Cactus Game Design Message Boards

As a general rule, when a card references it's own name in the special ability it's referencing itself only, not all copies of a card by that name.

I can't think of any examples where it does not apply, Golgotha included.  I'm not saying it's not possible that there are examples, I'm just not aware of any atm.

I wouldn't say everything in that thread is not correct.  Only Stamps statement that he can use his Golgotha to place an enhancement on another players Golgotha.  He's retired so you really shouldn't listen to much of what he has to say.

If that wasn't true, then you wouldn't even need to convert your Uzzah, you could simply block with your Uzzah, choose to discard mine and one of your Artifacts, then continue to battle with your Uzzah, play a few Haman's Plots, whatever.  Wouldn't that be cool?

Perhaps the rule would be more cleanly written if it said this? "When a Unique character refercences it's own name in it's special ability it is referencing itself only - Not all copies of that card bearing the same name."

One of the other Elders can chime in and correct any of this but the gist of the issue is that we feel discarding an opponent's Uzzah with your own strays to close to 'No Player Experience' or NPE

As a whole we've been attempting to move away from NPE gameplay. The famous 'Sin in the Camp' deck or the even earlier 'Helpless'/'Devastator' deck are prime examples of NPE - using your cards to force a situation where your opponent can not take action. Heavy pre-block ignore abuse is another form of NPE that has been prevalent in recent years.

Even before pre-block ignore, Type 2 was mainly about creating NPE via Authority of Christ (promo) use, making situations where your opponent is completely helpless to stop you. When the playtesters determined that this was a problem, they began to create ways to limit NPE - Protection fortress' were the first step along this journey, limiting the abuse of AoCP and other similar territory clearing mechanisms.

However, everything cannot be solved by creating new cards alone. In response to Ron Sias and Chris Bany creating the Devastator deck, a rule was enacted that limited the number of side battles that you could have per turn. (1) Before Tim Maly ever even had a copy of Sin in the Camp he theorized a deck that could shut down an opponent by placing multiple SitC's into his territory - This lead to an errata which allowed one dominant to discard all copies. RTSManiac went ahead and made the deck anyway, and it worked, so well in fact that Gabe Isbell went on to win a National tournament with it. In response to RTSManiac's SitC deck, we created the hand limit rule (16). Eventually, after he proved that he could do it even with that restriction we errata'd SitC to limit itself to one per territory.

Numerous individuals have broken, or attempted to break A New Beginning over the years, leading to multiple errata's to it, until it reached it's current state. Even that may not be enough however, as we've even discussed limiting ANB in a similar way to SitC.

Now that we've taken care of a large majority of NPE situations with current cards, we are always careful to take into consideration the combo potential of new cards we create. It is very hard to fathom all of the possibilities that can come up with various card interactions when you have 2000+ cards in the game. This is one of my primary focuses as a playtester - I try to think outside the box as much as possible, attempting to break the cards any way I can.

This was a card that we almost printed in disciples:

"While this lost soul is not in a site, protect your other lost souls from rescue by Heroes. When this is rescued, place a N.T. lost soul beneath deck."

Points to anyone who can think of the combo I did. That card created crazy NPE. We caught it in the second to last version of the list - It was eventually printed with just the second part of its ability.

Sometimes its a fine line on whether something is NPE or not - I think the Uzzah situation is one of those. Others (SitC) are obvious. We're simply trying to keep the game as close to equal play opportunities for each player as possible. We've determined that Uzzah creates NPE when he discards another copy of himself.

John.

P.S. I was trying to find copies of the decks I mentioned here so that people could read up on those if they were further interested in the history... I know Destroyer probably isn't on the boards, but SitC should be. If someone could find me those links it would be much appreciated.

Thanks Matt. I knew it was around somewhere. I guess I should have searched for 'Speed Camp' instead of SitC.

Nice one Gabe - Funny story - I was actually the first person to play against Ron with the deck, the night before MN State - We were over at Bany's house, and Ron wanted to run it quick to see if it would actually work or not. Chris built a copy that very night after Ron trounced me.

Ron's first version of the deck actually used blue in addition to green for more sidebattle goodies.

John, thanks for the history--but this brings up a number of questions that I am curious about...

Numerous individuals have broken, or attempted to break A New Beginning over the years, leading to multiple errata's to it, until it reached it's current state. Even that may not be enough however, as we've even discussed limiting ANB in a similar way to SitC.

As you noted earlier--numerous individuals also abused AoCP for years to get NPE. AoCP x5 had no counters for five years after it was released, and then we were given the Color Guard and some protect fortress. (Both of these counters were also given to stop AnB.) Unlike ANB, players even went so far as to abuse other cards (Chemosh anyone) in order to use AoCP. Have there ever been any discussions about limiting AoCP to one per deck or whatever? (Even today such a limit would help to increase the diversity of T2.)

What cards were designed specifically to counter SitC? Why does AoCP warrant the creation of a whole category of counter cards while SitC gains a new game rule and two errata to stop it?

Why is there this distinction between AoCP and other cards of a similar NPE potential level? Is it because AoCP is a National Promo?  Is it because of when it was created (i.e., if it were created today it would be facing errata-nerfing rather than having counters created for it)?

If folks are really concerned about NPE--how do we explain Thaddeus, TGT, and RTC?

John, thanks for the history--but this brings up a number of questions that I am curious about...

Quote from: Red Dragon Thorn on April 09, 2011, 06:02:14 AM

Numerous individuals have broken, or attempted to break A New Beginning over the years, leading to multiple errata's to it, until it reached it's current state. Even that may not be enough however, as we've even discussed limiting ANB in a similar way to SitC.

As you noted earlier--numerous individuals also abused AoCP for years to get NPE. AoCP x5 had no counters for five years after it was released, and then we were given the Color Guard and some protect fortress. (Both of these counters were also given to stop AnB.) Unlike ANB, players even went so far as to abuse other cards (Chemosh anyone) in order to use AoCP. Have there ever been any discussions about limiting AoCP to one per deck or whatever? (Even today such a limit would help to increase the diversity of T2.)

What cards were designed specifically to counter SitC? Why does AoCP warrant the creation of a whole category of counter cards while SitC gains a new game rule and two errata to stop it?

Why is there this distinction between AoCP and other cards of a similar NPE potential level? Is it because AoCP is a National Promo?  Is it because of when it was created (i.e., if it were created today it would be facing errata-nerfing rather than having counters created for it)?

If folks are really concerned about NPE--how do we explain Thaddeus, TGT, and RTC?

Matt - Unfortunately I was not a member of the playtest team when AoCP was concieved, You'd have to talk to Bryon or Bany about that.

Card counters to Sin in the Camp that I can think of just off the top of my head include: Abraham's Descendents, Lifting the Curse, I am Grace, King Hezekiah, Aaron's Rod.

When discussing why one course was taken over another in regards to two different cards it is important to note the type of special ability each has.

Authority of Christ is a discard ability - Of which we have tons of in the game - Thus you can create general counters to the power of discard that will help to ease the power of one card.

However, with Sin in the Camp the ability is completely unique - Some cards are similar - Words of Discouragement, Fearfulness, etc. But it's not logistically plausible to create 4 brand new cards to counter essentially 1 card in a set of 5. We simply don't have enough card slots. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but we've had to bump a lot of cards from this set to next years simply because of the highly restrictive space issues we have.

We are testing a card that many playtesters feel is close to AoCP level in 'NPE' it is one of the cards we are paying the most attention to in order to insure that it doesn't create a huge imbalance. AoCP probably would not be printed verbatim if we were to print it again.

Thaddeus is an unfortunate event - We've discussed it before, but suffice to say, he was buffed in the 11th hour one step to far.

I wasn't on the playtest team for RTC or TGT - However if you read the article about TGT, Bryon clearly states that it was meant to smack the game towards single color defences - It was meant to be a very strong card. What the playtesters didn't anticipate was just how easy it can be to decimate a single color defence to the point that TGT laughs at them also.

RTC was printed a year before TGT when splash defences were all the rage - I can only assume that the playtesters didn't think it overly strong for that reason - When TGT forced the game back towards single color defences, thats when RTC was really at its best.

It is an unfortunate side-effect of printing only one set a year, but the meta-game can take unexpected swings that make a card stronger, or weaker than intended during playtesting.



P.S. I really shouldn't say much more since I've already given out far to many tidbits about the new set and Elder material in general - But we are looking at making some general, and some specific card changes to T2 for next year.


P.P.S. I know that I'm getting really tired of the questions about 'Thad the Mad' and his power level - I'm sure the rest of the playtest team is also - We've been over it about 30 times - Thaddeus was increased dramatically in power at a point in the playtest proccess that we really didn't have time to test it extensively or to revert the changes if they proved to powerful. It was probably a mistake, and we've admited as much numerous times - We are taking steps to insure that he isn't as awesome next year. Let it lie please?

I know that I'm getting really tired of the questions about 'Thad the Mad' and his power level - I'm sure the rest of the playtest team is also - We've been over it about 30 times - Thaddeus was increased dramatically in power at a point in the playtest proccess that we really didn't have time to test it extensively or to revert the changes if they proved to powerful. It was probably a mistake, and we've admited as much numerous times - We are taking steps to insure that he isn't as awesome next year. Let it lie please?

I'm sorry if this is getting on your nerves. I hope it was clear that I was talking about NPE cards in general, and not Thaddeus in particular. I should have been more clear in my final question, because it was a (hidden) two-parter. It's not just the creation of cards that is the issue (cause we realize mistakes are going to be made in that area). The second half of the question is, if the PtB really are concerned about eliminating NPE why aren't cards like AoCP. Thad, RTC, or TGT ever given errata once it becomes clear they are warping the meta?

Apparently there are discussions about limiting an already twice errata'ed ANB to one per deck (or one use per game or whatever), but we needed to wait four years for any help against AoCP and waste two seasons waiting for a viable counter to TGT? Seriously?

The idea of making ANB one per deck was mentioned by another elder in jest when we were discussing possible changes to T2 deck building rules.  It was like this:

1) Blah, blah blah (yes, that's really all we say on the elder boards)
2) More of the same
3) Ditto
4) Limit ANB to one per deck
 

Honestly, with Nazareth it seems like ANB is being kept in check this year.

What I want to know is, why is all this rule gimping going on but still no intro prep phase?

Intro prep phase was brought up before and Rob quickly axed the idea.  That happened on the public side of the boards because I wasn't an elder then.  I don't recall his reasons, but I got the impression he is opposed to intro prep.

You don't recall reasons because there are none. Intro prep is needed.

What exactly would that clear up?

What I want to know is, why is all this rule gimping going on but still no intro prep phase? That would solve so many problems Redemption still has, leaving only Dom imbalance (doms are still too powerful and every time a counter is made it's either over-

I agree. Even cards like lampstands actually make the power curve worst. Essentially you can control the flow of dominants. Virtually making your opponent's useless for as long as you want to keep it active. When you draw yours you can just deactivate it.