How much of this game is about Deck Building? Can players just pick up a team and go?

hendersondayton said:

There is no proper Deck Building at all. There is a lot of tactics in the way you play cards, and the composition of your deck is modified by some events in the game, but that's it

I have read that the lack of Deck Building has caused contention among players who like this ability. That the RANDOM creation of their team causes the game not to be enjoyable.

Has there been any house rules made that addresses this issue?

Thanks!

You only have 12 Cards per Race. So there is no room for deckbuilding. But if you wish to buy more than one copy, than the option of deckbuilding will be given.

Garthnait said:

Although you would have to come up with your own rules for it.

Oh it is still very enjoyable, don't worry about that. The lack of deck building means it is really fast to pick up and play, especially for new players compared to most deck building games.

I think what some people find a little annoying if the drafting* of star players is random, so you might get a dwarf on an elf team for example. You can mitigate the randomness by increasing the number of cards you can choose between depending on the highlights you go for, but I think a number of people would like the option to pick the team they want to build at the start, an thus develop strategies that work on those teams.

Of course counter to this is it would make it less of a pick up and play game, but optional rules would be nice.

I think something could be done by turning the star player icons that you get from Highlight to be points to buy cards rather than the size of the random draw, it wouldn't be true deck building as such, but drafting wouldn't be random. Working out the values of star players is tricky as it isn't just down to their star power, but skills and abilities as well. You would have to keep the value range to say 1-3 (maybe 4 at a push) so that someone could get a star player with each go otherwise it wouldn't balance with the game, or would the value of being able to pick your star player mean it would need to be harder to get them?

I dont agree about the lack of room for deckbuilding, you actually have 17 cards per team if you add the star players for each team and you have the freebooters as well,

Lets give it a shot: (I am thinking aloud here, none of this has been tested)

Setup:

Before the game itself starts take the star player decks and separate it into 4 piles, Neutrals (all the freebooters plus neutrals) and each of the three teams, and also distribute all the cheat tokens evenly among the coaches (if some tokens remain after this either discard them or assign them to the weakest coach, you can let them make their case on why they are the weakest in the table ;-)

The Draft!:

Each player takes all his cheat tokens onto his left hand. Take one of the neutral decks shuffle it and reveal the topmost player, then each coach places a secret bid on that player (secretly takes any amount of tokens from his left hand and places them on the right hand and puts his closed right hand on the table), then each coach reveals his bid, the winner pays the price (puts back the cheat tokens into the box), takes the equivalent player on his division for his team (if a freebooter the freebooter ability applies) and another round of the draft takes place, repeat until the deck is completely revealed.

In case of no bids, discard the player, reveal next. In case of ties the player that has drafted less players wins, if still tied randomly assign a winner.

The Game:

Set up the game as normal but with the following exception: Each player will have a private deck with his 5 team related starplayers instead of a shared division deck and will draft starplayers only from his pile during the game.

What do you think?