Here's a simple proposal to fix a lot of the problems of the game all at once without changing any cards.

What if the deck construction rules were changed so that you were only allowed to play 3 copies of any card instead of 4?

Obviously, I'd like to know what the community thinks such a change would mean, so first, some of my thoughts in no particular order, numbered to make responding easier:

1.) Right now 4x 15 equals a deck. With this change players would need to run 5 more playsets to fill out their deck (3x 20). More cards in the environment should make each deck feel more unique than it is now since there aren't 5 more infinity cards waiting to be played. Decks would gain more "resource identity".

2.) Because the odds of drawing any particular card goes down, decks become slightly less consistent, which I believe is a good thing.

3.) The hardest staging areas in the game would get easier to beat because fewer control pieces would be available. With only 3 copies of Blood Runs True to draw, the odds are that you'll see 1 by the 3rd turn (or so) of the game than the 2nd (or 1st with mulligan), giving your opponent time to set up and not get immediately locked out of the game.

4.) Only having to collect 3 copies of a card like Feline Spike or Raging Gnome saves players $25-50/ea on the singles market, allowing more players to be able to afford the decks they want while also allowing the supply of cards to serve more players.

5.) The biggest downside for FFG is that players would be able to buy 1/3 less boxes to get the same thing they get now. I suspect though that most people would just opt to spend the same amount of money they are spending now and instead have 1/3 more boxes in order to get more ultra-rares.

Enough of me, what does everyone else think?

I've always been a fan of the 3 card limit, and also that Klub of Fighting game's scheme 1 ultra 2 rares 3 uncommons 4 commons thing (or whatever... might be 1/2/3 for R U C).

However changing the deck construction is obviously just a patch and doesn't address the root of the 'problem'. Any game with (new deck construction) restrictions is just allowing for the game to have that over powered card, but to let it happen in a more random fasion...

HOWEVER given the nature of our OP cards, more games allowing my opponent to get set up before i unlease the beast is a good thing.

BUT like I said before, it just increases the concept of "OMG I WIN I drew the card in my opening hand!" sort of randomness... so IDK...

It'd be a decent quick fix. However it would make a FEW other cards less powerful. Remy and those few guile cards. lol

Having spent 8 years playing Raw Deal where the card limit was 3 of each, I would be very happy with that choice.

Granted, Raw Deal also said only one of each unique as well.

overpowered card is overpowered no matter how many you have in your deck. This fix will not fix "problem cards", just make them less frequent. But they also make answers less frequent.

I feel like this fix would have minimal impact at best, and could possibly compound issues and make them worse as some decks which are currently barlety coherent will fall apart while win condidtions like launcher -> Breaker will jsut get stronger as they have redundantcy. For instance:

There is no card Ivy can use in place of what switchign weapon styles does for her deck, so a deck based on that will be greatly hurt,

A deck that uses knight breaker to win but has all atttacks that chain off fire as well will be able to use something like dragons flame as its 4th breaker and be fine for it and really not lose anything in its build.

It's never seemed to me that the attack runs of decks were the problems. It's always been more that the foundations were. Though attacks like Feline Spike are obviously ridiculous, the staging area backing them up has to be very stong as well to prevent opponents from blocking, etc.

Hata already seems to be toning down the power level of the game. Personally, right now I only want to play set 12 cards. If I could I would ignore everything else. Until rotation though, no matter how far down the power level of new sets fall, the old ones are going to rule the environment.

Also, having played several other games that used 3 card minimums (L5R, Warlord, etc.) I have to say I'm a huge fan of it, both as a player and collector. With the amount of cards a player draws in an average game of UFS I would say that right now the game is over-redundant. Becoming less than that might technically be less consistent, but in my opinion it would really be just balancing things to where they should be.

Unifiedshoe said:

Thoes games have 3 card limits but much different deck construction rules. L5r is a 2 deck game and I believe the minimum was 30 per deck, meaning you actaully have a better chance of drawing into any one card even with only 3 in the deck. Warlord saw you start the game with 6 cards in play I believe, though I havent played it in some time, and this also skews the odds. None of these are directly comprable.

The other problem becomes cohesion after rotation. Sets are pretty small and theres 12 suymbols to make cards for. If you need more cards per symbol so decks can be cohesve, you encounter a real design hurdle. Not that it cant be overcome, just that its there.

L5R uses two 40 card decks. You only draw from one deck, and you start with a 5 card handsize. After the initial draw of 5 cards you only draw 1 card per turn, so you have less chance than in UFS where the average draw per turn is 5 or more cards.

As for Warlord, you start with 6 cards out of 50 in play (I think, you may have 50 cards plus the starting 6, it's been awhile). You have a 5 card handsize which you draw up to each turn. Average draw is 3-4 per turn. After a mulligan, a deck with a 7 handsize character has 45 cards in it (with 4 copies per card so 11 + 1/4 playsets), compared to a 39 card Warlord deck with 3 copies of each card (so 13 playsets), UFS game is pretty similar in terms of odds to draw.

As for the cards per symbol argument, most sets have all cards share one resource, most sets feature two to three resources between all the cards. I don't think adding 5 cards to a players deck would strain design, but I'm sure playing in anything other than a one set environment would fix any problems.

Shoe i hate to be this guy but didnt you say in a previous thread that you havent played with new cards since set 9? Im not sure the game is in any sort of state where a change like this needs to really even be considered.

While I havent played with anything newer than set 9, I have been both reading the boards and keeping in touch with my old playgroup so I have a pretty good understanding of the meta. (Not that this is directly related, but my playgroup and I didn't play for six months before winning Team Nats, and didn't play again until a couple weeks before winning team GCC. This game doesn't really take much more than understanding it's fundamentals to succeed.) I did play a few games when set 11 came out, but only about 5 so I haven't been trying to represent that as any profound insight or experience.

I actually started thinking about this for the game back when the "void trio" was the big thing. I think mechanically, this game would be more in line with others if it used the 3 card playset in terms of probability, etc. With all the talk for the last year or so about banning (starting really around Happy Holidays era) this has seemed to be more a realistic solution than banning 7-8 cards or extensive errata. I'm not trying to suggest that this change should be immediately implemented, but rather, it should be considered as a way to change the game to avoid problems.

I think it's an interesting thing to consider. Not sure how well it'd work out in practice, though. Would need some serious playtesting to see how much it changes the meta.

A lot of the time, I DO play with only 3 copies. Nowadays, with better cards coming out and multi-symbol still around, running 3 is becoming the smarter choice, unless your deck absolutely needs 4 (which is the case with such cards as Lord of the Makai, Chinese Boxing, Battle Prowess, etc)

Making the maximum copies of a card 3 would really help in assisting with card variety in most decks.

Also being a Raw Deal Player, I think the game would benefit from having Unique mean "only 1 copy is allowed to be played in your deck". This would make Uniques a powerful force, and make you think twice about playing it when it could get hack'd or discarded.

Frankly, I feel that there are quite a few cards that would really benefit from being made "Raw Deal Unique" in the game, but it won't happen.

UFS != Raw Deal

I know Raw Deal has a strong following and all that, but these comparisons always agitate me. I dont want to play Raw Deal, i want to play UFS. Lets keep UFS as UFS.

That being said i dont see that any of the games that use 3 of a kind rules really follow a framework thats comprable to UFS, so I think without MASSIVE playtest its not something you can just conclude to be a good idea.

Unique as 1 per deck I also feel is kinda MEH. Cards are typically playtested against the rules we have now and balanced there in. Unique is often more for flavor, but often times balance. Cards given unique are not overpowered on thier own, but could be broken when used intandem with themselves which is why they are limited in that fashion. Making them one per deck just means that your leaving draws up to luck more than anything, and i feel this game wants to reward skill over chance.

Algols Assets are a good example of cards that got unique not because they are overpowered, but would be in multiple. Forethough is another instance of the same thing except it dosent (and possibly should) have the unique stamp.

You wanna talk about variety?

I don't remember who, but somebody once suggested this game always be in the Highlander format! Now THAT'S a way to get variety! ><

You know, this actually wouldn't be a bad idea. Compared to the games where 4-of is the standard, this game thrives on much more drawing speed built right into the game as a whole (aka drawing your hand size every turn). Pokemon is full of draw and tutor, but even then you usually have to sacrifice some draw for the turn to tutor, and at most you're still looking at seeing 5-7 cards a turn which is about the same as a 7 hand size UFS character without any additional support.

Plus, someone above said it would make the answers more scarce but we'd be able to run a larger variety of answers without feeling like our deck is being watered down.

I wouldn't mind testing this.

Once again my issue becomes redundancy. You say that yes you can run a more diverse group of answers if you were forced to 3 of a kind, however some symbols only really have 1 answer. So while some builds might be wholy unaffected, some builds or symbols would be arbitraliry hosed.

All for instance has one card that protects from OWLFACE now, Controler of souls. Limited to 3 in a deck, there is no replacement for it. While you opponent may only have 3 owlfaces in the deck, you proportionatley have only the same defence. Now compound that with the fact that maybe they run other foudnation control in place of the 4th owl while you dont have another option to run and you can see where the problem lies. Additonally consider that some cards that play off themselves are proportonatley weaker, cards that tutor are stronger, and Owlface has that much more to pick from. I honestly dont see it as a solution to any problem, let alone a problem im not 100% behind existing.

Considering I've very rarely run 4 of a card nowadays, such a change would not change anything for me.

Homme Chapeau said:

I think this would be a GREAT change for the game, Shoe.

Thanks for the excellent suggestion. (I think it does all the good that I think Highlander does for Legacy, without the complete lack of consistency that turns a lot of folks off to Highlander.)

ARMed_PIrate said:

Personally I'd welcome this change from a trader's perspective - Less cards for playset.

For collectors, it'll be easier, yes.
For players, it'll be cheaper, yes.

However, for gameplay, it really doesn't change too much. Sure the cards come up less frequently, but you still have access to the same amount of ansers to the same amount of problems. If the problems are on characters, you'll have less answers. That said, it makes Chun-Li 10x better because she really only packs 3x Hoyoku-Sen and 3x Spike anyways. If you can only pack 3x Seal and 3x Tag Along, you have less answers for her.

I wouldn't mind trying it out.

Shaneth said:

I wouldn't mind trying you out rawr.

Yeah I know. I saw what you did when Chubbs and I gave you that lollipop dance at ECC 08.

ALL EYES ON ME!!!!! homie

Shaneth said:

yes.

I'm not jumping on this band wagon, however I more than any player in my playgroup, play sets of 3 constantly even the good stuff like experienced. Mainly the only time that happens though is when I want to fit a few nessesary cards into the deck, so I start by taking things down to sets of 3.