Cactus Game Design Message Boards

For your approval, or lack thereof:

Spoiler (hover to show)

Admittedly, I couldn't think of a single thing that could discard a Soul regardless of protection.
Very well, rewrite it as an instead.
But even if your opponent could do something like that, a living metagame would bring out the significantly more common cards that'll take souls out of the discard pile. Even the Awake Soul can do that.

The point of course is to make it so that you have fewer Souls in the deck in exchange for a Soul that never goes away. Your opponent can still rip it out via the eight billion soul gen options in the game, and then you'll have to prepare to defend it every single turn.
When souls aren't in play, the game just stagnates. There should be the possibility for rescue as much as humanly possible.

Still some wording corrections, I think.

Should read return to “owner’s” LOB rather than “your”.  Otherwise I believe the lost soul would go to rescuing player’s LOB to create a token in the same LOB.

Not sure how the ability part would work anyway since when it is rescued (I.e. when it hits opponent’s LOR) the ability would not work. My thinking is along the lines of territory class characters treated as lost souls or in set aside area.

The wording would require if rescued, create a LS token in rescuing players LOR instead.

Since the wording change on the first version, I am not sure if the rescue regardless of protection is necessary anymore so hopefully that will create more room for other words.

Possible wording:

When this Lost Soul is rescued, create a Lost Soul token in rescuing player’s Land of Redemption and Land of Bondage instead. If this card leaves play, return it to your Land of Bondage instead. Cannot be negated.

I'd run 2 of these in my T2 Daniel deck and then I'd have room for 8 more Daniel Cards. That'd be great. I really don't mind blocking every turn (I build my decks with that expectation anyway) and the fact that this would make my Daniel deck more Daniel is a big deal.

All that said, there will never ever be a card like this.

That's a shame.
How come?

Quote from: SignoftheStar on January 20, 2019, 09:31:18 PM

Quote from: Master Q on January 20, 2019, 05:44:53 PM

All that said, there will never ever be a card like this.

That's a shame.
How come?

Because it's a problem of soul hiding. It lets you run five fewer souls, and thus, five more cards to draw (and use) instead of a soul. It would go in every deck that it could fit in, and it would force soul tutors (Like CoW Melchizidek and EC Barnabas) to be in every deck. Themes that can't generate Souls consistently (or need to search O.T. souls like Shem's Wife) would fall by the wayside, as it's unlikely for your opponent to draw the three souls in their deck.

It's worse in type 2, though. 110 cards with only 3 souls. That would be horribly unfun to play against.

True all of the above.

What if the SA specified that the card starts in play?  Extra slots in your deck for whatever you want in exchange for your opponent always having access to a lost soul.

Quote from: Asahel24601 on January 20, 2019, 11:24:33 PM

Quote from: SignoftheStar on January 20, 2019, 09:31:18 PM

Quote from: Master Q on January 20, 2019, 05:44:53 PM

All that said, there will never ever be a card like this.

That's a shame.
How come?

Because it's a problem of soul hiding. It lets you run five fewer souls, and thus, five more cards to draw (and use) instead of a soul. It would go in every deck that it could fit in, and it would force soul tutors (Like CoW Melchizidek and EC Barnabas) to be in every deck. Themes that can't generate Souls consistently (or need to search O.T. souls like Shem's Wife) would fall by the wayside, as it's unlikely for your opponent to draw the three souls in their deck.

It's worse in type 2, though. 110 cards with only 3 souls. That would be horribly unfun to play against.

True all of the above.

What if the SA specified that the card starts in play?  Extra slots in your deck for whatever you want in exchange for your opponent always having access to a lost soul.

That’s not a trade worth making (Other than Daniel deck).  If you want extra cards in your deck you already have the option of going up a deck size by adding one soul as opposed to always having a soul in play that has no useful SA.

Technically, but the draw potential for a given card goes down with the increased deck sizes.

The same way it would if you replaced lost souls with other cards...as lost souls don’t take up draws.

A 50 card deck with three souls has the same draw potential as a 54 card deck with seven.
In my experience, when you go up a deck size, you tend to go to the higher end to justify the additional souls.
If you took four of your souls and replaced them with other cards, the draw potential of cards would go down a little bit, but now you have a higher concentration of non-Soul cards, meaning each draw has a higher chance of not being a Soul, which adds more draw value to every card you draw.

Removing souls from your deck does increase the average card value of your deck as a whole but does not increase the average value of each card draw since souls place themselves. Drawing a card has the same value either way and actually having more souls in your deck actually increases the value of each instance of card draw if you count the soul special abilities as beneficial.

That's true, but I rarely consider a Soul draw as valuable as other cards in my deck.
Which is to say, I'd always rather draw something else.

I would usually rather get the soul because then I get the soul AND something else. Any additional value is better than none.  In the case of Prosperity and Lawless, that value is an entire extra card!

Yes, but it comes with the price of having to defend yourself from your opponent scoring.
I could have cards that do very much what my Souls do without running that risk.

In a type 1 game between two players with tuned decks it's very rare for either player to get a block by not having to defend.

In a type 1 game between two players with tuned decks it's very rare for either player to get a block by not having to defend.

Getting souls when you're not ready to block effectively, either because you haven't drawn into your resources or they've been exhausted, is something that happens on every level. Walk-in rescues are rare, sure, but being fully prepared for 100% of your opponent's rescue attempts is also rare. If I had the choice between a Lost Soul and a Fortress/Site/T-class Character/etc. with the same special ability, I would ALWAYS prefer the other card and not the Soul.

LS are one of the coolest elements of making your deck, and I would hate to see something like this take out five souls right off the bat.

I'll admit, I've never seen someone with such an appreciation for Lost Souls before.