Discuss all of your questions, concerns, comments and ideas about Second Edition.
User avatar
 
By monty42 (Benjamin Liebich)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
2E World Quarter-Finalist 2023
Chancellor
2E European Continental Runner-Up 2023
2E German National Champion 2022
#507873
KillerB wrote:
Fritzinger wrote:How about “Mad Fritz’s Weird Regulations”?
In 3 years Nasty Nate will be calling it "South African House Rules".
We've had worse format names than both of those.
User avatar
 
By Cersan
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
2E European Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E Russian National Second Runner-Up 2016
#507929
IMO this format's only positive thing is the possibility to show game to new players. It will be extremely borring to play since you have removed all decision making. Draw 3, play 3, go to mission, die all (since dilemmas are ballanced around the cost), draw 3, play 3... repeat.
Edit: Also, you will need a huge Excelsior-like banlist.
User avatar
Ambassador
 - Ambassador
 -  
#507931
The first post on this thread will now always hold the latest rules I am testing. Current iteration is testing what happens if the 2 cost per card rule is applied to standard deck sizes

Updated Romulans for rules v0.3 https://www.trekcc.org/decklists/index. ... ckID=43619

Game 1: 27 minutes for 100 points :( I was familiarising myself with the deck, looking up some stats about what I included as I went.
Game 2 26 minutes for 100 points, still too slow :(

Observations:
- It's very few minutes to get to the slog of mission attempts against attrition
- The first mission is pretty slow, the last mission is a formality: like 15 personnel against 6 dilemmas when all the useful dilemmas for that mission are gone
- My hand got way too big while I was trying to keep people in hand so as not to give too many dilemmas at mission one.
Last edited by Fritzinger on Mon Apr 13, 2020 6:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Ambassador
 - Ambassador
 -  
#507934
Cersan wrote:IMO this format's only positive thing is the possibility to show game to new players.
I care about new players a lot, but I don't think that's all it has. And if that's all, it can be changed. Since right now it's just one guy's ideas that's pretty easy.
It will be extremely borring to play
Maybe. If so it can be changed.
since you have removed all decision making.
Decisions you keep: to play or not to play (keeping cards in hand to pay costs); how many people to attempt with; how many of your total dilemmas to give (You need to save some for later); skill tracking is still important. As of v0.3 nothing preventing any of the other forms of interaction is in place.
die all (since dilemmas are ballanced around the cost)
I'm hoping that "everyone dies" will not happen often with a max deck cost of only 2 per dilemma, no duplicates, no benefits for cost reduction text, and no zero cost dilemmas. I'm anticipating that The Clown: Guillotine might be a problem, but there will be only one of it. 8 costers are "free" in the game but really expensive for deck building.

But it's worth testing. The next deck I build will have a kill pile.

Edit: for a quick comparison I checked an MVB kill pile and it has 64 printed cost including 2x He Wasn't Nice, and lots of duplicates, so that pile would be significantly weakened.
Edit: Also, you will need a huge Excelsior-like banlist.
I'm not sure about ban lists vs "ignore this text", but yes, I'm imagining that a ban list is inevitable. If so, I think it will be intuitive: no cards that change counters or allow more drawing.
User avatar
 
By Danny (Daniel Giddings)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
2E British National Runner-Up 2021
#507937
Out of curiosity, what are the base drawing/playing rules of 1E? I thought about making a "witty" format name suggestion of "1.5 Edition" (because there's no cost associated in either that or this), but wanted to make sure.
User avatar
Ambassador
 - Ambassador
 -  
#507948
Danny wrote:Out of curiosity, what are the base drawing/playing rules of 1E? I thought about making a "witty" format name suggestion of "1.5 Edition" (because there's no cost associated in either that or this), but wanted to make sure.
1.5e is pretty apt. Having a cost on cards is vital because we want people to have to trade off between fewer/better and more/worse, but it might make for a better experience to move that decision making outside of gameplay, which is kind of like 1e's seed phase. This is a shorter version of the seed phase.
Last edited by Fritzinger on Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Ambassador
 - Ambassador
 -  
#507961
v.0.3.1 dilemma restrictions are now max 30 cost, no minimum pile size (because a pile full of 1-cost dilemmas is kind of boring): https://www.trekcc.org/decklists/index. ... edef0585f8

- 20 minutes to 100 points (getting better)
- many turns to solve the first mission (lots of walls faced), last two missions were done in 1 attempt each by just sending everyone
- still building up a massive hand while spending forever trying to solve space, then dumping it all on my first planet mission :(

I'm keen to try brainstorming some other rules now
User avatar
Ambassador
 - Ambassador
 -  
#508806
Brainstorming two new ideas:

1 mission, the points value of the mission determines the limit of counters you can include in your deck (or places some other restriction?). So you choose an easy mission with a weak deck or a hard mission with a better deck. 1 mission each would make for a pretty quick game; I'd want dilemma restrictions to be such that it takes several turns to solve that one mission.

AND/OR

Seeded bridge crew of uniques, you can only include non-uniques, equipment and verbs in your deck. With some cost restriction on the bridge crew; but dilemma restrictions can probably be minimal since you can assemble a crazy-good mega-crew from the start of the game.

Balance is tricky I guess ... actual numbers to use could make or break any idea.
User avatar
Ambassador
 - Ambassador
 -  
#510521
Ok, I think I'm on to something here

Mad Fritz v0.5
Missions: 2 missions (1 planet, 1 space) + HQ (open to allowing a meta mission)

The lowest points on either of your non-HQ missions is important, we'll call it X.

Deck restrictions: you may include a maximum of X counters worth of cards (e.g. 30 counters if your biggest mission is 30, 40 if it's 40 etc - we'll have to think about printed points vs attemptable points). Deck restriction is based on printed cost of cards, interrupts cost 0.

Seed a bridge crew: from your deck, choose personnel worth (X divided by 3) counters and round up (e.g. 30 points = 10 counter bridge crew, 35 = 12, 40 = 14). You don't get "when you play" abilities on these people.

Seed a ship (with heavy deck restrictions, you probably don't want > 2 ships and if they're both stuck at the bottom you're 5+ turns behind)

Starting hand: 3 cards

Play/Draw: draw 1 and play 1, every turn, regardless of cost. Counters do not exist in this phase, don't try to play AWC.

Victory conditions: First player to solve both space and planet, or use points as a tie breaker.

**All other rules are the same as a standard game, no changes to dilemmas**

Testing results

Sample decks I'm testing with:
Starfleet https://www.trekcc.org/decklists/index. ... ckID=43768
Klingon https://www.trekcc.org/decklists/index. ... ckID=43769

Missions seem to be running about 7 mins / 2-3 attempts each. Reliably under 30 minutes :).

Why these rules
This is close to what I want Slipstream to be. Easier victory conditions than standard, but there is way more variety in how to get there. The points on missions matter, but in a different way (will you go for big/difficult missions and get a bigger deck+bridge crew? Or small/easy with a smaller deck and bridge crew?). Number of missions you've solved and score still exist for cards that reference them, e.g. Neurogenic Parasites is not an auto-include.

Mission solving starts fast (turn 2 or 3), play/draw phase is fast, the number of personnel on the table is enough to get to know the individuals.

Possible drawbacks
- There is probably an ultimate combo out there.
- Kills matter way more, I imagine ETU and Keevan will be a big deal. Maybe if this is untenable the bridge crew cost can be excluded from your total deck cost, so you have more counters for redundancy.
- If you slip on a dilemma draw it matters, I expect some dilemma support in the draw deck will be crucial. Cards that let you spend points for more dilemmas are probably really good.
User avatar
Ambassador
 - Ambassador
 -  
#511646
Update to v0.5.5 - tiny decks make it pretty difficult to build in enough redundancy against kill piles, giving a few more counters for life saving cards like ETU.

So - now your 10 or 12 or 14 or 17 counter bridge crew can be excluded from your draw deck total cost.

Also: thanks to Eberlems for putting a little total draw deck cost number onto the deck builder - makes this way easier.

Games are still under 30 mins, and these two 0.5.5 decks seem to be balanced against each other:

https://www.trekcc.org/decklists/index. ... ckID=43835 Klingon
https://www.trekcc.org/decklists/index. ... ckID=43841 Starfleet

Updating the first page the v0.5.5 rules.

I have some doubts about the draw 1 / play 1 rule because of the interactions with discount or counter gaining cards. The great benefit, IMO, is that there are fewer cards in hand to choose from, and fewer cards on the field by the game end, which leaves less to concentrate on and lets you grow to know and love your bridge crew.

But maybe this can be changed by just using a smaller number of counters than 7. Next step will be to try a 3 counter per turn rule, where you can save up counters over multiple turns if you want to play something that costs 4/5/6/7. 3 is arbitrarily chosen because of its use elsewhere: 3 card opening hand, divide mission points by 3 to get bridge crew, spend 3 counters per turn. I will admit to being worried that this will open the door for massive teams of weenies.
User avatar
Ambassador
 - Ambassador
 -  
#513070
Update: now on v0.6

1) Renamed to Bridge Crew format, I think it's safe to say the starting crew is a net positive so that's likely to stay.

2) Draw/play phase is now closer to a normal game, you just get 3 counters instead of 7. You can save counters to a following turn if you have to play something > 3 cost.

This achieves my goal of keeping the total number of cards in play down, but still allows cards where a big part of their gameplay is to discount... I expect TOS and TNG would be in a difficult spot otherwise.

3) Starting ship cost is excluded from total deck counters, so you can bring your borderless Dominion Battleship without penalty if that's what you want (see Dominion deck in the first post :) ).

On the Bridge crew watch list:
Weenies: the ES9 Cadets deck on the front page can start with 13 personnel for 10 counters, which seems a bit contrary to the spirit of the bridge crew. Maybe some rule like only uniques, or no zeroes in the starting crew would be good.

Chula: 3x The Game at two missions might be too good. Maybe max counters based on total mission points will limit what else you can play with them, or maybe just limiting to 1 or 2 of each dilemma.

Romulan discard: Reman Subterfuge would be a huge swing and it can be played from turn 1. Terix or Trolarak can start. Gal'Gathong... I don't even want to think about it.

Counter denial: these tricks will be way more devastating with only 3 counters each turn.
Last edited by Fritzinger on Wed May 20, 2020 5:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
1EFQ: Game of two halves

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve re[…]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Happy birthday to @Takket ! :D :thumbsup: […]

Opponents turn

Remodulation