A fine new spoiler - a react speed headline that will shake things up!
Plus there’s a great article with contributions from three different authors on how Pinebox see the play environment and their plans for fewer, larger releases and encouraging play for fun alongside the competitive scene.
http://pineboxentertainment.com/2017/06/01/doomtown-reloaded-and-the-player-environment/
I think this is a great initiative - I’m going to try to shift some of the regular Edinburgh events towards rewarding participation by buying an old OP kit and distributing pieces regularly. Perhaps we can give things out for thematic decks or those that were fun to place against? 
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Quick question, does the “Shootout abilities cannot decrease casualties” stop Heartseeker from being used (First line is “Reduce your opponent’s casualties by 3.”) or does it make Heartseeker into a beast?
Also I love having a card to stop all the hand rank shenanigans that have been cropping up. Makes shootouts less of a race to DMH.
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Best to ask in the official rules forums - sorry for dancing around this but it is best for lowly playtesters not to intrude on rules territory! 
Agree on having a card to help manage hand rank manipulation being good for the environment - it’s reliable too as it happens at react speed. A good way to shut down Forcefields and Calling the Cavalry etc.
Great article!
The league idea for local game stores is a great idea. We did that at our store a few months ago, using an OP kit and a stack of random alt art leftover cards from previous tourneys as prizes. You got points both for games played and wins, and every x amount of points we’d get to pick out a prize. There were several other games doing the same thing in the store, and it seemed to work well.
Unfortunately there isn’t enough interest to continue at our store, but enter OCTGN to the rescue! I realize all the past leagues have been pretty competitive/tournament in nature, and maybe we can start a different league that is more casual.
One random idea: I’d love to see a OCTGN league that required everyone to play all 6 factions before being allowed to play a faction again (is that called revolver?), or something similar that forces creativity/variety of play, and of course fun!
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League play is great. I’ve also had modest success with achievements - short and long term
e.g. hit a natural SF or DMH
win a game while never winning lowball
win a game using 3 different spell types
play a deck with NO drifters
or ALL drifters
etc.
long term could be (if you’re not tied to the same deck for league play)
play all 6 factions
etc.
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Yes that’s called Revolver.
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Interesting article - definitely excited to participate in both competitive and casual organized play! The former because of a love for the grind, the latter because as an organizer for a high-commitment game (DTR) it can be pretty challenging to recruit new folks - also be really nice to have a space to try out more experimental ideas without having to worry so much about the “benchmarks” of competitive viability.
Two pieces of feedback.
Rotations
The first is I think the structure of the game itself - thirteen values, six factions, four suits, and the necessity for repeating values/suits of unique cards - will make it very difficult indeed to “balance” rotations without a very wide swath of expansions. For example, say I want to build a deck with the standard three value structure - what will my options at each suit-value combination look like? I can imagine getting “stuck” on (say) Jacks with only one spade dude in my faction, maybe one drifter, one deed or maybe two, one or two hearts (which may or may require a skilled dude!) and choice from maybe two clubs to fill out the Jacks in my deck.
In short, I’d like to ask how the rotations themselves will account for their inherent parameters without drastically altering deck-building and gameplay? This seems like a big nut to crack.
Database Filters
Second feedback, building off the first one, really more of a suggestion, is there a way dtdb.co will be able to filter through the rotations so those of us who have all of the cards can use this tool to build decks intended to play in these competitive rotations?
Cheers!
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I love the idea of a more casual/creative OCTGN leagues! e.g. revolver as @prodigy suggested.
The OCTGN league is great, but being a casual player (95% on OCTGN, I don’t have regular opponents in real life sadly), I would love a format that does not focus on winning but allows for exploring the rich game mechanics and flavor.
Revolver would already be great, as there are many many archetypes that I haven’t had the chance to explore. Not to mention factions (I have only played 108 bandits once ever). Or all the ideas mentioned by @davido4015 sound interesting.
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I much prefer playing decks that are fun and/or interesting, and I tend to jump around between ideas a lot so something like that sounds like a great idea!
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We did a league for a bit at my FLGS, and I hope to revive that soon!
Having support for it makes it a lot nicer too. We used an OP kit the first time, and it worked okay.
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