Revolutions Can Be Fun
by Drew “Darth Weasel” Barton
Raw Deal Staff Writer
darthweasel@hotmail.com

A major change is on the horizon. The traditional holiday set is poised to shake the game of Raw Deal up more than anything has done before. This has the potential to be more game-changing than the introduction of the Backlash deck, Legends, or even the Afterburn format. As of the writing of this article, there are only a select few people who know exactly what this new format and expansion consist of.

There has naturally been a great deal of speculation on the various online boards. Reactions have run the gamut from “The game needs a reset, this is just what was needed, people are going to flood back in” all the way to “Oh, this is terrible, this is the last straw, the sky is falling, and I am out of the game.”

The most fascinating part about these reactions is…who knows what it will be? Very few people have seen the cards other than the Maneuvers and a couple of Superstar cards. The new rules have been spoiled for less than a week. Even fewer have had the opportunity to play with the new cards and rules of the sub-format. It is nearly impossible to know what the results will be.

I would offer the most recent doom and gloom prophesies as a cautionary tale. When the Afterburn format was announced there were a lot of people quite upset about it. In all fairness, the format has indeed made a huge splash on the Raw Deal scene to the point where over half of the World Qualifiers this year were Afterburn. A couple of important points should not be overlooked, however. First, as promised, to this day the original format is still supported both in the World Qualifiers and, more importantly for the vast majority of the Raw Deal community, at local tournaments. It is a truth, in fact, that the next Afterburn game any of the Starving Crazed Weasels plays will also, by amazing coincidence, be our first. We prefer the original game and have no interest in playing the newer format. This has never affected the prize support our local tournaments received. Nobody has ever insisted we play Afterburn. We have continued to play the game the way we prefer it and the support has been as steady as ever.

There is no reason for anyone to suspect their Raw Deal gaming life will be any different with the release of Revolution. As with Afterburn and Raw Draft, those who enjoy and embrace the new format will have plentiful opportunities to play it. Those who prefer not to play it will be able to continue their preferred format(s).

I say this based on clues readily available. First off, there is the information easily found on the Comic Images website. Second, there is the long-standing promise from Comic Images in general and Van Toth himself that All Axxess will continue to be the primary format. Third, there is past experience.

A large portion of the objections to Revolution have been based both reasonable questions and on unfounded speculation. The reasonable questions have to do with what the future holds for things such as continuing direct support for older Superstars in the form of new Superstar specifics, continuing release of new Grapples, Submissions, Strikes, High Risks, and Actions, and other things in a similar vein. Some of the more unreasonable assumptions have ranged from there being no further All Axxess format all the way to Raw Deal itself collapsing and disappearing.

One thing that has been common with every set of spoilers has been the frenzied “the sky is falling” impersonations as cards, Superstars, traits, or other features of the spoilers have caught the attention of various parts of the Raw Deal online community and immediate doom and the end of the game has been forecast.

The most recent example was the introduction of the Afterburn format. As mentioned above, it is a format I still have not experienced personally…but the overall Raw Deal community has. How devastating has it been to the Raw Deal community as a whole? I saw a claim today that the most recent tournaments have been among the highest attended ever.

It is very difficult to sit back and wait to see what develops when you are looking at something you are passionate about. Obviously a great number of us are passionate about Raw Deal. We want to see the game we love grow and improve and when spoilers are coming out, it is as if we are trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle where we lost the guide picture and are having problems getting all the pieces to fit. The picture is muddled and, while there are bits and pieces that are recognizable, the overall picture has yet to be revealed. Until it is fully revealed there is no accurate way to judge it.

Additionally, many people are looking at this holiday set exclusively as a new set, format, and, in some cases, game. For many of us the format will seldom if ever be a factor. And that is the most beautiful part of this new set.

For those of us who for whatever reason don’t want to play regularly or even experiment casually with Revolution, there is nothing whatsoever that says we have to. If we choose to continue playing All Axxess locally, we have some new cards to throw into our decks if and where they fit. We don’t need to worry that someone will insist on a different format unless we locally so choose.

Looking at the Revolution holiday set simply as new cards I see a few reasons to be excited. The game has an added dimension as there are new ways to generate Fortitude. The game should be more open and diverse forever. There have been eras of Raw Deal where, for whatever reason, Fortitude has been difficult to come by. I have seen entire tournaments where one person got no offensive cards played in an entire tournament and a second person only successfully played cards against the one who got nothing accomplished. Introducing harder to reverse Maneuver types can go a long way towards keeping that from happening again. Making the game more interactive and more strategic seems like a good thing. Choosing whether to use the cards solely as additions to the formats we already play or as part of the new format seems like a pretty good idea to me.

It seems if people stop focusing on a format that may or may not directly affect them and instead look at just the cards there is a lot of fun stuff to look at. It is just going to take some time, as always, to see the whole picture. A little patience will be rewarded and it seems like a pretty good bet the Raw Deal sky will turn out to be no closer to falling than it has ever been.