Hi, all.
Does anyone know of any examples of deck building games that use multiple currencies to purchase cards from a community pile?
Dual Currencies in Deck Building Games
Mon, 07/08/2013 - 12:17
Mon, 07/08/2013 - 18:09
#1
Legendary
I've had the pleasure of playing Legendary recently, which has a mechanic like that.
The cards come with two values, an attack value and a recruitment value. The attack value is used to defeat enemies to gain victory points, and the recruitment value is used to buy new cards to go into your deck. In both cases, the card is removed from the pool of 6 cards, and a new card from the randomised draw is put in it's place.
There's no limit to the number of cards you can play or buy per turn as long as you can afford them, and some cards allow you to draw more cards.
It's a great game that's both coop and competitive with some interesting rules.
Mon, 07/08/2013 - 22:06
#2
Ascension and Thunderstone
Ascension and Thunderstone both do this.
In Ascension there are runes which let you buy cards from the center or power to defeat monsters which still go into your deck - though different in theory, mechanically they are the same.
In Thunderstone, you can spend money in the town or attack power to defeat monsters. You cannot do both and in the newer Advance version you may not be sure if you will be able to defeat the monster since draws are done afterwards. In the old version, you generally always knew for certain if you would defeat it.
Overall, I tend to think it causes issues for both games. By fragmenting your spending power into two separate piles, it adds a lot of luck regarding what you can buy. You almost always want to draw mostly one of your types during your turn so you can buy the best cards, but generally you end up with a mix and some of it is wasted. In Ascension it is viable to go primarily with one of the currencies, but since the mix of cards is random there will be times when all or most of the cards showing are not in your currency. In Thunderstone, you really must have money at the beginning and you must have attack power to get points. However, it is mitigated a bit by having many utility and spell cards that are worth money (there are not "money only" cards like in Dominion).
The Resident Evil deck-building game had an interesting take: Ammo (for fighting) is also money for buying cards and you can use it for both on the same turn. This helps a lot. However, I would be curious if two currencies would work if the cards overlapped more. i.e. a card could have more of one currency, but still some of another (and only one is usable) or action cards could alternately have a use as a money card. In my mind, the key is to make sure players have enough money that they actually have choices as to what they can buy.
Tue, 07/09/2013 - 02:34
#4
I like the general idea so
I like the general idea so far. Especially with cards that are either/or, it gives the players a bit more ability to plan.
Other possibilities:
The most powerful cards don't have both currencies, only one. Then you have to plan if you want a well rounded deck, or to go big and powerful but less flexible.
Cards can be skewed, like 3/1 so you could get 3 attack, but only 1 intellect. There's still that choice, but it's harder. If you need just 1 more intellect, do you throw away 3 attack? It might make the maths of the game a bit hard if there's a lot of cards played though.
Some cards could give Attack and Intellect at the same time.
Wed, 07/10/2013 - 10:50
#7
Somewhat
I definitely think it is a factor, but having your spending power split up among the two currencies so that you can't buy the best cards is a major factor as well. If you use dual currency cards (even if they have different amounts of spending power) along with a larger set of choices I imagine this issue will be largely mitigated.
The general idea I was thinking of using has two "currencies" - Influence and Intellect. Influence would be primarily granted to players from slaying an enemy, which allowed them to gain creatures from the lineup. In order to obtain Magic or Tactics, players needed to use Intellect. The creatures players buy have both Damage/Attack and Intellect, so the player has to choose which one they will devote their creature to. The starting deck contains 10 creatures with Damage/Attack of 1 and Intellect of 1.
What's everyone's thoughts on this?