Cactus Game Design Message Boards

If you want to reduce time-outs consider eliminating/putting limits on table talk.  Otherwise you are failing to eliminate the primary culprit for timeouts.  All this gibberish and code word garbage takes 1-2 minutes each turn when playing against some teams during and prior to the battle phases and makes games drag on much longer than they should.  It makes teams a painful category to play at times.

If you want to reduce time-outs consider eliminating/putting limits on table talk.  Otherwise you are failing to eliminate the primary culprit for timeouts.

Based on several posts so far, it seems that we have one major alternate idea that needs to be tested alongside removing Intro-Prep, as stated by Mitch. Polarius also offered another alternative with the "no attacks on first turn" idea. I think we should give the necessary time to work out the possibilities before making a change that would occur in the next month.

I think we can all agree that experiences with TEAMS are different based on the playgroup. It appears that Gabe and Redoubter have had issues with TEAMS that they feel need to be addressed, so we need to be sensitive to this request. Others of us have had no issues, so we would like to move cautiously with a change that doesn't seem necessary.

I think we can come up with a solution that will make everyone happy if we are given enough time to make it happen. Who knows, maybe eliminating Intro-Prep will end up being that solution, but I would guess there would be other changes alongside it. 

I don't think so, I just don't think your points are valid.  Even combined it seems the points don't add up to much in actual gameplay.  I didn't have to stretch at all to come up with scenarios where it is relevant.  How is it impractical to consider scenarios that multiple players have encountered frequently?

For some decks and players this won't matter but for certain decks I think this could be a fairly high percentage, maybe close to 50% that it makes a difference.  I of course don't know the actual number but that is an educated guess based on playing decks where it does matter.  A LOT more testing or complicated math would be needed to come up with reliable statistics.

Have you played with team decks that use significant defense and rely on their teammates cards to block with?  If you have just used disciple decks and blocks like Uzzah then I would bet you wouldn't encounter this much. 

One more point I wanted to bring up that I just thought of:  There's nothing quite as painful as giving up free souls in Redemption.  You can come back from a game where you draw defense and no offense, but you can't come back (except by luck and soul drought) from games where you draw offense, Lost Souls, and no defense.  Couple this with the fact that in TEAMS, the opponents get to attack twice before the 4th player even takes 1 turn, and you just need the Intro Prep Phase.

Quote from: jmhartz on June 24, 2015, 01:05:35 PM

One more point I wanted to bring up that I just thought of:  There's nothing quite as painful as giving up free souls in Redemption.  You can come back from a game where you draw defense and no offense, but you can't come back (except by luck and soul drought) from games where you draw offense, Lost Souls, and no defense.  Couple this with the fact that in TEAMS, the opponents get to attack twice before the 4th player even takes 1 turn, and you just need the Intro Prep Phase.

Except you're even less likely to draw no defense in a teams game because both players get the opportunity to block.  If you are straight up having both teammates not draw any defense with any sort of regularity, I would state that really, you just built your decks wrong.

Absolutely, and the other question is how is intro-prep going to help you with defense?  Are you basing your ability to block solely on artifacts, sites, and fortresses?  Some decks work better with those, but if you're relying on that for a block and not being able to put it down is what is 'hurting you', then I agree that you did not build your deck with the capability for early blocks (since you have to draw those cards in the first place), and intro-prep isn't actually helping you anyway.

We don't have to base this on an educated guess or gut feelings.

I'd say that is not exactly true. The amount of variables makes an accurate formula basically impossible.  You can look at similar strategic questions in other card games that have far more players and more money and they are largely still dealing with theories and not fact. We also don't have anywhere near enough play experience to arrive at reliable answers with the same degree of certainty that games like MtG have.  Even with millions of players playing more frequently, it still takes them months to settle some of these types of questions. So we do the best we can but some of this is going to be based on personal experience and guesswork.

Except you're even less likely to draw no defense in a teams game because both players get the opportunity to block

The question isn't simply do you draw defense/no defense but whether you draw sufficient defense to block or even matter.  Your gomer banded to your teammates KoT has a much better chance of blocking their judge with Sam's edict than if either blocked alone.

Absolutely, and the other question is how is intro-prep going to help you with defense?

Your comments like this is why I asked if you had played the kind of decks I'm talking about in teams.  The ones I can think of right now: Unholy writ, magic charms, rain becomes dust, Hezekiah's signet ring, household idols, darius decree, covenant with death, confusion of mind, unknown nation, go into captivity, asherah pole, plagued with diseases, philistine outpost, gates of samaria, gates of Jerusalem, gates of hell, Assyria's tribute?, that caananite fortress, Golgotha, Nazareth, hormah, and I know there are many more I can't think of right now.  All of these can matter if you or your teammate have them in play the first round and can be the critical difference between blocking or getting steamrolled.  It is also not just those support cards but the characters you can put down for your teammate to band to.  There is a big difference between blocking with just your Jezebel or adding your teammates Ahab to that.  You can have decks with early block attempts but being able to actually stop the high powered offenses out there without a very heavy defense deck is not so easy.  If you don't see how the intro prep phase can make a huge difference here then I don't know what else to say.

Whether affected decks should be considered or only the total percentage, is its own discussion I think.  I would favor rules that make a greater variety of strategies playable so we don't end up like multiplayer where the decks are 90% alike.  imho that would ruin the fun of teams.

aside from offensive speed decks, what strategies would eliminating intro help?

One possibility I could see is to make intro-prep an optional rule for tournaments for the next year. Judges/hosts who don't like it can announce when the tournament is announced that it will not be included, and those who prefer it can keep it. Then we should have a fair amount of data to base a decision on that would apply to Nats 2016 and beyond, whether to keep it optional or to go permanently one way or the other. At this point, with such a divided set of viewpoints on the topic, I am not confident that a good solution could be determined in the next month before Nationals to apply to any tournaments coming up after that. However, perhaps a year from now people will be more in favor of one side or the other, and even if not, we can at least discuss some actual benefits that the intro prep or lack thereof has, instead of remaining in the theoretical realm where only one side of the argument has ever been tested.

It looks to me like the real solution is something I've been wanting for years: more stringent time limits on play. Nobody likes a timeout, and I think with the overly-liberal time allotments we currently have, stalling out when you know you've lost the game is not only possible but a great idea. There have been a few times I lost an entire tournament because of running into either a player who was so slow the game reached timeout even though my winning was a foregone conclusion in the first handful of rounds, or an even more infuriating situation with an unscrupulous opponent who realized his inevitable loss and then started playing way slower than he had been up to that point.

If people are truly having multi-minute-long conversations while playing nothing, that's not even a case of needing stricter time limits but just enforcing the ones that already exist.

It's probably mine and Jayden's fault that Jordan doesn't like talking in TEAMS...ever since we started using Jordan's baby nicknames as code words in our games against him... 

Kidding of course, but I think code/table talking in TEAMS needs to have its own discussion. 

Maybe a time out win should be considered a full win. Let's be honest here, for all intensive purposes you did beat them. Which also discourages stalling to tie and when you're losing. Not to mention It encourages defense which is always good.

I know that people have been in love with the idea of defense heavy being viable for a while now, but honestly, I think offense should always be significantly stronger.  Defense heavy games are frankly often not very fun.  And 45 minute games are bad for the game.

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Defense heavy games are frankly often not very fun for the person facing the defense heavy deck

FTFY

It is very bad for the game when the general case is for one person to have fun, and the other person to not.  Yes the winning player will usually be having more fun, but the goal should ALWAYS be to have both players having fun.

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And 45 minute games are bad for the game.

Again, a matter of opinion. For me, I'd much rather play a 45 minute game and potentially time out in a close game than have a game last 5 turns because one team had a great draw and the other team couldn't play the counters until after the damage had been done.

Both 45 minute games and 5 turn games are bad for the game.  However I find in general that 45 minute games are common in tournament, and 5 turn games in general aren't.

45 minutes is a long time for each match in a game you are playing a tournament.  There's a reason that other CCGs are able to play best of 3's in the same time it takes Redemption to play one game.

Prof A and I were discussing this a bit last night, and here is a potential solution that we came up with:

The term intro-prep is eliminated and instead there is just a rule for TEAMS that you cannot make an attack during the first round (as Polarius suggested earlier). This keeps Mayhem from being an issue and doesn't create fuzziness with a "turn" that isn't really a turn. It also maintains the balance of power between getting to play cards first (except attacking) for the first team and getting the opportunity to counter for the second team.

For example--the first player goes first and plays down Samuel and Wheel within a Wheel to grab AutO. He can't attack this first round, but he's all set up to make a strong opening rescue on his second turn. The opposing players can now see that and get an opportunity to play a counter card (say RBD or Golden Cherubim) during their first turn. Assuming they drew a counter (which I grant is not a given) they now have the upper hand because they had the opportunity to react before a rescue was made. Consequently we have pros and cons both for going first and for going second.

With that in place, I feel we could also eliminate the "first player doesn't draw" rule so that the player who goes first will draw first. This makes TEAMS consistent with other multi-player categories. It does shift the balance towards the team that goes first, but since the team with the most souls on the table determines who goes first, that advantage is controlled by them.