2 hours ago, Horiuchi Nobata said:

My greatest hope is that FFG has decided to make a larger part of the Action cardbase universal. It seems like such a waste of design space to have each faction only able to use a tiny fraction of the available cardpool for things like that. And it also makes the meta almost comically complicated as a player has to remember what the version of a given effect that each faction they are playing does, see all the different negation cards in AGoT.

They have to find some balance though, remember when every military deck in L5R was "3 Rally, 3 Test of Courage, 3 Sneaks, 3 Deadlies, 3 Superior Tactics, Clan Sword, that one Cost effective follower...."?

6 minutes ago, El_Ganso said:

They have to find some balance though, remember when every military deck in L5R was "3 Rally, 3 Test of Courage, 3 Sneaks, 3 Deadlies, 3 Superior Tactics, Clan Sword, that one Cost effective follower...."?

Well, that's not thaaaaat terrible to me, in the end, you'll need your personalities, and that's what makes each clan different. Lion will rush my face, Unicorn cavalry other of my provinces, Crab yu/strenght duel my chars and Mantis shoot them from their boats. Also then you'll have more space for faction specific cards, or action cards to support other kinds of gameplay.

50 minutes ago, BayushiCroy said:

Also to mention, among options A, B, and C, I hate c, and at risk of having a weak discard effect with b, I'd choose a everytime the time.

Here's why: if it's random I can't plan. If I get to choose which of my cards to discard then I can plan around that. Also I don't put useless cards in my deck so I have to not use some resources to protect the others because of discard.

There is a big side effect to A and that's card information. By virtue of picking their best card in hand hand, you also get to see everything else they have. The card information on top of the actual effect of getting rid of their best card is pretty nuts! If a card like that was in the environment, there would be really no reason for any deck not to play it at all, which isn't a great thing for an environment. I think people would sooner complain about that being NPE than the random discard! And that's where the necessity behind designing random discard is. Somehwere in between as you say, a potentially bad card effect (Would in many situations feel like a dead card, esp when behind), and insanely good card information coupled with removing their best "Surprise" play from the equation.

59 minutes ago, BayushiCroy said:

If they get to choose, then I likely know what they will choose and can plan accordingly, and if they don't choose that one, I can reverse engineer their thought process and see how they came to that conclusion. Which allows me insight into their point of view of the game and its state.

I played a lot of Scorpion too, and there was this double bluff aspect which I agree is nice.

I think there is room for all three in some way. Originally I was just challenging the idea that one wasn't necessarily NPE. All depends on the overall environment in the end.

1 minute ago, Moto Subodei said:

There is a big side effect to A and that's card information. By virtue of picking their best card in hand hand, you also get to see everything else they have. The card information on top of the actual effect of getting rid of their best card is pretty nuts! If a card like that was in the environment, there would be really no reason for any deck not to play it at all, which isn't a great thing for an environment. I think people would sooner complain about that being NPE than the random discard! And that's where the necessity behind designing random discard is. Somehwere in between as you say, a potentially bad card effect (Would in many situations feel like a dead card, esp when behind), and insanely good card information coupled with removing their best "Surprise" play from the equation.

I played a lot of Scorpion too, and there was this double bluff aspect which I agree is nice.

I think there is room for all three in some way. Originally I was just challenging the idea that one wasn't necessarily NPE. All depends on the overall environment in the end.

There could be also a some kind variation of A like looking for half of cards in hand (rounded up) and then discard one of them.

Completely agree. And knowing everything in hand is just overbearingly powerful. My point was mostly that I am so pro having discard effects that i would only have only option A rather than not have any at all.

A further blend would be cool two. Reveal 2 random cards from hand discard 1. I DETEST effects that change board state without info, which intrigue challenges do.

I would rather start an action with randomness but end it with choice.

However, I agree with everything you have said.

5 minutes ago, kempy said:

There could be also a some kind variation of A like looking for half of cards in hand (rounded up) and then discard one of them.

Would be a cool card!

This whole conversation has reminded me of Bayushi Paneki Exp2

Just now, Moto Subodei said:

Would be a cool card!

This whole conversation has reminded me of Bayushi Paneki Exp2

Haha! Trust me, but i also automatically got this version before my eyes.

Yes, randomness is good and a necessary part of the game. Resource randomness isn't.

Resource randomness prevents you from playing the game at all and that I have an issue with.

Take Netrunner: you can never be completely out of resources, as you can always spend clicks to gain creds. It's not super efficient, but it is always an option.

Or Dominion: there's a little randomness at the start, do you get a 3:4 split or a 5:2 split of coin, but you can never end up with two turns of nothing to start with.

In Magic I can end up not drawing a fourth land for the entire game, or never drawing that second color or never drawing enough to play two cards in a turn or activate an ability and play a card and all of these are boring and deadly.

See what I mean?

16 minutes ago, Myrion said:

Yes, randomness is good and a necessary part of the game. Resource randomness isn't.

Resource randomness prevents you from playing the game at all and that I have an issue with.

Take Netrunner: you can never be completely out of resources, as yiu can always spend clicks to gain creds. It's not super efficient, but it is always an option.

Or Dominion: there's a little randomness at the start, do you get a 3:4 split or a 5:2 split, but you can never end up with two turns of nothing to start with.

In Magic I can end up not drawing a fourth land for the entire game, or never drawing that second color or never drawing enough to play two cards in a turn or activate an ability and play a card and all of these ate boring and deadly.

See what I mean?

I think most people will knee-jerk respond and stay something like:

"but you should have taken care of that in deck building "

But I believe I understand your point. In that in netrunner and dominion, it is actually IMPOSSIBLE to not have access to resources.

8 minutes ago, BayushiCroy said:

I think most people will knee-jerk respond and stay something like:

"but you should have taken care of that in deck building "

Sure, in CCG put just 3x Forgotten Legacy in your deck and you'll always have a at least 3 Holdings to buy every game. And in Onyx they were going to add another legal Legacy Holding that smoothed things a lot.

Those were guaranteed to be in my starting cards?

@BayushiCroy pretty much. In Magic, even with the correct amount of lands yiu can still just have bad luck, as there is no guarantee at all that you will get the resources or the cards to fetch resources.

In one case, it's impossible to just be out of ways to play the game, in the other, it's impossible to guarantee that you can always play.

16 minutes ago, Myrion said:

Those were guaranteed to be in my starting cards?

No, they're alway guaranteed in time when you need them, i mean in Dynasty phase.

---

Talking about MtG-ish games, take a look at The Spoils. There you always start with two Resources (lands) in play and every card in hand can be played as colorless Resource. Easy-peasy. Maybe that's why game is dead now.

Ah. That works too!

I only ever heard about that from the back of deckboxes I bought for MtG. I'm pretty sure that lack of advertising killed that.
Hearthstone is doing fine and it got rid of resource randomness. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was on track for surpassing MtG.

Magic has a *huge* first mover advantage and an equally *huge* network effect on its side. It has a few really bad issues, but nothing else has a chance to displace it, because the business space is so limited and competitive. You'd have to be massively better in *all* respects, to not die vs. MtG. So getting rid of resource randomness being the cause for a game dying? I ***heavily*** doubt it.

Isn't Yu-Gi-Oh like the second biggest CCG? Does it even *have* resources?

LCGs can survive by having a different business model and that's what I'm hoping L5R does

3 minutes ago, Myrion said:

So getting rid of resource randomness being the cause for a game dying? I ***heavily*** doubt it.

That was meant to be bitter joke. It's just sad that game with nice superior mechanics die becasue of various random reasons.

Ah, I see. I'm sorry I misread that

Personally, in card games I enjoy building the economy. It's another aspect to look after, and while you do get screwed from time to time, for me the trade off is worth it.

I was never able to get into hearthstone, I don't enjoy the linear resource development to it. It makes the games feel very samey to me, and it feels a bit more like solitaire sometimes.

Saw someone here the other day mention the new game Faerie, and it has a really innovative resource system that feels like a compromise between the two different approaches.

8 minutes ago, Moto Subodei said:

Personally, in card games I enjoy building the economy. It's another aspect to look after, and while you do get screwed from time to time, for me the trade off is worth it.

I was never able to get into hearthstone, I don't enjoy the linear resource development to it. It makes the games feel very samey to me, and it feels a bit more like solitaire sometimes.

Saw someone here the other day mention the new game Faerie, and it has a really innovative resource system that feels like a compromise between the two different approaches.

I agree that I like to build my resources.

But just to mention maybe you should play shaman or druid. They both mess with mana pretty hard.

Hearthstones flaws are not it's resource system.
It's the combat mechanics and their incessant desire to make extremely random but powerful cards who depending on rng can swing the game immediately.
Hearthstone is the ultimate lucksack game. Sure it's great for clips and casual play, but it's a disappointing game to take seriously.

I enjoy Dominion greatly. In some sense, that game is entirely about building a consistent economy with which to buy victory points. Yes, sometimes at the end it boils down to who gets lucky enough to buy the last victory card and sometimes you just draw 7 gold for 3 turns straight and just *can't* buy that last Province. That's fine. You've been playing the game, you can possibly buy other victory points in the meantime and a bit of luck in the game is fun and suspenseful.

I've never been screwed out of playing the game. I've seen silly bots in the unofficial android app do that, but those are silly.

I enjoy Hearthstone, and due to the cards my opponents have and the randomness of the cards I get, it doesn't feel samey to me. But I never had a game where I just sat there and couldn't do jack ****. Well, okay, weird tavern brawl combos stuff - but that's exceptional anyway. But I can always play and have fun.

I also enjoy other games with stronger economic aspects - because getting screwed means only getting a bad turn or two and never just the whole game. It never happens right at the very start.

7 hours ago, Builder2 said:

Interestingly enough, in MaRo's podcast he claims that eliminating that random element (when designing Duel Masters) removed a lot of suspense from the game: since you were guaranteed your resource drops each turn, you knew how soon you could play stuff and didn't need to prepare for bad luck.

Yeah, well, MaRo's job is also to promote Magic. He can't exactly admit that there might be a structural weakness in the game. In addition to the Duel Masters episode, I think there was one episode where the entire thing might have been one big justification of the mana system. Including gems such as "when you're playing someone much better than you, the possibility of them getting mana screwed means you always have a chance to win."

Randomness is absolutely a big and important part of card games. And avoiding repetitive play through things like not printing Transmute again is certainly a thing. But mana screw is not about randomness in what your play is going to be, its about randomness in whether you're going to get to play at all. And that, I believe, is a weakness (so do a lot of game designers, it seems, since no one copies Magic's mana system). I like MaRo, but I think this is one where he's just shilling because it's not like they can change Magic's mana system now.

I would be surprised if the L5R LCG has a magic-like mana system (or even an L5R Classic-like gold system). I feel like their design space on LCGs is to have a basically guaranteed amount of resources available that are enough to function, and then players being able to run cards (that they will randomly get, or not, in particular games) that will increase from that base. L5R Classic, of course, came with a basic number of resources out of the gate (your Stronghold, or sometimes your Stronghold plus a starter holding), but that was generally not enough to run a deck, reintroducing the resource flood/screw (and decks that could fully function on the starting gold were often broken, since the game wasn't designed for the opponent to be able to fend off that aggressive an attack).

I'm not hating variance just to be clear, I inherently understand there is an amount of that does add fun to the game.
I think a randomly arranged deck of actions/options is the perfect amount. You still get to implement the options in the way you want, you get to include the options you wants, but random mechanics that can foil the best laid plans on a whim is upsetting.
I remember one time in a pretty high tournament match for a card game, I was searching for a specific out in my deck to handle my opponent. I stalled the game as long as possible while searching for one of the 3 outs. After an extremely long loss I picked up last the 8 cards in my deck and the 3 outs were in the bottom 4. It didn't really bother me, because sometimes it happens.
However, a turn 1 random discard effect that knocks out one of the reasons why you kept that hand is one of the most frustating experiences in the world.

Modern FFG LCG design seems to be clearly aware that to much variance is a bad thing.

Why not just let players start with a resource

3 hours ago, Daramere said:

Yeah, well, MaRo's job is also to promote Magic. He can't exactly admit that there might be a structural weakness in the game. In addition to the Duel Masters episode, I think there was one episode where the entire thing might have been one big justification of the mana system. Including gems such as "when you're playing someone much better than you, the possibility of them getting mana screwed means you always have a chance to win."

Randomness is absolutely a big and important part of card games. And avoiding repetitive play through things like not printing Transmute again is certainly a thing. But mana screw is not about randomness in what your play is going to be, its about randomness in whether you're going to get to play at all. And that, I believe, is a weakness (so do a lot of game designers, it seems, since no one copies Magic's mana system). I like MaRo, but I think this is one where he's just shilling because it's not like they can change Magic's mana system now.

I would be surprised if the L5R LCG has a magic-like mana system (or even an L5R Classic-like gold system). I feel like their design space on LCGs is to have a basically guaranteed amount of resources available that are enough to function, and then players being able to run cards (that they will randomly get, or not, in particular games) that will increase from that base. L5R Classic, of course, came with a basic number of resources out of the gate (your Stronghold, or sometimes your Stronghold plus a starter holding), but that was generally not enough to run a deck, reintroducing the resource flood/screw (and decks that could fully function on the starting gold were often broken, since the game wasn't designed for the opponent to be able to fend off that aggressive an attack).

There is Force of Will which has a side deck with nothing but your resource cards. In addition, other games like Spoils, could simply let you use any card as a potential resource. There's plenty of other games to look at for interesting spins on resources like Shadowfist, Dune, Guardians, and so on. Maybe we'll get surprised by something that feels both familiar and innovating.

12 hours ago, Obscene said:

Hearthstones flaws are not it's resource system.
It's the combat mechanics and their incessant desire to make extremely random but powerful cards who depending on rng can swing the game immediately.
Hearthstone is the ultimate lucksack game. Sure it's great for clips and casual play, but it's a disappointing game to take seriously.

HS's problem is how it's designed. It ismade to be totally uninteractive, since you cannot do anything in your opponent's turn or to your opponent's hand, and thus the combat system doesn't leave you a chance to react. That's way there are so many random effects, to make that uninteraction a little bit more interesant.

13 hours ago, kempy said:

Talking about MtG-ish games, take a look at The Spoils. There you always start with two Resources (lands) in play and every card in hand can be played as colorless Resource. Easy-peasy. Maybe that's why game is dead now.

It's not actually dead, it was bought by a Danish company and they make sloooooooow little releases.

8 hours ago, Kubernes said:

Why not just let players start with a resource

There is Force of Will which has a side deck with nothing but your resource cards. In addition, other games like Spoils, could simply let you use any card as a potential resource. There's plenty of other games to look at for interesting spins on resources like Shadowfist, Dune, Guardians, and so on. Maybe we'll get surprised by something that feels both familiar and innovating.

FoW is the only Magic-clone that really fixes the biggest issue Magic has, and it's mana. Lots of fanboys and theorists would say that it makes deckbuilding more exciting and the calculations and bla bla bla. It doesn't matter, you could mana flood or mana starve, and that's not a good design in my opinion, or at least not nowadays.

40 minutes ago, Barbacuo said:

It's not actually dead, it was bought by a Danish company and they make sloooooooow little releases.

No pal, it's officially dead. After last boxed Decade of Decadence at 31st dec 2016 game has been stopped.

http://thespoilscardgame.com/rescue-mission-comes-end/

Anyway, DoD for the price of 1 FFG Core Set contained over 400 fixed card,s where all non resources were in two copies. Box was designed to homemade cube draft experience.

http://thespoilscardgame.com/decade-of-deckadence/

Too bad, the game had a really impressive sense of humor and nice artwork (very gory at times). The rulebook was a bit confusing to me. I guess I'd go to hunt every card now.

In a similar way where everycard could be set as a resource we had WoW TCG.