Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Quote from: Chronic Apathy on December 29, 2011, 12:39:22 AM

Mono color would be interesting, but it would pose two big problems. First off, brown would rule defense, since Gomer, Uzzah, and Plot are already found in most defenses anyway. It wouldn't be hard to add a few brown battle winners and Wickedness Abounds and call it a day. Even so, it would be a nice change of pace, and might encourage a few more bigger brown defenses. On the offense, I fear that Disciples would rule, though it would help some, stripping them of Passover Hymn, Peter (and 4DC), and Simon the Zealot, along with Pentecost. Disciples and Genesis (even without Joe) would likely rule the meta. I wouldn't mind seeing this though. Although, now that I think about it, TGT would be huge (but be balanced out by the mono defenses). Huh. I'm starting to like this a lot.

Genesis + Kings of Israel. All the time.

Genesis loses their best hero, which makes Disciples more likely, and even then, Disciples take a pretty big hit too.

Traditionally, ROOT has never been used to playtest things. This is all new.

Here's a serious idea from me: Pan.  An CBN, protected from everything Iron Pan, active the entire game.

I'd just like to see more fun variants.  CBN protect, immune, etc would still be around.  It would make for a deckbuilding challenge, and not be facing the same decks again and again.

While we're throwing out ideas for nerfing speed, I think one month should be thrown in that does something of this sort:  Ban Mayhem/NJ.  No more, no less.  Speed decks will have less reason to plow through their deck, the game will always last more than 3 turns, more enhancements/longer battle phases, no FTMs, etc.  See what kind of change can happen with AS FEW BANS as possible.  I would nominate these two.

If ridiculous ideas like a "Gifts of the Magi" rule and a D1 rule get consideration for nerfing speed, then why not give this a try?  There's 10-20 participants in ROOT from month to month.  After months of trying all these different ideas, there should be a general consensus about what alternate rules:

1.  Nerfed speed without turning the meta into herolite decks WHILE STILL
2.  Making the game more fun

At the risk of oversimplification, if changing the rules only accomplishes the first while not accomplishing the second, the rule isn't worth it.  Let's find the alternate condition that does both the best.

Put Banning to the scientific test.  It would be a waste not to use this opportunity, since it will be easy to compare ideas (all will happen during the same expansion when the meta is theoretically not going to change much).  You are already planning on instituting rules that don't exist, so there's no real reason not to do it.

Ban Mayhem/NJ.

2 problems with this one.  Firstly, Rob has already stated that he is strongly opposed to banning.  Secondly, I agree with Rob, so I'm not inclined to champion this cause.  Banning 1 card (or 2) only leads to banning more.

I suggest a limit of characters equal to the number of lost souls in deck. applies for both good and evil. so 7 ecs and 7 heroes

I'm not really a big fan of this idea personally because I usually like to give players flexibility in deck building.  However, I don't see why this couldn't someday become a rule, and it would deal with the power of characters that people like Alex_O has been talking about recently, so I'll add it to the list.

I'm not saying anything has to be permanent from this.  We already know it's not going to happen.  But most (if not all) of the other experimental rules are not going to happen either.

The difference is that all of the other experimental rules that we have tried COULD POSSIBLY happen, and in fact many have been talked about pretty seriously even among elders.

Again, I'm just not interested in championing this idea.  Maybe now that Chronic Apathy has joined me in ROOT leadership, that perhaps he'll be more inclined to support it.

To an extent I agree with TheHobbit13; I feel like we have to tread lightly with which rule changes we experiment with, because anything too drastic just takes the fun out of the game, in my opinion. However, ROOT is unique in that we never have the opportunity to see a bunch of people from different regions come together to play aside from the T2 Only and Natz, and we can't examine rule changes like these at either of those two events (though I am cooking up an unofficial category for Natz this year - more on this later). It would be a shame to squander the opportunity to look at the way some of these rules changes effect people and games. Also, it's nice to inject a bit of variety into the game; playing the same thing over and over again (even though I'm not using the same deck for every game I play in a season  ) gets stale. It's for that reason that I'm against the ideas put forth by Red and Somekittens, respectively. Seems like too much for rules that will likely never get implemented (and in the case of Red's suggestion, I'm against anything that so much dresses the same way T2 does).

Regarding the ban suggestion, I'm a little more mixed. I was actually going to suggest this myself yesterday, but I forgot. I've been on the record before in support for banning cards (specifically New Jerusalem [so the people who want it banned will be quiet  ] and Mayhem (seems to be the easiest way to stop FTM). I'm well aware that Rob and several of the Elders are fully 100% against the idea, but I feel if nothing else, in order for their position to hold true legitimacy (I understand Rob's reasoning, but I don't feel like it holds much weight [not that it matters how much weight I think it holds]), the idea should at least be tested and commented on. I'm in support of having a "Type Ban" category, and I'm working on putting together an unofficial category for Natz this year, much the same way Teams was a couple years ago. Having a month of ROOT with these cards banned would at least allow everyone some insight and be able to see what the pros and cons are regarding gameplay. Now that said, I'll defer to Underwood; if he doesn't see any large need to test the idea (since it really doesn't ever have a shot of being implemented into T1 or T2 permanently), I don't feel so strongly about the issue that I'll push it at all; these are just my thoughts.

Didn't they do Type Ban a while ago?

That's about what I remember.  It seemed to have fizzled after whatever the best deck was got nerfed.  I'd be against something like that in ROOT

I can tell you what happens if we ban mayhem and new jerusalem. Genesis enters God tier.

We played that exact ban list in type ban without the new set and gen dominated. Genesis is far and away the best deck because of the increased power of search.

It should still be around. Look at JSB or Spy's older posts. They were involved.