I have an idea on how to fix pox...

many card games transition positively over to rotational format play. most games have a much higher population when they do it though.

 

I thought he was referring to my referring to CoC correspondence style PvP. Nonetheless, I'll weigh in on the possibility of trimming the rune base...

I was surprised and delighted to get my account restored after having been away from Pox for 6+ years. I was further surprised to find so many old runes are still very viable. I had been fully prepared to start anew without my old account, and am happy to see that acquiring runes has become much easier under the newer revisions of the game. Nonetheless, I do very much enjoy playing many of my old runes and the fact that they are still viable lends quite a bit of worth to them.

I'm not sure if trimming the rune base is strictly necessary but some way of paring down the enormity of it all for new players is necessary. The faction decks are one of those options, a means of allowing new players into the game without having to sift through several thousand rune choices. Though as a fan of CCGs, I can honestly say I >like< lots of choices and a deep rune base is appealing. As a new player I would be excited at the possibility of digging into all those old runes, especially as so many are still playable.

That said, it would be possible to trim the fat. There are surely runes that are not being run. A sweep of each release, noting what runes are in use and those which are not, could form the first step for retiring runes. Core could probably be condensed down to a single release of 100 runes or so. Extended could probably be similarly condensed, (I can't weigh in too much beyond Rise of Serkan, but assume it would condense to 300-500 runes are so).

If the rune based is pared down, it would be very nice if either, old players were given credit for retired runes or retired runes were still playable for campaigns and possibly an 'All Runes' room with the possibility of runes occasionally be un-retired should they prove very useful in a new meta somewhere in the future.

 

Here's to a better Pox!