To my fellow obsessive fans of Doomtown. Thank the gunslinging gods for Pinebox and their incredible hard work. After a successful kickstarter they've managed to put the paddles to Dt:R and bring it back from the brink. This Gencon looks like it's going to be a massive success and so far the community looks poised to re-embrace Dt:R with vigor. Just take a gander at the Discord channel and facebook pages, the forums, etc. Activity is starting to perk up dramatically.
Still, I have a problem, and as I understand it has been noted at Pinebox. Although I have no doubt they intend to address this issue I have a few suggestions that I wanted to send out to the Dt:R universe to see how they'd be received by my fellow fans.
The issue is Greenhorns. I'm having lots of trouble convincing new players to ante up. My three nephews (for example) are all very excited about the game but they're all in High School or their first year of college. The upfront cost of being able to buy and play is a major thing for them. And to boot, they're a bit lazy. In that the idea of an LCG isn't appealing because (oh what a drag) they have to build decks using rules that seem too complicated. Kids these days #amiright?
I was talking to them about why they like Magic so much and what made them spend hundreds of dollars over the past few years there. The response was that the money trickled out. $10 here $20 there, and once they were in what was $30 for a draft tournament?" That's like a single trip to the movies but you get cool and usable cards no matter what!" They said.
So I got to thinking. Deckbuilding in DT:R is a little tougher than your average magic deck and far more nuanced. New players want to start with a deck that's competitive as they start to understand the concepts. I know pinebox has a list of great starting decks on their forums that also have a low cost of entry but when I confronted the greenhorns about this they admitted that it never occured to them to go out asking about them. Even when they found the forum post they fawned over the DTDB lists and just floundered. I guess it's too big of a pain in the ass to order a few sets on amazon and assemble your deck. That's when it was put to me by my nephews. "Why can't they be like magic and just have starter decks for sale?" What a brilliant idea. Why don't we have pre-built starter decks? $25-40 for 55-56 cards in a pre-playtested and relatively competitive starter deck. This started the fountain of ideas that will follow. Here's the brief version:
- Starter decks - Pre-built decks playtested to be balanced between each other. Two series, a series for greenhorns that will be in print for several years potentially and a set for tournaments that are in deliberately limited runs (Maybe yearly based on the previous Marshall's Meta). Greenhorn decks are balanced to go head to head with other greenhorn decks, include no special alt-art cards, and are relatively cheap. Price point around $30. Tournament decks are perhaps a little looser on balance, often requiring skilled play, and have a chance at various collectible alt-art and foil cards. Keep in mind all of these decks have the same text and effects as cards offered throughout the LCG. All of them are tournament legal. However, only the art is different. Think of Tournament decks as intermediate level. To boot they cost a bit more owing to foils and increased cost of production and rarity.
- Alt-Art boosters. Alongside the tournament decks are cheap alt-art boosters. Same chance of popular rare and collectible cards but fewer total cards. These would primarily attract the collectors among us. Again, there's nothing at all different about the mechanics, they just look purdy and are produced in limited runs of various quantity. Think vanity items popular in many modern MMOs.
- Keep the typical boxed Saddlebag and Pinebox LCG distribution cycle as always. When released each expansion will contain 4 copies of all necessary basic cards as always. For official tournament players LCG distributions are a guaranteed way of getting cards you need. The art just may not be as fancy as in the previously mentioned tournament decks or alt-art boosters.
- Sell more accessories. Doomtown loves tokens. I bought a nice set of 2g poker chips that I use to mark cards. I found I need about 7 colors. Red and Blue are obvious, Yellow and Grey depict bullets on dudes or additional production on deeds. Black indicates a noon ability that was used, and Orange depicts that I need to do something at sundown. It can get really confusing to try to keep track of that in your head. The promo deck boxes of AEG looked neat but the tin wasn't very durable and therefore they worked better as a trophy than as a practical method of keeping your deck. Also with stacks of cards moving and booting around the table sometimes they can start to look a bit sloppy. I started using steel sheets the size of a playing card in a card sleeve. I put my stack on top how I want it and then put a magnet on top of the stack to hold everything together. Now I can move my cards all over the table without having to re-organize all the time. The magnet also acts as a nice little handle to pick up a stack with all of it's tokens. Anyway, stuff like that. Fancy dice counters or whatever. You could have multiple varieties of all different kinds and double those as tournament prizes.
And, as if I needed to say it out loud. Metal ghost rock like that of AEG prize winnings. Really fancy ghost rock maybe leave as prize stuff. The little cardboard chits are junk and most long term players I know forked up cash to buy tourney kits or premium on e-bay specifically for the ghost rock.
This concept I reckon has several benefits. Clearly it generates revenue from existing players. I'd buy a few starters just to fill up my jokers. I need basic jokers and don't want to pay $10 a card if I can find them, I know starter sets are cheap but it seems like a ludicrous waste to buy all of that stuff just to get a couple of jokers. Ironically, this cost comes to about $14 per joker. A tournament deck with the potential for rare alt-art seems like a much better buy. I may pay more, but I get fancy cards and a complete and meta relevant deck. As for the alt-art boosters. What's $5 here and there for a chance at a rare foil "Pistol Whip".
Having random distributions of cards allows for new tournament types borrowed from popular competitors. Namely, Magic Draft tournaments. In this reality, it might go something like this. You ante up for maybe ~$45 You pick one starter from a previous run of leftover tournament or greenhorn decks, and some generous number of boosters. The starter deck assures you get a legal deck to begin with, there's a little luck and engineering behind the boosters. You're allowed some time to build and modify your deck with the boosters you unwrapped. Then you compete. When you leave, you keep your cards at the least. If you win. You get promo stuff or whatever the vendor decides is prize worthy.
I could easily imagine this being a way to make everyone happy. The people bananas about collectibles get their fix without the unbridled power creep associated with CCG models that embrace collectible mechanics as well. The LCG fans get to rely on skill and cunning to win and build new decks, design new cards, and all the things that made/make Dt:R so awesome. The Greenhorns get a more gentle entry into the fold without taking a double beating (one from experienced players and another from their pocket book). And Pinebox sees an increase in both players and revenue from existing players.
I know for a fact Pinebox is beating against the wind with all of this. This whole reboot has to have sapped so much energy from them. Again, I think they're doing an amazing job. The new cards all fill some great niches. The rulings and errata are fair and seem to have made the meta start to thrive again. The Gencon showing looks worthy of Doomtown and for those of us who've been around awhile I'm sure we appreciate the renewed vigor in promoting tournaments. AEG treated Dt:R as a money cow. Tons of press at first but they just let it run itself into the ground. IMHO the only reason Dt:R wasn't an amazing long-term success was a lack of promotion and marketing innovation. IE they didn't try to engage the audience... like at all. Just poop out new cards and whoever is ambitious enough to go buy them does. That seemed to be the strategy then. Pinebox seems firmly opposed to that method. That all said, even if everyone adores the starter deck/alt-art booster ideas they'll be running an uphill battle to get them started.
To overcome this I'd suggest another kickstarter. Work out a budget, figure out what it will take in time and effort to get things started. I think now that the revived community has some press it might be just the ticket. I, personally, would leap at the chance to get some guaranteed alt-art and starter packs to give to friends interested in trying out Doomtown. Additionally, kickstarter provides a way to test the waters of the market. If you get enough people interested it's easier to feel comfortable putting in lots of work and money into a product, namely because you know there is a market for your hard work.
I hope this post hits home with some of you. With any luck it will stir the creative juices that be in a year's time I'll have some kind of way to easily convince my friends to join me in the Weird West.