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rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad

Game mechanics: 90 cards vs smaller decks

Tazar

11/10/2010 8:14:00 AM

In my experience from magic. Smaller deck is better because it
increases chance of you drawing right cards. In vampire it is more
tricky, because there is no card limit so you can increase your chance
just by adding more copies.

Still my idea is that unless you draw all you library cards there is
no need to increase your deck size. Also if you are able to bring out
enought minions with some permanents you can finish the game even
without any further cards. This is especially true for Ashur tablet
decks where you can get some important cards back.

Problem with bigger deck is that you are more likely to experience
"hand jam" where you have either too many actions (and no modifiers),
or too many combat cards without ability to enter combat, or too many
master cards so you can just sit and wait few turns until you play
them.

I'm interested to read why to play 90 cards decks and how to approach
to building 90-cards deck to avoid hand jams and other problems. What
are advantages of 90 card deck.
55 Answers

Petri Wessman

11/10/2010 8:31:00 AM

0

On Nov 10, 10:13 am, Tazar <varga_mar...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'm interested to read why to play 90 cards decks and how to approach
> to building 90-cards deck to avoid hand jams and other problems. What
> are advantages of 90 card deck.

The advantage is that you're less likely to run out of deck. Some
decks cycle cards like crazy (when they are running right). More
static decks can (and often should) be trimmed down to less than 90.

-Petri

YY

11/10/2010 9:12:00 AM

0

On Nov 10, 4:31 pm, Petri Wessman <or...@iki.fi> wrote:
> On Nov 10, 10:13 am, Tazar <varga_mar...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm interested to read why to play 90 cards decks and how to approach
> > to building 90-cards deck to avoid hand jams and other problems. What
> > are advantages of 90 card deck.
>
> The advantage is that you're less likely to run out of deck. Some
> decks cycle cards like crazy (when they are running right). More
> static decks can (and often should) be trimmed down to less than 90.
>
> -Petri

Also, a bigger deck may be a result of adding options. In 2 players
games (mtg, vs, l5r, etc) the deck is usually designed to trigger off
a certain killer combo or to achieve a very specific winning condition
to the extent of ignoring what-ifs or 'fun' stuff. If your deck works
right, you're generally in a very good position to win, regardless of
what your opponent can do.

V:tES, I found, is less so.

Combat decks need to include things to get around s:ce, not to mention
cards that help to oust. Close combat decks need to deal with that and
maneuvers. So more cards get added to deal with those and more of what
was originally in the deck gets increased to keep the ratios useful.

Vote decks are reliant on table votes. Sometimes your deck works
exactly the way it should, but random on-table votes somehow happen to
be enough to shut you down, so you'll need a plan B (bleed cards,
combat with fame on the side, etc). This means more cards in the deck
and more of the original cards to keep the ratio.

Toolbox decks are extremely likely to hit the 90-card mark just
because of their nature. You need enough cards to support each "tool"
and make sure that the "tool" is effective.

My 2 cents.

-YY

_angst_

11/10/2010 11:53:00 AM

0

On Nov 10, 9:13 am, Tazar <varga_mar...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'm interested to read why to play 90 cards decks and how to approach
> to building 90-cards deck to avoid hand jams and other problems. What
> are advantages of 90 card deck.

Answer is simple. You shouldn't!. There is no benefit of 90 card
decks, period. There are no exceptions to this rule.

And I'm not trying to be a troll here. Just trust me. If you want to
build good decks you never want them to be 90 cards.

Trust your magic sense when it's tingling. It'll most likely help you
alot in understanding deckbuilding in all CCG's.

//Alex

Xaddam

11/10/2010 12:49:00 PM

0

On 10 Nov, 10:12, YY <the1andonl...@yahoo.com.sg> wrote:
> Toolbox decks are extremely likely to hit the 90-card mark just
> because of their nature. You need enough cards to support each "tool"
> and make sure that the "tool" is effective.

These are the decks which could go up to 75 card size. Rest should be
60-65-ish.

Petri Wessman

11/10/2010 1:25:00 PM

0

On Nov 10, 1:52 pm, _angst_ <alexander.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Answer is simple. You shouldn't!. There is no benefit of 90 card
> decks, period. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Well, provably not true. A 90-card deck is much less likely to run out
of deck than a smaller one is, and is also more resilient vs.
millstone stuff (Slaughterhouses etc). So there are exceptions. Do
those exceptions matter? Depends.

Some decks cycle cards at an insane rate. I've run out of cards with
90 card decks, within the 2h time limit, with some decks. Sure, it's
rare, but it does happen.

So yes, there *are* benefits to 90-card decks.

Do you get more benefits in comparison by shrinking the deck size?
Maybe. Maybe not. Depends hugely on the deck. I see a lot of brilliant
tournament players using 90-card decks and doing great with them.

Don't confuse your own preferences with universal truths ;)

-Petri

_angst_

11/10/2010 1:51:00 PM

0

On Nov 10, 2:24 pm, Petri Wessman <or...@iki.fi> wrote:
> On Nov 10, 1:52 pm, _angst_ <alexander.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Answer is simple. You shouldn't!. There is no benefit of 90 card
> > decks, period. There are no exceptions to this rule.
>
> Well, provably not true. A 90-card deck is much less likely to run out
> of deck than a smaller one is, and is also more resilient vs.
> millstone stuff (Slaughterhouses etc). So there are exceptions. Do
> those exceptions matter? Depends.
>
> Some decks cycle cards at an insane rate. I've run out of cards with
> 90 card decks, within the 2h time limit, with some decks. Sure, it's
> rare, but it does happen.
>
> So yes, there *are* benefits to 90-card decks.
>
> Do you get more benefits in comparison by shrinking the deck size?
> Maybe. Maybe not. Depends hugely on the deck. I see a lot of brilliant
> tournament players using 90-card decks and doing great with them.
>
> Don't confuse your own preferences with universal truths ;)
>
> -Petri

I'm decently sure my preferences are universal truths ;)

I can share some other words of VtES wisdom if you want. Other divine
truths like "1/10 cryptacc cards is never enough if you want to win
with fatties", "V:tES is a game about rolling a dice and see who gets
to have a starting pool of 40", "if it's from Switzerland it's
probably good" and "V:tES is a game about bleeding for 6".

Ofcourse there are cornercase situations where a 90 card deck will get
the upper hand from the extra 15-30 cards it packs but considering how
rare it is for VtES players to actually understand how to build good
decks I much rather say that there is absolutely no benefit to
building 90 card decks than saying there is almost no benefit. Because
hearing that almost part will make alot of people think their 90 card
piles of cards are ok and will prevent them from trying to evolve
their decks and play.

And yeah, I know I sound like a complete **** but seriously guys,
recent studies have proven most people don't understand the
fundamentals of this games, I'm seriously...

//Alex

Teeka

11/10/2010 2:15:00 PM

0

On 10 nov, 09:13, Tazar <varga_mar...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> In my experience from magic. Smaller deck is better because it
> increases chance of you drawing right cards. In vampire it is more
> tricky, because there is no card limit so you can increase your chance
> just by adding more copies.
>

If you're a ratio freak, it might a good thing that in this game you
can add more cards. In MTG the maximum ratio of any card X vs card Y
is 4:1. In VTES, you can make 1:5:7:9 ratios (or whatever), should you
so desire.

> Still my idea is that unless you draw all you library cards there is
> no need to increase your deck size. Also if you are able to bring out
> enought minions with some permanents you can finish the game even
> without any further cards. This is especially true for Ashur tablet
> decks where you can get some important cards back.
>

This is true most of the time, sure. I guess it mostly depends on the
amount of different options you want. Keep in mind that quite a few
'permanents' are unique so you can't have more than 1 at a time and if
someone already has one, you need to contest before you can continue
with your set-up. In MTG terms, it's very possible to have a deck
that's 40% legendary cards. So having a plan B might be good.

> Problem with bigger deck is that you are more likely to experience
> "hand jam" where you have either too many actions (and no modifiers),
> or too many combat cards without ability to enter combat, or too many
> master cards so you can just sit and wait few turns until you play
> them.
>

Well, that's why we have the discard phase and cards like The Barrens.
If you build a deck that you think might jam, always include some
discard tech. There's also a lot of 'cyclable' cards out there: cards
that you can play without much requirement, and even though you know
they're not really going to do anything, you can at least draw
something else.

Also, thinking ahead and discarding "this-might-be-useful-later"-cards
early to avoid a possible hand jam is part of the game's strategy,
which I personally like a lot. If you have a hand full of masters it's
often not a good idea to, as you say, sit and wait few turns until you
play them. In most cases, you should just accept the fact you had some
bad luck drawing and get rid of some of them asap (preferrably by the
time you hit 4 or 5, if possible of course).
It's the no.1 beginner's mistake in my experience, especially from MTG
players: keeping stuff in hand for turn after turn because the
player's 'CCG-think' is still counting on a fresh draw and seeing
discarding as a bad thing (which it is in MTG). This is where the
'more cards' thing comes in handy: it's ok to discard good cards if
they come up at the wrong time, because you have more!

That all being said, I don't usually go all the way up to 90. But it
happens. The biggest disadvantage I can really think of is the
shuffling! :-)

Teeka

11/10/2010 2:24:00 PM

0

On 10 nov, 15:14, Teeka <teeka_dra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In MTG terms, it's very possible to have a deck
> that's 40% legendary cards.

Oops, brain spasm. That's not what I meant to say. I meant something
more along the lines of "40% of your deck could be "legendary cards"
and cards that require targets/situations/costs that might not come up/
be possible". Sorry, hit the send button before re-reading my own post.

Vincent

11/10/2010 2:28:00 PM

0

On 10 nov, 12:52, _angst_ <alexander.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 10, 9:13 am, Tazar <varga_mar...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm interested to read why to play 90 cards decks and how to approach
> > to building 90-cards deck to avoid hand jams and other problems. What
> > are advantages of 90 card deck.
>
> Answer is simple. You shouldn't!. There is no benefit of 90 card
> decks, period. There are no exceptions to this rule.
>
> And I'm not trying to be a troll here. Just trust me. If you want to
> build good decks you never want them to be 90 cards.
>
> Trust your magic sense when it's tingling. It'll most likely help you
> alot in understanding deckbuilding in all CCG's.
>
> //Alex

There are exceptions:

Turbo decks need (for most) 90 cards.
A deck that cycles 10 cards per turn needs 90 cards (combat, weenie
bleed etc.).

Combo decks work better in 60-65 cards.
Other decks can usually be 75 cards big.

Petri Wessman

11/10/2010 2:33:00 PM

0

Teeka brings up a good point: the amount of card cycling tech (Dreams,
Barrens, Heart, whatever) your deck includes is also a big factor. A
big deck becomes less of a problem and more of a bonus if you have
tech to cycle the stuff you don't need out of your hand.

Also: small decks have less redundancy (or none) versus a card getting
cancelled/blocked. Bigger decks may include multiple copies. Now, this
is again a "depends" issue... in a small deck, if that one copy of
card X gets Washed, it's gone for good (barring deck recycle tech). In
a larger deck you may get a chance to try again... but of course, if
it succeeded the first time, you may draw into a card you can't use
anymore.

....and of course, if the deck does have recycle tech (Ashurs,
Anthelios, etc etc), it can easily be made smaller, since you get the
option of going back for the stuff you need or which failed the first
time round.

I think the matter is a lot less clear-cut than people would like to
imagine, and previous Magic experience doesn't always scale into this
game, at least not for general deck types.

-Petri