Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Personally, I'm in favor of banning SoG/NJ, but I would say we have some other options.  Like, just ban NJ from the category.

Two players going after four souls still seems a little quick for my taste. Banning NJ might be the safer option, but I think banning them both will be healthier for the category overall.

About the same effect, and it is the bigger problem here.  Alternatively, restrict dominants to 1 copy per team, not per deck.  I honestly hate the way we track dominants anyway, because having them in discard pile is very important for several abilities.  Having only 1 copy per team means you don't have to track it the way we do and you get more diversity between the two decks and options opening up.

I didn't like this at first, but it's starting to grow on me a little more. I'm mulling it over. Maybe we can talk in the van.

As far as your other idea, I like the discussion, but disagree with the answer.  Instead, I would argue that having a different maximum deck size would be preferable.  That way, we do not have drastically different deckbuilding for the type, but still manage to head off the type of problem you foresee.  T2 is 252 cards (35 souls), T1 is 154 cards (21 souls), so why not have Teams be 70 cards (9 souls)?

I threw around this idea for a while, looking at ways to solve that particular problem, and the conclusion I came to is that the less restrictive deck building requirements are, the better. If a team can actually put together large decks that are effective without duplicate cards, in my mind, they deserve to play them (under the current T1 deck building rules, because of Gates of Hell). Huge decks generally don't play well without duplicates, so I think it will solve the biggest problem, while still allowing for more flexibility.

I threw around this idea for a while, looking at ways to solve that particular problem,

"That particular problem" being huge decks?  Seriously?

TEAMS 2013 1st Place  53 Cards x2
TEAMS 2013 2nd Place 52 Cards x2
TEAMS 2013 3rd Place  idk, did Wester/Olijar play a huge deck?

TEAMS 2012 1st Place  52(?) Cards x2
TEAMS 2012 2nd Place 50 Cards x2
TEAMS 2012 3rd Place 154 Cards x2

I played one of the 154 cards deck against both the TEAMS 2012 champions (at Nats) and the TEAMS 2013 champion deck (at both MN State and MW Regionals), and we lost all three games. There was a pretty darn good chance we would have lost all three games even if opponents decks didn't use SoG/NJ. Huge decks bring increased set up time and a huge variance in draw. (Against Early/Roepke, the draw we had would have lost to starter decks--or at least that was what I believed in the original reports a week or so after the event). Penalizing them further on the basis of theory-crafting about the results of a separate rule change is just unwarranted.

I'm honestly not a fan of either change. We all know the first card that should be banned (regardless of category) is A New Beginning. Furthermore, 154 decks are a legit strategy that can be fun to use, and even more so in TEAMs where a team could have one monster deck and one speed deck.

I agree that the dominant tracking is kinda iffy. I would be in favor of treating "used" dominants as being in the discard pile even if they are in the Land of Redemption for tracking purposes.

I'm fine with 154s. What I hate is seeing two decks that are almost identical.  It chokes creativity.

I'm fine with 154s. What I hate is seeing two decks that are almost identical.  It chokes creativity.

Unfortunately for this point of view, consistency usually tops creativity when it comes to top decks. Of the decks that placed at Nats in the past two years (the one listed above), four of the six had partner decks were within a half dozen cards of each other.

Quote from: YourMathTeacher on August 05, 2014, 08:31:45 AM

Quote from: Westy on August 05, 2014, 01:46:31 AM

I'm fine with 154s. What I hate is seeing two decks that are almost identical.  It chokes creativity.

This is the fundamental flaw with any card game and the internet. I had the same problem at last year's Pokémon City Championship, where I faced almost identical Virizion EX/Genesect EX decks from two unrelated opponents, and my son played against a third one. Who knows how many others were out there. This was particularly troubling to me, since I was running a Blastoise deck.   

Nail on the head. This never used to be a problem with Pokemon, but since the internet exploded I can have the National winning deck card-for-card built the day-of it's winning.  Too much information for competition.

Two things:

First, you can find--for basically any customizable card game--a huge discussion on the plusses and minusses of netdecking. The overall consensus is that it does limit deck design creativity but it also bumps the overall level of deck construction and forces improvements in strategic card play.

Second, I think it is strange that you bring this plaint up on these boards because Redemption (both official and the community) probably has the highest amount of deck secrecy and hence the lowest amount of netdecking of any game. (This possibly to the detriment of the game as a whole.)

The teams deck that I built (with my friend) was very similar, but it wasn't just because they banded together, the offense was based around Musician's Chambers, to take advantage of the shared Fortresses, we couldn't have done that if our offenses were vastly different.

But I understand the annoyance of always seeing two identical decks in teams, but the only way to stop that is to limit cards per team rather than per deck.

Quote from: ChristianSoldier on August 05, 2014, 03:42:50 PM

But I understand the annoyance of always seeing two identical decks in teams, but the only way to stop that is to limit cards per team rather than per deck.

Which isn't practical from a deck-checking standpoint.  I get that.

Unless you did like every other CCG/LCG and required players to submit deck lists.

Penalizing them further on the basis of theory-crafting about the results of a separate rule change is just unwarranted.

MJB, I'm not suggesting that huge decks are the best thing in the category right now, but the main thing that holds them back in Teams is the time needed to set up in games that don't have optimal draws. If that was lengthened by at least a full round, the odds of those decks performing better would increase quite a bit. In talking to a few other people about it, including people with a wealth of experience in Teams, along with a couple of the Elders, I don't seem to be alone in this thinking. Even if 154's aren't as dangerous as I think they would be in Teams, they're not particularly fun to play against to most people, and I wouldn't mind seeing them fundamentally neutered in at least one category.

Tim Maly suggested that when you rescue a Lost Soul in Teams, your teammate cannot make a rescue on their following turn (with the caveat that large decks be neutered). I think I like this better than the original suggestion, especially since it won't really increase the length of games that much (since most of the time in Teams is taken up by the battle phase).

The only change to Teams that I would like to see is to get rid of the table talk aspect, at least when it comes to decision-making. Maybe talking it over after decisions are made is fine, but otherwise, it should be treated more like a T1-MP game. That way most of the integrated strategy is planned with the team beforehand, and people don't have to wait 5 minutes for a team to decide in some of the most ridiculous and complicated coded jargon what one of the players is going to do. I would really hate to see SoG/NJ (or even just NJ) banned for that very reason...most if not all of the Teams games I have played have either been really short (the minority) or really long/timeouts. And a lot of that time goes to the amount of discussion had between teammates.

Maybe its because I've only played teams in about 4 tournaments (though two of those were nats), but I have never had a problem running into time issues with teams, even when teams were talking for long times on what play to make.  Teams games just don't seem to generally last enough rounds for the games to go to time even with the table talk in my experience.

Josiah,

I really wish Jayden and I had gotten a chance to play you and Jerome. That would have been an awesome game I think. Unfortunately we got nipped by one turn in round 1 and then faced a ridiculous draw in round 2, so we were middle of the pack most of the time.

Quote from: The Guardian on August 11, 2014, 11:01:27 PM

Josiah,

I really wish Jayden and I had gotten a chance to play you and Jerome. That would have been an awesome game I think. Unfortunately we got nipped by one turn in round 1 and then faced a ridiculous draw in round 2, so we were middle of the pack most of the time.

Totally agreed perhaps we do that through a google doc sometime?

I feel like Lackey might support multi player, but don't quote me on that.