Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Pol wins the thread.

I think what he is saying is that the format and extensive time limit allows people to build and use decks that they would not dream of playing in a real tournament because they have a much longer time limit to exploit.  Therefore, the "meta" game in ROOT is drastically different from how decks are built and used in face-to-face tournaments.

I'll jump back in this discussion as well.

I'll agree that playing a person who does absolutely nothing until the end, and is slow in the process of doing that is quite annoying. I'm guilty of it myself a few years back. However, I've been trying to make 105 carders work quickly as well. I'm trying to avoid playing turtle with 100+, and it can work if done right.

I love playing heavy defense, I'm sure most of you know this. However, why is it that defense heavy players have been around for a while, but never got that much support from cactus? People will continue to play heavy defense, so why not make some cards to allow defense heavy to work within time limits? I thought we want variation and unique decks?

The current time issues pretty much force people to just play offense heavy decks as always, and as seen in this thread, with a LOT of the same cards as other decks.

Here is the main issue I see with 100 carders that FORCE them to be turtles:
A serious lack of GOOD generic heroes. If there were as many worthwhile generics on offense as there were on defense, I'd be playing fully balanced 105 carders. Unfortunately there are not, so you're stuck being forced into turtles, weak generic offenses, or Job offenses which are the only viable one I see at the moment.

Cactus, can we get some more generic heroes that are worth using? Most generics are angels, and they are old cards so their abilities are rather useless now.

The problem with too-big decks in my opinion is they're total spoilers. I guarantee you nobody will ever win a major T1 tournament using a 100+ card deck every game. They time out and lose at least once because of their bulk, making it impossible to actually win a tournament, even if your opponents never get to five, making it super-frustrating for the player with a clearly-better deck who got 2 points instead of 3 just because someone was being cute with their deck choice.

But it goes from frustrating to maddening when it's on RTS, and especially ROOT. 100+ card decks are worse than 50-63 card decks. There's basically no denying that. But in ROOT, you're using RTS and playing with a MUCH longer time limit, somewhat mitigating the natural deterrent to playing an awful, bloated deck. And while fat decks will lose 90% of the time, it's extremely frustrating when you're in that 10% for a tournament game and loose because of sheer luck (150 cards in a lot of room for LS's to get lost in).

T1 was not designed for huge decks. That's what T2 is for. I'd be all for lowering the limit to 105 cards for T1, and I'd be for lowering the limit to 98 cards in a ROOT game.

I accept this challenge.  I will build a 100+ card type 1 deck that I will play in major tournaments this season and try to win with it.

Quick Question. How would a typical ROOT monthly tourny equal in difficultly against other local, state, and regional tournies?

I would say it's comparable to a regional in terms of the number of highly skilled players playing. This month RooT is a little smaller, but there's still several players who have won at the State and Regional level.

I would say it's comparable to a regional in terms of the number of highly skilled players playing. This month RooT is a little smaller, but there's still several players who have won at the State and Regional level.

  I would say the skill set and diversity is equal to that of a regional tournament.

And I would say this is another reason that ROOT is so small.  A newer player is HIGHLY unlikely to dip into those waters primarily because of the caliber of play.

I used to think that too.  But then we split ROOT to take out all those top players, and give the new players a chance to win some games and win some free booster packs even.  But it really didn't work.  The new players that I expected never showed up, and in fact overall ROOT participation went down.  Since putting all the players back together, ROOT participation has gone up again.

::Stands up::
Well, I must confess that I am a repeat offender guilty of oversized deck usage.
I never did this to tick people off. Sorry if I "offended" anyone. 
Just wanted to experiment to try and make it usable in a tournament one day. I guess in ROOT I will ask the person I am playing if they want to stick with normal tourney time limits (:45 for T1, 1:15 for T2). Maybe that will make people feel better since it will be more realistic? I try to experiment alot in ROOT. I am a T2 player, and most in ROOT play T1, so I try to make my decks larger since I am more familiar with that format.
I like the idea of control decks, since T1 is overrun with aggro decks.
I appreciate the help some ROOT players have given me to help speed up the bigger decks and I try to implement the suggestions.
I really have played with oversized decks in some tourneys over the years with minor success (T1-placed 2nd at a small regionals with a 105er--which I think would not have done well in a normal sized regional; and 2x 3rd places in T2 regionals with 203-252ers), so I really do play with the stuff and try to make them competitive. 
I also think RTS is faster than real life since the auto shuffle is wonderful compared to real shuffling which can be lengthy, tho ANB and Gates don't do as well in RTS.

yeah agreed but big decks also play a factor there both valid componets to the problem no one any bigger then the other and both need a way to be solved

Another option could be to have different time limits for Swiss games and challenge/bonus games. That might be a little more confusing, but could make for a good middle ground. Dividing RooT would not really work because there's so few people in it right now anyway.

agree with pol