I must agree that the 60 card deck does cut down on the guaranteed combo grab.

Everybody hates that one little punk who has the cards he needs for an awesome combo, and thats all he plays....
Sure you can get another deck designed to shut him down, but who wants to play like that?

this game is cutting that out of the equation. (I remember a kid who was playing Bargain every Friday, with its first turn kill.)

Let's make this the official "smooth draw" thread:

Has anyone figured out how to overcome the clunky nature of the draw? Can you get a smooth curve and draw the right number of resources as well as the 1,2,3,4 cost characters you need to do what you want? Are you just giving up on the first two or three turns, or are you just giving up on the over-6 cost crowd? If Longshot is the answer, how do you get him every game? Does your deck have a smooth synergy that allows each card to work, or are you bogging down every third game? Am I asking too many questions?

not too many questions stu - the more the merrier!

my initial reaction way back when reading some peoples comments about their turn 1, 2 and 3 card play was - how are you going to ensure a high probability of having the cards you need on turn 1 when you start with 4 and draw 2 - giving you 6 out of 60+. if you opt for the mulligan, then it is effectively 10 our of 60+. I like the way this game forces good strategy and flexibility over 'first turn kills' (at least from what I have seen thus far)

my initial sentinels deck has approx 30 plot twists and locations and 30 characters and equipment. I have many different plot twists just to test out their feel in gameplay. i have a couple of negative zones and an annihilus in the deck, just for those times when it happens to work right. i like to build 'smooth synergy' decks, where the cards can work together in different combinations, so that my card play tactics are what really matter in any given situation.

and i am more than willing to make short term sacrifices for long term strategies :devious:

'you can't make an omelete without breaking a few eggs!' ;)

I've tested it with "sample draws", but generally 4 copies of a character is pretty good insurance that you'll get them. I tend to scale WAY back on the 8s and 7s - I figure that I'll have a pretty good shot and getting them by the time I need them.

For key numbers, my guess is those will tend to be 4-6, I include 3 of 1 character and a couple of another character, allowing for versatility and making sure I have one of them either way.

I imagine another good strategy would be in decks like Brotherhood - feed your more powerful characters to power up your smaller versions, and then pick them back up with Avalon... in fact in attack decks, that would probably be a good strategy since you could use Lost City to boost those characters... win-win situation as long as you're not cluttering your deck too much with that strategy...

To be honest, I don't think the draw in this game is clunky at all. Since you draw on the first turn, you effectively start with six cards in hand; I mulligan to six pretty often in Magic and I have found that is a fine number of cards to start the game with. Granted, you don't get to see the last two cards until you decide to keep, but I don't know of any CCG that doesn't require one to sometimes keep a risky hand and hope it evens out.

What I've been finding so far is that turn seven doesn't exist. I was surprised; people start at fifty, so I assumed games would go longer than I'm used to. Nope. They seem to be ending around turn five or six (and sometimes on turn four, if I'm playing against someone who hasn't given much thought to early game defense). As a result I've been building decks with very few cards that cost four or more. The slowest deck I've built has Master Mold as the most expensive card, which is the only card in the deck that costs more than four.

I haven't had trouble with having something to play on turn one; I tend to run at least ten one drops, which makes it likely that one will be in my opening hand plus the draw.

I built an FF deck around getting out a specific location and packed 4 Mr. Fantastic: Reed and 4 Tech Upgrade to get one of my 4 Pogo Planes to get one of the 4 locations. It was WAY overkill. I got the location or Pogo Plane every game. I never used Reed and only used Tech Upgrade once. Out of the deck they came and I didn't slow down a bit.

Now if you are relying on getting Longshot in your opening 6 cards its going to be a lot less consistant, which I believe is fair (always remember to use that free mulligan!).

The key issue in deck building is that we need 60 actual cards. A Magic deck is actually a 36-40 card deck with a stack of land (some of which are rare and expensive, yes, but you could use basic land instead).

Also remember that this is a brand new game. By the third or fourth expansion, you may only need to get one or two cards to improve your deck, making deck building much easier (how many Doom cards will be in Spiderman? Hmm?).

a bird of my feather. Turn seven might not exist in the tournament scene to you and I, but many voices are screaming the contrary. Perhaps we are not factoring in bunches of Political Pressure and Flame Traps?

I have to completely disagree with the majority here. I have made 4 decks “x-man”, "Brotherhood ", “sentinels with negative zone”, and “Fantastic fore with Dr. Doom”. The hardest part was picking the ratio of cards because many Plot twists and some chericters can be used in any deck it is hard to work out which one will do the most where. In my opinion 60 cards is the magic number for the Vs system.

By the way

If you have half Dr. Doom deck and half X-man or Fantastic Fore for just put in :

“Common Enemy “for F Fore with Dr. Doom
“Unlikely Allies” for X-men with Doom

So maybe I'm completely nuts, but my character ratio is SEVERELY higher. As in I run 60 characters, and 20 for the rest (equip, location, plot twists). I think that's about the right number to ensure you get what you want. As for breakdown:

5 1-cost drops
6 2-cost drops
8 3-cost drops
8 4-cost drops
6 5-cost drops
4 6-cost drops
3 7+ cost drops

or not looking at tournaments as a goal.

rgd122, most games that we play end on the 5th, 6th, or 7th turn, using basically a 30/30 split of characters/other cards, with enough cheap stuff that works together for expensive results.

Yes, a deck like that can be slowed with Political Pressure or Flame Trap (although both have their own drawbacks) and the Foiled! that takes care of the Pressure slows the game down... but a good deck should still be able to end the game by turn six. If you are to get to a seven cost character, consider Berserker Rage, he can slice through whatever weenies are left.

All respect rgd122 but that curve is way beyond bizarre. You holding a total of 11 2 drop or less characters, which mean since by turn two you have only seen eight cards there is a good chance your not playing a character until turn 3. That guarantees a loss. With a deck like yours chances are approximately 50/50 that you will not get a turn one drop. If your opponent is playing FF and happens to get Alicia off your screwed. I personally tend to run a minimum of 8 one drops, I just don't want to hand over board control the percentage of time your curve demands that I do so.

I haven't played a game yet where i haven't had a 1 or 2 drop when i needed them. Also, it's a 60 card deck, 40 chars, not 60 chars 80 cards (my bad)...

5 1-drops and 6 2-drops:

You draw 4/60 cards, then you draw an additional 2. It's a pretty good chance you'll get a one or two drop in that. If you don't, mulligan. Then you're going through the top 10 cards of your deck. That's a 1/6 chance you'll get a 1 or 2 drop at the start of the game.

I really consider that your seeing only eight if you mulligan to redraw, that would mean that there is a 1/3 chance that you are not going to draw one drop character out right, and have to depend on the draw to get it. In no way would I be depending on mulligan 50% of the time or greater to draw a smooth curve. You must be playing slow decks, I don't see the neccessity of such a curve if your games are ending in 7 or 8 curves.

Is Yugioh 40 card decks or something? This has to be the strangest complaint I've ever heard; there are so many ba-roke things you could do with 40 card decks, it's not about them wanting more money from you (which they do want, but still) it's about game balance. I mean you'd still run 4 copies of everything good/pricey in a 40 card deck too right?

Also this two card draw system is ingenious. In Magic since you start with 7 cards but only draw 1 a turn, tempo is much more important than card advantage in the first couple turns, with CA taking over as your hand empties. But in this game it seems like it will be much more even. I mean you could see anywhere from a 1/3 to 1/2 of your deck in an average game. Also the way the curve just explodes, you can be sure that your 6-drop will actually mean something when you drop it. I'm real excited about this game. Whoever came up with these twists to traditional mechanics ... you did a hell of a great job!

The way I see it, there are two other thing.

1) If you're playing a friendly game, there is no limit to deck size. So for right now, while getting a feal for the game, a 50 card deck is fine and by the time you start competing, you'll have the cards you need for a great 60.

2) What happens when you get two great defenders going toe to toe? Who's to say with good re-inforcement and elimination cards, that endurence loss is hard to come by and the game lasts 10 turns or more. It may be rare, but tournaments need to account for long games.