Strenghtening & Deck cap

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snowdrop
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Strenghtening & Deck cap

Post by snowdrop » Sat Jun 02, 2012 00:28

Deck Cap
I'm leaning more and more towards a strict cap on the max size of a deck, as I would want to use the can't-draw-new-card-due-to-deck-is-empty as a lose-condition. My reason is that I want to create a sense of "urgency" and that every card that is somehow removed from your deck brings you closer to your demise.

This is of course also in contrast to the fact that most players will want to have as many cards as possible in their hand and get to the goodies as fast as possible in their decks, creating a slight dilemma. In addition it also relates to pace of decks - suddenly there are real risks playing a very cheap deck that mills through your cards.


Strengthening

Idea
A random idea that I got just now... two ways of implementing it, but with somewhat different results:

Every creature that has a faction belonging (most will have) can get +1 ATK or +1 DEF until end of turn for each card the player discards from hand that a) belongs to the same faction and b) has a loyalty requirement greater than 0.


Example
Let's look at an example to make this understandable. Say we are in combat with our Merman Brawler (I love that critter and graphics).

Image

While being in combat with him, we have a bunch of cards in our hand, among them we have this one:

Image

Since they both a) share faction and are Gaian, and b) the Longing for Peace has a loyalty requirement, we may discard Longing for Peace from hand and choose to give +1 ATK or +1 DEF to Merfolk Brawler, until end of turn.

However, when this happens the Merman Brawlers own loyalty requirement will rise with +1, changing it from it's default 0 to 1, until end of turn.

Strengthening may be repeated any number of times, but due to a player never being able to control creatures or play other cards that have a loyalty greater than what his/her hero brings to the game, it will never result in a creature being strenghtened more than 3 times the most during the one and the same turn (since it's loyalty requirement will hit 3 by the third time it is strengthened).

As seen, all of this also entails that a creature with a loyalty requirement of 3 can not be strengthened, while a creature with the requirement of 2 can be strengthened once, and one of requirement 1 can be strengthened twice, and lasty we have the exact same case as with our merfolk braweler - a creature with loyalty requirement 0 can be strengthened up to 3 times.

is this cool?
Or rather, "what does this bring that isn't here already?". I'm not sure. At least I know one thing - it doesn't add yet another variable. We use one that already exists, but just double it's relevance, and while that on it's own can't be seen as "good" it at least is almost certain it isn't bad.

Question remains though - what does this bring? I can think of the following:
  • Somewhat more opportunities to bluff an opponent and to have to guess if you are being bluffed, which relates to the next:
  • A reason to try to hold onto more cards in hand instead of playing them directly, be it because they have loyalty requirements and can be used as strengthening or because they can be used to bliff opponent. This creates tension between two opposing interests the player has: Play as many cards as fast as possible to maximize as much economy as possible versus holding on to cards for future combat.
  • In any situation a player thinks about using a card as strengthening he/she also has to make a choice: Should he/she use the card now and discard it to win the combat, or should he/she stick to it? In relation to this:
  • A tension arises between playing the most faction oriented cards in your deck, versus using them as strengthening.
  • Hero choice will have even larger impact on deck building - heroes that bring low loyalty to the game will result in decks that can not be strengthened as much as more loyal heroes. This speaks for mono-heroes, belonging to just one faction and with high loyalty, but, when you choose such a hero you also forfeit your chances to include cards from other factions in your deck. Compare playing with a hero that gives 3 gaian loyalty with one that gives 2 Gaian loyalty and 1 Red Banner loyalty. :P
  • A strenghtening system like this seems to push the game towards more mixed decks loyalty wise, resulting in fewer decks that are loyalty-reqirement-zero or loyalty-requirement-three. Then again, in what way is that good?
I'm not so sure about this, but it seems it could have some impact on the game. I'm just not all clear about exactly which one and how much it brings. One effect of it would for example be that Event-cards that have a +1 ATK boost until end of turn would be less appealing/needed in the game.
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Re: Strenghtening & Deck cap

Post by Q_x » Sat Jun 02, 2012 16:27

Thumbs up for a deck size limit. What I see that may work against is
it's limiting our tactic spectrum a bit - so there will be not much use of tactics and cards that let you draw some extra cards.

"No" for lose condition. Not having any cards to draw is a penalty on it's own, big enough to lose the game. If you can cope with it and defeat your enemy - you should be able to win.

And we may try the strenghtening during any full round of tests. May work cool. Certainly it's a yet another way of discarding unneeded cards.
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Re: Strenghtening & Deck cap

Post by aspidites » Sat Jun 02, 2012 18:58

I'll need to go over the rules again (and in doing so, perhaps start porting them to that github project I mentioned before), but strengthening seems like an easy way to make a weenie swarm deck:

Put only cards with exactly one loyalty requirement in your deck. Horde cards in your hand until you hav enough to sacrifice and use for the sole purpose of strengthening.

Of course, play-testing would be the only way to see how often it occurs that such cards are strong enough even after strengthening to take on your opponent. That said, I'm not against the idea per se, just concerned about the possibility of it being an overwhelming mechanic that is too easy to deploy.

+1 for at least giving it a shot. What Q_x says about lose condition is interesting. It might be cool to be (one of) the only games that doesn't enforce a lose condition simply because a player can't participate in a phase of the game.

-1 for deck size limit. In practice, I've seen it such that most people who have too many cards in their deck lose anyway because:

* they have so many cards in their deck that the probability of getting good cards is nigh impossible to predict
* not having a lose condition would make the lack of cards a non-issue in some instances
* I don't necessarily believe we should *force* the semantics of the game to suggest that it should be faster. People will find out soon enough by analizing the cards whether having a lot of cards is beneficial or not.
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Re: Strenghtening & Deck cap

Post by snowdrop » Mon Jun 04, 2012 19:36

aspidites wrote:....strengthening seems like an easy way to make a weenie swarm deck:

Put only cards with exactly one loyalty requirement in your deck. Horde cards in your hand until you hav enough to sacrifice and use for the sole purpose of strengthening.

Of course, play-testing would be the only way to see how often it occurs that such cards are strong enough even after strengthening to take on your opponent. That said, I'm not against the idea per se, just concerned about the possibility of it being an overwhelming mechanic that is too easy to deploy.
Yes, I share the notion. It could play out exactly that way, but let's keep in mind that it probably won't be enough to keep on killing superior creatures due to:

1) the pretty steep cost - for each strenghthening you do you gain only +1 ATK or DEF (not both), and for that you discard a card from your hand, presumably remove it from game, so it doesn't even go into the discard pile from which it would be easy to pick it up again later on. Max hand-size is 7 cards, usually. By playing 1 as resource every turn you will have 6. Playing a creature or something else leaves you just 5. Now, top that off with strengthening one or two creatures, and you have about 0 or 2 or so cards left in hand, narrowing your options plenty. Next turn you will have even fewer cards even if you draw 1 or 2 new ones.

2) You can still never strenghten creatures more than a maximum of 3 times. In theory a wheenie would be 1/1 or 2/1 or 1/2. So... even if you start strengthening all your weenies (however that is possible given you will run out of cards from hand) the max values would become 5/1 or 1/5 (until end of turn).

All that put aside, I am still not convinced that strengthening really adds anything good, more than some seldom used possibilities and more guessing/bluffing while playing. Maybe it would even make players more cautious and lead to a game that is more "locked down" with less aggression. Now that I think of it it doesn't seem far fetched.

Let's put it on hold for now and try out all the basics without it to begin with. When they work we can re-visit the topic if needed.

What Q_x says about lose condition is interesting. It might be cool to be (one of) the only games that doesn't enforce a lose condition simply because a player can't participate in a phase of the game.
The reason that many have that around could maybe be to avoid stalemates: If both players run out of cards it could easily become the case that they just sit and do nothing since taking the first step could be lethal. I'm not sure that is their main reason though, and we could solve it by just stating that if both players decks are empty then the game ends, and the winner is whoever has most x, y z.

I agree with you both on not having it as losing condition.
-1 for deck size limit. In practice, I've seen it such that most people who have too many cards in their deck lose anyway because:

* they have so many cards in their deck that the probability of getting good cards is nigh impossible to predict
* not having a lose condition would make the lack of cards a non-issue in some instances
* I don't necessarily believe we should *force* the semantics of the game to suggest that it should be faster. People will find out soon enough by analizing the cards whether having a lot of cards is beneficial or not.
I agree on the first two. Don't think I share the view on the third, but in practice you are most likely correct that most will try to keep it as low as possible anyways to get their combos as fast as possible.
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Re: Strenghtening & Deck cap

Post by Q_x » Mon Jun 04, 2012 20:33

End of the cards in deck... I'm strongly against this type of endings, really. I understand the problem - the game has to end somehow, be summarized and the winner and the loser has to exist in the end. I'm against draws, I was under impression that draws are impossible here, or at least highly unlikely.

Now, from what I understand, one can win fighting, using cards harming opponent (such cards are not yet developed) or solving quests (also in development). Adding one more rule - deck exhaustion (combined with deck size limit) - will change completely how the game is played - it will become more card-conservative. For me it's harming more than helping in terms of strategies. In fact doing nothing literally will make quite effective tactical solution.

I can see where the game could end up in deadlock. However, I think that having all cards going through a game should lead to actions, rather than waiting for opponent's move. So either one waits, or attacks. Two turns without changing the score and drawing any cards should finish the game, I think. If both sides are waiting, why bother playing. Either you can win with what you're left with in hand, or can't.

Also, we can recycle the graveyard, and simply play until someone wins.

Avoiding draws with existing break condition (no cards ends game, but points decide about winning) is really another story. We could use a single scale for both players - one that's never even (no zero). It's offtopic, so anyway, whatever.
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Re: Strenghtening & Deck cap

Post by Mattaiyah » Mon Jun 04, 2012 21:12

Q_x wrote:Two turns without changing the score and drawing any cards should finish the game, I think. If both sides are waiting, why bother playing. Either you can win with what you're left with in hand, or can't.
While the idea of ending if nothing happens is good, how can you determine this? The players could be really agressive, but fail to destroy enemies or complete quests. I know chess has a rule like this (no pawn movements or pieces removed = draw), but it's so large it's nearly impossible. The possibility of stalling is quite likely; how can a finish the game rule be created that wouldn't also get in the way of potential (non-stalling) gameplay?

Wouldn't this also cause potential problems? How would you determine the winner? If you use victory points, there's the possibility of a draw, which isn't a possibility.
Q_x wrote:Also, we can recycle the graveyard, and simply play until someone wins.
The problem with this is you can easily develop a strategy that abuses this. This would also destroy
the idea of graveyard interaction with the undead.
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Re: Strenghtening & Deck cap

Post by Q_x » Tue Jun 05, 2012 06:25

Well, I've proposed two simple solutions for two problems you've mentioned, Mattaiyah.

For no cards to draw - no score change through whole round could finish the game. If one has strategy that takes too long to apply, it's not effective enough to win. If you're single turn late to win - you lose.

For scoring we could use a single scale that has no zero point - if you have 1 point of advantage and just lost one point, you lose, skiping from 1 to -1. Problem is, again, without absolute values victory conditions will have to change.

I have to agree with recycling graveyard the game may not be the best idea. Abuse may be one reason, problems with undeads - another. But, considering the game foundation - that is being cheap, eco-friendly, DIY product, I think reusing graveyard fits here nicely and helps to keep card count lower, while adding a bit of tactical dimension.

I can see it even further - that is having 30-40 cards in deck, with limited creature (and offensive in general) cards count and limited hand size as well, so that the graveyard will always be full before recycling it.

Problem is, as always, very general: what we want the game to be? How it should be played? And most of all - how to mend what we have into what we want.
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