Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Quote from: Alex_Olijar on August 22, 2011, 05:41:57 PM

I think you are ignoring the fact the Wester used Disciples 3 games and built a deck designed to counter disciples. That's equivalent to playing disciples from the perspective that he saw them as so widespread at the top tables that he wanted to play a counter deck.

And on my way to 4th place, I only saw Disciples once, and beat them, and did NOT play a deck designed against them at all.

Quote from: Professoralstad on August 22, 2011, 04:41:55 PM

The truth of the matter, jtay, is that you can't really post a thread that says "thinking about quitting the game" without getting people to try to convince you that you shouldn't. It's happened too many times to count where people do what you do, and for better or worse, people get involved.

From a design perspective, playtesters worry about two things: making cards that everyone uses (bad) and making cards that no one uses (worse). The main reason themes are so popular nowadays is that we don't want to make cards that everyone will use, so we say that the card is only useful for certain strategies. For example, what if Thaddeus had said "X=# of your Heroes in play". Why wouldn't someone use him? He would go in every deck with a sizable offense. The reason we made Assyrian Siege Army require another Assyrian in play was that if we didn't have that requirement, he would probably go in every deck.

The other nice thing about themes is one of the primary focuses in the game. They help people to see the Biblical interaction between characters in the Bible. For example, why does Terrifying Beast band with a Roman Emperor? Well, doing a little looking into, someone could learn that the four beasts represented the four successive major Kingdoms of the earth from Babylon to Rome. Why does Joseph protect sons of Jacob from discard? Well, because he literally did protect his brothers from starvation and near certain death. So many more examples just like that.

If you do decide to quit the game, we are sorry that you feel the way you do, and if we could convince you not to, we would. But hopefully whoever buys your collection will have fun and think it a fun game, and that the time you spent building up your collection will have been valuable to others, as I hope it has been to you.

I appreciate the post, and everything you said is true. When I posted this, a part of me was hoping that people would convince me to stay. It's still a great game, but my reasons for wanting to quit are still the same as they were in my other post. If someone can convincingly show me that it is possible to successfully play without Cactus-defined themes and that outside the box deck building has any potential, I'll definitely reconsider.

And I can certainly see why themes are a good thing. I 100% agree with the reasons that you listed. It just happens to be the case that they also push away people with a gaming mentality like mine; admittedly, people like me are a pretty small minority. Additionally, I live in a location where virtually no one plays this game, which means casual games with friends and noobs are right out. I'm limited to online play for the most part where the caliber of players is on average pretty high, and thus successfully winning 1 game in 10 with an unusual play strategy becomes MUCH more difficult.


Actually, allow me to retract my first statement. The only thing that I believe is untrue about what you said is that creating cards that no one uses is bad. This assumes that by "no one" you mean "approximately no one." I absolutely love cards that approximately no one uses. This means that that fewer people have put much thought into them, leaving me, the guy who lives outside the box, to explore new obscure ideas that utilize them.

disciples/tgt were everywhere at the top tables. yay, coin-flip matches.

Quote from: SomeKittens on August 25, 2011, 11:33:40 AM

Quote from: Master KChief on August 22, 2011, 07:19:17 PM

disciples/tgt were everywhere at the top tables. yay, coin-flip matches.

Yup.  Ours was the coin-flippiest game of the day for me.

But at least we are all safe from the scourge that is ANB!  Of course, if FBTN ever makes a comeback, they'll have to errata those 4/5 numbers.