Cactus Game Design Message Boards

It's no secret speed decks are a problem, they're dominating the meta and choking out all deck variety. Card based counters are worthless because you need to draw the card before they get set up, meaning you need to outdraw them, which forces you to use speed to counter speed. So I propose the following rules:

1. Haste Makes Waste. - Each time a player draws outside of their draw phase they must discard X cards from the top of their deck. Where X equals the number of cards drawn divided by two, rounded up. (IE 3/2 = 1.5 rounded up = 2)

2. CBI No More (credit to MJB). - CBI no longer exists, CBN becomes CBP.

3. Interrupt on change in battle type (sorry, no clever name). - If a battle shifts from RA to BC the rescuer gets a chance to interrupt the last card played. Likewise, if a battle shifts from BC to RA the blocker is given a chanc e to interrupt.

4. Change Angel under the Oak to say: "Protect Gideon from all cards,"  which means you can't play enhancements on him if you use AutO to protect him.

It would need to specify "when players draw because of a special ability on their card". If I force my opponent to draw, they shouldn't be extra punished by having to discard the top X.

What I think might be a better idea is to make a rule that ALL draw abilities (except forced draws like Hur) become optional, and in order for a player to use a draw ability, he has to discard a card from deck/hand/territory, etc. That would add a cost to use an ability.

I would tweak this to only apply to abilities that can target opposing characters in battle.

I'd see certain cards banned before I'd like to see this put in place. Absolutely hate it.

Quote from: Chris on May 05, 2012, 06:51:56 PM

I'd see certain cards banned before I'd like to see this put in place. Absolutely hate it.

Care to explain? Without drawing and CBN almost all of the broken themes/combos from the last few sets lose a lot of steam.

I know in today's game of "chump-block-this and CBN-battle-winner-that" that the idea of a prolonged battle phase seems foreign to newer players, but back in the day Redemption used to have actual interactive play occur during the battle phase...

And it was wicked fun,

If we're looking for a penalty to decking out, then let's use the Pokemon Rule: If you deck out, you lose. 

1. Haste Makes Waste (redux). For each card a player draws outside of their draw phase, they lose the abiity to draw one card from their next draw phase.  So if I interrupt and draw three I wouldn't get to draw any cards at the start of my next turn.

Redoubter, if you really believe this is true than you should move on to another game pronto because Redemption is already "COMPLETELY ruined." As I pointed out above, Redemption already has a bunch or cards that are CBN (even though it doesn't say that) simply because they are too hard/impossible to take back. Moreoever, as Prof Alstad mentioned, in Redemption any number of other SAs can be granted CBN status depending on when they are played for game play consistency purposes.  If you can swallow the camel on those I am unsure why you are straining at the gnat of Hur.

You might actually want to get together a few players, design decks to take advantage of the rule, and play a game or two with this before declaring you hate it. What you would end up seeing is that interrupts become extremely valuable cards and that the battle phase will actually involve actual battles between good and evil. I know in today's game of "chump-block-this and CBN-battle-winner-that" that the idea of a prolonged battle phase seems foreign to newer players, but back in the day Redemption used to have actual interactive play occur during the battle phase (even in Type 2 if you can believe it).

Wouldn't a fortress or artifact that restricts players from playing a card with CBN status be a good place to start?

Quote from: EmJayBee83 on May 06, 2012, 12:33:57 AM

Quote from: Professoralstad on May 05, 2012, 02:48:45 PM

2. I would tweak this to only apply to abilities that can target opposing characters in battle. What would happen, for example, if Hur was blocked by King of Tyrus in your example?

What happens if I make a rescue with John Promo or Foretelling Angel or King Solomon or ... and you block with King of Tyrus? There are already any number of cards (that are not even designated as CBN) that actually are CBN simply on practical grounds and no one sees any issue with that. The problem with Hur is that it the phrase "Cannot be interrupted, negated, or prevented" should never have been included in the first place just like the CBI is not included on John Promo.  Or--as Bryon would say--the last sentence in Hur's SA is extraneous explanatory text.

There's a difference between "look" abilities (which are inherently CBN because of the nature of the ability) and shuffle abilities. If a typical shuffle ability (like Two Bears) is negated, then the shuffled card(s) are fetched and returned to here they were.

There's no reason why Hur would be inherently CBN, he got that ability because it was necessary. And that's just one example.

Certain CBN cards are okay and not at all abusive, the problems come from CBN abilities that win battles.

That's what makes battles short and "unfun" for some people.

What exactly is your goal then? Simply making battle phases longer?

How is completely reshaping the economy a good way to fix the problem that some people have with the game?

Have you considered the fact that it would make the game a lot less accessable to new players, because little Johnny who was excited to go to his first tournament after he spend all of his allowance on new cards has zero chance of winning because not only did he miss out on a fundamental rule, but all those "CBN" cards he is so darn fond of aren't nearly as good as the rulebook told him they were.

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The other issue is that single-card counters rarely work as hoped. (The notable exceptions being cards like Golgotha which shut down a strategy all by their lonesome). In this case it is not enough to stop CBN from working. You would need to include interrupts to make a complete strategy, but the interrupts are worthless unless the anti-CBN comes into play. So I get dependent on a "lucky" draw compared to my opponent to win. This is definitely sub-optimal.

Nazareth is actually a really good example of where this worked perfectly;

Having a similar card, even if it's just a "Protect all cards from special abilities that cannot be negated" instead of restricting play, the point is, it's a better jumping off point than fundamentally changing the game.

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So I guess I don't understand why you brought up Hur in the first place. If a player can go in and fetch out two cards shuffled in by the Bears, why couldn't he go in and fetch out the seven shuffled in by Hur? If King Of Tyrus would make you undraw a card gotten via Parmenas, why couldn't he make you undraw seven from Hur?

For Two Bears, both players know what was shuffled so if there's any confusion, there's two people who can fill in any blanks.  For Parmenas, it's one card.

For Hur, it's memorizing seven cards that were shuffled, and frankly, I rarely remember every card I shuffle from Hur, since at that point, having drawn them is moot.

If I forget even just one card I shuffled, what do I do? Draw? It also makes cheating extremely easy for the dishonest among us.

CBN battle winners don't mean a thing if you can't play them, I have more problems with interrupt + CBN battle winner all in one card.

If we're looking for a penalty to decking out, then let's use the Pokemon Rule: If you deck out, you lose.