Random system to upgrade your decks after a scenario

[Shirys 150]

Have you guys thought about or even develop some random system to select cards bought with XP to upgrade your deck after a scenario?

I feel like ppl might tend to always select the same ones causing other cards to be left aside all the time.

Thoughts?

 

 

Edited April 19, 2017 by Shirys

[Guitarquero 186]

I'm sure, like with most card games or LCGs. Once later packs are released some interesting combos will come out that will make certain cards deemed useless will be useful. Also, certain scenarios may make cards better or more appealing. I'm sure there are lots of people also who just slot cards in just to try them, I don't think everyone is playing this game to min/max their deck to be the best Arkham Investigator. It is a roleplaying experience afterall.

[General Zodd 459]

I haven't seen many cards that I think are auto-include for anyone who can get them. Pathfinder is amazing, Grotesque Statue and Extra Ammunition are really strong, but mostly it depends which investigator you're using (Encyclopedia is much better for Daisy than Rex, IMHO) and what you've built your deck to do. Plus, we have a fair amount of higher level cards now, and you get fairly limited experience each scenario apart from The Gathering, so I don't think there's much concern about everyone always taking the same upgrades all the time.

Besides, trying to come up with a way of randomising upgraded cards with so many variables makes my head hurt!

[BD Flory 695]

On Wednesday, April 19, 2017 at 11:04 AM, Shirys said:

I feel like ppl might tend to always select the same ones causing other cards to be left aside all the time.

If you feel like certain cards aren't seeing play, play them. Randomizing upgrades robs you of much of the benefit.

To say nothing of the difficulty of incorporating varying xp costs and 0 level swaps into such a system.

[Network57 561]

8 minutes ago, BD Flory said:

If you feel like certain cards aren't seeing play, play them.

I've recently started doing this for Arkham. You'd be surprised how many good cards are in there that you gloss over because they don't seem good. Switchblade, for instance, or Taunt.

[Guitarquero 186]

27 minutes ago, Network57 said:

I've recently started doing this for Arkham. You'd be surprised how many good cards are in there that you gloss over because they don't seem good. Switchblade, for instance, or Taunt.

Agreed, I had built 4 decks for my play group and the player playing Roland Felt Taunt wasn't all that useful in our first run through of the house always wins so he swapped it out. Which was unfortunate as he could have probably used it in extra circular activity for the experiment.

[BD Flory 695]

Yep. I mean, I still wouldn't call Switchblade "good," but I built Cut Man expressly to use it, and it's a fun deck that holds its own.

https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/684/cut-man-skids-combat-1.0

Part of the benefit of being a cooperative game is you'll never sit down against a player with tournament-caliber deck with your theme or gimmick deck, so the pressure to play the "best" cards and decks is eased.

[BD Flory 695]

4 minutes ago, Guitarquero said:

Agreed, I had built 4 decks for my play group and the player playing Roland Felt Taunt wasn't all that useful in our first run through of the house always wins so he swapped it out. Which was unfortunate as he could have probably used it in extra circular activity for the experiment.

Alas, you can't Taunt the Experiment. As a Massive enemy, it can't be engaged as such, and is considered engaged with every investigator at its location (unless exhausted).

Taunt can still be helpful against Whippoorwills, though, and generally in 4 player games. Not so much in Act 1 of House Always Wins, though.

[Network57 561]

3 minutes ago, BD Flory said:

Yep. I mean, I still wouldn't call Switchblade "good," but I built Cut Man expressly to use it, and it's a fun deck that holds its own.

https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/684/cut-man-skids-combat-1.0

Part of the benefit of being a cooperative game is you'll never sit down against a player with tournament-caliber deck with your theme or gimmick deck, so the pressure to play the "best" cards and decks is eased.

Good point. And even if you're just curious about a card, play on Easy Mode or something.

[Network57 561]

Just now, BD Flory said:

Alas, you can't Taunt the Experiment. As a Massive enemy, it can't be engaged as such, and is considered engaged with every investigator at its location (unless exhausted).

Taunt can still be helpful against Whippoorwills, though, and generally in 4 player games. Not so much in Act 1 of House Always Wins, though.

If you engage an Aloof enemy, he stays engaged until he's evaded, right? Aloof means they won't choose to engage and fight you (and no AoO), but once you decide to fight them, they function like normal until evaded/disengaged?

[Guitarquero 186]

1 minute ago, BD Flory said:

Alas, you can't Taunt the Experiment. As a Massive enemy, it can't be engaged as such, and is considered engaged with every investigator at its location (unless exhausted).

Taunt can still be helpful against Whippoorwills, though, and generally in 4 player games. Not so much in Act 1 of House Always Wins, though.

Oh shoot, very true.

[BD Flory 695]

4 minutes ago, Network57 said:

If you engage an Aloof enemy, he stays engaged until he's evaded, right? Aloof means they won't choose to engage and fight you (and no AoO), but once you decide to fight them, they function like normal until evaded/disengaged?

Yep, including getting AoO's once engaged, as normal. Other players can even attack aloof enemies who are engaged with you.

I mean, you could use it in Agenda 1 of HAW (what I meant to say above), such as to save an action if you want to engage the Pit Boss and drag him off a location someone wants to trigger. For me, though, I find the most common use of Taunt in multiplayer is to grab enemies off other players without using an action.

[Hannibal_pjv 203]

Maybe you can make a card pool of upgrade cards by card type and/or purely by roles. 

Then randomly pic one or x cards that you can chose from. Like random loot in rpg.

if you only pick one random card and have to keep it, I would lessen the "penalty" by givin one or two extra XP after scenario. So if investigator X was given randomly something not usefull, in the long run the extra XP cumulates and allow stronger deck. But it depends on how easy or hard you find the game. If the arkham horror Lcg feels too easy, leave that extra XP of. But I supose that one extra XP and only draving one random card that you have to buy. Balance out each others. 8 extra XP during the whole scenario vs. X not so optimal upgrades to your deck.

[TheFool 11]

I had a random system in place, mostly for people entirely new to deck building games. By giving them a limited number of cards to choose from after each game, they didn't get overwhelmed by choice.

It went like this: after each game, the player is dealt a number of random cards based on the difficulty we played on (3 cards on Easy and 5 cards on Standard, for example). The role/color of the deck the cards are drawn from is chosen by the player, though he must pick at least two different decks (he could choose to pick 2 cards from the Rogue deck and one from the Guardian deck on Easy, for example). Cards that can't be purchased by the player (because he already has the maximum amount, or the level/type is prohibited) are returned and replaced by different cards, until the player is presented with viable cards. He can then use his XP to purchase them as desired.

There were some other rules as well, but that was basically it.

[Shirys 150]

On 4/23/2017 at 5:43 PM, TheFool said:

I had a random system in place, mostly for people entirely new to deck building games. By giving them a limited number of cards to choose from after each game, they didn't get overwhelmed by choice.

It went like this: after each game, the player is dealt a number of random cards based on the difficulty we played on (3 cards on Easy and 5 cards on Standard, for example). The role/color of the deck the cards are drawn from is chosen by the player, though he must pick at least two different decks (he could choose to pick 2 cards from the Rogue deck and one from the Guardian deck on Easy, for example). Cards that can't be purchased by the player (because he already has the maximum amount, or the level/type is prohibited) are returned and replaced by different cards, until the player is presented with viable cards. He can then use his XP to purchase them as desired.

There were some other rules as well, but that was basically it.

This is an interesting idea. I should try it =)

[xuzuthor 10]

It reminds me of a spreadsheet I made for an old CCG (only one I'd ever owned or played - not Magic and won't tell you which!)

It had many categories of cards (such as we do with allies, items, etc).

I made a spreadsheet that let you type in the amount of each type you wanted in a deck, and then it generated a random deck for you. (also had to select which of the energy types - so class in our case).

In that game the maximum for each type varied, but in this game you'd still need something to indicate if it is a unique ally as you would not want to force them to have 2 in that case (though I guess you could still as it would double the odds of getting it quicker and give you more health/sanity to use up.

Anyway, it's definitely do-able.  I may even consider doing it for this game (making a random deck based on certain inputs - or if blank, completely random).  But, for now, I'm not bored with it.  I did it for that CCG because it was such a small CCG (only 2 sets ever released) that the same cards were picked all the time.  This made it much more fun, but could sometimes be brutal to use!

It was great to try out new cards though.  It really made the game different.

And, in this game, I may do the same.  If I feel my deck is too awful, I'll just play on easy.  (will post if I ever get up the ambition to do so)