Deck Rules

This thread is to discuss ideas around Deck Rules.
The current deck rules at the time of posting:
Max 4 of any card in the Deck
7 Cards are chosen for starting hand.

Note: All ideas proposed are just ideas, DarkRune has the final say on anything proposed.

The 7 card chosen starting hand is a very interesting mechanic. It adds a great deal of meta-game strategy to the game, as well as speeding up early gameplay (useful as some Online CCGs take a LONG time to get going).

The 7 card set however is a very very powerful tool for optimizing the use of specific cards. One example abused in several rush decks is the Magic Mushroom. Spamming multiple cards that are fairly balanced on their own into the starting hand allows them to be much more effective that if they had to be drawn randomly.

My proposal is to divide the Building type into 2 groups: Buildings, Land. or Building, Resource. Then deck rules will have the following changes:
Starting hand may have at most 1 of any non Land card
Deck limit of 4 per card does not apply to Land cards.

This change will still allow for rapid deployment of a wide variety of deck types, does not block Boom/Resource based strategies, but will mean Rapid deployment strategies will need to leverage the abilities of multiple cards rather than a single card that can be abused because of the chosen hand mechanism.
It punishes Gimicky and Simple strategies without greatly affecting complex and strategic play.

Disagree with this, lumping a ton of cards into a pile that can’t be used in a starting hand, just because one or two cards are overpowered in a starter hand. Like killing a cockroach with a grenade.. sure you kill the cockroach but you get the cat too… then the wife is pissed, and you don’t get laid for a week, and you go and cheat, then wife leaves you… well.. you get the point.

Much better solution is to limit certain cards. Like Default is limit 4 per deck. If a card is too powerful put a 1-3 limit per deck, or a limit to the number in your starter hand.

I do agree with the Mushroom. Great card, but easy to abuse in a starter hand. Should definably be reviewed for individual limits.

Note: All ideas proposed are just ideas, DarkRune has the final say on anything proposed.

I don’t like to see it this way. I would prefer the game to be community driven, e.g. like wikipedia. However, we do not have the technical means for it. So it should work like that:

I’ll have to wait till you can agree on something (putting my own 10 cents in, of course). Then I will code it.

I also agree with the Mushroom-problem. Your proposals seem both doable. There is one more thing to consider. The deck building rules shouldn’t get too complicated. Otherwise they get to hard for new players to pick up.

I understand your point Wupstomp. I think we have too little card data yet to be sure of the right fix (to be honest). Well actually it depends on the # of cards expected in the system when it goes into a beta phase. If we are looking at cards in the scale of numbers like MTG or many of the physical CCGs, then we have to ask if the mechanic that is causing the imbalance is likely to be repeated in many cards, or if it was a one-off mechanic. If it is the former, it is probably better to address why the mechanic creates a broken game.

Also we should point out that since DarkRune has changed the Vampire Elder card’s cost, the crushing Vampire Elder Rush is now stopped (as well as the 2 variants of it I had put together). Yes Yato rush is still possible, but it is a much weaker rush.

I think it would be best to fix the mechanics. I can’t say in what scale new cards will be introduced – but I certainly hope for a big one.

for a starting hand you shoud be able to chose up to 4 resource production cards and all other cards are drawn randomly from deck. also a minimum of at least 10-15 would stop people from setting up ecessively powerful starting hands. this would hurt some of the current rush decks but it gives other types of decks a fairer chance.