I was just curious if people would be for or against the idea of sideboards for use in the CoC LCG.

For the uninitiated, the 'Sideboard' is a term used in Magic: The Gathering (M:tG) where you have chosen 15 (no more, no less) cards that are outside of the game but are brought in addition to your deck and can replace other cards in the deck after the first game is played. Its more for competitive play, but for casual play its nice to see who wins two out of three games as a truer judge of who 'won'. When I was heavily into M:tG, we used this constantly in casual play.

Since the minimum deck size in CoC is 50 as opposed to M:tG's 80, a reduction in the sideboard size would be necessary. An arbitrary 7-10 cards could be made into a sideboard. (Perhaps to step away from the M:tG terminology and to give it a more Lovecraftian label, a 'vault' or a 'crypt' might be more appropriate. Hmmm. Yes. I quite like that term for it...)

Perhaps 9 cards might be more reasonable (and is close to M:tG's 15 cards average ratio of 1 crypt card for every 5.5 cards in your deck). That said, I propose 9 cards in the Crypt. Max amount of any card is three, so this is a good divisible number for its square root.

Utilizing a 'crypt' can be quite advantageous and helps create a bit more strategy to the game instead of being stuck without the answer for the rock to your scissors. Gathering a crypt can be an art in itself and adds new dimension to deck building. Since your opponent also has a crypt, the strategy gets deeper. Ravager from the Deep got you down? Replace a card in your deck with the answer your faction might have for it in your crypt, etc. I think you get the idea.

Note that I am not trying to make this game more like M:tG, but since we now have a Mulligan rule then why not a Crypt as well?

Casual house rule only or does it have the potential to be more?

Hi,

personally I don't feel the need of a sideboard.

When building decks, we decide for a main strategy and we pack as many tricks as possible along that strategy. But for every trick, there is a nemesis. It would be anyway impossible to store every card that you might need for every faction and situation that you might face. Therefore I just follow some basic rules of deck building and try to cover what could be the most common situations that I could face, while keeping the deck down to 50. Then if a princess of bubakis turns into a ravager from he deep thanks to a shocking transformation, you just take the beating and go along with it. At the end, I think, your overall stronger strategy will prevail even if you don't have an answer for everything that get played against you.

The beauty of this game is also in the skill of playing your deck and how sensitive you are in sniffing out and avoiding potential traps.

PS I'm a very casual player and I don't have any competitive experience so you might want an opinion from those kind of players.

I personally like to build a deck with a coherent purphose and logic. I hate using single cards just because they are strong cards (ie Eibon or Guardian Pillar)

I prefer to build a stronger deck and use my play-skill to work with decks that are bad matchups for me. I have never been a fan of sideboarding "silver bullets" and always felt like it was the sign of a weak deck-build to begin with.

Chevee

I understand the role of the sideboard in Magic. And, considering the strength of Hastur/Agency right now, I can see why you might want such a thing. But, I don't think it is appropriate for this game, and I agree with that random guy who suggests it is a sign of a weak deck. Ideally you want to create a deck that can respond to any threat it perceives.

Couple this with the relatively few games in a competitive tournament round (sometimes there was only 1 game completed) and I think the need/value of such a thing is low.

I'm going to go with... absolutely no.

In fact... I'm going to go as far as... get rid of the mulligan while we're at it. (and/or best of 3, no need to have both)

In magic, and other less thought-out games sideboards become an eventual necessity due to poor basic game system, narrow card design, and a well defined tier based metagame.

Continueing with the magic example. Magic needs it mostly because of the tier based metagame and little bit because of its basic game system. On the game system side, in MTG, the average deck contains between 22-26 lands, and 34-38 non-land cards (to reach the minimum 60 card requirement). With 4 copies of each card available that leaves between 9-10 minimum different cards that you must play (not including cards that you can have more than 4 of). Therefore magic decks tend to only be able to handle a very minimum number of situations and are generally very focused on a single strategy. So that ability to swap a minimum of 4 different cards (slightly less than half contained in the main deck) becomes necessary so games become one-sided less often.

On the metagame side, MTG seems to pretty consistanly contain 3-4 strategies that perform far better than other possible strategies. So in order for decks to compete a sideboard is needed so those 3-4 decks do not dominate... as much.

CoC on the other hand requires a minimum of 17 cards (again not including cards that you can have more than 3 of). Which is more than MTG's main deck and sideboard combined. This means cthulhu decks can have a focus and still have responses for a much wider variety of situations. Also, CoC as we all know, doesn't use the land mechanic. This way if you want to add a silver bullet type of card you can with much less risk of it being a dud due to the fact that you still have the option to resource it.

Not to metion the fact that in CoC you are going to see more of your deck in an average game than you will in an average game of MTG. So even the odds of you finding your 'answer' is much greater. Normally this results in having a metagame that is not defined by tiers, and if it is... it is much more vast and the level of competitiveness between the tiers are much closer. Of course, when a certain strategy/cards break that balance... things can get a little crazy.

This is a testiment to CoC's superior game system. Sideboards and mulligans... are not needed if the card balance is restored/preserved.

House rules... if sideboards make it more enjoyable for you and your friends then by all means go for it. However, for official tournaments... I don't see one being needed and I don't think it should be implented.

TheProfessor said:

TheProfessor said:

Of course we do. But do you honestly think that the present card pool is deep enough to have an all comer deck? I certainly dont and even if we did have 20K card pool I would still say that sideboarding enhances the strategy of the game.

TheProfessor said:

I can see how time length can be a factor, but it is no different in M:tG either and yet somehow it still works fine. For years.

I keep hearing from the people who have played this game for quite sometime that they think sideboarding is akin to cheating. I guess if you sideboarded in Poker it would be (and would get you shot) but this is a game which involves the strategy of deckbuilding. Sideboarding at its core compliments this strategy.

I wonder if the new users would be so curmudgeonly resitant to this idea as the grumpy grognards seem to be.

Magnus Arcanis said:

This however is a good point and better explains the resistant position.

'No thank you' to sideboards.

I agree with NO mulligans as well.

Random_Person said:

I couldn't have said it better myself.

No mulligans either.

I never liked the idea even in Magic so I wouldn't want to see sideboards appear in CoC (or any of the card games I play).

Hybrid said:

Yes, I agree