Cactus Game Design Message Boards

This is the post explaining about it:
https://www.cactusforums.com/redemption-tournaments/follow-up-to-rob's-'rotation'-announcement/

Basically anything before the card redesign will not be legal anymore.

Thanks for the information, friends.

Not gonna lie... I'm absolutely gutted to see Redemption actually implement set rotation. It's very difficult for me to see anything positive in this change. I really hope Rob and the elders know what they're doing...

Yeah, but what competitive player cares if the old cards are legal in the little leagues if they're not in the big leagues?

Nobody asked for it, but here's my two cents on why rotation in Redemption is upsetting to me.

I played Pokemon many years ago. I'm not sure what it's like now, but Pokemon employed very strict set rotation. Cards older than five sets were cycled out. This created a very stale metagame. There were only three types of decks on the tables- 79% of players played the one deck that was clearly stronger than all the rest, 20% ran the counter-deck that could sometimes win against that deck, and 1% tried to have fun and run what was called a "rogue" deck. Sure, the metagame WOULD change every set, but it would be just as stale- only three types of decks, no matter how many people were playing. The card pool was so small that a dominant deck was clearly evident, and everyone used it.
I'm afraid I just don't understand how giving players fewer cards to play with will make decks more creative. Sure, initially the metagame WILL change, but since there are fewer cards to work with, fewer ideas will be playable. Dominant decks should be more likely, not less likely; the metagame will change every set, but it will be more monochromatic, more homogenous. From now on, the metagame won't change because people will get more creative ideas. The metagame will change because tried-and-true ideas are no longer valid, and you HAVE to use the new ideas given to you by the new set. If old cards are polluting the metagame, ban them. If Throne and AUTO are too OP, just ban them. Don't burn the wheat with the chaff. At least give old cards a chance to be used instead of just wiping them all out because of a few bad apples.
Rotation also punishes players. It punishes collection by giving the cards an expiration date. If after X number of years a card can no longer be used competitively, that essentially means that the money that was spent on those cards is thrown out. That becomes more and more of an issue, because rotation causes the prices of cards to skyrocket. Hopefully the effect won't be so noticeable in Redemption, but it made Pokemon next to unplayable. Since everyone needed the new cards- not to be competitive, but just to have a legal deck- the demand of the cards exploded while the supply stayed the same. Brand-new individual cards that every deck needed went for multiple hundreds of dollars. A Pokemon deck would cost you more than your rent for two months, and within a year you'd have to reinvest because the cards were cycled out. Redemption has always been the most affordable trading card game to play, but rotation threatens that. When cards get cycled out, they have to be replaced by new ones. Now getting the new cards isn't a strong suggestion; it's mandatory. That's great for business, of course, but it comes at the price of the players.
Sure, the older cards don't look as nice, and cycling out cards means we can streamline keywords and such. But most of the cards with poor wording are already outdated. People don't use them, so it really doesn't matter much. It was always my understanding that cards cycled out of use pretty naturally in Redemption. Forcing it is sad.
Yu-Gi-Oh is arguably the most successful trading card game success story. Unless I'm very much mistaken, there is no set rotation in Yu-Gi-Oh at all. This comes at the price of an ever-fluctuating ban list, but it DOES allow you to use cards as old as the game itself. More importantly, it means the card pool is ENORMOUS, which potentially means an incredibly diverse metagame. Unfortunately, Yu-Gi-Oh suffers from crippling power creep, which normally makes using old cards impractical. I'm not sure if rotation will protect Redemption from that. If it does, then that's good.

I have never designed a game, and I have only playtested for a trading card game on a low level. I can only speak from my experience with rotation from Pokemon. For me, it made a potentially fun game too expensive and too boring to bother with. That's something I never want to happen to Redemption. It's my favorite game of all time. I hope I'm wrong about the consequences of rotation and that Rob and the elders have a better perspective than I do. For right now, though, I'm just very worried.

I really like the idea of rotation and the way it's been implemented by Rob and his Elder team.  It's one of the top reasons I'm back in the game.  I think it reduces the instances of broken card combinations.  When I read some of the threads about banned and errata'd cards while I was out of the game, it appears that most had to do with mixing newer cards with older cards. 

Granted, some of my NW friends have wondered how I could support rotation when my favorite card and T2 meta has been rotated out.    But then it was reprinted as a dominant, so....I've got that going for me...which is nice.

(BTW, the 2021 NW Regional Type 2 - 2 player winning deck was......well, I'm sure many of you figured it out.)   

Currently the sets are: Early Church-146 cards, Persecuted Church-93 cards, Cloud of Witnesses-129 cards, Revelation of John-129 cards, Fall of Man-147 cards, Prophecies of Christ-241 cards, Lineage of Christ-240 cards, Gospels of Christ(phase 1)-129 cards. Legacy Rares are roughly 50-55 cards and Promos are roughly 50-60 cards. That's not counting the alt border versions of Cow and RoJ.

Echoing what @The Guardian said, the deck I used at Nats this year and was able to get 2nd with it had only 3 non-rotation cards total between the deck and Reserve. And these cards don’t make or break the deck, either.  So naturally, the newer cards are going to be the competitive cards anyways.

There are so many cards that hurt the fun of the game that rotation clears out.  It gets rid of: most all the weapons that let you play first, most of the chump blocks, most of the CBN enhancements, so many consistancy pieces that help you set up in turn 1 and never give your opponent a chance to do anything.  There was so many elements to the game that needed to be changed that it wouldnt be feasible to ban them all.

It's really cool that you recognize this. We've been planning "rotation" for years. It's the reason we haven't made many play abilities or CBN battle winners on the new card face. The ones we have made are pretty limited in their application. There area quite a few old cards that would make amazing LRs but don't meet our criteria for what we deem "healthy". We've still made some mistakes along the way and have room to improve. But we believe this new format is both healthier and more diverse.

I do feel bad for players that don't have a lot of cards on the new card face but want to be competitive. But I'm also not aware of any other card game where you can remain competitive without buying new cards. On the whole Redemption is still one of the cheaper (if not the cheapest) games to play and collect. This is part of the reason I recently went through my collection to see what I can part with and listed quite a few cards pretty cheap.

Boy, the old 'Falling Away' card gets lots of love🤪