Wyrd, I love you guys, I hope you know that by now, but I have serious misgivings about this whole ordeal about sunsetting masters.
Dead Mans Hand is not a viable option. There is no guarantee you'll be able to play them in tournaments, so anyone who is has any desire towards competitive play risks a lot hoping to back those masters without guarantee. It creates a stigma around them that will force people away. Then, even if the owner/player of the dead master's is fine with risking that, they might not find an opponent that wants to as well. I don't care how optimistic some people seem to be about the chance of this, it is untenable so long as there is no guarantee.
It further more does not make sense that you guys have already stated they will be balanced, if that is the case, why bother with the restriction?
Saying its because of the story makes little sense either. Ramos and Lilith have been captured for a year now, and people still have kept playing them without complaint. I'm fine with bad things happening in the story, but it doesn't need to reflect in game in this way.
It also creates bad precedence for buying Wyrd in the future. Maybe not next year, but in 4-5 years from now, ever increasing as time pasts is going to be the question "is it worth picking up this master?" "Is Wyrd going to deprecate this investment as well?" I can't see any way this won't hurt sales.
The only logical argument I've seen for this decision is that Wyrd plans a drastically different return for these masters in the future so they want to keep non-official rules out there for them to keep going until the big reveal/redesign. If this is the case, I feel Wyrd really needs to make an announcement they are coming, and people's money and time have not been completely wasted on these masters.
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Additional thoughts:
I'll take a wait and see approach on the card size, but I agree with the other misgiving of people in this threat. I do not remember the 1.5e card sizes fondly. Right now sleeves and card storage is plentiful I worry about what hoops will need to be jumped through to store the cards.
I'm also worried about the use of tokens over various conditions. It may be annoying to remember what all the conditions do, but they were easy to track by writing on the card. Tokens imply another physical presence cluttering the board which i worry about. Those have been turn offs for me in Warmahordes and Guild Ball. Also where are these tokens going to come from? Is Wyrd including them with the models? Will they be sold extra at additional cost? Will we need to make our own or find 3rd party?