Cactus Game Design Message Boards

These rules will be added to the tournament guide with the next update, but be advised of the following:

In the 2P booster format, Lost Souls may not be placed in Sites (whether by game action or special ability).

Sites may still be used in the 2P Booster format.

Characters may be captured to Sites by special ability (i.e. Herod's Dungeon), but not by game action.


I believe this was announced previously, but I could not find a record of it so this will be the official announcement and will be the way it is played at Nationals. These rules apply to both Sealed and 2P Booster (the tournament guide does mention the first two in the section about Sealed deck).

Any chance this is still up for discussion?

I understand that being locked out and unable to rescue enough souls to win can be frustrating.  But, having done 2 player booster draft for years, I can say that this has almost never occurred to me.  Usually at worst it just loses you a couple rescue attempts, which many other cards can also do (or even just your opponent not drawing souls can do it).


A few of reasons why I believe sites should stay in draft/aren't a problem:

1.  Multiple brigades of heroes = More site access

Draft has always been that a player tends to end up with Heroes of several different brigades.  This means that you are much more likely to have access to your opponent's various sites!  Also in newer sets there are many Dual+ brigade heroes that have even more site access options.

2.  You can draft site access/destruction

In my experience, there are quite a few cards that can interact with sites, and knowing that you may need to have access is just another decision to be made while drafting, kind of like deciding how many characters you need to play an enhancement of a specific brigade.

3.  No souls in sites = Many more near useless cards

No souls in sites means that most sites have severely reduced value, many becoming worthless.  But that isn't all.  Any cards that interact specifically with sites also have reduced value, some even becoming useless as well.  Having more useless cards in draft makes the experience less fun, and actually this is the biggest reason that I believe sites should stay.

4.  Increased Lost Soul generating abilities available

In recent sets, there has been an increased focus on Lost Soul generating cards, which is great!  These cards also work well against sites as you can put souls out before they can be placed in sites or even overwhelm their amount of sites altogether.

5.  Increases Strategy

This ties into a few of my other points, but having another strategy for defending souls out there increases the overall strategy involved in drafting.  When do you draft sites?  First?  Do you miss out on good heroes/ECs/enhancements then and thus make your deck weaker in other areas?  Or wait until later and just end up with one or two sites like everyone else?



I hope that this will add some additional thought and discussion on this rule change, which I believe is bad for 2-player booster.  If you are dead set on changing things, might I suggest trying out limiting sites to maybe 2 per deck instead of no souls in sites altogether?  That way, sites could still be useful, but there would still be enough souls available for every player to win eventually.

I would guess this is something that gets revisited at some point--could be next season, could be a couple seasons from now. While the rule might take away from some strategies and the usefulness of some cards, we felt the potential negative (being site-locked) was too large to ignore. Experienced players would know to take Site access or LS gen cards, but casual players might not necessarily be prepared for that and find themselves in very un-fun games. One of our goals in the past few years has been to encourage the battle phase--something that Sites tend to detract from.

CBN site access is how our playgroup has been doing it and how northeast regionals did it. That is how we all thought it was supposed to be and had no ill effects on game play.

1.  Multiple brigades of heroes = More site access

2.  You can draft site access/destruction

3.  No souls in sites = Many more near useless cards

4.  Increased Lost Soul generating abilities available

5.  Increases Strategy

I'll address these one by one.

1. There's still 9 possible brigade colors needed for site access.  And the more spread your offense is, the longer it takes to get a hero of a certain color, and the harder it is to keep that hero on the table.  It's simply really easy to sitelock in 2P Booster.  I got Sitelocked when my opponent played 3 Sites last November.

2. I don't acknowledge the "Counters exist for OP cards, therefore OP cards are not a problem" argument.  And even if I did, there honestly aren't many cards that deal with LS hiding in Sites.  1-time use GEs from Kings that can be easily negated (and are basically worthless if your opponent isn't playing sites) are not a legitimate counter to Sites, and they don't belong in Booster decks over actual battlewinners.

3. "Many more" - by what counting method?  Maybe if you take the entire Redemption universe of cards and identify all cards impacted.  But you won't see all those cards in the draft pool (because nobody drafts all expansions) and you aren't guaranteed to see any specific card either.  I'm thinking the "Many more" you describe is probably closer to 5 per the average 75 cards drafted (and I'll take the Under on that bet). 

4. Even drafting FoM x2 with all the Slaves doesn't mitigate soul drought (we did this at OH States).  Also, see Point 2 above regarding OP cards and counters for them.

5. But it doesn't.  Sites are simply a bad game mechanic (put a LS in this card and 8/9 of heroes can't rescue it?  Wut?) that is more evident in Sealed categories.  If you are able to draft 7 Sites and heroes don't have CBN Site Access, you don't even need to draft defense in 2-Player.  On the flip side, you might draft an awesome deck with a spread offense, with 4-6 brigades, but if you happen to play someone with a bunch of off-color Sites, you can't do anything. 

Quote from: The Guardian on July 24, 2018, 01:11:29 PM

Experienced players would know to take Site access or LS gen cards, but casual players might not necessarily be prepared for that and find themselves in very un-fun games.

-and-

Quote from: The Guardian on July 24, 2018, 01:40:31 PM

As of now, what I originally posted will be the rule for Nationals.

Just how many "casual players" are you expecting at Nationals?

Actually, I'd argue that experienced players would be first-picking Sites.  Because just 4-5 Sites is often an impenetrable defense (or at least an incredible stall tactic), and they can still be potentially used for Site access if needed.

Either way, there's no reason early picks in Booster should be spent on Sites, much less Site access.  They should be spent on good characters and solid battlewinners. 

I would guess this is something that gets revisited at some point--could be next season, could be a couple seasons from now. While the rule might take away from some strategies and the usefulness of some cards, we felt the potential negative (being site-locked) was too large to ignore. Experienced players would know to take Site access or LS gen cards, but casual players might not necessarily be prepared for that and find themselves in very un-fun games. One of our goals in the past few years has been to encourage the battle phase--something that Sites tend to detract from.

Thank you for the response and explanation.

I would like to point out that as for casual players being locked-out by sites, it really only takes that happening to someone once to have them become 'experienced' enough to know not to let that happen again.  Kind of like knowing that you need cards that can negate character abilities, otherwise you can be locked out by Red Dragon, Emperor Claudius and the like.

Your point about encouraging the battle phase is a good one, that is the part of the game that players tend to enjoy most.  And that might be enough of a reason on its own.  I just think that eliminating their use altogether is going too far to eliminate (in your words) a 'potential problem'.  I would encourage everyone to try out sites in 2-player booster with other experience players in such a format, and see how much of an issue or not they actually are.