Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Yes, I'm pleased with how streamlined the decks are. The number of concepts needed is far fewer. No artifacts or sites in the starters (unlike 10th Anniversary), no fortresses, no ignore, no set-aside, no immune. You need to know basic turn flow (not even needing Upkeep Phase and with a very simple Prep Phase a la Prophets-era), brigade matching, battle flow, and territory and weapon class enhancements.

These are the different ability types:
Negate
Rescue
Discard
Withdraw
Search
Draw
Topdeck
Reveal/Look
Underdeck
Remove from game
Prevent
Band

Almost all of these abilities are self-explanatory. The only ones needing more explanation for these purposes are prevent, negate, withdraw, and band, and those are quite basic too.

And some basic vocabulary, like card types and alignments, "control", "territory", and phrases like "Ruth enhancement".

Without playing with them, I can't speak to depth of play, but it feels like this will be the best set of starter decks yet.

Lots of interesting reprints, some wildly different (Vain Philosophy), some as a much better standard wording (Jephthah), and some sort of lamified, but it's a starter deck so that's fine (Sword of the Lord - we sure don't need side battles in a starter deck!).

My only question is, which Shamgar art will we see?

I posted my initial thoughts in the Preview thread, but I wanted to reiterate here how much I love that there isn't any CBP/I/N in the starter decks. On top of everything Tim said (which I agree with 100%), not having the confusing aspects (for new people) of "I negate that" "You can't, it's CBI" will make it much, much easier to teach people with these new decks. And at the same time you still get the benefit of enhancements that mostly all have some sort of special ability, and also the back and forth of initiative both with numbers and with all the negates that are prevalent in the decks.

Kudos to the PTB for an awesome set.

I think everyone will be glad that there won't be as many (if any) Denying Blame (redirect) ruling questions now.

Indeed.

These are the different ability types:
Negate
Rescue
Discard
Withdraw
Search
Draw
Topdeck
Reveal/Look
Underdeck
Remove from game
Prevent
Band

For comparison, the 10 cards in the new tin have the following abilities/keywords:
Discard
Negate
Protect
Cannot be prevented
Instead
Take
Decrease
Search
Remove from game
Cannot be negated
Toss
Underdeck

That's as many abilities in 10 cards of the tin as there are in the 100 cards of the starter deck! And that's not counting triggers like "is captured", "opponent draws", "if rescue attempt is successful", etc.

I wonder how many abilities were in the G & H decks...

Isn't Gabriel the first post-FoOF reprint?

How do you think Samuel, Jair, Disciples Gabriel, and a few other cards aren't Reprints? And they were post-FOOF.

G & H decks had:

Prevent
Cannot be negated
Discard
Cannot be prevented
Increase hand size
Band
Interrupt
Redirect
Capture
Search
Play enhancement
Decrease
Topdeck
Remove from game
Draw
Immune
Reveal/Look
Regardless
Set-aside
Increase
Protect
Ignore
Use other enhancements
First strike
Convert
Put in play
Rescue
Underdeck
Return to deck (shuffle)
Negate (including Negate all)

That's 30 different abilities, compared to 12 in the I & J decks!

Quote from: Red on May 15, 2013, 10:39:46 AM

Quote from: Daniel on May 15, 2013, 10:34:20 AM

Isn't Gabriel the first post-FoOF reprint?

How do you think Samuel, Jair, Disciples Gabriel, and a few other cards aren't Reprints? And they were post-FOOF.

No, I mean, is that the first card that was first printed in FoOF+ that has been reprinted again?

Simeon was printed in Faith of Our Fathers and in Disciples. Except the FoOF version and the Disciples version represent different people (one OT, one NT). Other than that, I don't believe any FooF-or-later cards share names (discounting Lost Soul), until Gabriel.

Well, there goes my deck. So... Solomon's temple meta this year? Looks like disciples may pick up again too, and Romans will be a bit better.

The main reason Burial isn't included in the decks is to mitigate the common problem of Soul Drought (which has always been a problem in Sealed Deck/Starter games). The ability for us to create new Doms was icing on the cake.

Good word, Professor. The desire to avoid soul drought is also one reason a Site was not included. It's the reason there are several draw 1 abilities in the deck as well as a Lost Soul generation card in each deck. In all my play test games, which were many, it was uncommon for soul drought to last more than a turn or two and very uncommon to have hand clog that caused a player to need to discard at the end of their turn. Those are two aspects of the game that are not fun for either player. We attempted to minimize those as much as possible.

I'd also like to point out that we fixed something that's bothered me about every previous starter deck. There has been an imbalance of the two evil brigades (3 of one and 4 of another). That usually made it more difficult to play the EEs from one brigade. This time around each brigade has 4 characters.

So... Solomon's temple meta this year?

Lol no, Solomon's Temple is horrible.

After playing with mockups of the new starters, I'm less sanguine about them. I know it's a small sample, but right now J deck holds a 6-1 edge with a +14 differential! It doesn't matter whether I play it, my son plays it, or I'm playing solo, J is the dominant deck. (I's only win was 5-4, and if J could have blocked the last rescue it would have won on the next turn.)

The biggest difference between the two decks is the ability of Tiberius/Sorrow of Mary to underdeck dominants, with no such ability in the I deck. I"m actually playing a "use doms quickly" strategy to mitigate against it. There's nothing like making a rescue attempt with AotL in your hand only to have EmpT show up and underdeck it. I also am finding that the Philistine defense struggles, since the giants almost never get initiative and there are enopugh discard/underdeck ECs to take care of them. (The weapons do help with this, if you can get them on the giants before battle.) The one event that hasn't happened yet that I think will help I's defense is getting Delilah out to band to opposing ECs to use their abilities against them. It just hasn't gelled yet. (Part of the small sample size.)

Has anyone else tried out the new decks? Maybe you're getting the exact opposite results, so I'd like to hear it.

(On the plus side, I'm thinking of reviving my Roman defense. Tiberius alone got me thinking about that, and there are other nice gray cards in the deck.)

In response to my own question: The Shamgar art is cleaned up, SNES Mortal Kombat style.

This was great.

I've played both decks once each and haven't lost with starters yet.