Sorry to MarthWMaster. You are on the "get rid of POD" side of things

Yay! I found out how to edit.

Double post folks, my mistake

Jivewookiee said:

Come on now, you can't really believe that having pod decks and non-pod decks playing in the same tournament is a fair and decent idea, do you? If so, you're not lending much credibility to your idea of "why not have both".

Jivewookiee said:

Seems like you are not only making assumptions, but also applying conjecture. There is no way to know that it will only work for a year.

If people want to make up their own deck building rules in their own homes or stores they can. Who is to stop them? You can pick any card to play in a deck and use any 10 objectives of your choice. Play with your buddies who do the same.

But it seems clear FFG has decided to issue balanced pods of 5 cards (objective + 5) as a new means of deck building and plans to use it as their tournament structure. I don't see how it is lazy at all. It is just a new structure that people aren't used to.

I said earlier that most who want PODS wont be attending competitive tourneys. And I would think that if you are going the competitive tourneys you would want to tune your deck to be as tight as possible. It would be like rocking up to the MTG Pro Tour with a $15 precon and expect to have a fair chance.

Why does free form deck building need to be a house rule? I like to play a game with the rules. Put it in the appendices, that or the POD rules

Dobbler said:

Yes, but that SUPER-AWESOME deck you just built would be illegal in tournament play. There is no point in doing it if it isn't within the rules. I'm sure that the system is set up in such a way that if you just start pulling out cards at random, the whole thing would get easily borked up.

Wow, this thread is hilarious. Four pages in the space of about two hours! Amazing stuff.

Anyway. The way I see it, Star Wars as a property is nowadays throwing a lot of its weight towards kids. I mean, it's always been a "kids' thing", and Lucas is on the record saying he likes making movies for young people, etc etc etc. Added to that the fact that there is likely a tremendous number of Star Wars fans who have most likely never played a Star Wars game without the use of a console, and FFG suddenly have an immense market that far outshines the "gamer" market they're used to with their other games. Maybe even exceeding the Tolkien stuff. Is it a coincidence that they're suddenly hiring every other week? I mean, their staff turnover can't be that bad, surely?

FFG need to appeal to a much more immense market. So they need an accessible game, and in this day and age, deckbuilding games are not accessible. They take a lot of time and a lot of study, and most people just don't seem to be interested in that anymore. "I want to play this game now, not in three hours' time" etc etc. So they're using this mechanic to almost-preconstruct decks to tempt people in.

As an example, it took me eleven months to get my buddy to actually make his own deck for Warhammer, that's a year of almost-constant niggling and pushing. This is a guy susceptible to the IP but who plays video games, where the set up time usually involves turning the power on. I doubt the core set will come with a FFG rep who will do the same for everyone who picks this game up.

I'm sure you get the picture.

But I'm sure there will be some sort of rule slipped into the back of the instruction manual that will let you make a deck exactly how you choose.

Such are my thoughts.

If I may weight in on this, I actually am looking forward to this structured deck building. I'll be more likely to get in casual games at home with friends this way, since I wouldn't need to spend a lot of time constructing a deck for them to use, then explaining HOW to use it in the game.

That's really the tougher thing when you make decks for other people, if you want to do a pick up game or two with someone who thinks it looks neat but doesn't know much about the game, or CCG style play in general.

So, you can simply run it on the fly;

Which side you want to play?

Now go through this stack of cards and pick out 10 of them that look fun

Here is your deck

Begin

I live in Toronto, and the odds of a competitive scene for this developing seem slim to none, so I'd be more likely to get mileage out of this game if its easier for a friend on the outside to pick up and play.

For tourney play, yes I know all too well how micromanaging your 60 cards from SWCCG was worth the payoff of getting to be 100% what you need, but that took more time than I frankly have in my life right now, to make a deck, then playtest the hell out of it, then tweak, playtest, tweak, repeat.

This way, you can look at the big picture of what the Core Set cards let you do, go with what feels right and you're off. Future expansions will allow everyone to get into micromanaging the objectives that way.

On the flip side, even looking at one of my fave decks from SWCCG, the Echo Base Operations X-Wing swarm, there wasn't a lot of room for swapping out specific cards. From memory, you'd have the following breakdown;

Starting Cards;

The Signal to pull A New Secret Base, and your starting location is the Power Generators, which requires you to also deploy the North Ridge.

You're also going to need Echo Base Operations, and 3 Echo Base sites, as well as the Hoth System, and Haven, which deploys on Hoth

Then, you'll have 10 or so X-Wings that will deploy for 1 Force to Hoth each (with EBO) or free if you have Haven out.

Already, just for the backbone of the deck, you're up to about 25 cards out of the allotted 60.

From there, you have a few options. If you want to go really themey, you can use Echo Base Garrison to pull Hoth Luke/Wedge and their Rogue Squadron mates and speeders, which will all be beefed up. That's another 10 cards or so right there.

If you want to really assert your dominance in space, after locking down Hoth for a good Force Drain every turn, toss in Kessel, some Kessel Runs, Captain Solo/Falcon, Dash/Leebo/Outrider and retrieve away. If the opponent plays cards to kaibosh your retrieval, Leebo still costs them 1 Force a turn after you finish a Run. Throw in a Legendary Starfighter for kicks. Your X-Wings will be able to do some serious beatdown, so it should always be playable, at which point you can park it in the Hoth swarm to keep it safely costing the opponent another 1 Force a turn in direct damage. That's another 10 cards right there.

Toss in the supporting Interrupts that cycle high destiny draws and that's the deck. Not too much you're going to alter in there, except one or two situational cards. Any major component beyond the EBO/Xwing core can be interchanged, but that'll just be replacing one cluster of cards wtih another cluster of cards for synergy.

I'm not too boned up on the deckbuilding of Magic, but from a Star Wars perspective, there were just frankly a lot of specific groups of cards that any deck engine would need as a foundation, so in a way, even though you could do 60 cards of whatever you wanted, you were still limited in selection if you really wanted it to run at that competitive level.

ISB Operations decks mean you're adding in a specific few cards from a list of viable operatives based on their flavour text

Playing Scum decks meant all Aliens (and Mara Jade…dual faction icons ftw!)

Rebel Strike team was Scout heavy. Cue Jedi Luke, Daughter of Skywalker, General Solo, etc, or tons of cheap Rebel Scout trooper cards

That Thing's Operational needed the DS2, the hangar bay, all the superstructure cards, the laser, the epic event, the moff, endor, and the setup for the Endor Ops Objective, just to play the epic event. You'd have some wiggle room after that, but you'd definitely need some kind of space presence to defend the DS2, but at least there you could opt out of Imperial ships and go Bounty Hunters. Either way though, there's card groups that support either and its a pool of cards that go into it, so it's basically "take from the Imperial pile" or "take from the Bounty Hunter pile", or go TIE swarm, and again you're back to a large group of ubiquitous cards.

I'm not saying ALL decks were like that, but I think we're being too hard on this game before we've really seen how it all unfolds, especially when you take a hard look at the previous Star Wars CCG's deck builds. I'm starting to see some potential from an extended look at a lot of the cards over at cardgamedb. I'm really digging that Dark Side Objective, Heart of the Empire, that's an auto-win for the Light Side if they can beat it.

I'm starting to slowly see the theme emerging out of the game as more and more information is released. I'm not saying it's going to be the most amazing themed Star Wars product ever, but I think we should just sit on our hands a little longer and wait for a really good look at the whole set, then we'll let the harsh judgement commence.

cleardave said:

See, this I have no problem with. The ability to shave this much time off SWLCG's setup time adds much to the game, and would make it easy to pick up & play.

It's the idea that we won't be able to build our own decks from scratch that's, pardon my language, karked up. I'd even be happy if there were events that utilized the pod mechanic, so long as those were not the exclusive format for sanctioned play. Then I could have my main deck, using the pod mechanic, but also a secondary deck, designed from the ground up to be my vision of the perfect deck for ME, to play in non-pod-based events.

MarthWMaster said:

From the spirit of what their Core Sets are designed to be; an easy to play game out of the box, I can't think of a better way to do it. As I said above, on the tournament side of things, to be honest with myself, I'd be having any major deck archetype more or less already being dictated by the theme, in terms of certain mandatory cards you need to include, which in itself is limiting when it would take away from your 60 card limit.

Again, I'm comparing experiences to Star Wars CCG. I'll wait for the official line on deck construction limitations from the LCG rulebook to contrast, but it looks like basically 10 Objectives, 2 of each max (some limit to only 1 max), and the associated cards.

Sure, this will be potentially very static in a Core Set tournament, but I feel strongly that in the long-run, it won't matter as more theme-heavy decks become possible with expansions, which will ultimately lead back to the SWCCG idea of having most of your deck dictated by your theme anyways.

The difference may come down to what to do with the last 10 cards, and at that point it doesn't both me so much.

All this is from the perspective of not likely seeing a competitive scene emerge where I live, in Toronto, relying more on gaming with a friend or two. The ease of play out of the box will make it easier to play and teach, than say, Netrunner, which, while an awesome game (in theory, I have yet to play the new one), looks like it might take some more work to properly teach it to a new gamer, especially for deck building, which goes back to teaching them first, the rules of the game, then the roadmap to victory with the deck you made.

Most of the games we play in our group are owned by one person, who then teaches the rest of us, so with card games, its usually someone sitting on the pool of cards who has to put it together for the rest of us, which can be a thankless job if your friends have never had to do it themselves.

If I'm lucky and a good competitive scene in Toronto comes up for this, then I may suddenly feel anxiety about limitations, but odds are the way it is will translate into more gameplay for me.

Maybe these cards won't be restricted to specific pods. Maybe they will legalize combinations of 10 cards to allow more deck building flexibility. I don't know what a pod looks like, but I can see a possibility in releasing a chapter pack that enables 5 or 6 pods using other chapter packs.

New Pod (A) - New Pod possibility with this new chapter pack

Card A from CP 1
Card B from CP 1
Card A from CP2
Card B from CP2
Card J from CP2
Card X from CP3
. from CP5
. from CP6
. from newest CP
. from newest CP

New Pod (B)

All from newest CP

New Pod ©

5 cards from Core Set Pod A

5 card from newest CP

Like I said, I don't know how it will work, but I am thinking that they will not restrict cards for only be available in Pod X, but that they may also be available in Pod Y and Pod Z using other CPs or Core set cards.

Just some food for thought(unless anyone else knows for sure).

Bomb said:

I have no clue what I'm looking at here, lol, but some people who played the demo have said that certain cards were in the deck twice, and were marked from different pods. Force Choke I believe was one example. There were two copies in the demo deck both from a different pod. So it sounds like at least some cards you will have access to in more ways than one.

Yes, some cards will be associated with more than 1 objective. Confirmed by designer at gencon.

Sorry for my terrible example.

Maybe cards will allowed to be in more than one pod. As time goes on, maybe FFG will legalize additional pod lists that include older cards as some new ones are released.

Bomb said:

Cards will be included in more than one "pod." For instance, the demo deck had two different objectives that included Force Choke in their "pod." Yes, this means that such cards could end up in a deck 4+ times, depending on the number of objectives printed that use it. What I doubt they'll do given the notation for which cards are associated with which objective is create an objective that instructs you to dig out cards from old sets. They'll reprint the old cards with the objective.

For those of you who didn't get the explanation at gencon, each card has a set number (or pod number as we've decided to call them) and an indicator of which card it is in the pod (x/6) in the bottom right corner. So Objective 1 will be marked as Pod 1 in the corner and as card 1/6. The other 5 cards will also have the Pod 1 indication and be numbered 2/6 through 6/6.

I think the pod concept sounds like it could be an interesting way to build a deck. I look forward to the previews to see how it works in practice. And there is nothing stopping you from doing traditional deck building in casual games with friends. Just house rule it that you can ignore the pod rules when building your deck.

Mundane said:

I stand on the same line. House ruling that one could use old-fashioned deck building is fine.

On the other hand, I think it's a good idea to propose a new approach at deck building, a more constrained one where you need to learn to use every card -- even potentially weaker ones -- and find hidden synergies during play between reputed weak cards of different pods. I like that idea. If I can draw a parallel, playing a lot of wargames: there are Card-Driven Games out there where the set of cards is fixed once for all, and the metagame of how to use well these cards is actives years after the games were first out (I am thinking of "For the People" or "Empire of the sun", for instance). My feeling is thet the newly proposed game have the potential for an interesting metagame, combining deck-building metagame and use metagame (I hope what I say is understandable!).

I've been thinking about this for a couple days now, but why are we calling them pods? I just checked the demo vid and Corey called them blocks. Now, we don't know that the name will stay as "blocks" when it is released, but I'm going to go back to saying "blocks" and I invite you all to do the same, although I think we'll all understand whether we say "pods" or "blocks."

Budgernaut said:

Because the pod people are coming to get us all!!!

I actually wondered this, too. Is there another game that uses a similar mechanic that called them Pods previously? Also, I've seen a lot of people arbitrarily referring to them as PODS (all caps).

RE: "Pods", i thought I read someone who was actually at a demo refer to them as pods, and just adopted the phrase since it seemed appropriate coming from someone who actually played the game.

I honestly don't care either way what they're called; pods, blocks, whatever

Yeah, I have no idea why people are calling them pods… I tried to resist it, but eventually decided not to fight the consensus.

herozeromes said:

I've actually only seen one person do this, albeit repeatedly and consistently. You know who you are…

I like the Block building aspect of creating a deck. But I've been thinking about possible ways of it allowing for customization.

So lets take the Light Side objective for the Jedi: A journey to Dagobah. With that objective you get Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi in Hiding, Jedi Mind Trick, Return of the Jedi and the last card is unknown.

A Journey to Dagobah has a block value of 3 (Just calling it that for now) and all the cards above match that block.

Let's say that in the first Force Pack they make more cards to work with this Objective, so we get 5 more cards with a block value of 3 that can be put into this block, with a total of 10 cards to choose from to creating our block. Since every block in the core set is a 5 card block, it is viable that block size would not change, so a max of 5 cards per block would still remain.

So it is now possible to customize a block. A Journey to Dagobah would be could be different every time you sit down to build a deck and your opponent wouldn't have the upper hand of knowing what cards you have chosen for that block.

And since we are allowed to include 2 copies of the same objective, you can have variations of that same objective. It is possible to have future objectives that share the same block value so that you can bend the rules a bit. Having 2 Journey to Dagobah's in your objective deck, each with a Obi-Wan and then another Objective with the same block value netting your third Kenobi.

These are only thoughts. just thought I'd share. Tell me what you think?

I find it difficult to believe this would happen since blocks are currently numbered as #/6. If you added more you'd get numbers like 10/6, and that wouldn't make sense.