The guys on the listserv have reached a point where they are so tired of having to settle for the wisps of rulings and definitions, that the tone of the posts have reached a feverish pitch - and I for one don't blame them. For all that the Decipher Reps post over and over again that the new ruling document has been carefully crafted, and that we should simply trust them, the fact remains that they haven't trusted us enough to give us the damn rules. Many of the guys on the listserv are either world-class players, TDs, or both - they have every right to ask that Decipher not keep the rules locked up until the cards are sitting in their laps and they are left wondering what the heck to do with them. Decipher's attitude seems to be that they are actually insulted at all of the negative feedback they seem to be getting based on the rumors about rules that have leaked from the world finalists. Tough poopy Decipher, get insulted all you want - you have a document that from every indication is going to change the way that the game we know and love is played and you're keeping it from us for no *apparent* reason. If you have a reason, then tell us what it is; if not, fork over the rules before we pop right through our modems and raise some serious hell right there on your doorstep.
Pardon me for getting a little excited, but I just finished reading Mark Tuttle's scolding of the listserv for the rising criticism of the new rules and cards. In his posts, he refers to the Special Edition as offering "the best chance to ‘re-boot' things a little." Pardon me, but when I say reboot, I generally mean restart and that sounds like what he means too. If they're gonna "reboot" this game, perhaps they could have the common courtesy to tell existing players what's going on. Mark also said "On Wednesday of this week, all previous documents get trashed and the Glossary and the Second Edition Rules become precedent. There's an awful lot of new stuff to delve into." No kidding! So give us the rules already. Mark's point that we should be upset about rules we haven't seen is a relatively reasonable one until your consider the fact that it's two days before the release and we don't have any rules. His assertion that there is no way that the designers of this game would mess it up because they have more at stake with this game than they do is absolutely true - but it still does not explain why they have left their most loyal players hanging out over the cold abyss of uncertainty while Decipher says "trust us."
As a graduate student specializing in public relations, I would just like to say that Decipher has shown some pretty poor communication skills in the past few weeks. It's very cool that they've given us cards images, but their unwillingness to at least explain why they won't release the rules before hand is only causing problems and creating a thick layer of distrust (for all you PR buffs out there, this is classic one-way asymmetrical communication that is almost purely public information model communiction). They've taken on a severely paternal attitude in while "Decipher knows best" and the players should go to their rooms without dinner for not trusting the company enough. They've set up a situation in which we know that they are making serious, fundamental changes to the game, but are left in the dark until we've shelled out the money for the cards. It's almost as if Decipher is afraid of releasing the rules, and that makes me even more nervous.
Queen Jawa