Cactus Game Design Message Boards

I don't think it would add much game time, just more deck building strategy.  Seriously, how many people play with Commissioned or Wedding Party?  And there are so many HTs in circulation it just begs for everyone having it in their deck.  Suddenly, you'd start seeing a lot of Malchus, Gib Treaty, etc.

I'm liking it more and more! 

Oh!  And you'd see a lot more side battles, which I think everyone can agree would make the game better!

Would that include teaching RTS to shuffle better?

... says the guy who once beat me in an RTS game where like six of his last seven cards were the bulk of his Lost Souls.  That was the most agonizing game I think I've ever played.

I actually was just thinking of another alternative, only to discover that you guys are talking about separate LS piles here already.  This idea is not exactly like that but there are similarities.  If any of you have played Vs system, you know that each turn you (may) put a card from your hand into your resource row, and the number of cards in that row is the maximum "cost" to which you can recruit characters or flip over certain resources.  My thought was to give Lost Souls a treatment slightly like that.

Players start out with the required number of Lost Souls for their deck, but stacked separately from the remainder of their cards.  At the beginning of the game, before opening hands are drawn, players may arrange the Lost Souls face down on the table in a left-to-right order of their choosing.  And then each turn, the players would flip over the next Lost Soul in their row to face-up and make it available for rescue.  So everybody has Lost Souls out relatively early and the number snowballs as the game goes on.

There are obviously some difficulties with this since the game was not designed around handling Lost Souls this way.  I'm still wondering whether the best course of action is to flip souls all at once each round, or have the player do it for their Upkeep phase.  If everyone flips at once, that would leave some players vulnerable while allowing others (particularly those with first turn) the chance to put them in a Site or something first.  On the other hand, doing it individually means that the first player is at a significant disadvantage (especially in the first turn) because he will always have souls available earlier than other players, and might not have any chance to rescue something himself.

Searching, drawing and shuffling/return to draw pile would be impacted also.  I guess searching for a Lost Soul would mean the opponent can look at the face-down souls, select one to flip, and randomize the rest.  Shuffling and returning to draw pile (e.g. Hormah) would return face-up souls to draw pile but I would say leave the rest on the table face-down.  So then they would be flipping Lost Souls and potentially (re)drawing more during his Draw phase.  "When drawn" would apply to when the player flips his own Lost Soul each round, as opposed to having it selected by an opponent.  That only leaves Confusion as an unsolved problem, on the rare chance someone might deliberately want to discard a Lost Soul.

A player could put all the "protected" Lost Souls in the front to make them more difficult to rescue and/or stop Dominants.  But the nice thing about arranging before the draw is that they can't stack the souls to compensate for their own draw.  In other words, they have to decide where to put the souls before they know whether they're getting SoG/NJ early or late.

So what I'm left now to wonder - the big question - is how that would impact deck-building and normal play.  Obviously I would want the impact of that to be minimal, other than reducing the randomness of LS draws.  A normal T1 deck would have all its souls out in the first 7-8 turns, with a deck intended to draw out in approximately 14 turns (barring speed draws and shuffling cards back in).  Now the power of cards and cost in Vs is such that there's usually little damage in the early rounds, but by turn 7 or 8, if the game is not already over, it's about to end real quick with a 20 attack character or whatever.  Redemption has no scaling cost and therefore no scaling power, so I wonder how things will work when all your Lost Souls are out and you're only halfway through the deck.  But if we made it every two turns or something like that, would we be timing out matches by making them all go 10 or more turns?  Is 7 a good or bad number for this?  Like I said, I have a basic idea for a basic idea, but it needs more brains burning on it.

It is because some of us enjoy the strategy of the game.  I do not enjoy the luck factor.  I would rather it be more like chess and less like Las Vegas.

Make the game go faster and then add rounds.

Are, Korunks, myself,  RR, and Janisarry the only ones to see the game as being far more strategic now than it would be with easier souls?

I guess you didn't read my post?

Well, y'all know I'm getting out so my points are moot.  But Schaef is a playtester and he makes good points.

A normal T1 deck would have all its souls out in the first 7-8 turns, with a deck intended to draw out in approximately 14 turns (barring speed draws and shuffling cards back in).  Now the power of cards and cost in Vs is such that there's usually little damage in the early rounds, but by turn 7 or 8, if the game is not already over, it's about to end real quick with a 20 attack character or whatever.  Redemption has no scaling cost and therefore no scaling power, so I wonder how things will work when all your Lost Souls are out and you're only halfway through the deck.  But if we made it every two turns or something like that, would we be timing out matches by making them all go 10 or more turns?

I also like these ideas.  Due to Redemption not having a scaling cost, I think a LS entering play every 2 turns is better than every 1 turn.  That gives more of a chance for site-based decks and other defensive-based decks to get set up.  Of course I also like having it be based on cards drawn so that speed decks would have their LSs enter play faster than slow decks to compensate for them having more of their "power" cards faster.

The game is fine. Please, wait for the next set and then if you still don't like it keep complaining. But at least wait to see the new cards. It could change your mind.

I'm not sure that I understand why suggesting new ideas automatically amounts to complaining.

The context and tone of some of the suggestions can be construed as complaining, and to be fair some the posts in this thread could be seen as complaining.

Look if it takes complaining to figure out how to make the game better does it really matter that much to you girls? I know I might have hit a nerve or ten when I started this thread, but I honestly just wanted this issue to just be looked at by our officials and the Redemption Public. And maybe something good can come of this discussion.

The game is fine. Please, wait for the next set and then if you still don't like it keep complaining. But at least wait to see the new cards. It could change your mind.

The game is not fine or we wouldn't be having this discussion would we? Also that's your opinion not mine.

There will always be some, but a general statement was not necessary. There have been more than enough thoughtful posts on this thread.

Not that I'm complaining or anything....  

True, but a lot of it was just "I got screwed with a draw so let's make more ls."

Also, for my actual input with the current cards...
1. Have more ls generators. Malchus, dungeon of Malchiah, night raid, gibeonite treaty, hopper, HT, comissioned, wedding party, generous widow, seeker of the lost, and more can all generate ls for your offense. That's a lot of ls generators.
2. It's the same with evil characters, heroes, and any other card. Sometimes you draw them like crazy and sometimes they hide. It's the game.
3. This is not an exclusive problem. Assuming two decks have about the same ls generators, you will get the luck 50% of the time. You win games because of this too.
4. It's a lot about how you build your decks. Look at the top players. They are consistently in the top. They don't get lucky most of the time, they build their decks to generate what they need and win. They do a better job setting up before the game even starts. A lot of times I think I got the short end of the stick, and then I look back at the game and realize that my opponent had A-slave, malchus, Hur, HT, and all those other cards and I didn't put those cards in, cause I wanted for battle winners. It was a sacrifice and it backfired.

The game is not fine or we wouldn't be having this discussion would we? Also that's your opinion not mine.

So if I made a discussion about how we should ban dominants there is a problem with the game? Just cause there's a discussion doesn't mean that the game isn't fine. It's been this way for 15 years and it's still running strong. I think it is "fine."

Ok, do this. Next 20-40 games you play, write down how many of them you lost due to nothing but no lost souls. I would be fine with this whole argument of yours if every game played had soul issues, but please, prove to us with real evidence that the game is broken.

Go out, do some legwork, and show us how broken the game is.

It's already been a proven problem. A ton of tournament outcomes including recent Nationals have had this issue come up frequently often determining our National tournament winners.  

It's already been a proven problem. A ton of tournament outcomes including recent Nationals have had this issue come up frequently often determining our National tournament winners.  

Hence the beauty of a CCG.  

Kirk