Living Card Game Thread: Run Your Nets Elsewhere

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Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Basically, the Core sets will get you crushed, but most of the time you'll need but a few well-chosen packs to turn them into something decent.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2014 02:42

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 00:06

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

I'm teaching Netrunner to my girlfriend and while she's enjoying it, both thematically and gameplay-wise, she's a bit overwhelmed by it. Can't blame her, especially since it's her first card game.

Now, she's been eyeing the AGoT a bit, purely because the theme is very appealing to her. THisgot me to think a bit of a side trip to a more "classical" LCG than Netrunner might not be a bad idea, to help her get to grips with some general LCG/CCG concepts quicker, as well as slightly bring me down a peg, as I discover quirks of a new system too.

I though of steering her either to LotR or Star Wars, as they seem somewhat appropriate on first glance. LotR is cooperative, so instead of feeling trashed again and again we could just laugh at how the game keeps handing our asses to us. Star Wars on the other hand, just looks generally more approachable, with pod-based deckbuilding and whatnot.

Still, the AGoT brand is a huge draw, but I think I heard it's very comboish? My gut feeling is to subtly ~~push~~ propose LotR because of its co-op nature, but since she's a big fan of the franchise, I wonder if AGoT with some small cardpool would work fine as a more casual game? Or is it a much better idea to go with one of the games mentioned above?

# ¿ Apr 9, 2014 21:28

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Yeah, I just wanna make sure we're taking a step back in complexity. Perceived complexity, really - I think Netrunner's emphasis on properly reading the (rather complex) board state is somewhat stressful, emphasises skill difference and in effect makes her prone to tilting. I just want to make sure I'm heading into more typical "play dudes face-up and cast counterspell" territory.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2014 22:45

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

I remember people talking AGoT had lovely balance in the core set. If I buy on the cheap someone's 2xCore Sets, Princes of the Sun (revised edition, whatever that means, and Raven's Song, War of the Kings, Epic Battles chapter packs, how much of an issue would that be?

Assume I want to treat this as a :10bux:

board game, rather than a collectible thing (unless I stumble into a big sale again).

# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 09:35

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Just make yourself a Navy deck and you'll be pretty much on the prowl for rebel scum. The Sith do just sit back and watch the clock advance, against such decks it is the other player's duty to pummel them out of the comfort zone.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2014 16:37

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Myself, I'd advise Star Wars, as it's very newbie-friendly (non-intimidating deckbuilding is a big factor here) and very good in general. I bought it as a simpler alternative to Netrunner I could play with my girlfriend and then really fell in love with it. It's not very popular, since FFG really mishandled the line (long shipping delays combined with system that in itself makes for slow changes in meta, driving away competitive players), but make no mistake - the gameplay is excellent.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 22:26

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

They were also wrong.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 14:02

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

In SUSD case in particular, I think their reasoning was literally "it's cool enough I guess, but we're too busy binging on Netrunner to bother with other LCGs".

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 14:31

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

I think the "only 10 decisions" argument is really overstating the difference. When doing a Netrunner deck, for example, I pretty much know exactly a good 1/3 to 2/3 of the deck right off the bat just by virtue of selecting an ID and the direction/gimmick I want to pursue, then add some tools and econ and tweak the numbers until I hit appropriate size. And frankly, sperging out whether you need 21 or 23 lands isn't really the exciting part of deckbuilding. The idea in SW is that these are 10 tough choices where you cannot simply assemble your dream combo and then drop some generic econ and a few twists of fate to shore up the shortcomings. Instead you need to think just how far you want to go with your gimmick of choice, have everything gel together and backed up by appropriate support. Sure, one can slap together five 2x pods that synergise and call it a day, but there's plenty of room to tweak 1-2 crucial pods to get your fate cards/econ/whatever without compromising the rest of your deck. An example I found incredibly clever when I stumbled on it is splashing 1x (or 2x if you really nned cash) Council of the Sith in mono scum decks*.

GrandpaPants posted:

It also makes it really hard to be excited for new force packs since there's usually like one pod that's interesting, but I just can't slip in a few copies of an interesting card. It's great as a starter LCG, but it's really dull for anyone who wants more.

This is quite true though, pod distribution makes each pack feel like having less new content than it really has. Which is interesting in a psychological manner, since the pods, forcing players to use more situational or generally 2nd tier cards, actually mean there's less stuff that gets laughed at for a short while and then forgotten forever.

* It has a lot of resources, twist of fate, if you draw the objective you get some card advantage and if you don't - the only card you cannot play without it is Advisor to the Emperor who can either burn on edge battles or be put into play by Jabba.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 16:57

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

PaybackJack posted:

I'm running 2x Ultimate Power along side 8x Scum right now and it's awesome.

I assume some Slave I-style shenanigans? As in, scum lock the board down and then one shot-one kill strike at objectives? Myself I tend to gravitate to Force-based scum, but you've just given me the idea to introduce some Aqualish Thugs to Colonel Starck. :unsmigghh:

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 18:23

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Zombie #246 posted:

For someone finally getting around to playing the Star Wars lcg I've had for a while, is there a general theme to the factions, or the types of decks you would typically see with them?

The "control force, sit back and enjoy" factions:
Jedi: Chillin' and upgrading their megadudes.
Sith: Stalling by means of board control, mainly killing off enemy dudes via events.

The "go for the throat" factions:
Rebel Alliance: spamming lots of little dudes for either rush or combo purposes. Lots of sacrifice/bounce effects here.
Imperial Navy: a rather straightforward "drop a bunch of dudes, upgrade the poo poo out of them" faction. Can either try outrush the light side, or just build up their forces for one, glorious offensive.

The trickster factions:
Smugglers & Spies: basically Criminal from Netrunner: they utilise a bunch of events and tricks to ensure the opponent cannot block them at a time.
Scum & Villainy: disruption & janky combos. They generally want to lock the board down by disruption and then do whatever they please (either control force, because they've abducted all your force-capable units or push a single unopposed heavy-hitter).

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 11:48

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

DatonKallandor posted:

Having a certain amount of a card in your deck and being forced by a search effect to remove 1 or more of them to the bottom of your deck is the definition of decreasing the value of future draws. When that happens you know for a fact you can't draw those cards again (unlike the more common search and shuffle Netrunner uses).

So how come the card you have to put on the bottom are pure gold you need to win, but the rest of the deck you suddenly consider worthless poo poo? If that is the case, it is a good thing to sort through the chaff to get to the game-winner ASAP. If you drop the sophistry and assume a well-made deck consists entirely of generally useful cards, it's still cool because you lessen the luck of the draw by being able to choose what is most situationally useful right now, while ditching spare copies of unique cards (which you'd waste your draw on). If you really need some poo poo you've ditched and have no spares, it's not the end of the world, you just know you need to save a tutor/deck shuffle effect for it, rather than relying on hail mary draws.

DatonKallandor posted:

As said before, the search effect is good if your victory depends on a single card. In a regular play situation where the game is still going to take a few turns discarding 5 cards to draw 1 is not going to be 100% positive. Or are you going to argue that discard effects are positive too?

Oh, they are. As a general CCG/LCG rule, can't really speak about Conquest in its current state. Some of the strongest Magic decks do this poo poo gleefully. Generally the idea is that the card you discarded might have as well been on the bottom of the deck and 1) hey, you've drawn something else for that cost 2) Instead of sitting gently caress-knows-where in the deck they lie revealed in the discard pile and it is oftentimes easier to fetch them from discard than to tutor from the deck 3) You can thin your deck for all sorts of combo tricks.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 13:27

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Pros:

They have bitchin' graphics on their backs
They're required for tournament play
Cheetos and beer-proof

# ¿ Apr 30, 2015 08:13

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Kaddish posted:

So for anyone burnt out on the traditional LCG release schedule/bloat and increasingly complex mechanics I highly recommend Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn. Mechanically it's super easy to get into and in my opinion has a pretty tight design. The big caveat for those into other LCGs in the addition of dice. You have 10 dice that you roll at the beginning of the round and are used basically as different types of mana to either place cards or power effects. I played it 10 or so times at Gencon and enjoyed it every time. The aesthetics are appealing to me as well.

Drive Thru has a good review up for more info.

There is place for only one Rutibex in this town, stranger.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2015 20:46

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

tijag posted:

Considering the storage boxes cost like $4 bucks, that's pretty pricey.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2015 17:23

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

One other cool thing about binders, particularly for LCGs with fixed card distribution, is that you can notice really quickly if a card is missing when packing up.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2015 17:32

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

quote:

new policies taking effect on April 1st, 2016

# ¿ Dec 22, 2015 11:22

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

It is good.

Deck building is somewhat unique, in that you basically build the deck out of 10 6-card sets, rather than picking each of the cards individually. This generally works well, retaining the core dilemmas that make deckbuilding fun on a more macro scale and gives incentive to try and make the quirkier b-tier cards work, while making it easy to slap together something decent in 5 minutes. Some folks, however, really prefer fine-tuning their resources and whatnot. It does, though, make meta move a bit slowly, then shifting rapidly when a key set drops to fully realize an archetype.

As for the multiplayer, there's a 2v2 mode that feels very natural (and allows pulling out some obscene combos) and somewhat mediocre 1v2/1v3 scenario decks (they're still cool for when you want to introduce some buddies to the game but know there's too much of a skill difference for enjoyable 1v1). I really like the fact that, for the most part, the objective sets printed specifically for multiplayer are made in such a way to be still perfectly playable in the default 1v1.

There are two asymmetrical sides (light side and dark side) and you'll have to build decks for both, like for Netrunner. However, unlike Netrunner, the asymmetry isn't that strong and concerns mostly asymmetrical win conditions and color wheel stuff. Within each side, there are three factions/colors (Jedi, Sith, Rebel Alliance, Imperial Navy, Smugglers & Spies, Scum & Villainy + neutrals), so you get your color wheel and poo poo. The color wheel is kind of interesting in this game, because it's like it's split into three, but each of those parts has an evil twin with its own twist on the same aspect of the game.

Combat is a pretty fun puzzle with heaps of bluffs and tricks. I wrote about it in detail in the board game thread.

The theme is a bit of contentious thing. One thing that is initially wierd is little differentiation between dudes/vehicles or land/space, so you can have an Ewok destroy a Star Destroyer or whatnot. However, if you can accept the somewhat zoomed-out, slightly abstracted way of how combat is presented (was the Death Star destroyed by Luke, or by an X-Wing shooting a torpedo?) it has the fast pace of an action movie (e.g. no summoning sickness) and a lot of little flavourful card interactions. For example, "Get me Solo!" is a card that does stuff regarding capturing light side dudes, but gives an additional boon if it is Han Solo in particular just because. A lot of equipment does a thing, but gains an additional effect if put on the "canon" owner (which has interesting consequences, given there's often multiple different versions of said character). My personal favourite is the original smugglin' Han Solo:

He's a cool, if a bit fragile unit, that dunks some damage as soon as he is declared to take part in combat. Why? Because Han shoots first. :v:

Conversely, Greedo is a character that's really cool for his low price, but gets really hosed the second someone gets the jump on him (wins the Edge Battle).

[edit] Rebel Leia is also amazing theme-wise:

When she would be killed off, she is taken prisoner by the Empire instead and the entirety of Rebel Alliance untaps in a mad scramble to rescue her.

Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jan 8, 2016

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 17:48

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Yeah, it's just rules from Balance of the Force (which are available online free). The box has the scenarios and six sets geared particularly for multiplayer which will be fun if you plan to play that way a lot, so it's okay to both grab it ASAP or whenever you feel like it. All you need is just enough "normal" cards for everyone to have a deck to assemble (2x Core Set will suffice, but don't expect much deckbuilding freedom if rocking four decks at the same time).

Please mind that the typical LCG distribution of 3x Core Set + 1x Everything Else is switched here for 2x Core Set + 2x Edge of Darkness (first big box) + 1x Everything Else. This is pretty great because it minimizes multiple-box waste (IIRC it's just two spare cardboard tokens and two card sets that have a "1 per deck" limit). Edge of Darkness is basically a Core Set for Smugglers and Scums, for whom there was no space in the other box (just a single token card set for each).

Oh, the Balance of the Force also has the second Death Star dial (basically dark side victory point counter) that goes up to 16 for multiplayer, rather than standard 12, so I guess that's a factor if you have severe OCD.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 20:03

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Anybody here capable of estimating how many cards a full playset contains?

With 4 more factions to go it probably won't turn put any cheaper than a fully stretch-goaled deluxe pack and $200 is a hell of a price for a bored game.

Then again, it seems there's actually a pretty bunch of cards per each faction (not sure how much of that is creature tokens and poo poo) so i'd like to convert it mentally to equivalent card pool worth of lcg boxes to feel less dumb for even considering.

I just want a control deck rather than red/green stuff

# ¿ Feb 3, 2016 17:01

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Oh come on, just as deck diversity got fun!

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 20:59

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Azran posted:

Also the undead faction has Crypt Crawlers, Abominations and even a Death & Decay spell. This is amazing.

You just wait until you read up on the Protoss.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 12:52

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Single Tight Female posted:

They stopped making Diskwars expansions. The greatest injustice in the history of boardgames.

One day the Skaven will rise... One day...

# ¿ Mar 3, 2016 10:14

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Depends on your taste, really. Star Wars is easier to start deckbuilding with, GoT scales nicer to multiplayer games. There's less of an existing cardpool in GoT currently, which might be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on your needs.

Myself I really, really like Star Wars.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2016 08:24

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

EVGA Longoria posted:

Still not sure I've seen any events for it. I bought a starter getup to get into it but haven't had a chance yet. I will say - Star Wars is still cheap to get into, because you only need 2 cores instead of 3s, and there seem to be a lot fewer "must have" packs to get competitive because of pods.

Frankly, you can grab the two cores + single appropriate core set for the faction of your choice and you can slap together a legit deck.

Exceptions:
- Rebel Alliance will reach that status in a few months, because they're still waiting for their core (Core Set is secretly the Sith big box)
- For Smugglers & Spies in particular, you'll need one more box.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2016 14:57

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Fetterkey posted:

the #1 most requested feature of Star Wars (playing units to specific objectives rather than just having them out there in general)

what

# ¿ Apr 28, 2016 18:28

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

As do Netrunner, Star Wars and a bunch of other games.

It is, regrettably, a great rear end in a top hat magnet, but to be frank, people who'd stick by having to name the card perfectly would already out themselves by nitpicking/exploiting all sorts of minutiae along the way. It is generally assumed sane people won't fret it too much in casual play, while it has to be strictly codified for tournament play for anti-bullshit reasons.

Kinda like remembering a lost action opportunity window before the delay had a chance to impact the game meaningfully.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2016 15:11

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Pretty sure they did some big boxes. Wasn't AGoT 2 some sort of convention pre-premiere too?

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 18:41

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Arkham will be published too late for my birthday in September and waaay to early for Christmas. :smith:

# ¿ Aug 7, 2016 10:02

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

How's the situation with amount of Arkham cores to buy?

# ¿ Nov 5, 2016 18:34

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

http://arkhamdb.com/

# ¿ Nov 10, 2016 13:19

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Forget it Jake, it's Jedit.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2016 13:08

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

ALLAN LASSUS posted:

I just shuffle the weakness in after the deck is otherwise complete so that I don't even see what it is when shuffling in.

This man does it right.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2016 11:30

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Orange Devil posted:

Unfortunately the expansion features a basic weakness which is a permanent (and thus starts in play) and which has an impact on your setup conditions (start with fewer resources) so you won't be able to blind shuffle in a weakness anymore.

Unless you're playing with a friend, in which case I intend to Indian Poker this poo poo 100% of the time.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2016 15:05

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Plavski posted:

I just picked up AH LCG as just a single core set. In Netrunner, the decklists in the manual are much weaker than the ones the community put together. Has the community got better lists for the core investigators, or are the stock ones fine?

Yo, I just managed to beat the campaign (standard difficulty) with a single core today. Not having the second one hurts, but it's more bearable when playing with a single investigator - it gives you some nice leeway, as you can stock up on cantrip neutral skills and ditch some of the worst chaff. It also helps that the first scenario is basically a tutorial*, so you can grab some of the upgraded cards as a second copy equivalent before poo poo gets serious.

I managed it with Skids, who's good all around, his main weakness being quite draw-reliant to tackle 4-shroud locations (be prudent about your intelligence boosters!). While I thought Roland would be the #1 solo investigator - able to both power through enemies and sleuth decently - I'm starting to think he's actually a better team player. Going solo, he's both kind of gambling on drawing enemies rather than treacheries and, with his low evasion score, kind of boned if you get caught without ammo or before you draw your weapons. Conversely, while I thought Daisy will be completely unworkable solo, she's actually more of a coin toss - the key issue being if you can leverage your card draw and tutoring to grab some spells before you get too dunked on by enemies.

I probably won't touch Agnes at all without the second core; similarly, I'm not sure Wendy really has any gameplan if working with just singletons.

Having said that, any word on when Dunwich hits the streets? I kinda want to grab the other core together with it, for shipping reasons, but I'm also burning inside thinking of infinite money double-machete Skids backed by spell-slinging card-effect clue gathering Agnes, yet am too lazy to draw proxies.

* At least with a single dude. Bosses with scaling HP are night and day for single/multiple investigators.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2016 17:49

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

The only exception so far is the Cunning Distraction survivor card, which taps all enemies at a location.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2016 10:36

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

While Pete is probably the one new investigator I'm most eager to try, he seems kind of scary to play in that with no way to pull Duke out of the discard pile, he can get shut down real hard. I mean, if you draw Paranoia as your weakness, you're pretty set up to fail.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2017 22:34

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Skull equalling zero is, like the others have said, a few less negative tokens in the bag - a small buff to every single test you'll be making.

The Elder Sign switcheroo is there to keep triggering his signature trumpet, while a zero result is usually good enough for whatever you were trying to achieve in the first place.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2017 02:33

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

[edit] Wrong thread, sorry!

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 23:47

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 00:06

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

I'm super not surprised, Galakta are giant amateur hour.

[edit] I hope it won't be spoiler to say, there'll be a new investigator. As in, not recycled from previous games.

Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Mar 23, 2017

# ¿ Mar 23, 2017 20:39

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