Deck building

Curious: Are there any deck building guides? How many cards are we allowed per deck? Is there a limit? How many of the same card are allowed?

So far a deck tends to involve the following:

25+ different cards of which
~ 5 are event cards
~ 10 are photosynthetic (or food chain = 1)
~ 5 are herbivores (or food chain = 2)
~ 5 are omnivores
~ 5 are carnivores

Each deck has a total of about 45 to 50 cards in total, meaning that there are duplicates and triplicates of some cards. Note that 2 of the cards in the deck would be home cards.

Hope that helps
Cheers, Dave

davehwng wrote:So far a deck tends to involve the following:

25+ different cards of which
~ 5 are event cards
~ 10 are photosynthetic (or food chain = 1)
~ 5 are herbivores (or food chain = 2)
~ 5 are omnivores
~ 5 are carnivores

Each deck has a total of about 45 to 50 cards in total, meaning that there are duplicates and triplicates of some cards. Note that 2 of the cards in the deck would be home cards.

Hope that helps
Cheers, Dave

Assuming these are 'musts' I can see some OK decks here. Anyone eve submit any combos or deck lists for you?

Actually, there not even technically "must haves." It's more a situation where every card has a chance to be played, and that the mix presents a situation where players aren't stalled (i.e. can't do anything) too often. The list below, gives you a rough idea of a mix that tends to work.

As far as coming up with other combos, that would be awesome - especially, if there's a theme that could be worked in (i.e. based on locality, or subject, etc). Anyway, let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

I think that will be my goal. The game achieves its teaching objective, but seem to lack in appeal (at least to the kids I've shown it to). Ramping up synergy between the cards will entice kids to play more and force them to read the cards. I'd also like to see if I can adapt a set of deck building rules to this cardset. The most compatible rules that come to mind are the ones that make up the cerberus system from Cryptozoic.

The kids we've tested it on, like it best when it's:

a) their own card deck (i.e. like the stuff you see in the DIY section), or

b) when it's one of the fancier decks (which aren't quite available yet) - see http://popperfont.net/2012/09/12/check-out-some-of-the-proofs-for-the-beaty-phylomon-deck/

Anyway, also keen to see different game mechanics designed, since we do hope for other ways of using the cards to be developed. If you're basing it on the cerberus system, just be careful, as some of our IP community have advised us of some gaming companies being very protective of their game mechanics (Magic for example is pretty aggressive apparently).

Game on!

WOTC has been becoming quite aggressive lately I agree. However, the Cerberus system draws heavily from other DBG (namely Ascension and darn near every other deck builder that isn't Dominion). I feel safe using the basic framework with these cards as there is no way the gameplay would be anywhere near similar. I like the playspace as laid out, but in this instance feel that separating the game into individual player bios will work best. This being said, I'm already looking to add events to reinforce the gameplay. So far by doing this, I've made this into a 4 player experience and made it so more cards are viewed (at least in my little world).

Awesome! Keep me posted. If you can do it so that the data on the species card can more or less stay the same, then that would be very cool. Event cards have generally been designed as flex cards that allow you to "add some specific text, so as to do specific things". (and we don't even have to call them event cards if you come up with a number of different type of flex cards).

I see no reason to change the species cards at all. I plan to build around them. I think a large communal pool of cards is appropriate here. My challenge is bringing those cards to the players and having them available for use. It'll just take some thought is all.

davehwng wrote:
Anyway, also keen to see different game mechanics designed, since we do hope for other ways of using the cards to be developed.  If you're basing it on the cerberus  system, just be careful, as some of our IP community have advised us of some gaming companies being very protective of their game mechanics (Magic for example is pretty aggressive apparently).

Game on!

What is Cerberus system, anyway?