Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Hey guys, instead of being cool and hitting up the Empire State Building on Thursday/Friday Night, I want to play card games. However, I have no idea what I want to play though, so this thread is to determine that.

Also, I would like to have a really really cool prize. I'm thinking about maybe saying there's some sort of entry fee, whether a card (of some value, sorry, your Buckler collection isn't a cool prize), redemption cash, actual cash ($5 or less most likely), etc.

As for what to play, I'm totally open. I do play Pokemon, but I doubt we'd have enough players for that, so I'm looking more at Redemption variations (if we were to do this, I'd want it to be VASTLY different from ordinary Redemption. None of that Type 3/NW or banlist stuff) or maybe some Dominion tournaments. If we were to do the latter though, I would need help with supplies. Ideally, I think we should do something Redemption related, as that will include the most people.

Several ideas that I had:
Set Rotation (ban all cards pre-G/H)
Past format (ban all cards post G/H)
Player made sets (I would select cards from New Card Ideas and post a list of what we'd be using by July. This could be only fan based cards or it could be a mixture with normal. I have a lot of free time to be picking cards. This could also be a mixture of video game cards, movie cards, etc. I'd love to see Gandalf banded to Mario blocked by Derek Jeter. However, that would take a lot of work and I'd need a lot of help. We'd be looking at putting together ~600 cards in the course of a couple of months)
Palace Format (for lack of a better term, I used the Pokemon one. Some cards have set number of points, and you can only have so many points in a deck. Not a strict ban list, but causes you to be creative in deck building).
Banlist.
Type 3 (http://typethree.game-host.org/home/index.php).
Tropical Mega Battle. (Everybody gets the same pool of randomly selected cards (probably around 300 cards) to build decks with.)

A lot of these I think are rather dull. I really want something that will spawn creativity in deck building and craziness in practice. I know there's a lot of crazy Redemption players out there with brilliant minds, so I ask that you suggest some things to play, even if you can't go!

Tropical mega battle

I think games/tournaments with custom made cards could always be fun.

Other than that, Tropical Mega Battle seems interesting as does Set Rotation (given that it would be interesting to see how current meta decks are impacted by losing the older cards that are still used).

I would like to see either a Super Booster or something non-Redemption related. Maybe Settlers of Catan could be played so that I can abandon my Teams partner and win Multi again?

I always wanted to play an "It's In There" event. All players draw from a single deck, which consists of 1 of every card ever made for Redemption (yes, that means multiple dominants), with enough generic Lost Souls to match the number of cards in the deck. Anything that shuffled would make life crazy. (OK, I figured it would be played by using about 100-150 cards at a time as the deck, with a new chunk added as needed.) All LSs would go to a common LoB, and anyone could defend. It would be like Booster Draft on some weird experimental drug that caused severe hallucinations.

We've actually played "one deck Redemption" as an experiment. Create one very large legal deck, with a minimum of 50 cards per player, and everyone draws from the same deck. It makes for some very weird plays.

Prof, I thought about the draft, but that was SO much work and would be very time consuming even while at nats. I'm willing to do the work before nationals, but at nationals I'll just be running the thing.

Actually it wouldn't be time consuming at all at Nats.  People would turn in draft lists by a month before Nats.  Then you would have a month to pull the cards based on people's picks, and put them into stacks.  When you get to Nats you simply pass out the stacks and give people 30 mins to put together their best deck with the cards they drafted.  Then you have the tournament, and when it's over they all turn the cards back into you.

Each person would only get a card pull of say 75 cards (with a 150 card draft list due to a lot of expected duplication).  The tournament would be limited to 16 players, and therefore single elimination would only require 4 rounds.  If I remember correctly, everyone was also limited to choosing cards from only 2 or 3 brigades of offense and only 2 or 3 brigades of defense.  You could check with Uthminister to be sure, but that certainly cut down on duplication in people's draft list.  People might have even signed up for certain brigades ahead of time with only 2 or 3 people being allowed to draft from the same brigade (to also spread things out).  But again check with Uthminister for the details.

Would a live draft be better than a blind draft?

A live draft would be a lot of fun for the first 15 cards or so (times 16 people remember).  But it would get super tedious for the last 60 cards (times 16 people again).  It would also take FOREVER.

I think that practically the blind draft is the only way to go.

I would really like to do a 2P Booster tournament. Basically you draft with a group of 4, build your deck and then do a 2P tournament.

Cost could be kept down as we could allow players to supply their own packs (or have someone with a bunch of extras sell them at a discount.)

Personally I prefer Tin Booster, so if we did that we could choose which tins to use and which ones to exclude. We could then make sure that certain tins are not paired at the same drafting table so that two players aren't trying to draft the same brigade (like having two Genesis tins at the same table) for their deck while the other players just get everything they want.

We could include:
RoA/FooF set
Unlimited
Prophets
Women
Apostles
Patriarchs
Kings
Angel Wars
Priests
TexP
Disciples

It would be awesome to see the great decks that could be built with that large a pool of cards to choose from.

That's a lockout machine waiting to happen.

Or just Prince of this World lockout.

we could combine a sealed and booster thing. do sealed but you get a tin to use.
I mean, you get a starter and a tin