6 hours ago, svelok said:

When you have a creature with 1 captured amber, 3 wounds, and +2 power, it gets... messy.

QFT

Magic is old school design so there really aren't many things that you are tracking.

Newer games are full of design concepts that do not mesh well with dice unless specifically designed to do so.

It was somewhat difficult for me to grasp this idea of no dice having played a bunch of different games from the mid 90's onward.

Once you see how the design concepts are built around specific tokens, beads, dials, etc it becomes clear that it was done to support the game concepts by using a variety of easily identifiable markets to denote different things.

You don't run the risk of playing that person using crimson dice for one thing and then blood red for something else and the burnt tomato for another thing and rusty red for that other thing..... And so on.

It's not the 90's anymore folks. Design concepts have evolved and we all just need to get onboard with it.

20 minutes ago, JorduSpeaks said:

FFG sleeves come in packs of 50, but per sleeve they're about half the price. I've found them to be of comparable thickness to Dragonshield.

Ultra Pro is trash. Don't buy it.

eh i'm still using the same ultra pro sleeves i bought in 2013 from my netrunner cards.

7 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

QFT

Magic is old school design so there really aren't many things that you are tracking.

Newer games are full of design concepts that do not mesh well with dice unless specifically designed to do so.

It was somewhat difficult for me to grasp this idea of no dice having played a bunch of different games from the mid 90's onward.

Once you see how the design concepts are built around specific tokens, beads, dials, etc it becomes clear that it was done to support the game concepts by using a variety of easily identifiable markets to denote different things.

You don't run the risk of playing that person using crimson dice for one thing and then blood red for something else and the burnt tomato for another thing and rusty red for that other thing..... And so on.

It's not the 90's anymore folks. Design concepts have evolved and we all just need to get onboard with it.

If it serves a purpose, sure. Play FFG games long enough and you might come to see them as yet-another-gimmick, created more for the sake of uniqueness rather than a pragmatic evolution of game design.

51 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

If it serves a purpose, sure. Play FFG games long enough and you might come to see them as yet-another-gimmick, created more for the sake of uniqueness rather than a pragmatic evolution of game design.

Having play just about every FFG LCG to date I have yet to find any gimmicky designs. Of course that is entirely subjective as I have hear people argue that just because FFG uses a particular IP for a game that it's gimmicky.

While there is some design spill over between the various LCGs that's to be expected. There is only so much you can do with a little piece of cardboard and the more components you add can over-complicate the game.

It's a delicate balance.

I don't find any of the main design elements of Keforge to be gimmicky. The tokens etc all seem to make sense with exception to the stunned mechanic which you probably could have just rotated 180 to denote stunned and then move from stunned to exhausted, but, not something I would consider to be a sneaky way to add a gimmicky design component that forces people to spend more.

Of course there are many that have said the very premise of a unique game makes this game gimmicky by default. I don't agree and it's a pointless argument to have.

I think where I make the distinctio is by asking if the component enhances, simplifies, or is necessary.

If you are just tracking a small number of things then dice certainly can simplify things. In Keyforge you currently have Keys, Amber, Power, Stun, Chains, Chain penalty, and, Damage.

Personally I think using a bunch of different dice to track all these things makes it more complicated. Use of objects that are distinctly different from one another helps the game move faster as both players are able to easily tell what is going on. I would argue that the items used to track all the various things going on meet all the criteria.......but the game was designed with these things in mind so they should naturally fit. If they didn't then it would be a design flaw.

Now that doesn't mean they are the optimal choice or visually most appealing. That is why fan made custom gear tends to pop up around these games and That pretty cool to see.

Are you familiar with commander / EDH? My playgroup seems to do just fine tracking the million different things going on with dice, and I doubt that's just our individual experience. Keyforge actually doesn't have that many things going on, so the removal of dice as a tool seems that much more curious.

Dice (d6, specifically) seem to be the absolute perfect thing to track chains with.

2 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

I don't find any of the main design elements of Keforge to be gimmicky. The tokens etc all seem to make sense with exception to the stunned mechanic which you probably could have just rotated 180 to denote stunned and then move from stunned to exhausted, but, not something I would consider to be a sneaky way to add a gimmicky design component that forces people to spend more. 

That would end up being more complicated in subtle ways. Right now, stunned and exhausted are separate concepts. Right now it's clear that I play a creature that comes in stunned, it comes in stunned (with a token) and exhausted (tilted 90º). Then it readies at the end of the turn and I can exhaust it to unstun it.

If we were indicating both stun and exhaustion with tilt, we'd need something like a chart:

• 0º Ready, unstunned.
• 90º Exhausted, unstunned.
• 180º Ready, stunned.
• 270º Exhausted, stunned.

So I play someone who comes into play stunned at 270º degrees, play a card that readies it by shifting it to 180º, activate it to unstun it by shifting it to 90º, it's a lot of confusing moving the card around is what I'm saying. Our venue was doing something similar because we didn't have any starters and it confused everyone, with a number of people thinking that a card that readies a creature also unstuns it because it's all in the orientation, and "ready" means moving it to 0º, right? I think it's the most common question I got asked!

So, I think the stun tokens are a good design element.

2 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

Of course there are many that have said the very premise of a unique game makes this game gimmicky by default. I don't agree and it's a pointless argument to have.

Everything is a gimmick when only one new game does it. Deck building games were a gimmick when Dominion came out, now they're a genre. I'm sure some ancient Egyptian complained that a game where you move pieces by rolling dice was just a gimmick.

8 hours ago, HaasBioroid said:

Im aware. I don't think most people will carry two sets of sleeves though.

hahahahaha. You haven't seen card players play before have you
I don't want to know how many different sleeves we have for Pokemon.
or the 200 each of Red and Blue sleeves I have for Netrunner.
For local events, I am not sleeving my Keyforge decks. That riffle and bridge feels so nice.

On 11/14/2018 at 10:08 PM, Hoju_ca said:

hahahahaha. You haven't seen card players play before have you
I don't want to know how many different sleeves we have for Pokemon.
or the 200 each of Red and Blue sleeves I have for Netrunner.
For local events, I am not sleeving my Keyforge decks. That riffle and bridge feels so nice.

No, I'm fully aware people will own sleeves, I'm saying people are going to be unsleeving there clear sleeved cards and resleeving opaque cards for the same deck depending on what kind of tournament there is. Most people I feel will just pick the opaque sleeves and keep them there.

On 11/14/2018 at 2:51 AM, Raahk said:

I never understood the fuzz about dice. Adding or removing tokens is much less fiddly and less prone to accidents

i've got kit for both. I will generally play with dice, but I have tokens if my opponent prefers. I don't like tokens for games like this, but i know FFG loves the **** out of them.

I like tokens just fine for damage and stun (ugh to a stun card though, I'm using Imperial Assault strain tokens currently).

The bigger problem is with power and chains. A d6 on top of your draw deck indicating number of chains (and each die is minus 1 card) is a perfect solution. It's impossible to forget the chain and less likely to get knocked than some flimsy cardboard tracker on a card (that could very easily be bumped or forgotten).

Tracking power without dice is annoying for those that can get large increases. I use a d6 to represent the additional power instead of the cards, it's so much cleaner and simpler than counting how many +1 cards or individual tokens are present.

Luckily, I have no desire to participate in tournaments so I can just ignore the ridiculous no dice rules.

Please explain:

2 hours ago, PickleTheHutt said:

A d6 on top of your draw deck indicating number of chains (and each die is minus 1 card) is a perfect solution.

Are you saying that you still use the chain-tracker card with the ring to indicate how many chains and use the die atop the deck to indicate the right-column effect on reduced card draw, or something else? At the prerelease we attended, we put eurogame cubes onto the deck for each card not to be drawn.

2 minutes ago, Keithustus said:

Please explain:

Are you saying that you still use the chain-tracker card with the ring to indicate how many chains and use the die atop the deck to indicate the right-column effect on reduced card draw, or something else? At the prerelease we attended, we put eurogame cubes onto the deck for each card not to be drawn.

How did you track reduction in chains?

3 minutes ago, Ellimist1 said:

How did you track reduction in chains?

Sorry, I did not write that clearly. We used bright cubes on top of the deck for cards not to be drawn, and black cubes placed onto the photocopy (provided by FLGS) of the chain tracker for each chain.

Dice work well for chains.

Chains 1-6 give you one less card, 7-12 give you two less cards, etc. When you tick up a die past 6, add another die and you draw one fewer card. When you tick down a die below 6, take away a die and draw one more card.

42 minutes ago, JorduSpeaks said:

Dice work well for chains.

Chains 1-6 give you one less card, 7-12 give you two less cards, etc. When you tick up a die past 6, add another die and you draw one fewer card. When you tick down a die below 6, take away a die and draw one more card.

Yes, this. Each pip is a chain. The number of d6 needed to represent those chains correlates perfectly with card draw reduction. Reduce by 1 pip each time you shed a chain.

56 minutes ago, JorduSpeaks said:

Dice work well for chains.

Chains 1-6 give you one less card, 7-12 give you two less cards, etc. When you tick up a die past 6, add another die and you draw one fewer card. When you tick down a die below 6, take away a die and draw one more card.

Oh, geez that's great. I wouldn't have thought of that because I mostly use D8s, D10s, and D20s, and sometimes D4s. I have too much emotional baggage from crap games as a kid to want to use D6s if not required.

Time to out some D6s in my KeyForge set!