9 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Ok, but I’m asking for a simple case example of one of those ways. What’s a reasonable staple alternative to two resources on a single card when every card already gives one resource?

I’ve suggested a couple places that you could do dual resource cards that aren’t the same resource. Another way would be like the aspect resource cards where you generate an additional resource depending on what kind of card you play. That could be based on the actual card type or the resource on the card you’re paying for… There are definitely some ways to spice it up. I am sure the designers have a few ideas that I haven’t thought of, and I can’t wait to see what those are.

I don't think they should make staples. I don't want a staple alternative to these cards. That would require basically making something more powerful than Genius or Power Of Protection, which would then obsolete the old cards unconditionally.

I think they should make cards that reward certain playstyles therefore it would be a better include (compared to the core set cards) if your deck does a certain thing. That way you see different types of resource cards depending on the type of deck you are playing. For example Arkham Horror has cards that gives you resources for doing things like for tanking damage, being on a location alone, sacrificing assets, failing a skill test, clearing the last clue off a location, generating doom on cards, allies getting defeated, gambling with the chaos bag... all better potentially than Emergency Cache if your deck is set up to do those things well (or with little risk), and therefore you end up having more deck diversity because of it.

We actually just got other interesting resource cards in these packs like the cards that generate a certain type of resource or the Jet that gives you resources over time to pay for allies. I suspect over time we will build up more interesting options. Though I worry these prebuilts will always default to the core scheme and therefore we'll waste deck space on those reprints rather than more interesting or thematic ones for the deck.

I'm obviously not a card game designer. I'm a player voicing his opinion. Off the top of my head maybe something like a card that gets a counter every time an ally leaves play that can be used as a resource. That might smooth out ally heavy decks without the need for a two resource card that does nothing else. Maybe a card that exhausts your hero to generate resources. That might be useful in a deck that has readying or a hero with lame stats and relies on playing expensive cards. Maybe just a prebuilt deck with a low cost curve where a two resource card that does nothing else would be overkill. That's pretty easy to do in Protection. Maybe something weird like deck that chains cards. Something like an attack card that you play that gives you it's resources if you play an ally as your next action. Then the ally card gives you resources to play an upgrade. Maybe just a prebuilt deck with better card draw which is often better than just a two resource card anyway since the drawn cards can give you more options.

16 hours ago, SpiderMana said:

I’ve suggested a couple places that you could do dual resource cards that aren’t the same resource. Another way would be like the aspect resource cards where you generate an additional resource depending on what kind of card you play. That could be based on the actual card type or the resource on the card you’re paying for… There are definitely some ways to spice it up. I am sure the designers have a few ideas that I haven’t thought of, and I can’t wait to see what those are.

I think the problem with some of these ideas is that we already have baseline resource card power levels established in the game.

ie the basic 2x strength, energy, or mental are all 1 Max per deck.

Then you have the aspect power of... cards that are wild, but 2x for aspect.

And finally we get the always 2x wild for Black Panther and 3x Energy for Captain Marvel.

If you introduce a basic that only is 2x for say, events, that’s just strictly worse as a card than any of the three basic ones. If it goes higher than 2x, now you’re beginning to encroach on signature card value.

And, if you make them combos (1x str/1x energy for example) that’s just going to be mandatory in aggression decks, effectively replacing the Genius card entirely, and defeating the purpose of those cards being 1 of max.

10 hours ago, phillos said:

I don't think they should make staples. I don't want a staple alternative to these cards. That would require basically making something more powerful than Genius or Power Of Protection, which would then obsolete the old cards unconditionally.

I think they should make cards that reward certain playstyles therefore it would be a better include (compared to the core set cards) if your deck does a certain thing. That way you see different types of resource cards depending on the type of deck you are playing. For example Arkham Horror has cards that gives you resources for doing things like for tanking damage, being on a location alone, sacrificing assets, failing a skill test, clearing the last clue off a location, generating doom on cards, allies getting defeated, gambling with the chaos bag... all better potentially than Emergency Cache if your deck is set up to do those things well (or with little risk), and therefore you end up having more deck diversity because of it.

We actually just got other interesting resource cards in these packs like the cards that generate a certain type of resource or the Jet that gives you resources over time to pay for allies. I suspect over time we will build up more interesting options. Though I worry these prebuilts will always default to the core scheme and therefore we'll waste deck space on those reprints rather than more interesting or thematic ones for the deck.

I'm obviously not a card game designer. I'm a player voicing his opinion. Off the top of my head maybe something like a card that gets a counter every time an ally leaves play that can be used as a resource. That might smooth out ally heavy decks without the need for a two resource card that does nothing else. Maybe a card that exhausts your hero to generate resources. That might be useful in a deck that has readying or a hero with lame stats and relies on playing expensive cards. Maybe just a prebuilt deck with a low cost curve where a two resource card that does nothing else would be overkill. That's pretty easy to do in Protection. Maybe something weird like deck that chains cards. Something like an attack card that you play that gives you it's resources if you play an ally as your next action. Then the ally card gives you resources to play an upgrade. Maybe just a prebuilt deck with better card draw which is often better than just a two resource card anyway since the drawn cards can give you more options.

I mean, I don’t see the point of those situational cards in a game system where draw and resources aren’t limited, requiring one of three total actions each as they are in Arkham.

10 hours ago, phillos said:

I don't think they should make staples. I don't want a staple alternative to these cards. That would require basically making something more powerful than Genius or Power Of Protection, which would then obsolete the old cards unconditionally.

I think they should make cards that reward certain playstyles therefore it would be a better include (compared to the core set cards) if your deck does a certain thing. That way you see different types of resource cards depending on the type of deck you are playing. For example Arkham Horror has cards that gives you resources for doing things like for tanking damage, being on a location alone, sacrificing assets, failing a skill test, clearing the last clue off a location, generating doom on cards, allies getting defeated, gambling with the chaos bag... all better potentially than Emergency Cache if your deck is set up to do those things well (or with little risk), and therefore you end up having more deck diversity because of it.

We actually just got other interesting resource cards in these packs like the cards that generate a certain type of resource or the Jet that gives you resources over time to pay for allies. I suspect over time we will build up more interesting options. Though I worry these prebuilts will always default to the core scheme and therefore we'll waste deck space on those reprints rather than more interesting or thematic ones for the deck.

I'm obviously not a card game designer. I'm a player voicing his opinion. Off the top of my head maybe something like a card that gets a counter every time an ally leaves play that can be used as a resource. That might smooth out ally heavy decks without the need for a two resource card that does nothing else. Maybe a card that exhausts your hero to generate resources. That might be useful in a deck that has readying or a hero with lame stats and relies on playing expensive cards. Maybe just a prebuilt deck with a low cost curve where a two resource card that does nothing else would be overkill. That's pretty easy to do in Protection. Maybe something weird like deck that chains cards. Something like an attack card that you play that gives you it's resources if you play an ally as your next action. Then the ally card gives you resources to play an upgrade. Maybe just a prebuilt deck with better card draw which is often better than just a two resource card anyway since the drawn cards can give you more options.

Also in addition to what Derrault said, the suggestion of creating new energy cards is only a stop gap. After 4-8 packs that design space has run its course and then we are back to the reprint issue.

The problem with reprints isnt the energy cards is cards like mockingbird. This deck wont run without mocking is something nobody said ever, lol.

Also why are cards that truly help drive decks not getting reprinted like mansion and helicarrier.

Energy cards make sense as reprints some of the other choices do not though and that needs to be examined

26 minutes ago, Tarliyn said:

Also in addition to what Derrault said, the suggestion of creating new energy cards is only a stop gap. After 4-8 packs that design space has run its course and then we are back to the reprint issue.

The problem with reprints isnt the energy cards is cards like mockingbird. This deck wont run without mocking is something nobody said ever, lol.

Also why are cards that truly help drive decks not getting reprinted like mansion and helicarrier.

Energy cards make sense as reprints some of the other choices do not though and that needs to be examined

That’s the thing, it’s possible (maybe even desirable) to include multiple mockingbirds or Nick Fury’s in a deck. Although I’d be more interested in ally’s with the avenger trait, to take advantage of the Quinjets.

5 hours ago, Derrault said:

I mean, I don’t see the point of those situational cards in a game system where draw and resources aren’t limited, requiring one of three total actions each as they are in Arkham.

What do you mean? I don't follow that.

1 hour ago, Derrault said:

That’s the thing, it’s possible (maybe even desirable) to include multiple mockingbirds or Nick Fury’s in a deck. Although I’d be more interested in ally’s with the avenger trait, to take advantage of the Quinjets.

You cant have multiples in the deck, they are unique

2 hours ago, Tarliyn said:

Also why are cards that truly help drive decks not getting reprinted like mansion and helicarrier.

They are getting reprinted.

They explained the reasoning for those one or two copies of existing cards pretty well. In some cases it's because the deck needs to them to run (resource cards, hawkeye for a leadership deck that's very avengers based). In other cases it's because uniques only need to be in the pack once even if it's a new card (because of the "all uniques are once per deck" rule), so they end up with slots in the pack where they can't fit a full set of new cards so they fill it with reprints of old cards that are good for the pre-built deck and also good to have more of in general.

9 hours ago, phillos said:

What do you mean? I don't follow that.

In Arkham Horror you get 3 actions, which can be used to draw a card, get a resource; so, absent resource cards, you’re getting at most 4 resources and 1 card per turn if you burn all the actions on that. Arkham needs special resource cards simply because of the structure of the game.

8 hours ago, Tarliyn said:

You cant have multiples in the deck, they are unique

Ah, I conflated up the in play restriction with the build restriction. Whoops. I guess the only reason would be that the card works well in the deck (all the honorary avengers cards, and sticks around for more the. 1 round to enjoy the benefit).

On 12/23/2019 at 6:44 PM, phillos said:

Please devs tell me you are gonna be more creative in the future, and we won't see Strength, Genius and Energy as well as two copies of the "Power of" cards in every hero pack. I hate to think that every prebuilt deck will have the same resource acceleration engine. It feels like a crutch. Though on the plus side the art is all fantastic.

I knew there would be some auto include cards like this going into the game. Really hope they don't get replaced.

A big draw for the game is grabbing a pack and being able to play. Really don't want to see power creep make current hero decks useless down the road.

To be fair, different games handle economy in different ways. Magic has its lands which are rarely the most interesting cards in your deck, but you still need them. I’m okay with these few cards being staple economy pieces (that not all decks need to run - I could certainly see a low cost Black Panther deck being over loaded on economy with Vibranium as well as extra 2’s for instance).

In this game, all cards we have so far generate at least 1 resource. It’s hard to design a resource card that isn’t just better or worse than the existing resource cards. We can see new economy style cards in things like Enhanced Senses and the like, which are cool, and I could certainly see future decks running so low cost generally that will be all you need, but I don’t really think they need to reinvent the wheel with these cards either. These cards are bound to be staples in any deck that has high costs to pay at least. I’ll be happy if FFG can put together some decks without them, but I won’t fault them if they don’t.

On 12/25/2019 at 6:01 PM, Derrault said:

In Arkham Horror you get 3 actions, which can be used to draw a card, get a resource; so, absent resource cards, you’re getting at most 4 resources and 1 card per turn if you burn all the actions on that. Arkham needs special resource cards simply because of the structure of the game.

Still don't follow why that makes those sorts of resource acceleration cards bad or unneeded for this game. Especially considering we have resource acceleration cards in this game and they are considered auto includes.

20 hours ago, FearLord said:

To be fair, different games handle economy in different ways. Magic has its lands which are rarely the most interesting cards in your deck, but you still need them.

Magic is also an ancient design and I consider it's econ system a big reason why it hold little interest for me anymore. The Magic comparison is gonna be apt if these cards are included in every hero pack. I have boxes of land cards that are pretty much worthless to me.

I'm still buying the game and I would still recommend it to people. I just don't agree with this decision. I think it's unambitious. I kinda wish the two resource cards didn't exist honestly because as Fearlord points out they are gonna be hard to compete with efficiency-wise. Their only downside is they do nothing if you have no 2+ cost cards in hand or if your resource total doesn't work to support your optimal play this turn.

6 hours ago, phillos said:

Still don't follow why that makes those sorts of resource acceleration cards bad or unneeded for this game. Especially considering we have resource acceleration cards in this game and they are considered auto includes.

Magic is also an ancient design and I consider it's econ system a big reason why it hold little interest for me anymore. The Magic comparison is gonna be apt if these cards are included in every hero pack. I have boxes of land cards that are pretty much worthless to me.

I'm still buying the game and I would still recommend it to people. I just don't agree with this decision. I think it's unambitious. I kinda wish the two resource cards didn't exist honestly because as Fearlord points out they are gonna be hard to compete with efficiency-wise. Their only downside is they do nothing if you have no 2+ cost cards in hand or if your resource total doesn't work to support your optimal play this turn.

I agree that Magic’s economy system isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s an extremely popular game that works even though as you say you end up with hundreds of land cards you don’t need eventually. I’d be pleased if they can come up with a way to avoid that here, but I’d be accepting of it I feel they can’t, because I don’t want a card that is just objectively worse (because I just won’t play it if I have more than 4 copies of the 2 Resource cards already) or objectively better (because I’ll run it instead of the other cards).

There might be ways to mess with that in the future - pure resource cards are interesting in this game, since they’re effectively the only cards that don’t pull double duty, so there might be ways to balance more powerful versions or to add more without concern. If they never innovate too much in that area though I’m not going to be too upset, so long as they’re innovating on the more interesting cards.

15 hours ago, phillos said:

Still don't follow why that makes those sorts of resource acceleration cards bad or unneeded for this game. Especially considering we have resource acceleration cards in this game and they are considered auto includes.

Magic is also an ancient design and I consider it's econ system a big reason why it hold little interest for me anymore. The Magic comparison is gonna be apt if these cards are included in every hero pack. I have boxes of land cards that are pretty much worthless to me.

I'm still buying the game and I would still recommend it to people. I just don't agree with this decision. I think it's unambitious. I kinda wish the two resource cards didn't exist honestly because as Fearlord points out they are gonna be hard to compete with efficiency-wise. Their only downside is they do nothing if you have no 2+ cost cards in hand or if your resource total doesn't work to support your optimal play this turn.

Well, in the first place, because of the structure of this game, you wouldn’t have them be “resources” per se, because you can’t float resources the same way you do in Arkham. Instead you’d do what they have already done with the Quinjet (pay 2 cards to get 1-X value) and cards like Enhanced Reflexes (pay 3 now to use 1 per turn over 3 turns)

You pay something up front, and get more payouts later. There’s presumably some design space there, but none of that supplants the basic and aspect resource cards (and with good reason, they fulfill a basic function at a better rate than non-resource cards already)

On 12/24/2019 at 3:58 PM, Derrault said:

Ok, but I’m asking for a simple case example of one of those ways. What’s a reasonable staple alternative to two resources on a single card when every card already gives one resource?

Card that generates two resources that states

If this card was discarded to pay for an event reduce the cost of the next ally you play by 1 or something like that.

Or something along those lines, there are ways you can add costs to make it more balanced too. That is just straight from the hip there

What would you say to a multi-resource 'colourless'?

2 hours ago, Tarliyn said:

Card that generates two resources that states

If this card was discarded to pay for an event reduce the cost of the next ally you play by 1 or something like that.

Or something along those lines, there are ways you can add costs to make it more balanced too. That is just straight from the hip there

That would be always better than the basic.

That makes it probably signature card value.

If you scaled it back to: 1 (specific, not wild) resource, if used to pay for an event card, the cost of the next ally you play this phase is reduced by 1. Then that’s probably in line with the power levels. Maybe even if the ally was specified as having the “Avenger” or “S.H.I.E.L.D.” trait.

53 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

What would you say to a multi-resource 'colourless'?

Do you mean, two wild resources? (ala Black Panther signature card).

43 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Do you mean, two wild resources? (ala Black Panther signature card).

Not wild, I believe he means lacking any symbol. They would have to add rules for it, but essentially you could pay for things but never trigger “when spending ________ resource type” effects.

Not sure I think it really fits this game, but it could happen at some point.

Yeah I am design guy, development would need to balance it 😛

On 12/27/2019 at 1:20 PM, Derrault said:

Well, in the first place, because of the structure of this game, you wouldn’t have them be “resources” per se, because you can’t float resources the same way you do in Arkham. Instead you’d do what they have already done with the Quinjet (pay 2 cards to get 1-X value) and cards like Enhanced Reflexes (pay 3 now to use 1 per turn over 3 turns)

You pay something up front, and get more payouts later. There’s presumably some design space there, but none of that supplants the basic and aspect resource cards (and with good reason, they fulfill a basic function at a better rate than non-resource cards already)

Well yeah the way you do it is the Quinjet example where you pay for econ later for specific things, that was exactly what I was talking about. Maybe I wasn't explaining myself properly. How the resource floating works wasn't really that important to the argument. Though at the same time a card like Decorated Skull in Arkham is just a card that goes down and collects benefit based on something you are doing during the game works fine here. For example an asset you play down that collects a resource counter every time you defeat a minion or every time you use a recover action (with some limit like a max cap or a limit on how many can be banked per round). That is not too different from how Quinjet works. Quinjet just banks resources per round for a specific purpose. I think we have room to see more of that sort of thing.

In the case of burst econ if we are already out of design space in this regard isn't that kind of problematic? I don't think we are in actuality. They just seem to give us those cards in the heroes card set. For example many heroes have resource discounts on one side of their card (hero or alter ego). Example Steve Rogers getting a discount on allies. Also many have some resource acceleration card that's better than the neutrals. For example Web Shooters being a more flat investment than say Helicarrier or Ms Marvel's suit that gives her a discount on a event a turn for the rest of the game. These are things that can be played down for immediate benefit for at least a net zero so you aren't giving up tempo. So we are exploring other avenues for resources in the game already. I don't think it's unreasonable to see deck builds that just use these types of cards and ignores the blank 2 resource cards or decks that just run low cost curves.

In addition effectively a card draw effect is straight up better than the two resource cards at giving you flexible burst econ. So conditional card draw effects basically are giving you burst econ. Heroes like Ms. Marvel, Captain Marvel and Iron Man all do that. So maybe you don't need the two resource cards if you have enough ways to extend your hand without too much investment.

Again I don't want to replace those basic resource cards. I want the prebuilt decks to have designs that don't just auto include them all the time so we can see that this game is more flexible than that. Also it would mean we wouldn't keep revealing the same 5 cards every pack, which is unexciting. Also I've made decks already where those cards don't feel like the most optimal include considering they come up more than once a game and need to be played for 1 resource. Particularly it was easy to do in Spider-Man/Protection.

8 hours ago, phillos said:

Well yeah the way you do it is the Quinjet example where you pay for econ later for specific things, that was exactly what I was talking about. Maybe I wasn't explaining myself properly. How the resource floating works wasn't really that important to the argument. Though at the same time a card like Decorated Skull in Arkham is just a card that goes down and collects benefit based on something you are doing during the game works fine here. For example an asset you play down that collects a resource counter every time you defeat a minion or every time you use a recover action (with some limit like a max cap or a limit on how many can be banked per round). That is not too different from how Quinjet works. Quinjet just banks resources per round for a specific purpose. I think we have room to see more of that sort of thing.

In the case of burst econ if we are already out of design space in this regard isn't that kind of problematic? I don't think we are in actuality. They just seem to give us those cards in the heroes card set. For example many heroes have resource discounts on one side of their card (hero or alter ego). Example Steve Rogers getting a discount on allies. Also many have some resource acceleration card that's better than the neutrals. For example Web Shooters being a more flat investment than say Helicarrier or Ms Marvel's suit that gives her a discount on a event a turn for the rest of the game. These are things that can be played down for immediate benefit for at least a net zero so you aren't giving up tempo. So we are exploring other avenues for resources in the game already. I don't think it's unreasonable to see deck builds that just use these types of cards and ignores the blank 2 resource cards or decks that just run low cost curves.

In addition effectively a card draw effect is straight up better than the two resource cards at giving you flexible burst econ. So conditional card draw effects basically are giving you burst econ. Heroes like Ms. Marvel, Captain Marvel and Iron Man all do that. So maybe you don't need the two resource cards if you have enough ways to extend your hand without too much investment.

Again I don't want to replace those basic resource cards. I want the prebuilt decks to have designs that don't just auto include them all the time so we can see that this game is more flexible than that. Also it would mean we wouldn't keep revealing the same 5 cards every pack, which is unexciting. Also I've made decks already where those cards don't feel like the most optimal include considering they come up more than once a game and need to be played for 1 resource. Particularly it was easy to do in Spider-Man/Protection.

I mean, the constraints of basic and aspect resource cards are pretty well built in. The parameters cannot exceed the existing ones, without making the current ones obsolete.

Because of that design constraint, I don’t see room for much of anything they would allow total replacement of those core resource cards. Ie you’re always going to have them because they’re basic, they’re good, and anything else in those card slots is either: worse, or makes them obsolete.

The signature cards having alternative resource generating mechanisms doesn’t undercut the need for double resource cards that maximize the efficiency of the hand size.

I can definitely see decks that don’t require the double resources. Notably in the Core set, Black Panther already comes with straight upgrades in the form of Vibranium. You already need to decide whether or not you want to run him flush with those resources, or take them out for something else (arguably Protection at least in the Core feels like it can leave you with more resources than you can spend), and I think we’ll see some decks built that don’t rely on big expensive plays, but I think it’s kind of inevitable that we’ll see these cards quite a bit.

4 hours ago, FearLord said:

I can definitely see decks that don’t require the double resources. Notably in the Core set, Black Panther already comes with straight upgrades in the form of Vibranium. You already need to decide whether or not you want to run him flush with those resources, or take them out for something else (arguably Protection at least in the Core feels like it can leave you with more resources than you can spend), and I think we’ll see some decks built that don’t rely on big expensive plays, but I think it’s kind of inevitable that we’ll see these cards quite a bit.

This is true, you can definitely build a Protection deck that is mostly or even entirely 0 or 1 cost reaction cards, at which point the only thing you can even use a double resource for is your hero cards and the probably inevitable Mansion, Helicarrier, and allies.