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| And Now For Something Completely Different |
The introduction of the Rainbow Draft is also geared towards avoiding these meta defining cards that make it hard to play a slower-paced game. This is an effort by WizKids to slow down gameplay (and sell product once there is actually product to sell), and while shops aren't WizKids, they come at it from the same perspective, to some extent.
Today I want to talk about some of the house rules we've encountered, pros and cons, and why they are cropping up in such a new game.
No 2s
Evan encountered this one at a local store, and the appeal (and downside) is obvious: no Beast, no Black Widow, No Nick Fury, etc. A lot of these cards really move along the game; not only are some of them really quite good, but they provide the incomparable benefit of being able to buy two cards a turn without any churn at all, and Beast 666 opens up the churn tap very quickly.
So why this rule? I assume it's a combination of Beast and Tsarina, sadly it really opens up the tap on Gobby (since he costs 3) and thus he becomes the king of the mountain when it comes to the local meta. Since you can't bring Tsarina, or Beast to chump block Gobby, you have created your own new set of problems, I suppose.
Other cards, like Gambit, or Nova who moderately facilitate churn also become that much more powerful.
One of the biggest Pros and Cons of this flavor is it's much slower. You might actually be able to field some of those bigger characters, but that slow play - and with the best churn engine completely barred - is going to be pretty hard to reliably get 6-7 energy to even buy those characters, much less pay their fielding cost. And with no Nick Fury: Mr. Anger you're going to have to pay 2-3 oftentimes if you pick up a Thor or Hulk with no recourse to slim down their fielding cost.
Still, if you're actually interesting in strategy beyond 'kekeke Tsarina rush' this is the way to stop that cold.
Taste the Purchase Cost Rainbow
Another house rule that we've seen in effect is that no two cards you bring can have the same purchase cost; the 'best' fielding costs you could bring would thus be 2, 3, 4, and a 5. I don't see a lot of benefit to this one, to be completely honest. My go-to team would be: Beast: 666; Green Goblin: Gobby; Human Torch: Johnny Storm; and Storm: Wind Rider. That's almost a carbon copy of teams that people are bringing anyway. You could also change it around to be: Black Widow: Tsarina; Gambit: Ace in the Hole; Human Torch: Johnny Storm; and Storm: Wind Rider. Once again, we haven't done too much for the cards that people are bringing anyway.
It's an interesting idea, and one way to shake it up a little bit, but if you're really looking to crack open the 'traditional' meta, this isn't going to change it far enough. It took me about 3 seconds to alter my already selected deck to tweak enough to fit these rules.
I think 'only one cost 2' might be the best, but, again, that's probably going to give you Tsarina/Gambit or Beast/Gobby and we see that a lot anyway.
No Super Rares
We talked about this in our podcast, as well, Demolishing the Super Rares, and we said that we personally thought it was wrong-headed, but I can't deny that there is some allure. All of the decks I put together up top included Tsarina or Gobby, and with good reason, they are very good and very strong.
I've argued before that it's not so much that the super rares (Tsarina and Gobby particularly) are too strong, it's that almost everything else is too weak. I know that seems like a distinction without a difference, but Evan has run the stats and there is NO real benefit to the stats of a 6 cost compared to 3 copies of a 2 cost die, the truth of the matter is given the way blocking (and attacking) works it's almost certainly better to have 3 copies of one cheap die than one copy of a big one.
What that tells me is that the cheap cost dice, like Black Widow, Beast, and Angel just are good enough to accomplish their goals, and the higher end dice don't have abilities that blow these guys out of the water literally or figuratively.
Getting a Handle on the Lucky Charms
The Rainbow Draft might fix some of these problems, if only because we'd be able to eliminate Beast: 666, rarify Tsarina and Gobby, sell product, and generally just clean up some of the purchase cost mess. Sadly, we need product, and the idea of resting Organized Play wins on something that random is pretty distressing.
I hope that when Uncanny X-Men comes out the purchase costs are a little more balanced. We might even have to wait for later versions before we really start to clean up the statistical imbalance (or too perfect balance) of costs vs. stats vs. strategy.
The Beginning
This is only the beginning of the meta, we only have 132 cards, and that is a teeny-tiny bit compared to even a small expansion of magic, and the imbalances are going to be even more apparent in such a small sample size. Your stores will start to make house rules, it's going to happen. Tournaments are going to start going over to these more random variations because there are only a few really good decks right now. Hopefully we can start creating a tournament where it comes down to luck and skill rather than having about $120 to shell out to buy the cards you need to make the perfect hand.
We live in hope.
Not really a fan of any of the house rule formats listed above. This set/format is already fairly small with it only being 132 cards to pick from. But if you think about it, its even fewer than that. Each character has 3 cards/rarities (starter characters have 4 if you count the uncommons) and you're only allowed to play 1 of the 3(4) on a team. I am 100% fine with that game rule, not trying to complain about it. But it almost cuts the cards we are able to use per team in half.
ReplyDeleteSo with that being said, not sure I like how some of these house rule formats limiting our card pool even further. I guess I am fortunate to have an LGS that plays 8 Team Constructed 20 dice. This past weekend was my first time attending and we had about 11 people show up, including both my cousin and myself. We all had a blast.
Thanks for the awesome read and always keeping us informed!
Happy to mention them! Honestly I mentioned these because I know for a fact that at least one store is doing 'no 2' and one is doing 'all different costs', and there has definitely been some 'no SR' talk as well. I... am conflicted. Really we need some more cards to shake up the meta. You're very right that you don't really get an opportunity to play a huge variety of cards because you can't overlap them. Ah well.
DeleteI like to do the following for a rarity-affected draft. I choose 16 total cards, of which there are 9 commons, 5 uncommons, and 2 rares. Roll a 20 sided die and on a 1 or a 20 you replace one of the rares with a super-rare. This is very close to the actual rarity distribution within a group of 90 foil packs. Once the card slots are set, you shuffle up your commons, deal out 9 face down, shuffle up the uncommons, deal out 5, and so forth until you have the pool of cards. You pick who goes first, then you turn them over, spread them out and start drafting. 1st player picks one and 2nd player picks 2. Then alternate. Once you've got your cards, you distribute your dice how you want. I find this to be a really fun way to play the game, as it controls basically all the problems with OP combos like Gobby and Human Torch JS, adds an element of surprise as the various characters are revealed, forces you to look at new characters and lets you do a bit of teambuilding too. I highly recommend it!
ReplyDeleteInteresting you only mentioned teams with 4 characters on it. Is that part of the house rules you've encountered as well? It was to my understanding that 8 characters are required for tournament play but the speed of the game seems to contradict the need for so many.
ReplyDeleteAre you finding that, with the speed of the game, OP's are saying 4 characters because it's just not likely some of the bigger ones will ever see the field? Personally I've found that a 6 character team is the 'baby bear' of the three options. That's what we use in my group of players.