Posted: 27 October 2007 at 2:46am | IP Logged

werewolflht65 wrote: Verc and I are kicking around the idea of making it a shareware computer game instead of a CCG, for the obvious financial reasons. We are also experimenting with a new format, one more closely resembling MtG. Basically, we threw out the 5 card minimum per category, the 8 category rule, and set a deck minimum of 60 cards, with a strong reccomendation that 1/3 of the deck be Terrain and 1/3 be Ships. Other then the standard stocking limits (Three level 6's and 7's, Two level 8's and 9's etc) and no limit on Entities (except for no duplications), we tried it tonight and I actually lasted longer then 6 turns against Harold Hennings CCN dueling deck. Eventually, being Terrain hosed in the early game caught up to me, and I fell apart, but I was slugging it out best I could with Krebiz(!) cards from a sealed Starter deck. :) The other rules we added to this variant are: Ships are played ENGAGED; They only have phasers, and you need to pay their engagement cost on the following turn(s) to keep them running. Yes, this will favor phaser-boat races, like the Indirigans initially, but we don't see that early advantage offering any form of staying power. R/T-2 Asteroid Shields anyone? With the removal of the low strength stocking limits, it frees a deck from the "dead weight" issue, of having to stock a bunch of nearly worthless cards in the deck just to support the higher strength cards. So, now I get to make a truly wunderkind monstrosity, and see what happens tomorrow... :)

I should clarify this a bit.

Part of this came from my observations of the problems with the current rules regarding command points. Command points are basically a non-issue in a multiplayer game, but are a severe limiting factor in duels. My suggestion was a way to change the command point system to allow a more freeflow game which makes more sense in general.

Basically, there is no limit to how many ships or bases anyone can have in play. What command points would then do is allow you to play a number of ships/bases/dragons/psys to be played engaged, allowing you to use their phasers or equivalents on the turn played. No other systems, equipment or anything else that requires points to be engaged would function on the turn played.

Any extra command point generating cards would have to generate their points during your allocation phase to open up more command slots for playing engaged units, and engaging cards like Time Knights would of course reduce the number of slots available to play units engaged.

We're going to mess around with this and see how it works.

Oh yeah, I think that this whole discussion should be in its own topic. The subject of this post has nothing to do with conjectural rules variants ;)

Posted: 27 October 2007 at 12:37pm | IP Logged

By the way, you don't want to mix the variable draw/play option with the 'command points allow engaged play of units.'

You NEED a softcap of 3 card plays to keep any type of game balance when lots of ships can be played with partial use of their weapons on the turn played.

As an example of why mixing the two is very bad... It is now turn 3. You were the first player. Everyone else has one unit out protecting the Sector HQ. Your hand is loaded with ships, so you play 5 engaged. That's definitely enough to blow away almost any ship out there. If you allowed that as a basic rule element instead of something that you have to work for with cards, most games would last no more than 4-5 turns tops. That's not good.

I'm not against second turn or third turn kills... it just should not be easy to pull off and definitely should be card-based and not core game mechanic based.

Posted: 27 October 2007 at 12:59pm | IP Logged

Your 7 card play/draw just increased the chance for mega draw decks.  And it will change nothing for it.  Still allowing the cyber mage to add and free card plays and free card draws is the basis of the MD decks.  Now instead of having 3 cards to play i can now play 7.  by making the softcap you just changed the 7 card draw/play back to the original rule.

Posted: 31 October 2007 at 9:29am | IP Logged

werewolflht65 wrote: We are kicking around something Andy had said, that GE was the best multi player CCG made. Sorry Andy, I played Magic in a group setting for 12 yrs, and I hardly ever dueled. GE  sucks Monkey Balls as a Multi Player game. It is what it is. It's no MtG, and it never will be.

You must not be playing the game I am,GE is so much better at multiplayer

Posted: 31 October 2007 at 9:53am | IP Logged

werewolflht65 wrote: Really? Because I rarely see a MtG game with 5+ people lasting longer then an hour. But I regularly see GE Multi-player games lasting 2-4 hours.

So Star fleet battles,3rd riech and all role playing games suck because they are long?

All the multi  player magic games are  WAIT WAIT WAIT WIN