Welcome to the forums, kdansky. Hope you enjoy the discussions. Be aware that it can get crazy impassioned in here and we do have our share of resident trolls or psuedo-trolls. (Sigh.) Of course we can all get trollish on the right subject, I suppose.

Anyway, one simple solution (imho) to the deck-size limitation problem (as far as must-have cards), is to offer tournaments or play levels with different deck-sizes, thus freeing up more room for cool cards. They did that back in the day with Spellfire and it really helped the gameplay environment a lot. And when I was the Line Coordinator at FFG for the (doomed) Mutant Chronicles Living Miniatures Game, we used the same idea with very good results, as well.

So there would be Tier 1 tournaments at 50-card minimums, Tier 2 at 60-card minimums, and Tier 3 aka "Battle Royal" level at 75-card minimum deck sizes. It's an easy yet elegant solution in some ways to this and a couple other game issues. However, players may want to bump the level of damage needed when the deck-sizes get larger but that could go either way, imho. For Tier 3 "Battle Royal" level, players might need to 12 pts to burn a zone.

some thoughts on WE, CV and innovation

the best thing to do is to make new cards that make you think twice about bringing WE.

dont´make it a bad choice but give evenly strong alternatives that can´t coexist.

maybe strong cards that say play only if you don´t have WEs.

or a tactic that allows you to put an enemy WE in a different zone.

or a tactic that says enemy player may only play cards that match his capital this turn.

CV is just fine imo.

it would mostly hurt the races with bad support cards if these would be baned.

a cheap grey support destruction card that destroys only cheap supports would be a nice answer imo.

or a grey quest that allows you to destroy a support card with cost of 1 less than tokens on it.

what i really don´t like is innovation because:

it makes the resource pool sort of unpredictable.

it forces you to develop your kingdom instead of the other zones if you dont´wanna lose the random recource boost.

there are some nice tactics with a developed battlefield but the lack of innovation power weakens them.

races that have access to improved developing (mostly dwarfs,empire) benefit the most of it.

i´d like to see a strong card that gives you cards or quest tokens for a developed quest zone.

making it a less obvious choice which zone to develop.

or more cards that are effected by all your developments.

or maybe a grey quest that allows you to cancel a tactic with cost of 1 less than tokens on it..

the best aproach in general should be to give other strong options that trigger by different conditions.

Curator said:

I can't agree more.

To me, the official format is simply a waste of space in the rulebook : rules clarifications would have been a lot more useful to players in those early ages.

For now, the (largely untested) format I'm trying the game with is :

1. put one copy of each cards (except Warpstone Excavation and Contested Village) in a large cardpile
2. each player draw the top 15 cards as their "booster"
3. draft 10 times the drawn cards. The remaining 5 cards are set aside and considered not drafted.
4. repeat two times steps 2 and 3. Each player ends up with 30 cards, all differents, and different from their opponents.
5. each player choose a Capital board and build a legal deck using at most 3 copies of each of the 30 cards they drafted.

In the end, you should have a decent decks (that's why only 10 cards are drafted on among the 15 drawn).

I like the basic idea of drafting 1 card and having 3 copies of it for several reasons : 1) it allows you to rely on combos if you manage to find one, 2) you know your opponent won't have that card, so counter-drafting as a real meaning with cards like Troll Vomit or Dwarf Rangers, 3) it is fully compatible with the current packaging of BattlePacks and it is geared more toward LCG than CCG.

You may build several piles to draw your cards from instead of a big (and unstable) one. A pile for Core Set + Assaut of Ulthuan + March of the Damned, and another for the battlepacks of the 2 existing Cycles is a good ideas. Players could then drawn their first 2 boosters from the first pile, and the last booster from the second pile, for example.

Back to the topic. I, too, consider WE and Contested Village to be way too "must include" cards (Innovation didn't really see the light of day in our local meta, but I won't be surprise if it came in recently). Everything was said about why I prefer not to see those cards : drawing 2+ in your starting hand unbalances the game in such a way it's a waste of time not to concede the game. But perhaps the mulligan rules was put in this game to increase the odds of getting those cards in your starting hand ?

Just a comment about comparisions with MTG : WE and CV are definately Moxes, not basic lands.

As someone formally known as Rave said, aGoT had these at the beginning (the 'streets' cycle) and then they got reprinted when the game when LCG. But, when they were reprinted they were 'one per deck' to add variety and balance them a bit.

Really, I am all for variety. As people who know me...um...know, I love games that feel different every time you play. So, here would be my thoughts:

1. Make more cards unique, and allow more than one Hero in a zone (or make a cheap card that allows it). Even more drastically, make some 'one per deck' cards, or instead of the one per zone Hero rule, make it 'one per deck'. Is anyone really worried if there were more than one hero in a zone?!? I have never quite figured out this rule...people would rather play "Smasher Awesome Unique Cool Orc Hero" than "Chud McCudpants Generic Orc #67". This is one of the main reasons I still perfer aGoT over WH - I like playing with Jaime Lannister, not House Lannister Chud...and you can competitavely. There are even cards that hurt non-uniques.

2. Make the decks 60 per. Most TCG/LCG games are. Makes greater variety game after game. Allows for more cards to be printed w/o the power creep (i.e. I am putting in MAYBE one card per chapter pack it seems like now...).

3. Make either more houses, or more 'starts in play' sub-themes for each faction. I.e. you could have two Orc 'strongholds' that replace the current generic one. One is Goblin based, one is Orc based. A healing Elf start-in-play card or indirect damage one. Or you could start Agendas like aGoT where they start in play. That would be more like the minis game and add built-in variety. My worry: start in play cards are the most hard to balance - see L5R (houses), aGoT (Agendas), Star Wars (they had you starting with a ton of cards in play by the end), 7th Sea (Captains, Boats), etc. aGoT is going through this right now with Wildlings/Night's Watch that had to be erratta'd and is still good. L5R erratta'd Strongholds more than any other card type.

So, I agree and thanks for a good post!

What about limiting WE to 1 per zone? So you effectively could only use one in Kingdom and one in Quest (since Battlefield doesn't make any sense).

CV may be a bit above the average power level, but I guess the problem here is the lack of good alternatives in the 1 cost slot. At the moment there's only the Derricksburg Forge and four units (Empire (quest only), HE (quest only), Dwarf (with 3 loyalty icons) and DE (needs two developments)).

For Innovation, you could always simple add a maximum to the card: 1 resource for each development in the kingdom zone, to a maximum of 3 (?).

Or change it completely, without completely discarding the original idea (gathering resources as a reward for developing a zone): "Gain 1 resource for each one of your zones that contains at least 1 development."

Just some suggestions...

I think there is some good discussion here. My personal opinion is staple cards are hard to avoid in a LCG/CCG simply because there will always be some sort of resource mechanic which is basic to long term success in the game, the cards that provide the best cost/benefit ratio for the gaining of or the stifling of that resource will become staple.

The only real way to avoid that is to build in conditionals on resource cards, which to be fair, Warpstone and Innovation try to do: the former's cost/benefit is influenced by the need to have things uncorrupted and the latter's cost/benefit is influenced by the degree to which a certain zone is/can be developed.

Sadly, the conditions are almost always favorable though and easily acquired by most all decks which is why these cards are staples.

Contested Village is just a definate staple card, the only condition on it is the limited text, so what - you don't play it in decks that run many limited cards.

So, my point is that the designer's tried their best but we still have obvious bests.

I don't think calling these staple resource cards power cards is fair, I'd say the Dwarf Ranger card is better described as a power card due to what it is capable of doing, winning the game relatively uncontested (same with throwers before rule changes/errata).

The solution to our woes has been mentioned, that is to play other formats, highlander-draft-whatever. OR, you could just ban these cards. Now, I understand the argument against this is that they are so staple that their removal from some decks means said decks just don't work well enough otherwise, I mean they are all neutral cards... I guess finding erratas or rule adjustments that make their conditions more meaningful is actually a better solution.

For example, Innovation acquires text: 'only playable if you had more developments in play than your opponent at the start of this turn'. Or Warpstone acquires the unique flag text so that only one can be in play in any zone at a time. Albeit this would likely see most decks simply the number in deck to 2 or 1 depending on their comfort, but I am just offering examples here.

Without any changes though I would say with a pretty high level of certainty that every competitive deck will continue to 3X all three of the cards we are discussing simply because there aren't better alternatives. Neutral cards themselves are kind of bleh this way, they are certainly more subject to becoming staple because of their playability.

- dut

As for tournies, I wouldn't compare them with say GW tournies or Magic Tournies.
The tournie scene for this game is microscopic and basically irrelevant.
This game is clearly aimed primarily at casual play. Hence I feel the game should evolve to underline this and stimulate it.
Not to mention it needs multiplay.

Decipher tried the "anti-card" thing with Star Wars and most of it was terrible. It created a large group of nearly useless rares that only stopped one other card in the card pool. Bad idea, don't do it. But, I think the reaction time for FFG to create cards or move cards up in cycle to give us something that may have already been designed against things like cheap support cards, is a little slow. Even if they wanted to be quick about it, they design the cards, send them across the ocean for printing (yes I'm sure the internets makes that one easy) have them printed and then send them back. I'm usually expecting an answer, but in the next cycle somewhere.

I think Decipher did a good job with their "bullet" cards. They are situational, but effective at changing the power curve just by being around. I don't mind having a resource base (WE, innovation, village) that everyone has access to either: its effective and you don't have to worry about your deck stalling and not doing what it's supposed to.

Darthvegeta800 said:

This thread is clearly aimed at competative play and/or the tourney scene. It is one of my pet peeves when someone comes in and says "this is a casual game mainly, so don't worry about power levels".

You can do whatever you want casually. 100 card decks, 1X a card, ban dark elf cards that begin with the letter D...

You can make the game as 'fun' and 'casual' as you want with your casual play group using house rules. The development of the game, however, will always be on competative playing (even among small groups) or people wouldn't buy the packs. *shrug*

"Use a house rule" is not a valid argument against me telling the designers that they should fix their mistakes. If I wanted to play with house rules, I could write up cards myself and not buy them, which is certainly not in FFGs interests.

As for how to fix WE: Reducing its effectiveness slightly (such as Uniqueness) won't do much. We'd still play it, because the first one or two are still totally powerful, and the third one becomes a development in the kingdom for Innovation. They would need to be changed so far that they would be detrimental or useless in some decks.

To give an example: Contested Stronghold is a very powerful card. But we do not play it in every game, because sometimes, it is just a 2P 4cost support with not effect, and that is quite weak compared to what you can get in that slot instead. Sometimes, we don't want a passive 4cost support, and would rather play two spider riders and two crooked teef goblin instead so we can swing for six and set up the WHAAAG. But playing two riders, one squig herda and one WE in my quest? Certainly better in 90% of all cases (when that one damage does not burn the zone), because I'll draw one more card next round (then I'm even to right now), and one more from then on (giving me an economical edge).

WE is never, ever useless, and very rarely weak. I still consider this question to be the baseline:

"If I would draw a [Card in Question] this turn as one of my draw cards, would I like that?"

WE needs some significant disadvantage, because all other 1P cards for 1 Ressource have one (albeit a tiny one in the case of Village), and it is actually cheaper than them. Getting your units corrupted is just not dangerous enough. I've seen one single game where it really mattered, because no defender could be played and the quest got burned.

Innovation probably should just cost 1, to make it less broken first and second turn. It's usually fine (or interesting) afterwards.

rings said:

You state that as if it is fact. When it is clear the game is aimed at casual, otherwise they wouldn't have custom draft format, they would have a better printing method for the cards (IE packs made 2 months in advanced instead of 6 packs made 1 year in advance), they would have posted an official "multiplayer rules format...etc etc.

Just pointing out that your kind is semi "odd man out" in this board game company's forums. FFG has and always will cater to the casual base, if a competitive player base forms as a side effect, then it just means more money and support is all.

FFG has printing windows of opportunity reserved a year in advanced. This is why the rules (errors and all) don't change from the reveal of the rules to the product on the shelf. Due to this they CAN'T help the competitive players because 6 months of cards are designed at once.

btw *shrug*

On a kinder note I do appreciate your donations to keep this product alive long enough for the wood elves.

Kdansky said:

Curator said:

Wow, salty.

He said this thread was geared towards competitive players, not the game. Not that I agree that it's aimed at casual players.

If the game wasn't geared towards the competitive, why bother with things like FAQs and Errata?

I agree with Rings, make the game at least somewhat balanced for competitive play and everything else will work itself out.

Hey just keeping the debate/fighting spirit alive in the forums...

Yaargh

Keeps people coming back for rebuttals. Keepin' the forums alive keeps the game alive, ya know?

No disrespect or notin'.

Oh, no issues

Yes, FFG has supported the draft format SO much compared to competative (read: sarcasm BTW). Have they done ANYTHING other than make the original rules? Has even one of the weekly posts been about draft/multiplayer? Maybe so...I just don't remember many/any. I never even have seen a multiplayer game supported by FFG. *shrug*

You are right that they have to print way ahead to make enough money. It isn't an issue of not supporting the competative players, it is to make $$. Of course this isn't Magic, but it isn't Apples to Apples either. They can't nimbly change the power level, which is why they usually have to rely at least partially on errata/bannings. They do the same thing with aGoT, and in any game power levels for different 'factions' ebb and flow.

~But, thank you casual players for paying to allow the rest of us competative players to get a lot of continued support for the game!

This thread is becoming a boor. Competative VS Casual? I hope that's not what this is devolving into. Sheesh.

rings said:

Arkham Horror

I know, right!

Lol take a look at this guy "no multiplayer games"

Um...don't you just hate when you post something you want to take back?

Doc9 said:

Curator said:

Are you being sarcastic or are you 11 years old?

He's talking about multiplayer variants of CCGs. Not every kind of game that plays with more than 1 person.

Arkham Horror is a cooperative board game, we're comparing apples to oranges here...

â—Kefkaâ— said:

Eh. I only use Ryu in SF2T, Super Turbo, Alpha, Alpha 3, 3rd Strike(AKA Low Forward >Super), CVS2, SF4 and SSF4. I wouldn't call him a staple. Not everyone can pull of a crouch cancel infinite in V-ism. (and I can't dash cancel to Ryu's Ultra) I don't really know the match up numbers for SSF4 to know how this statement could apply to the triumvirate of resources in W:I (SF4 is mostly balanced). May I redirect a bit and say that Crouching MK is as much a staple to Street Fighter as WE CV and IN are to W:I? And on the side. How do you like AGOT? I have the Core box and hate it as a 4 player game. How's 2player?

Also, to the OP, I don't really see the problem being WE, CV and Innovation. They are excellent examples of staple cards (which exist in many good games). Do they make good decks better? Yes. Are they needed to be competitive? Probably. Do they guarantee a win? Certainly not...unless you're playing Dwarfs. Kidding. Mostly. Dwarfs are the strongest and will be for a while. If you want to complain, complain about Dwarfs. Then build a deck to beat them. There are three other fine factions that can do it with a little work. I'm not going to waste my time recycling discussion about Warpstones, Villages, and Innovations. They're staples. So what? They don't hurt the game like Bolt Thrower did and how Dwarfs will if left unchecked for another expansion cycle.

qwertyuiop said:

Oh, the contrast I made of SSF4 to W:I was more like Ryu:Dwarf's definitive build, not to the resources. I don't play Ryu at all in prior games, but in SF4 he has all of the tools needed to play. He has a good cross-up, good pokes, good health, good stamina, good anti-air, good zoning with fireballs, a good ultra. As a newer player interested in winning, I can pick him and I can do well without having to worry about really skewed matchups, he does have some 6-4 matches, but he always has an answer.

As a contrast, I'll use Guile. Guile is amazing in SSF4, his zoning is probably the best of the bunch, and it creates really miserable situations for 75% of the cast. Guile has no crossup defense though, so you can cross him up on wake-up every time you like, (sans double flash in the corner, but your crossup would have to be sloppy) and force him to guess your mix-up. Also you can't focus cancel backdash his flashkick from max range, which means you'll be blocking and guessing a lot. New players would have a tough time with Guile in certain matchups like Ken, Rufus, Abel and C.Viper because you have to have good defense, and know how to tech throws. Guile would be our Orc rush, or DE control, or any other kind of deck that performs extremely well in one aspect, but has a hole in their gameplan that requires some skill or experience to deal with. No security blanket, so to speak.

I do agree about WE, CV, IN being related to cr. MK, or to put it more broad, good pokes. I would also add things like Tick Throws, and Option Selects. Things that should be used for every character, will improve every character, and don't really effect the core gameplay of the game despite being really useful.

~~~~~

I don't like current AGOT that much at all. Multiplayer Thrones is and always has been horrible as a competitive activity IMO. It turns the game into Diplomacy, which is competitive in it's own right, but I feel that it detracts from the entire point of building decks if myself and the guy I drove to the tournament with, can just bash this third guy in the ground no matter how good of a player or deckbuilder he is.

As far as the game as a whole, it's just too old and too convoluted now. Mechanics on top of mechanics... and they've gotten to the point where they will reprint old cards and update them to the new mechanics, which was pretty much when I jumped ship.

However AGOT around the time of Valyrian Edition, through the ITE block was the best CCG I've ever played... Balanced, fun, good tournament support, GREAT community (the community is still great though, always has been.)

For gods sake, though. They need to print another Bronn and stop updating the old one. I promised I would give the game a second look when they did that.

***TL;DR version: Ryu = Dwarf because they are both solid, and don't have gameplay holes, WE/CV/IN = cheap or shortcut tactics in SF which are not bad because they don't affect which deck or character you pick, AGOT now = bad, AGOT then = good.***

â—?Kefkaâ—? said:

Semi-sarcasm. For a semi sarcastic thread.

Being serious so that you can catch my bearings. All of youse guys take this semi-casual game way to seriously. This entire forum is nothing but one big joke. Reminds me of the pogs movement, lol, pogs...remember that fad.

Kefka I admire your input and logical feedback, but do you honestly think FFG, James, or Eric take this game for any more than a simple money maker? Honestly I think they leave the game broken and use articles to instill a false hope. This hope gets you to purchase the 60 card packs. It is just like the character packs for the WoW adventure game. That is NOT to say that they don't try to keep the game balanced, just that if they fail at that task, it is no skin off their backs.

I try to take this game as serious as the devs do, because if I am looking for more out of this game than they are willing to supply I will just end up being upset. FFG still has my full support in the direction that they are taking this game. I look at this product line as a supply of materials for me and my friends to use towards own designs and variants. All this game is to us is a cheaper way to enjoy the table tops glorious lore and battles, without having to mess with terrain minis, paint, glue...etc.

Come next cycle (granted Prince of Pleasure is included) I will be happy no matter what state the game is in, even if next cycle is the last. I will make this game last longer than its product line using my own methods and changes, that is my goal.

Curator said:

I remember Pogs. I had a sweet set of Ace Ventura pogs. I remember it died when the Pog making machine came out. Jerks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is a money maker. I definitely agree with you. I would've agreed with you wholeheartedly if FFG didn't start offering entire playsets in their fixed packs. But to me, that says something. That shows some respect for their product.

I remember being younger, and playing the Yu Yu Hakusho card game, which had commons, uncommons, rares, super rares, and ultra rares. I tried to play it competitively, and all of the WE/CV/INN equiviants that everyone could use were rare. Not just that, the "High Elves Disdain" equivilent was an ultra rare.

I create card games, and to this day, I back my created cards with cards from this horrible game.

Or maybe, to hit a little closer to home. UFS, with their 4x a card in each deck, shiny foils, and 20% of the card pool that was actually playable. Toss that into the traditional CCG format and you've got a nightmare.

Then there were the tournament rares, characters you could only obtain if you placed in tournaments. Which would mean you needed that 4x Shadow Banishment in your deck if you didn't want to take home a Gaira every tournament. The only time I EVER got a Nakoruru was from the dev teams themselves at Gencon.

I really wanted to play UFS, because I'm a Fighting Game dork, and I managed for a little while. And realistically, I spent just as much on that game as AGOT, and I had played UFS maybe 1/5 of the time.

Though it was nice to play Terry Bogard in a card game, too bad he didn't have an 8 hand size and couldn't commit a foundation every turn. Oh well...

These are two games that I was not sad to see crash and burn that were primarily money makers.

For what it is, this game is great. It is well designed, and well maintained. Their willingness to offer entire playsets in each pack, and to maintain the rules of the game is what I find caters to the competitive crowd. Really, I think that's all you need. Offering some tournament support would be nice, but I don't really care all that much about it.

Some of the cards do raise an eyebrow, like a lot of the dwarf nonsense. But I don't think a game has to be completely balanced to be competition worthy. Just not to the point where you absolutely need to play X deck to win.