I am new to the Vs. system, so I think I must be missing some rule or some dynamic of the game. My friend and I have been playing some one on one games with the starter sets and a few booster packs to try it out before we invest money in the game.

It seems that in any given game we will go through about 20 cards by drawing four or eight at the beginning, and then two per turn for six to eight turns (out of a deck of 60). Maybe we'll go through a few more if one of us has a card that knocks cards off the draw deck. How can you be expected to overcome the highly random outcome of such a small draw? I enjoy games with a moderate random element, but it seems that you could easily lose to a less skilled player because you drew all the wrong cards, and you'd never have a chance to get to the meat of your game. You could easily draw only a few characters if you had only 20 in a deck, or if you stacked your deck with characters you could easily draw no locations or plot twists. You could also just draw all the wrong level characters at the wrong time.

Is there something I am missing?

You have to this in consideration, when you build your deck. Randomness is always part of any card game. Sure 4 cards is small, but adding the mulligan is a good thing. There are games out there that does not see the 8 cards and draw too.

Can you imagine if this game did not have the randomness added into it? Every body would be running the same deck. That is why I left those games.

Basically, you need to build a deck that can consistently win on a LESS random level. Being able to draw those 4 Savage Beatdowns isn't as easy when you have 60 cards to go through, and usually won't see more than 20 of them. Build a deck that uses strategy and has alternate scenarios.

It adds to gameplay, you'll come to realize.

of course you have those guys who can draw their whole deck out......

...But usually have built a somewhat weaker deck (sort of) in the process...

True......

Thank you all for the constructive replies. I was worried that someone would think I was attacking the game and become offended.

Concerning a random element in games, I welcome that. What I'm not sure I like yet is the degree to which the outcome of matches are arbitrary.

Some games, like chess, are 100% strategy. There is no random outcome in chess. Other games, like craps (or some variants of the game, anyway), are based completely on chance, barring any cheating. Many games strike a balance between the two, but not necessarily at a 50/50 split. Some games are 80% strategy and 20% chance, while some others are the opposite. I gravitate toward games that have a high degree of strategy and maintain a little chance, for excitement. It just seems to me that, compared to other CCGs and other games I've played, this one depends a great deal on incident.

Nobody seemed to refute that. Am I correct in my observation, or is there something I am missing due to my inexperience?

True, any deck and any player- no matter how good they are- can be brought down by a bad draw.

There's two things (and I believe a metagame article covered this recently) that really cut the luck factor.

1) Stategy: Which is how you plan out your deck. This is where you ARE playing the odd, ie: if I put 4 copies of Catwoman in the deck, I'll probably draw her. You build your deck with a goal that most of the cards are built around. Say you have an important plot twist in your Doom Deck? Pack 4 copies of it and 4 copies of Boris to give yourself a 8 in 60 chance of drawing it. Same thing goes with Signal Flare and Bat Signal. This is where you really are counting out the odds and balancing out a deck.

2) Tactics: In game decisions. All that planning was for nothing if you can carry out sucessful tactics. These are your in game decisions that really matter. Even if you have a bad draw, maybe you can use creative tactics to pull something off that isn't too terrible. Even if your options are limited, you're not down for the count.

eleazardmm, Me and you are in the same school of thinking: Games of luck suck. I cannot stand Candy Land. I spend the entire game trying to get to the end and then I draw that card that's like "Go back to the Mollases Swamp"... and it totally irks me off. I hate games of chance. HOWEVER- some people do not consider things like Blackjack games of chance, entirely. Its calculating the odds and determining your chances and such- another form of decision making. There is just as many decisions to be made before the game as there are during it.

The amount of luck involved in this game and others like it(Magic) is not as big a factor as you think it is. Otherwise, you would not be seeing the same people winning like they do.

You limit your amount of luck by building the deck properly. You limit your amount of luck by playing the deck properly.

Vs. System is most probably the most skill-intensive CCG yet. If you don't understand that, then you need to free your mind and examine the game from a fresh approach.

I think you might be overestimating the amount of luck involved with this game. There is certainly the possiblity that you get a bad draw and will lose to most opponents but a large part of this game is building a consistent deck and making good decisions while playing that deck. Knowing when to mulligan is important and how to claw your way back from a bad start. As was just mentioned, the best players in the world consistently do well so unless they've just got good luck then you have to believe skill is a much bigger factor than luck.

Personally I think Versus has less luck involved than Magic because you can play any card face down as a resource. The only card game I've played with even less luck involved is probably Legend of the Five Rings. There are just so many decisions to make in that game that skill far overpowers luck with any consistent deck.

I think I've given ample indication that I am not making an argument as much as I am asking where my current viewpoint is incorrect. I do appreciate the added input, but I just want to be clear that I never meant to say that I know for a fact that this game is based on a great deal of luck. I only meant to say that it was my perception, and I thought there must be something that I wasn't seeing.

I do have two follow-up questions that may help me understand the strategy in this game.

1. Do some of the better decks use a small variety of cards (e.g. Four of many uniques and many duplicate plot-twists), do the better and more often played decks contain a variety of cards, or does it vary from deck to deck? Is there a general guideline in this regard? At my current level of almost zero experience with this game, it seems very unlikely that you would see a deck played by a champion that contained one, two or three of a great variety of cards. It seems like you'd want to build most decks around a small group of well chosen characters and many plot-twists that support those characters.

2. Do the best decks usually use 60 cards? Are there any proven decks with much more than 60 cards? In other CCGs with more card throughput it is important to keep a deck no bigger than it needs to be, for predictability. That seems to be even more important in this game, given the low probability that you will go through the deck. Is my assumption correct?

1. It does vary from deck-to-deck. Given that, you will see that the core cards of a deck will have 4 copies.

2. 60 cards. 60 cards. 60 cards. Always 60 cards for constructed. Any more and it messes with consistency.

Well, there's Star Trek (first edition); it eventually became possible to pretty much gaurantee having the cards you needed, if you built your deck right.

As to deck size...you might go up to 61 in some cases :-)

I usually aim to pack 4 of any given card in my deck. There are exceptions, though.

This game has many exceptions to running copies of cards, but it usually breaks down into how good the Team you've selected is at searching throughout the deck for cards.

In a Doom deck, you could run 1 Flame Trap and pull it out of your deck with Boris. Because Doom has a way to retrieve any plot twist from the deck, you can run a wider variety of Plot Twists and less copies of them.

In a Fantastic Four deck, you can run less of your higher drops (usually about 2 6-cost characters and 1-2 7-cost, and 1 8-cost if you choose) because they have Signal Flare which can retrieve any F4 character from the deck.

Brotherhood have no way to search the deck for any type of card, so people usually run multiple copies and many characters to gurantee to get the right turn drop for every turn (also this just happens to further boost the power of Lost City).

So yes, there are many exceptions, but you have to see what type of deck you are running to figure how many copies of what you want to run.

My opinion is that this game runs less on luck than one might assume when you just start playing, but only after playing for a while will you notice it.