Hello Guys,

I am new at the world of W:I. I come from other games, but this is my first LCG.

Not very games and a large community at Portugal. But 2 at Germany this year. We are growing : )

I have a couple of questions that i can´t find the awnser no where.

Can we have a Side Board? How many Cards can it have?

If we can have a Side board, can we have a different Capital in it? (That would be cool...)

If any where a way i can get my hands on a deeper rule book?

Thank u

There is no side board. There is only the one rulebook.

Depending on how your League/Tournament is setup, you could have Sideboards. However, with the current cardpool, sideboarding is not necessary.

I foresee sideboarding being useful later on as more battlepacks are released.

what is side boarding???

StoneColdSpider said:

Generally (speaking from Meccg POV), you put cards that might be needed into your sb and then if there seems to be a need for them, move cards from sb to deck via another cards. In Meccg, you generally place Anti-One-Ring cards in sb, since, it's fairly rare for a person to play a dunk-deck, but if you having nothing to stop the dunk, it's not that hard to pull off. Another use is to put resources that you don't need just now in there, maybe they have a requirement or something (like the One Ring), once you have all/most of the requirements ready, sb the card in and wait to draw it.

Sideboards are about plugging gaps that your deck might have or save space in your deck. In Meccg, you pretty much needed the smallest deck available (30+30) in order to be competitive, just couldn't cover ever possible strategy with those cards, sb was very much a key component.

I think the new Zealot Hunter is great to have in a side board when playing with a Empire deck.

Seems this game is really in need of a errata or more extensive rules.

Why do you say that ?

I really hope this game does not add a sideboard to it.

Toqtamish said:

Well, in certain games side boarding is essential, so you have at least a fighting chance against other decks. In MtG you have to play best of 3, so you could use the side board after every game, but I don't know, if WH:I uses the same tournament setup.

In WarCry you had a card that granted you a sideboard. You could play the card during the match and search your sideboard for another card. I think it was one of the coolest ideas ever since it didn't make the side board t0o powerful by swapping half of your deck, but you could react upon your opponent during the first game, which was pretty useful, too.

IMHO, in a proper tournament scene you need a side board to make things interesting, but in friendly matches it isn't neccessary. If FFG ever releases tournament rules, I am sure that they will address this issue as well. But for now we only have the core rules and have to make up our own tournament rules.

Dam said:

MECCG was an exception. In this game, the gamerules allow you to access your sideboard DURING the game (since youp lay only 1 game per round).

In all the other CCGs I know, sideboards are used between games to alter a deck.

The existance of a sideboard for WH:I will rely on the tournament format. If the game is considered to have a high "luck of the draw" factor (like MtG has), the rounds will probably be played in "best of 3", and thus sideboards will see the light of day. If the game has a small "luck of the draw" factor (like MECCG has), sideboard won't exist by the rule. To me, since you have easy ways to draw cards (just put more cards in your QZ), the "luck of the draw" factor of WH:I is pretty low.

Last, another way to play WH:I events would be to ask every players to come with an Order deck and a Destruction deck, and to play a game with each deck during a single round (like NetRunner events), but one will have to define if the round will be order vs order and destruciton vs destruciton, or order vs destruction in both games.

_GoDsHanD_ said:

Side Board ?

It is imo an autoinclude in most order decks.

Yeah. I was thinking about the Pure Orc Deck, since the card says Forced. Its a Risk, but, i can see that all decks in the near future will use more than one rece. So yeah, its a very powerful card.

Sir Blackadder said:

The original Star Trek CCG from Decipher had a card like this as well.

I hope they don't add a sideboard element to this game.

Sideboards prevent a lot of players from playing well rounded decks. If you know you can just include silver bullet cards in your side board rather than figure out how to build a deck that can answer any situation, you depend on a crutch. IOW Necissity is the Mother of Invention. If you find a build or a race that is really giving you problems you alter your deck and/or play style to minimize its effectiveness against you or to shore up weaknesses. This may mean you are not as dominant against all other builds or races, but it is a question of finding balance between what you need to do to make your deck play to its strengths while still minimizing its weaknesses, and correctly reading the metagame.

Side boarding does not require nor incourage any of that.

Never saw the things like that dormouse.... but i must say i agree with all the things you said. Thank u for this slap back to reality.

Thank You Very mutch.

I am also leery of sideboards. It seems to drive the game in the direction of one-trick pony decks that then sub in their next trick as needed. I like the idea of going into a competive situation knowing that you have to consider playing a variety of deck styles.

_GoDsHanD_ said:

I'm sorry, I certainly didn't mean to come off that you were wrong. I was just pointing out my personal issues with side boards and how I've seen games go that included them. I'd rather this game be played best two out of three to determine who is the better player with the better deck rather than changing decks, but M:tG is incredibly popular so obviously not everyone agrees with me when it comes to side boards.

Your point about side boards potentially creating a one-trick-pony cycle is well taken. But the fact is also that too often they seem to design these games with a rock/paper/scissor mentality. And you then throw in a tournament environment, and it can get a little silly. I brought a scissor. You brought a rock. We randomly meet. You beat me. Another guy brought rockish scissor-paper and we both beat him...

The solution to just randomly running into a bad deck match-up is either: allow players fore-knowledge of their opponent, as is the case in the sporting world, and/or some ability to make "half-time adjustments" (also like the sporting world). If all players played exactly the same deck, then the situation would be more analogous to sports (like a tennis or golf or karate tournament), and competitive balance would be assured. But this is not the game we are talking about. So the other solution is fanatical attention to the balance and playability of well-rounded decks vs. anything else. With so many moving parts, this is hard to achieve.

My group, sportsmen all, see it as simply logical that you would know at least which faction you were playing ahead of time, every time, and you put your cards together appropriately beforehand. Since both players know, it is completely fair. We also feel that some small amount of "half-time adjustments" should be available as well (remember...BOTH players can make adjustments, not just the one who got hit on a weak-spot, keeping the initiative firmly with the player who exploited said weak-spot first). And further, if the game is not just cranking out useless cards, I would think that there is still so much variety and trickery and misdirection involved with the faction combinations and neutrals that your intel is certainly always severely limited.

Let me ask you this: if you and your friend sat down to play, and you both had more knowledge of each others decks (in fact, knew every card in it), rather than less, and you agreed both decks were balanced, and then played a best of 5/7/whatever, would that be a more fulfilling, player-skill driven experience, or less of one? If the deck is meant to played , (as opposed to merely being a program that is executed, like many CCGs of the past) then the answer seems obvious in my experience.

Rheingold

PS And a note on best of 3s...that is the minimum any of these games should be using. Egads, one and done? On a card drawing game where you might not see half your deck? Ick. Best of 5 is better...best of 7 better still, but I understand that at some point you reach limitations. 5 seems to be a sweet spot for games like this...not unlike an RTS tournament.

Rheingold said:

Great points. I guess what I am worried about is the "race to 50". where the only viable option is to have your 50 card deck and your 15 card sideboard that deals with the other two 50 card optimal decks that are out there.

Absolutely 100% agree with everything rheingold said.

Just wanted to add a good way of looking at sideboards is if you decide to run a 50 card maindeck and the game system say allows a 15 card sideboard (potentially 9-10 in a game like this since the MD requirements are lower as well as single card allowence) than when you're building your deck you are building a 65 card deck not a 50 card deck with 15 other cards. A common mistake a lot of players make with sideboards is vewing their sideboards as seperate entities from their maindeck.

I for one am pro sideboards obviously. There are a lot of cool things you can do with sideboards other than just running cards that shore up your one bad matchup. Examples are making a transformational sideboard which allows you to say switch from a combo deck(something I never see happening in this game based on how it plays) to a control deck or even a aggro deck.

I'm going to have to stick with AGOT as an example of a game whose player base has never needed sideboards.

Every player makes a decision about what deck to build and the optimal way to play it. Your decks ability to field numerous tactics all feeding into a central strategy and having the necessary answers in it is an artform unto itself. Then the players ability to improvise, adapt, and overcome with the deck they brought is highlighted.

You have a way of looking at the game which is vastly different than mine. I'm a combatant and you are a sprtsman. I spent time in the militayr and my favorite games and sports are those which distill the same goals, strateies, and tactics into a less lethal form. You only have limited and imperfect knowledge of your opponent on the battlefield. Your ability to switch strategies mid-combat, knowing when to fallback and regroup, commit to a frontal assault, feint, or flank your opponent is what shows us who the best generals, fighters, and players are.

If you want completely symmetrical forces then there are a number of games out there, from Go to Carcassonne. This kind of card game is by its very nature asymetrical. Your skill is revealed in how you deal with that. As to Rock-Paper-Scissors... not all CCGs breakdown that way, AGoT certainly doesn't, and in the cases where games do end up in a circle of submission/domination the ability to read the metagame and know which deck will place you into the top seed and then the top place is part of the game. I suspect you don't view it this way though, which is a little funny since in sports you don't get multiple games to determine who the winner is, you just play who you are matched up with and if you lose you hope you win enough of your other games that you make it to the bowl/pennant/cup anyway. Again metagame.