Looks like it has been a few years since I last
gently pushed back on the "Lego Design" phrase. (TLDR: Generally, cards accused of being "Lego" cards are generally just powerful cards that you can use in different combinations to different effect, like cards in a CCG.)
I do find the phrase "Sandbox Design" interesting, though again it kind of misses the point. Generally what I'm seeing is that Sandbox affiliations are ones that are unsolved ("optimal" decks haven't been settled on). Ultimately, I think that comes down more to card power level than anything particularly different about the design of the cards. Here's why:
I certainly agree that building with KCA certainly feels more open. I think the main reason for that is that the verbs that came out at the same time to promote the affiliation generally had a very low power level. That had a couple effects:
- Fewer people tried the new affiliation because the cards appeared to have a lower power level, which was then borne out in middling initial tournament results, which created a feedback loop that caused even fewer people to try out KCA.
- Fewer people playing meant that the likelihood of "solving" the affiliation went down.
- Additionally, low verb power level meant that the new HQ was generally reliant on historical verbs designed for other affiliations. That kept the affiliation "open" feeling, but also meant that a player looking to use KCA had to think "why am I using The Promise in a KCA deck rather than just playing Klingon? High range ships and Garak, Crafty Underling, I guess."
We are finally starting to see some
well-performing KCA decks in high level events, but again there's not a whole lot of difference between playing that deck and a Klingon two-mission-win deck (add
Kressari Rendezvous to taste), so you're still not seeing people flock to using KCA. Which leaves it still unsolved.
Interestingly, the non-sandbox feeling of existing affiliations is also better explained by how solved the affiliation is than by anything unique about the design. Most Decipher-era affiliations are huge sandboxes by virtue of how long they've been around and accruing more cards. Take TNG: there are tons of ways to play them: AU Metreon 2 Mission Battler, Vintner Solver, Enterprise 2 Mission Win, Micro Data/Lore/Barclay solver, Ghemor Barf... but even with some of those builds being relatively new, the affiliation doesn't
feel as open (the sandbox has been very much explored), because most of those decks are pretty solved.
That's also why HoF Format is being offered as a sandbox solution: take away a lot of the powerful cards involved in the solved decks for affiliations, and the deckbuilding opens up some more. It's not anything different about the design, it's a different way in which players are interacting with the cards. And that's fun, but it's a different situation than the one that the phrase sandbox design articulates.
----------------------------
Contrast that situation with that of the poster-child Lego Using Card Affiliation Source, the Starfleet cards from A Time to Stand (disclaimer: I had nothing to do with the design of the SF cards from ATtS, but I found I was halfway to making an acronym of my name and couldn't resist). While the ATtS cards are generally cited as the most Lego ones, I'd argue that SF was the least "open" (most solved) in the wake of Peak Performance. Those new SF cards had such a higher power level than prior SF cards that the affiliation was solved within a month.
The SF cards in ATtS actually fixed the solving problem pretty well. They had a high enough power level to actually compete with the PP cards, but not high enough to outright replace them. That actually led to a pretty exciting deckbuilding time for SF, where lots of people were playing them, but the balance in card power within the affiliation meant that they didn't get solved for a (relatively) long time.
The
actual problem with ATtS SF was not that the decks built themselves, it's that the power level of the cards
plus the power level of the PP cards meant that the final solved decks that came out of the affiliation were just too damn powerful compared with other affiliation's decks. That's a genuine problem, it's just a different one than the Lego design critique articulates.
----------------------------
Okay, bringing this all back to new affiliations. I can tell you that the one I'm working on is based on a pitch that I made in 2017 and have been chewing on ever since then, is based on a mechanic you could only really do in a new affiliation, and I'm working very hard to make sure they have multiple ways you can approach them. Are they going to be called Lego design? If they're too powerful out of the gate, probably. Once they're in testing, I'm going to be working very hard on balance for them too (I mean, I've been building decks for them and testing those decks for their years of pre-testing development too), so hopefully they'll escape that fate.