prep for me to activate it.

I am one of the proponents of removing intro-prep, and honestly don't feel that this particular issue is an 'issue' as is being put forward.  This is not a unique situation to TEAMS, it is in all categories, and part of the advantage of going first (hence the shift of who draws first).

--and--

Quote from: kariusvega on June 23, 2015, 06:19:25 PM

how does intro prep work?

This is why I'm in favor of eliminating Intro-prep. I really feel the cons of it being unique to it's category far outweigh the limited pro's

This is why I am in favor of extending Intro-prep into all categories. It fixes both the concerns that Redoubter has raised about the going-first advantage in all categories and RDTs concern about TEAMs being distinct.

I vote to stop calling it intro prep and instead change the basic rules to not allow an attack on your first turn (preferably in all categories). This is already the case in MTG, the place most Redemption players will be recruited from, and has never caused any confusion.

*EDIT* I may be mistaken about it actually being a rule and not just that there is no way to get a creature with Haste down on your first turn most of the time. Regardless "you can't attack on your first turn" seems simple, coming from the guy who is at the front of the simplicity parade waving the flag.

Quote from: EmJayBee83 on June 23, 2015, 07:01:53 PM

This is why I am in favor of extending Intro-prep into all categories. It fixes both the concerns that Redoubter has raised about the going-first advantage in all categories and RDTs concern about TEAMs being distinct.

Quote from: Gabe on June 23, 2015, 12:35:22 PM

(We are only evaluating this for Teams and not considering adding intro prep to any other categories at this time.)

The fact that we won't even consider extending intro-prep to other events means that harmonizing event rules is not an important issue.

I am strongly in favor of keeping the intro-prep phase, and echo the sentiments of Justin, MJB, YMT, Pol, etc.  They've laid out some good reasons, and I don't have much to add.  I agree with the "You can't attack on your first turn" is really what intro prep boils down to, and I'd be curious how 4 turns in which players can't attack would take 5 minutes to play.

One thing that I would add:  TEAMS has a unique environment (and in my opinion, one that makes it so enjoyable for me) in which support cards (Fortresses, Sites, and Artifacts) can be used to create MANY more viable strategies.  TEAMS gives you the unique opportunity to include counters or strategies in your deck builds, and get the counters or strategies out faster.  Cards that you'd never include in a T1 deck all of a sudden could be worth the slot in TEAMS decks.  You have much more freedom to be creative and build competitive decks that would never win T1 2P. 

And as for all these meta counters that are being printed because of AUTO and company...  When you have two 50 card decks slotting CWD, DD, Naz, Hez Ring, etc., these counters can actually show up at the beginning of a game and make an impact.  But they still need that intro prep phase to work to maximum efficiency. 

I just think an intro prep phase creates more viable TEAMS decks.  Otherwise, why bother printing meta counters?  If the intro prep phase is eliminated, there's not much point in playing anything other than drawing+banding decks. 

I'd be curious how 4 turns in which players can't attack would take 5 minutes to play.

So very easily in TEAMS...everyone trying to discuss their strategies without their opponents knowing what they have and talking about.

"Should I put the banana peel down?"
"I don't know...I have shortcake, so...hrm..."
"Wait, shortcake?"
"Yeah you know the one that...um if you want to...well can you pull stuff...from not your hand?  Or do you want to?"
"Wait do you have Naz?"
"USE THE CODE WORDS!"
"I CAN'T REMEMBER THE STUPID CODE WORDS!"
"WELL SHOULD I PUT DOWN NAZ NOW?!"
"NO I HAVE PUDDING!"
"...what was pudding again?"

Now of course this is a dramatization, but 99% of the time spent in TEAMS in my experience is hilarious attempts at communicating without revealing information to the opponents, and intro-prep is not immune to this since you don't want to duplicate certain effects or turn off your teammate's options (such as Naz when they have their few draws available early, or Lampstand when they have Shipwreck and Falling Away already in hand).  That's a whole other issue that we can discuss with TEAMS, but I can tell you that intro-prep can easily take up that time.

I think that is part of the concern for me. Why is there no other possibility under discussion? This thread seems to be the after-effect of discussions that some of you have had, that the rest of us were not privy to. And now, we are thrust into this "vote," which fits well into the USA version of voting: the Democrats people who support nixing Intro-Prep and the Republicans people who oppose a change have already locked in their vote and will not be swayed. We're not really having an open discussion here. Your minds are already made up. We just need to see who has the most hands raised after the voting is done.

This is a very poor representation of the discussion here.

First, we are looking at one particular point of discussion that was raised among the Elders/playtesters while we were discussing other rule changes that could be on the way.  We did not want to be making a decision without hearing from the players themselves, hence this post.  This is an open discussion; just because people are set in their minds currently does not mean that discussing the issue at hand is useless, and it gives a good idea as to whether this one change would be good for the game.  As noted earlier, Rob already looked at this and said that he'd be open to a change, so we are addressing just that issue.

That's not to say that other changes in the future would be out of the question, but frankly that is not being discussed right now as part of the rule changes.  It may be as a result of what is said in this thread, but we have a question we are looking to answer.  I'm also not sure that this is a 'majority of votes in this thread decides the outcome' sort of thing.  We'll take the results and the feedback and discuss it as a group in order to determine what is the best option moving forward.