Redemption discussion

[The Schaef]

I'm afraid I can't understand that paragraph.  It's maybe broken, but not totally broken, but certainly broken, but you don't believe it's broken, but it just needs a tune-up.  My eyeballs hurt.

[TheHobbit13]

Pokemon doesn't have a "Battle Phase." You do one attack per turn, which ends your turn. Besides, Pokemon has had its issues with battles that were over before they started, immediately after the first set was released. If your Active Pokemon is Asleep or Paralyzed, you can do nothing. That was very frustrating when your opponent's Gastly could knock out your Charizard before you could even attack just because you couldn't flip a stinkin' heads (not that I'm bitter or anything  ).

I think the Pokemon analogy does not work in a comparison to Redemption, so it should just be dropped.

One can make the exact same argument that Redemption doesn't have a battle, by saying that one card stoppers are not much of a battle.
Here is the thing with the paralysis and sleepiness of pokemon, there is a chance that he will become un asleep with the flip of a coin ( antidotes 2 if I remmeber correctly + not all pokemon have this ability, and those that do are weaker in other stats). When Jacob comes in battle and plays RTC ignoring my solid brigade defense ( which is what logically the mechanics of Redemption incourage) their is only a few things I can do ( Martyr and Writ come in to mind).  There are preventive measures but not a whole lot of them and remember you have to deck them I have them at the right time.
Believe me Redemption has far more issues of Battles being over before they started.

Let us look at RTC  through pokemon's glasses. RTC paralyzes all  EC of one brigade ( when played with Jacob) with no chance of un paralyzing them by the flip of a coin.  All I am saying is that in pokemon at least there is a hope of attacking (blocking). And attacking every turn for that matter because it does not depend on opponents drawing Ls. Diminishing the need for battles hurts the battle phase as a whole, which is why IMO pokemon as a better battle phase (currently).

I do agree to some extant that it is futile to make comparisons from pokemon to Redemption, however it isn't  totally irrelevent to compare the level of player invovlement and interaction  ( overall) between the battle phases of pokemon and Redemption to illustrate a point.  And when we can look at other card games and see how they have maintained them  we  (when I say we I mean the playtesters) can take general tips and pointers from them to better the game of Redemption as a whole, withought totally relandscaping the game.

[~Jake of the Wolves~]

I'd turn your argument on you by saying that because of those battle preventors that causes more player interaction when it comes to anticipating, preventing, countering, and evading said preventors. Pokemon, as you say, gives the chance for the turn you just used to go without use when you might have instead used another attack and done damage. Redemption there are measures to take accounting for and attempting to predict those card which make for less interesting games. Pokemon is a rather dull game. Draw, play energy, attack. Sometimes you get to flip a coin. Redemption is draw, think, play, manipulate card options, choose an attack, be defended, and begin manipulating effects again. And in that, even if you lose your RA, you might gain something from cards manipulating your opponent's deck, hand, or cards on the field.

[YourMathTeacher]

Here is the thing with the paralysis and sleepiness of pokemon, there is a chance that he will become un asleep with the flip of a coin ( antidotes 2 if I remmeber correctly + not all pokemon have this ability, and those that do are weaker in other stats). When Jacob comes in battle and plays RTC ignoring my solid brigade defense ( which is what logically the mechanics of Redemption incourage) their is only a few things I can do ( Martyr and Writ come in to mind).  There are preventive measures but not a whole lot of them and remember you have to deck them I have them at the right time.

You state that there are things you can still do against RTC, after implying that there is nothing you can do. There are only a few counters to Paralysis, too (Flipping a coin is not one of them - that is for Sleep only).

Believe me Redemption has far more issues of Battles being over before they started.

I don't believe you because I have played both games simultaneously for the past 9 years. There are very few counters to Paralysis and Sleep, and nothing to stop a Pokemon that uses an attack that "prevents all effects of attacks, including damage, done to your Pokemon during your opponent's next turn." I very easily built a deck from the original three sets that none of the players in my area could stop. They were just as frustrated as you seem to be now, and that was 9 years ago. Yet, Pokemon lives on, a gazillion sets later and still on TV every week with new episodes.

Let us look at RTC  through pokemon's glasses. RTC paralyzes all  EC of one brigade ( when played with Jacob) with no chance of un paralyzing them by the flip of a coin.  

You cannot "un-paralyze" with a flip of the coin. That is for Sleep only. Paralysis has no counter other than Full Heal or Scoop Up (which they did not reprint in the Nintendo version of the cards).

All I am saying is that in pokemon at least there is a hope of attacking (blocking). And attacking every turn for that matter because it does not depend on opponents drawing Ls.

Well that's not true at all. You cannot attack unless you have enough of the right type of energy. You have to draw those, just like your opponent needs to draw Lost Soul cards. Pokemon makes it tougher because you only draw one card at a time to start your turn.

I do agree to some extant that it is futile to make comparisons from pokemon to Redemption, ...

See. We can agree! 

...
however it isn't  totally irrelevent to compare the level of player invovlement and interaction  ( overall) between the battle phases of pokemon and Redemption to illustrate a point.  

It is irrelevant because Pokemon does not have a Battle Phase, as I stated earlier. There is no player interaction on your turn. Your opponent cannot do anything until it is their turn, and by then they may not be able to do anything.

Redemption does have player interaction, because you can play cards during your opponent's turn, especially dominants. There really is no comparison.

[The Schaef]

Not to mention all the ways you can negate or discard cards, either RTC itself or cards that play it.  If anything, YMT's analysis tells me that Redemption has more options to allow a player to unlock his characters and go back to battling.

[TheHobbit13]

I'm afraid I can't understand that paragraph.  It's maybe broken, but not totally broken, but certainly broken, but you don't believe it's broken, but it just needs a tune-up.  My eyeballs hurt.

Maybe broken-- I would rather not say if I thought the game is inherently broken because I haven't made my mind up and I don't have time to think of all of the flaws and counter arguments. I will say for now that I don't belive it is broken.

Certainly broken---- This is from another ccg prospective that I base this conclusion. The searching, drawing, minimal cost system  and the inherint power of cards.  This isn't the only meter of sytem you can use when judging a succesful ccg like Redemption. Successful being the key word. However I do think that this can be a deterant for players who play other ccgs and want to learn Redemption.

Tune up- Yes I do believe Redemption needs a few fixes her and there. At the same time I want to make it clear that Rob, Byron, Shaef + playtesters have done a superb job at making it all happen, this is not a reflection on their work on the ccg (surely not!). No, this is a reflection of natural mistakes that just, well, happen from time to time.

I hoped that helped to clear up your questions.

[Minister Polarius]

Jumping into this conversation way late, but I just want to express the fact that I am quite pleased Redemption is vastly more about deckbuilding choices than what happens later. Luck of the draw is in unfortunate necessity, as nobody has come up with a good game without that element of randomization yet (and if you have, I will be the first to buy), but beyond that, the single biggest determining factor in who wins the games is what you have chosen to include or not include in your deck, and what your opponent has chosen to include or not include in his deck. Will your Unknown Nation be a lifesaver against a battle-winner deck like Teal or Purple, or will it be completely useless against your opponent's Zebulun offense? Will your decision to rely on Zerubabel's Temple to make your offense invincible enable you to waltz right past a Syrian capture defense, or will you encounter Egyptians worshiping Mildew on the High Places, making your Lampstand useless and your entire offense vulnerable? I, for one, am in favor of the current state of Redemption.

[The Schaef]

I hoped that helped to clear up your questions.

Only partially, since you only addressed two of the four ways you said it is/is not broken.  At least in your response you pared it down to just one conclusion, which is sort of the point here.

I don't think you can say a game is "certainly broken" because its mechanics are different from another game.  Otherwise, all CCGs would necessarily have to be the exact same way.  I could "break" a game with no drawing if I made the object to deck out the other person (as is common across several titles) and then put in cards that shuffled used cards back in so that no one ever decked out.  I could "break" a game with a cost system if I skewed the power of cards in relation to their cost.

Any system can be "broken" if its elements are not properly balanced.  Likewise, the mechanics you say are problematic have to be exploited to a point where the game is untenable and therefore "broken", and you are saying that Redemption has NOT reached that point.  That was what I was driving at: games are not automatically "broken" just because they have certain mechanics, and though those mechanics CAN lead to breaking, all mechanics theoretically CAN lead to breaking, but that doesn't mean they inevitably WILL, and you agree that to this point, they have not.

[TheHobbit13]

I hoped that helped to clear up your questions.

I don't think you can say a game is "certainly broken" because its mechanics are different from another game. 

The game of Redemptions from another  CCGers point of view, looking in on the game. (given the person has not played a whole lot of Redemption to see other wise).

I hoped that helped to clear up your questions.

  I could "break" a game with no drawing if I made the object to deck out the other person (as is common across several titles) and then put in cards that shuffled used cards back in so that no one ever decked out.  I could "break" a game with a cost system if I skewed the power of cards in relation to their cost.

Yes you could, but games like Magic, and LOTR aren't broken. That is the whole point, other ccgs have banned cards/been careful about what kinds of cards they make, in order that the game doesn't lose its pizzaz or become totally broken. Redemption for me has lost some of its pizzaz especially because of the back to back tin sets and because of the NPE decks. Don't get me wrong it is really fun to walk in for free souls, but when I am on the other end of the stick it makes it takes alot of the fun out of the game for me.

I hoped that helped to clear up your questions.

  Likewise, the mechanics you say are problematic have to be exploited to a point where the game is untenable and therefore "broken", and you are saying that Redemption has NOT reached that point. 

Nothing has to be exploited to the point of brokenness and it is a could thing it hasn't ( due to the counters that were made), but to a certain degree these mechanics have hurt the game by decreasing the interaction level. Sometimes I am not sure whether I am watching a game of Redemption or playing one.

My point is that the game has been harmed by said mechanics and the increase of auto blocks/ auto RA's to the point were it has lost some of its fun.

Not to mention all the ways you can negate or discard cards, either RTC itself or cards that play it.  If anything, YMT's analysis tells me that Redemption has more options to allow a player to unlock his characters and go back to battling.

Yes on paper you can negate it or discard it, but in a game situation (even if you put cards in your deck to counter that) it is very very hard to stop.
It doesn't work to just look at the lists of cards and make a conclusion that since their are cards to counter RTC it means that it is easy to stop in a game and or/ it isn't broken.  YMT, and yourself seem to dismiss the idea of OP cards because of the fact that their are counters to them. Consequently I cannot get passed that to illustrate my point.

There are many other cards that work like this that work towards NPE. Such as false+momentum change in type two.

Welcome back Pol! I respect your ideas as well as the others.

YMT, I will drop the pokemon thing.  It was ment for a simple analogy of why I though the pokemon battle phase was better not the main point of my argument.

Not to mention all the ways you can negate or discard cards, either RTC itself or cards that play it.  If anything, YMT's analysis tells me that Redemption has more options to allow a player to unlock his characters and go back to battling.

Jake,
What do you mean by battle preventers? The cards that limit the battle phase like, The Garden Tomb, or Reuben's Torn Clothes? If so these cards decrease player interaction not increase. Perhaps you mispoke.  My point about the pokemon is that in that ccg they seem to encorage the battle phase ( like in Redemption) Redemption however has created more cards that minimize the battle phase (the strategy and bottomline fun). This is from limited knowledge of pokemon though. YMT arguments about the game haven't disproven in my mind the claim of the better battle phase.


I think it would be good to discuss Redemption at a later date, in the meantime though I was hoping to hit home for some people on a few of my points.

[TheKarazyvicePresidentRR]

Jumping into this conversation way late, but I just want to express the fact that I am quite pleased Redemption is vastly more about deckbuilding choices than what happens later. Luck of the draw is in unfortunate necessity, as nobody has come up with a good game without that element of randomization yet (and if you have, I will be the first to buy), but beyond that, the single biggest determining factor in who wins the games is what you have chosen to include or not include in your deck, and what your opponent has chosen to include or not include in his deck. Will your Unknown Nation be a lifesaver against a battle-winner deck like Teal or Purple, or will it be completely useless against your opponent's Zebulun offense? Will your decision to rely on Zerubabel's Temple to make your offense invincible enable you to waltz right past a Syrian capture defense, or will you encounter Egyptians worshiping Mildew on the High Places, making your Lampstand useless and your entire offense vulnerable? I, for one, am in favor of the current state of Redemption.

*Hands Pol a chess board *
Redemption is 50% deck building 40% playing 10% luck.

[YourMathTeacher]

YMT, and yourself seem to dismiss the idea of OP cards because of the fact that their are counters to them.

I did not dismiss the idea of OP cards anywhere in this thread. I was talking about your comparison to Pokemon.

However, it seems that you are the one dismissing anything that I have said:

YMT arguments about the game haven't disproven in my mind the claim of the better battle phase.

So be it.

[The Schaef]

The game of Redemptions from another  CCGers point of view, looking in on the game. (given the person has not played a whole lot of Redemption to see other wise).

I think anyone who calls a game broken without playing it enough to tell if it's broken, that's the problem right there.

As for the POV of other CCG'ers, we just had a tournament on the same day as a YGO tournament a couple weeks ago, and a couple of the YGO players actually ditched their tournament to play in our local.  So we also have evidence of people playing other, bigger card games and viewing ours favorably in its current state.

Yes you could, but games like Magic, and LOTR aren't broken. That is the whole point, other ccgs have banned cards/been careful about what kinds of cards they make, in order that the game doesn't lose its pizzaz or become totally broken.

My point, and I thought I had stated this pretty openly in the last post, is that our system isn't broken, either, and that brokenness comes from lack of balance and not from any one mechanic applied.

My point is that the game has been harmed by said mechanics and the increase of auto blocks/ auto RA's to the point were it has lost some of its fun.

And this is the point where we part ways, because I don't think anyone likes auto-wins, but they take time to set up, they have a few counters with more on the way, and more to the point, I enjoy the increased strategy of managing my cards outside of the Battle Phase as well as within.  It's like shooters; some people like raw twitch shooters and play CTF until they're blue in the face.  I like shooters with vehicle modes, and/or player classes, that allow me to play a little more strategic and a little less rambo.  I have a way to compensate for the kiddies with the mad skillz.  In TF2, I would probably be the Engineer or the Medic.  People may like different types of shooters than I, but because they play different, not because one is objectively better than the other.

And bear in mind I'm referring to full-turn play as a whole, not auto-win cards unto themselves.

Yes on paper you can negate it or discard it, but in a game situation (even if you put cards in your deck to counter that) it is very very hard to stop... YMT, and yourself seem to dismiss the idea of OP cards because of the fact that their are counters to them. Consequently I cannot get passed that to illustrate my point.

I'm not sure what to tell you on that.  A lot of what I see in the metagame is not whether a strategy CAN be countered, but whether people really invest their time in killing it.  IMO there were enough counters to shut down FBN years ago, but people didn't build enough against them to manage, and therefore they remained dominant past their theoretical prime.  I think speed is in that state right now, where it CAN be stopped, but the question is whether it will in the years to come.

As it stands right now, my tournament deck had the potential to stand up to a TGT deck, a Zeb deck, an RTC deck, a FBN deck, an AoCP deck and a Sitelock deck with varying degrees of effectiveness.  I'm not saying I would take any one of them apart with ease, only that I did not fear any of them outright.  That's why I'm not running up the white flag against auto-ignore, even before the onslaught of new cards.

[Prof Underwood]

As it stands right now, my tournament deck had the potential to stand up to a TGT deck, a Zeb deck, an RTC deck, a FBN deck, an AoCP deck and a Sitelock deck with varying degrees of effectiveness.

Just to be clear, this is the "tournament deck" that hasn't even won a local right?

Couldn't resist the chance to give you a hard time buddy

[Bryon]

Jumping into this conversation way late, but I just want to express the fact that I am quite pleased Redemption is vastly more about deckbuilding choices than what happens later. Luck of the draw is in unfortunate necessity, as nobody has come up with a good game without that element of randomization yet (and if you have, I will be the first to buy), but beyond that, the single biggest determining factor in who wins the games is what you have chosen to include or not include in your deck, and what your opponent has chosen to include or not include in his deck. Will your Unknown Nation be a lifesaver against a battle-winner deck like Teal or Purple, or will it be completely useless against your opponent's Zebulun offense? Will your decision to rely on Zerubabel's Temple to make your offense invincible enable you to waltz right past a Syrian capture defense, or will you encounter Egyptians worshiping Mildew on the High Places, making your Lampstand useless and your entire offense vulnerable? I, for one, am in favor of the current state of Redemption.

*Hands Pol a chess board *
Redemption is 50% deck building 40% playing 10% luck.

That sounds about right to me.  Nice insights, both of you. 

[The Schaef]

Just to be clear, this is the "tournament deck" that hasn't even won a local right?

It lost to a championship deck that just hammered people with priests and prophets.  None of the "overpowered combos" were in his deck.

And you only get to talk trash because I was forced to miss Regionals and therefore the chance to take you all to school.  :p

[Captain Kirk]

You can still come to East Central regionals in two weeks.

Kirk

[Prof Underwood]

And you only get to talk trash because I was forced to miss Regionals and therefore the chance to take you all to school.  :p

Sounds to me like you need to bring your bad self down to EC Regionals in 2 weeks and put your money where your mouth is

Seriously, we'd love to have you and your guys come down.

Instaposted.

[The Schaef]

I'd love to do it but we're getting killed financially.  That reason unto itself might still have made it impossible for me to attend last weekend even if I didn't have that other thing with the guy and the stuff.

[Prof Underwood]

I'd love to do it but we're getting killed financially.  That reason unto itself might still have made it impossible for me to attend last weekend even if I didn't have that other thing with the guy and the stuff.

I feel bad for you, and hope that things turn around.

[The Schaef]

It is what it is.  We have a roof, the boys have food, so praise be to God.

[Prof Underwood]

It is what it is.  We have a roof, the boys have food, so praise be to God.

Good perspective.  We are all very blessed!

[The Guardian]

I'm still mad that no one called my Witnesses to Creation/3 Nails/Lampstand T2 deck from 2007 Nationals broken...it only has 3 counters (Madness, The Serpent and Leviathan) and nobody could block me at all...
"I don't get no respect!"


 

[YourMathTeacher]

Guardian's deck was broken. That's all I have to say.




* Please send the promos to my home address.*

[Red Dragon Thorn]

Unholy Writ also stops you 3 times, Doubt can block also.

[The Guardian]

Unholy Writ also stops you 3 times, Doubt can block also.

If Writ could capture Angels it would stop me...

If you use Doubt, I applaud your preparation...