5 minutes ago, shosuko said:

I wasn't going to respond to this one but there is a situation I've experienced that comes to mind that really shows where meta can go, as well as where sideboards can help keep a janky meta in check.

I used to play the My Little Pony CCG game competitively. There were some decks that would come about that were not interactive in their method of victory which would go off unexpectedly and end the game in a single turn. There were a few cards that could be added to any deck to beat them, and once you beat that combo the deck essentially fell apart. There was no sideboard though, which meant every deck that wanted to be competitive needed certain cards just to counter that odd deck they may or may not face. Basically if you didn't have any of these few cards that deck always won, if you did have these that deck always lost.

The problem is that these eat into the actual deck design, and you are then weaker against other decks that don't consider that janky deck. The janky deck ran the meta into a chaotic storm. There was no sideboard in MLP:CCG, and the game designers eventually restored to a ban list to help calm the meta down. If there was a sideboard then I could have easily played a general deck with a few cards to put in to shut down the janky deck rather than have a weaker build just to cover against the crazies.

I'm not saying every game needs it - but there is certainly a situation I've lived through where it would have helped tremendously. Swiss rounds may put the jank deck against several people, where someone would beat them... but that doesn't change my game with them, or my game with other people who have a stronger deck that may beat me, while they lose to the jank, and I beat the jank... Bad 3 way tie there that would be solved with a side board.

......There was a My Little Pony CCG?

Thats........I have no words.

22 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

......There was a My Little Pony CCG?

Thats........I have no words.

Haha - yeah - it was actually kinda cool, but rough around the edges. The designers were new and there were some missed estimations of what was powerful and what was not, and how powerful certain combinations of abilities could be It's definitely a one off, and again I'm not saying "sideboards are needed" or anything, it's just a situation that I feel a sideboard would have helped in.

FFG has made mistakes before as well, but recently their reputation is pretty solid so I'm excited for the L5R game!! I just hope I can get it on Gencon release instead of waiting for it to come to my lgs.

6 minutes ago, shosuko said:

Haha - yeah - it was actually kinda cool, but rough around the edges. The designers were new and there were some missed estimations of what was powerful and what was not, and how powerful certain combinations of abilities could be It's definitely a one off, and again I'm not saying "sideboards are needed" or anything, it's just a situation that I feel a sideboard would have helped in.

FFG has made mistakes before as well, but recently their reputation is pretty solid so I'm excited for the L5R game!! I just hope I can get it on Gencon release instead of waiting for it to come to my lgs.

Well at least it wasn't a Strawberry Shortcake or Rainbow Brite CCG, that might have moved me from amusment into scorn.

It did, however, improve the side board story.

24 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

Well at least it wasn't a Strawberry Shortcake or Rainbow Brite CCG, that might have moved me from amusment into scorn.

It did, however, improve the side board story.

Not a ccg but...

20 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

Not a ccg but...

*sigh*

I'm going to have nightmares now,aren't I?

6 hours ago, Mirith said:

Holy run-on-sentences Batman.

....

Welcome to the L5R forum...

5 hours ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

......There was a My Little Pony CCG?

Thats........I have no words.

My buddy bought it as a joke. Then the joke got better as we realized it was far more fun than it should have been.

So we played for about a year won a bunch of tournaments. And taught pony lovers how to build a decent deck.

8 hours ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

......There was a My Little Pony CCG?

Thats........I have no words.

There is a My Little Pony CCG. I never bought it (because it's a CCG), but I tried it out, and it's pretty good.

The fact that people are willing to post their support for a MLP CCG, I find extremely funny.....and kind of awesome.

Well, I'm a Unicorn player, so...

Real reason I tried out the game is that one of the owners of my FLGS has a young daughter and is a big fan of the series.

48 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

The fact that people are willing to post their support for a MLP CCG, I find extremely funny.....and kind of awesome.

I like what C.S. Lewis said about My Little Pony (despite having died decades before it was created):

Quote

Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

From "On Three Ways of Writing for Children", in 1952.

For whatever reason, MLP seems to get some really good gameplay treatments. I have heard, though not from a reliable source, as he was a sales-guy, that the MLP RPG is actually quite well designed too. Though he then promptly tried to sell it to us, despite us trying to be obvious about our disinterest. However, the mechanics seemed decent (as he described).

I had also heard that the MLP CCG was fun.

I however, am going to be a real man and go back to watching the 1990s batman cartoon instead of this silly My Little Pony stuff.

I've never been a fan of a side board. I certainly see the point in combating a tough meta, but I also think that is part of what makes deck building for a tournament so interesting. It's about making those trade off decisions - do you make a pure Lion military swarm deck that will excel at that one thing - or do you include more meta cards that dilute your deck? For me a side board makes those strategic deck building decisions less important. Maybe I approach it the wrong way though, I see the deck building process as equally important as the gameplay itself and like to see a great, all encompassing deck make it to the top.

30 minutes ago, YasukiKaito said:

I've never been a fan of a side board. I certainly see the point in combating a tough meta, but I also think that is part of what makes deck building for a tournament so interesting. It's about making those trade off decisions - do you make a pure Lion military swarm deck that will excel at that one thing - or do you include more meta cards that dilute your deck? For me a side board makes those strategic deck building decisions less important. Maybe I approach it the wrong way though, I see the deck building process as equally important as the gameplay itself and like to see a great, all encompassing deck make it to the top.

You are correct, and FFG does a good job with this to some extent. The problem arises when you just need to meta for everything, so your deck fills up with meta. Eventually it got to the point in Netrunner where, at least on runner side, I felt like there were about 10-15 cards I needed to always run to avoid most of the major gotcha decks. I'm not the best deck builder so I was probably being overcautious, but it leads for a bad play experience. I'm not saying sideboard is a good solution to this. Sideboard only really matters if you play multiple games against the same deck. Anything else is just scouting and illegal.