> There are some things about the VSR rules that aren't clear to me.
Ok, good to know where I should clarify things.
> The buildings start face down on the table. How do you play them? Just turn them face up?
Actually, building are plain normal cards that you draw from your deck, have in your hand and play on the table. The seven starting face down cards are just placeholders at the start because you won't start "dead". Remember, buildings are also "lives". When you build a building, you just discard a face down card in exchange.
> The rules state, that the number of creatures are dependent on the number of buildings.
> And you don't 'pay' anything, so you don't have expensive - cheep cards, but how can you have then
> stronger/weaker cards? If it doesn't matter how much they cost, I'll only build a deck with the
> strongest cards.
...yeah, that was badly explained from me. Some buildings produce gold. For example, a farm with +1 and a gold mine with +3.
So, with +4 gold, you can have troops on the battle that have a cumulative cost of up to 4. It's not a "hiring" cost, it's a "maintenance" cost.
> Also I feel that decisions made by a player are not really important.
> e.g. the decision "should I attack or not" doesn't matter to much, because you are still able to defend with attacking creatures (the opponent's turn).
It favors attacking. Not doing so is probably often a disadvantage ...but it may depend on the cards. However, it increases the decisions/tactics you can apply since you can choose which troops you attack and in what order. It's not the "simple" "I attack" of MTG.
> How do you think the player's tempo compare? I think it's very symmetrical, each turn a player
> will have the same number of buildings, hence the same number of creatures, hence the same
> buildup.
Well, I guess this is cleared up with my explanations above. I think a game can quickly progress very differently depending on player's deck and how it plays out. I honestly don't fear any symmetry effect, IMHO it provides more diversity potential than MTG.
> You've also removed the act-react-react chain for events, I'm not sure how that will work.
> Say you have both an event card, one that deals 3 damage, one that heals 3 damage, and you play > it on a 2/2 creature. In your case, when the effect is direct, there's no gameplay.
Sure, the creature will die.
It simply changes from a "reactive" gameplay to a "preventive" gameplay ("Hmmm... I should probably buff its defense before I attack because he'll want to block with that one") ...and well, it just removes the complexity of the aweful MTG "counter chains": "I counter the counter of the counter of the counter... of your counter spell! mouhaha".
> I also see little chance to turn-the-tables (but I could be wrong). If you start losing one or
> two buildings, it takes away your power to put new stuff out and it brings you closer to defeat.
> This kind of double punishment is very harsh. (the reason why MTG is often very exciting is that
> you can have situations where your close to death, but far away from defeat)
Honestly, I've no idea, only playtesting it could tell. As a comment, if the enemy destroyed a building, it means you have no more troops on the battlefield. In this case, the limiting factor is more the 2 cards you draw at your turn than the lost building(s).
I think though that the dynamics will be very different. It's hard to tell. If the enemy overpowers you, it'll quickly end. However, if you find a way to block well enough for a few turns, you could recover completely.
...as a last note, what I fear more is that ranged attacks mechanics. A few archers might turn into a problem because they'd just kill new opposing troops without harm. But that's perhaps also interesting because it forces the player to build decks with appropriate spells/troops/buildings to face these situations.