Quest Starting Cards and other Tweaks

[friarsol]

Here's some ideas regarding a new Starting Pool scenario, plus Tweaking the existing Scenario.

I was thinking it would be nice to give the Players an equivalent to a Deckbuilder's Toolkit to start the quest off as an option. This way starting quests have a bit more cohesion and players won't have to recreate starting deck pools to get something decent.

I would suggest against just copying the Toolkit Product, but come up with our own Starter Kit. For comparison, the DBTK comes with 85 Fixed Cards, 100 Basic Lands, 4 (of 11) 10 card strategies and 4 15-card Boosters. For a total of 285 cards. I believe the DBTK is designed to have two decks built from it, so we don't need to start the player with so many cards. Maybe about half the amount of non-basic cards. ~90-100 Cards

Right now all Quests start with: 100 Basic Land, 100 Snow Basic Land and the following per Difficulty:
Easy 45 Commons, 20 Uncommons, 10 Rares = 75 Non-Basics
Normal/Hard/V. Hard 40 Commons, 15 Uncommons, 10 Rares = 65 Non-Basics

both of which seem fairly low to build a 60 card deck, and still a bit low for a 40 card deck.
Quests start with 250 Gold, and if you sell all the Snow Basics and Half the regular Basics that still only brings you up to 500 gold.

For our "Starter Kit" I'd suggest the following:

100 Basic Land, 0 Snow Basic Land.
(36) 6 6-Card "Theme Packs" 1 for each Color, and 1 Colorless. (5 common, 1 uncommon). The more Theme Packs we have available the better probably.
24 Staples (4 Common Staples of each Color/Colorless. Lightning Bolt, Doom Blade the sort of card that any Deck of that color can use.)
(Edit: To Clarify, you aren't getting 4 of the same Staple, you get 4 Colored Commons that can be useful in most decks. Something like 1 Removal, 2 Creatures, 1 "Extra")

Total Non-Random Cards: 54 Common, 6 Uncommon, 0 Rare

24-32 Random Cards (8-10 Rare, 6-10 Uncommon, 10-12 Common.*)

This gives a final total of (8-10 Rare, 12-16 Uncommon, 64-66 Common = 84-92 Cards + 100 Basics)*

So for non-Starter Kit Pools, we should probably give more cards to make up for lack of Cohesion.

Maybe 8-10 Rare, 15-20 Uncommon, 72-80 Common = 95-110 Cards* + 100 Basics (+ 25 Snow Basics?).

(*Ranges Dependent on Difficulty)

Each pool total is significantly larger than is currently given, but the amount of cards is actually closer to a Sealed Deck Pool (6*15 = 90). And mostly is added as Commons, and I think will help the early Starter Pool. It should also help the AI Decks not pull too many punches on the Easy level, as the Human will be able to start with a better deck (either by sheer numbers, or starting with more cohesion).

I feel like the Starter Kit Pool, should probably start with less gold than a Random Starting Pool. (Maybe purchasing the Starter Kit costs 150 gold from the Original 250). Seems like a reasonable purchase to get such cohesion to start the Quest.

Alright, that's enough brainstorming from me. I'm sure everyone would like to add suggestions or additional tweaks.

[lazylockie]

I like the idea, just not sure on the Lightning Bolt / Doom Blade thing. Having removal early game is king (pretty much like when drafting), so giving catch-all removal spells (especially as 4-of) could really kill the purpose of quest mode. I think that as starting quest the player will probably be fine with a pair of a Turn to Slag, Annihilate or Corpsehatch.

Another idea could be to provide a booster with only removal (or any other type) cards, or even as a reward from leveling up. On the same line of thought, quest quest decks / boosters that rewards specific types, instead of specific colors.

This starter kit pool could also be tied to the difficulty. So, on Easy you get SKP, Normal you start with Standard, Hard -> Modern and Very Hard -> All.

[Sloth]

I love the idea.
Here are my thoughts:
- The "Theme Packs" should have at least 10 cards (like in the original toolkit) to give a chance to add some more difficult strategies.
- The "Staples" have to be balanced: Lightning Bolt and Doom Blade would make this card pool much more powerful than the normal one.

(Can't wait to design theme packs).

[friarsol]

I like the idea, just not sure on the Lightning Bolt / Doom Blade thing. Having removal early game is king (pretty much like when drafting), so giving catch-all removal spells (especially as 4-of) could really kill the purpose of quest mode. I think that as starting quest the player will probably be fine with a pair of a Turn to Slag, Annihilate or Corpsehatch.

None of the ideas were set in stone by any means. I was just giving an example of what a Staple could be (not everyone might use the same terminology), and I think you misunderstood: you aren't getting 4 of the same Card, you get 4 "Staples" so Black might be: Doom Blade, Blisterglub, Child of Night, Unholy Strength.

[Chris H.]

An interesting idea Sol.

I would not mind myself if quest mode did not let people import a deck form outside of the quest game. But giving people an option to have some control over their starting pool of cards can help to keep the game fresh.

I like the idea of a Starter Kit Pool and I agree with the idea of buying it for credits. Increasing the size of the starting pool is also a good idea and should make it possible to start with a 40 card two color deck.

I once had a quest where I had to start with a 40 three color deck. Ugh, not a fun experience.

[timmermac]

Since we've been getting the ability to distinguish among the various expansions with more precision, how about adding booster packs to the card shop? Also, to clarify what posted earlier in the thread, are we talking about adding things like goblin tribe packs or elf tribe packs, or white packs, or etc...

[friarsol]

Since we've been getting the ability to distinguish among the various expansions with more precision, how about adding booster packs to the card shop? Also, to clarify what posted earlier in the thread, are we talking about adding things like goblin tribe packs or elf tribe packs, or white packs, or etc...

What I'm talking about is solely what you start with, not additional Stores.

[Jaedayr]

I once had a quest where I had to start with a 40 three color deck. Ugh, not a fun experience.

Starting out quest mode is very difficult unless you keep restarting the quest to get a few half decent cards. I am very much in favor of having a better chance at making a cohesive deck to get started. Very good ideas in this thread so far.

[Rob Cashwalker]

I like this idea in concept, however implementation sounds crazy. Set-specific boosters are now simple to work with, so they can be used for both the starting pool and in the store. The BoosterPackGenerator can build packs from a CardList, so if you make up theme-pack lists, you don't have to do anything special to get a random distribution from them.

[friarsol]

If anyone is interested in trying the tweaks I've referred to for more cards in your starting Quest Pool replace the appropriate section in /res/quest/quest.preferences to this:

Code: Select all

startingBasicLand=20
startingSnowBasicLand=5
startingCommons=82,80,78,76
startingUncommons=20,18,16,15
startingRares=10,10,10,8
startingCredits=250


The commons are a little higher than my original count, because of the discussion related to theme packs.

[rafl]

Is there an easy way of making it possible to get more than 1 copy of a single card in your starting pool?

[Chris H.]

If anyone is interested in trying the tweaks I've referred to for more cards in your starting Quest Pool replace the appropriate section in /res/quest/quest.preferences to this:

Code: Select all

startingBasicLand=20
startingSnowBasicLand=5
startingCommons=82,80,78,76
startingUncommons=20,18,16,15
startingRares=10,10,10,8
startingCredits=250


The commons are a little higher than my original count, because of the discussion related to theme packs.

`
Good work Sol.