Actually, no. When I bought boosters I cared only about what cards would fit into my decks, and whether I could start working on a completely different deck or decks with whatever was left. I never cared a jot about rarity, just what the cards actually did.
Actually it's 10 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare or Mythic Rare (1 in 8 chance), 1 extra common or foil (1 in 11 chance) and 1 basic land. Also foil cards typically go for about $1 even when it's common just because of the shiny. Foil Basic land and uncommons hit, $3, foil rares and mythics trend towards 1.5x or 2x normal value.
Or at least it does these days.
As too Story Wars, my love of Sentinels, storytelling and comics is fighting with my wallet over whether to back it fully or just get the comic and buy the game when/if it hits my FLGS.
I'll take that as a compliment! I couldn't have written what I did w/out yours and other people's posts to learn from.
Sorry, poor wording on my part. What I mean to get at is social games, classically, just don't "review" well because the gaming experience relies on 1% mechanics and 99% group interaction. For this reason, games like Snake Oil and Story War typically receive wide spectrums of feedback from "can't get enough of it" to "lol what is this garbage?"
A game that hinges on mechanics, won't really surprise you and is a lot easier to quantify.
But an excellent or scalding review of a social game is almost moot because the players themselves are directly responsible for the experience. So when people started parroting "Well, Story War got mixed to bad reviews; why would GtG want to be a part of that?" I just wanted to point at that this is a tough genre to review in an objective manner and that your best bet at figuring out if you like the game is to get a group of fun, creative friends together and give it a whirl.
You can print off a good chunk of the cards on the game's website for free: http://www.cantripgames.com/storywar/
You never know you might be surprised.
Just for the record I am aware about the delay to Wrath. We are talking about an extra week or two. The basic point is that it is coming very soon. We wouldn't have even known about the delay, but they were being nice and trying to help people plan accordingly for giving gifts.
As as for criticism cutting both ways. I truly believe that criticism is a gift. You can learn a lot from it. Here I am seeing statements along the lines of losing all faith in >G. It is hard to know what to do with that. >G is just a small company trying something new that they hope will resonate with peopl. They truly put their heart into this stuff. I mean did you watch the tactics tourney videos? The set and production effort was far beyond what I was expecting. They really try hard. Not everything is going to be great, but as they say" if you want to learn to make an omelette you have to break some eggs." If you don't like what they are doing it would be better to guide them by telling them what you want to see.
Personally I am hoping for a Roleplaying game with the tactics system as the combat engine. Having old school modules that draw us deeper into the multiverse showing us new heroes and villians, now that is my kind of story telling! (I am probably going to try to do a little bit of that on my own.)
In the mean time we have some great things coming and I am not worried if not everything that >G makes fits my taste.
Here is what I have taken out from these discussion. Where once some people said "I love GtG!", this has now changed to "I love SotM!" Right or wrong, for that change doesn't matter. It is becomeing clear that GtG is no longer in the same realm of Knizia, Wallace, Moon, etc., but now in the realm of Fantasy Flight, Days of Wonder, GMT. For better or worse.
I think that looking at reviews from people who do actually like storytelling games and have played several would be a great way to get information about whether this is a good storytelling game. It's obvious that many people who reviewed Story War do like the genre a lot and that's why they bought the game in the first place, but have been disappointed by the lack of "game" and/or the lack of variety (Tom Vasel said that they had seen almost all of the cards in their first game).
Personally I'm yet to see why you need a bunch of cards to make up stories about how Tempest would win against Legacy and convince a friend that you're right. It doesn't sound like a game, more a shared activity gamified by the distribution of points by a third party.
It would be very easy for fans of this game (or any game) to argue, "if you're not having fun you're not playing it right!" and essentially blame the players for their own bad experience. I'm glad we're not doing that here.
Can I have permission to use "gamified"?
It's a tricky one. I do still love >G as well as SotM and Tactics (and I'm sure I'll like Spirit Island as well) and I hold out hope that their next project will also be a good one. It's just now I can only say ">G mostly make awesome games".
But yeah, I think you're right that the difference seems to be designers vs publisher. I guess we need to get used to it, even if we don't like the direction things are going in.
it's already a thing, so I don't see why not. Gamification - Wikipedia
Cool. First time I heard the word. Thanks!
What does that even have to do with anything?
Do people like games, or do they like games because of who made them?
When GtG was SotM everyone who liked SotM liked every game that GtG made. Because it was one game.
I love 2 of their games, that has nothing to do with how I feel about the company, I like the company for completely different reasons. I like the peoplethat run the company and I like their business model. I also really like that they support other game-makers when they like the game.
If I don't like Spirit Island it won't change that I think it is awesome that they are helping it get made.
GtG isn't some mathmatics wizard trying to create only brilliant award winning games. They are three guys that enjoy telling stories through games who happened to create a comic book world which resonates with a lot of people, and some games that are really fun. They aren't reinventing gaming, they are just having a good time. Just let them be themselves, and buy what games you want.
Hell, if I'd made it up I'd still let you use it. 
The problem is, if a company makes games you love that aren't "finished" yet, which essentially require them to make more expansions so you can have the "complete" story experience, you become invested in that company and want them to do well (even if you take out feelings about the actual people behind the name).
It's a legitimate worry that if a company like that makes a terrible terrible travesty of a game (not that I'm saying Conflict is that game…) or a series of not-very-good ones, their customers will be much less likely to continue to support them by buying their products. People who aren't emotionally invested like us (and let's face it, we can't possibly be anywhere near the majority of the customer base) who have been burned by bad >G games won't bother buying future games, or existing good ones.
I'm catastrophising here, but a really bad game could have an enormous financial impact on the company, and that affects all of us too if we want to get the future good games and expansions to the existing ones. It might not be as clear-cut as "just don't buy the bad games".
But it is a kickstarter. It gets paid for before they are made. Very little financial risk.
I understand the worry that GtG won't come up with games that can fund the company after SotM is done, but I don't think that will be a problem. Games liek this require a lot less work than SotM Expansions, the amount of art, the fact that the structure of the game is already there. . . this is a low resource game for them to make. These kind of "Window Dressing" games aren't going to take a serious bite out of time for other more important projects, and profits from them help the company.
Again I'm catastrophising, but if a company makes a terrible game it's not beyond the realms of possibility for the Kickstarter backers to start demanding refunds and kicking up a big stink all over the relevant parts of the internet, and the resulting reputation hit to significantly affect sales of all their games.
I don't believe that will happen to >G, but I'm going for worst-case here to illustrate where I'm coming from. Bad games can hurt reputation and therefore sales. I don't want people to be put off buying their games because they've had bad experiences with other products.
Anecdotal example: I generally don't like games by Fantasy Flight and consider them to be bloated, needlessly complicated boxes too full of bits, with busy unappealing artwork, too much consideration given to the theme (which is usually one I'm not interested in) over the mechanics, terrible rulebooks and errata/FAQ documents longer than the actual rules themselves. I do own and enjoy a few of their games but if I'm interested in a new game and then I find out it's from FF I tend to lose interest pretty quickly because I feel there's a good chance it'll be a bad match for me, because, you know, it's by Fantasy Flight. I don't think I'm alone in allowing my bias against certain companies to affect my purchasing…
Honestly, I don't think Story Wars is a game for people who want to argue why Tempest would kick Legacy's butt, or why Batman would beat Superman, ect. ect. (Hell, if I was the judge I'd be likely to give a point for a well told loss over a badly justified win if the rules allowed.) I'm seeing Story Wars in the same way I see Snake Oil or The Big Invention, you need to make the most out of what you have in your hand using your imagination. At best Sentinels Conflict will be light hearted fun, at worst, it'll let me excercise my imagination outside of DnD and writing.
This.
My own thoughts are that I'll treat it like Mad Scientist University. That's another party game with an arbitrary judge, but my partner and I play it two player a lot. We enjoy the plotting and madcap schemes so it doesn't matter to us that we don't score points. Rules can be broken/ignored/changed to suit your purpose in circumstances like this, certainly where the number of players is an issue… When did I become Chaotic Good?
And sometimes, I like to have a prompt to make me think of a solution to situation I wouldn't think of myself.
Anyway, that's my feeling on the matter. I'll go back to lurking now.
I took the liberty to fix this for you. For a second it sounded like you meant all criticism is a gift and that just can't be right.
If one doesn't like rules that invoke a judging system, why not houserule that aspect away? Personally, I think that with many games (particularly the storytelling ones) it is the journey and the company, rather than the possibility of winning that is important for a game to successful and that the game provides a framework to fall back on. If certain rules of a game create too much annoyance with certain people, I tend to adjust those rules. Yes, it is convenient to not have to do that, but can easily be played upon by making the rules kind of modular. The original Cash 'n Guns did this quite nicely and when we have new player in our group, we usually play a series of games in which we introduce an additional rules-module with every game.