Poll on hand limits

I agree, hand limit won't avoid fast cycling. Maybe a minimum of units in each army and/or the proposition of Garshell : "Condition 2 : You have strictly less card in hand than your Discard pile."

Ok, now I understand the issue and it is not a problem at all.

It just allows more options in peoples hands, double activation every turn, and a lot of retaliation blows.

Looks good to me.

Malamute wrote:

Ok, now I understand the issue and it is not a problem at all.

It just allows more options in peoples hands, double activation every turn, and a lot of retaliation blows.

Looks good to me.

The problem is not really the difference beetween players cause they will all have all ths choice they want.
The problem is more like... why are we using cards at this point ? why not playing what i want when it's my turn ?
Then we miss one part of this nice game, i mean the card mechanic... why draw, why search, why waiting to have this card if you have already all in hand...

With the condition i propose, then you keep a bit more this mechanic because you cant cycling if you have more than half of your cards in hand. And then you must be carefull with what you play until you go under this half, because you can't draw anymore and can't renew your discard pile in Deck.

Just kill the guy with the smallest deck then since it seems it occurs mostly in 3 or 4 player games. :-)

Ya know, if someone drafts to cause this problem, then draft to kill them. >

In the beta rules thread I noted that nowhere was a hand limit mentioned. However, from this thread my gut leans toward "no hand limit" for these reasons (plus others noted earlier):

-- remembering to "check your hand" for the card count is a nuisance and too-often forgotten (tacking on a rule to have to remember to check is more cognitive overhead than I want to manage!)

-- to it seems like "gaming the system" for a player to intentionally set up this situation, which tells me this is someone more interested in pushing the boundaries than playing the game (i.e., last game I'm playing with this guy!)

-- Maybe just mention it can happen in a sidebar to the rules and call it a quirk (pun intended, Jake!). Tell them "Repeating Deck Syndrome" is disallowed or address how to deal with it. Then I know it exists and don't have to keep it alive in my mind. I can look it up if ever needed. As a rule, it becomes "another thing to remember," yet it does not seem frequent enough to merit such overhead in a player's mind.

Hope this added something of value to the convo.

Denarius wrote:

-- to it seems like "gaming the system" for a player to intentionally set up this situation, which tells me this is someone more interested in pushing the boundaries than playing the game (i.e., last game I'm playing with this guy!)

-- Maybe just mention it can happen in a sidebar to the rules and call it a quirk (pun intended, Jake!). Tell them "Repeating Deck Syndrome" is disallowed or address how to deal with it. Then I know it exists and don't have to keep it alive in my mind. I can look it up if ever needed. As a rule, it becomes "another thing to remember," yet it does not seem frequent enough to merit such overhead in a player's mind.

I'm in agreement with these points. It seems it's such a rare edge case that it's perhaps not worth trying to find convoluted ways of fixing it.

On the other hand, one possible way to prevent an infinite loop would be to completely reset the player's hand if he can't draw anymore. For instance, if a player would draw a card and has no cards remaining in the draw pile or discard pile, then that player shuffles his hand and that becomes his new deck. He then draws 6 cards.
You'd still end up having frequent cycles because of the small amount of cards, but at least the players aren't playing with their entire deck in their hand. It's an extra rule to remember, but I think it would be an rare enough situation that you could just look it up in the rules if it ever occurs.

MaxC wrote:

I'm in agreement with these points. It seems it's such a rare edge case that it's perhaps not worth trying to find convoluted ways of fixing it.

On the other hand, one possible way to prevent an infinite loop would be to completely reset the player's hand if he can't draw anymore. For instance, if a player would draw a card and has no cards remaining in the draw pile or discard pile, then that player shuffles his hand and that becomes his new deck. He then draws 6 cards.
You'd still end up having frequent cycles because of the small amount of cards, but at least the players aren't playing with their entire deck in their hand. It's an extra rule to remember, but I think it would be an rare enough situation that you could just look it up in the rules if it ever occurs.

Wow no way about the hand and discard pile shuffling !!! Imagine this case, you have your 3 God cards at the end your deck, you take those card using AW and no more card left. You play one oki, but next turn you must draw a card at the begining of your turn and then PAFFFFFFFFF you loose all your hand !!! no way !!!

One other options could be :

condition 2 (B) : After your are the last player who trigger a Battle cycling, if your deck is over again, you can't draw anymore and must play all your hand before doing the next Battle Cycling. (this mean the first battle cycling is a normal one. this prevent player to trigger over and over too fast)
Then small deck won't have so much choice during the time to empty their hand.
They will almost always trigger the Battle cycling anyway but the other player will have more choice in hand, even during the time the player with the little deck empty his hand. (no need to count, just empty your hand)

This make me think about one thing too ^^,, Why not allow player to search in their discard pile too ? (they could SEARCH (and reveal to other player if you think its to powerful) an already played card they could need faster, using an AW to do this is a cost too)
In other way this possibility could be a unit's power =))

i voted for no hand limit.

Don't forget we playing a game and the most important things are Simplicity and Fun.

adding a hand limit or spécials drawing rules or make us count our hand will add complexity in the game mechanics. When its too complicated they are many mistakes and then more frustrated situations because of the wrong use of the spécial rules.

make it simple !!

fast cycling is a tactic, not an exploit. fast cycling has advantages but also disavantages. Some players like having few units and play fast, and other players want fun with many or big units.

try not to transform the game into the " the only mechanic to win all "

just have fun !!

ps: sorry , english is not my mother tongue :p

Minifred wrote:

i voted for no hand limit.

Don't forget we playing a game and the most important things are Simplicity and Fun.

adding a hand limit or spécials drawing rules or make us count our hand will add complexity in the game mechanics. When its too complicated they are many mistakes and then more frustrated situations because of the wrong use of the spécial rules.

make it simple !!

fast cycling is a tactic, not an exploit. fast cycling has advantages but also disavantages. Some players like having few units and play fast, and other players want fun with many or big units.

try not to transform the game into the " the only mechanic to win all "

just have fun !!  

ps: sorry , english is not my mother tongue :p

With the last proposition i said, you don't have to count, just remember if you were the last player who trigger the battle cycling to empty your hand before battle cycling again.

Acutally If you have a too fast deck, you will battle cycling even 2 times in the same turn ! I do'nt want to have to cycle again and again cause of 1 player... its a battle game, not a cycle game !! =))

As some of you said before, this case is rare enough to just add a little condition to prevent extrem case.

Garshell wrote:

The problem is not really the difference beetween players cause they will all have all ths choice they want.
The problem is more like... why are we using cards at this point ? why not playing what i want when it's my turn ?
Then we miss one part of this nice game, i mean the card mechanic... why draw, why search, why waiting to have this card if you have already all in hand...

Well, your example indeed caused a situation where all players have all their card .. the main question is if this tactic (if deliberate) would be viable.

In my experience thus far, people would save up a lot of cards anyway.
Because you can't set up an offense (offence?) with just 1 card in your hand. So people start saving cards. Wait for that AoW card.
Anyway .. the things I wrote in post #2.

In any case I am happy an overwhelming number of voters picked "no limit".

Teowulff wrote:

Garshell wrote:

The problem is not really the difference beetween players cause they will all have all ths choice they want.
The problem is more like... why are we using cards at this point ? why not playing what i want when it's my turn ?
Then we miss one part of this nice game, i mean the card mechanic... why draw, why search, why waiting to have this card if you have already all in hand...

Well, your example indeed caused a situation where all players have all their card .. the main question is if this tactic (if deliberate) would be viable.

In my experience thus far, people would save up a lot of cards anyway.
Because you can't set up an offense (offence?) with just 1 card in your hand. So people start saving cards. Wait for that AoW card.
Anyway .. the things I wrote in post #2.

In any case I am happy an overwhelming number of voters picked "no limit".

I didn't vote yet, and if i would i will do no limite. But i think the question is not here... I prefere add condition.
As you siad many player save card to do an offense. After a battle cycling , almost all player will have all their card in hand, including AW to trigger Power etc.
But when big Deck will do one offense using their AW and waiting another shuffle to get their AW back, small Deck will use them to attack too and battle cycling will give them back almost directly after their turn. So they could attack with power almost every turn if we don't add delay beetween cycle. An dimagine if Pandora is in this small deck, she could cut in half all hand many timesand you ll have probleme after the first cycling because each new cycle will give you not many cards and you ll put half hand twice in a row in discard pile after...

No limite card in hand is good, but no delay in cycling is a bit abuse because its like having double AW. And you ll pass your time to shuffle instead of playing... and you ll loose the card mechanic gestion...

So this poll is a wrong one =))

1/ I want to stay with actual rules
2/ I want condition 2 (A)
3/ I want condition 2 (B)
4/ I want condition ...
5/ I want other ...

Because i don't care to count i like all conditions, but if you don't want to count you could like condition 2

I'm not sure which option I like less. One requires card counting, just like hand sizes, and the other requires remembering who triggered something several turns ago. I can see both being problematic.

My feeling is that we don't have the right solution yet.

I think this poll has admirably served the purposes for which I made it

I'm not sure that adding other rules to prevent an effect that happens so rarely is a good idea, personaly.

If the case has never been encountered during all the playtests, but is just a theoretical one, with no deep impact on the curse of the game, and it doesn't really interfer with rules (when you have no deck to draw cards, it seems reasonable not to draw...).
The case may just be a problem in tournaments, I feel.

Possibly. However, if it can be engineered by players deliberately (which I think it probably can), then I think we need to consider a way to mitigate it - because it will probably end up as an exploit otherwise. Loops are seldom good things.

Hand limits are probably not the answer, which gives us a different question.

Maybe Benoit should answer this question ?

I've been discussing it with him. He's mostly busy with other parts of the MBP project at the moment, so I'm sorting out the rules details.

I wonder if this issue is only triggered by a specific deck size. Say, if a deck was <14 cards. If that was the case, then a minimum deck size for an army would be another approach to mitigating the problem.

Thoughts?

I feel that deck size is not the only criteria to take into account, as hand size also has an impact.
But clearly, the bigger the deck the less is chance to encounter this case of infinite loop (not sure about the english).

Voice of Olympus wrote:

I wonder if this issue is only triggered by a specific deck size. Say, if a deck was <14 cards. If that was the case, then a minimum deck size for an army would be another approach to mitigating the problem.

Thoughts?

The shortest deck is 13 cards (10 from units + 3 AW basic in hand at start).
And with this Deck you can trigger a cycle at the 3rd turn and then you can trigger cycle every turn or 2 turn (check my example in this topic 1st page).
I think you all should play this config to understand =)) Take Aphrodite + Charybdis + Colchis Bull, and your Ally what he want, and play against 2 other player who take regular army. (2v2 mode)
Start as i said in my example and then play. Charybdis will be devastating and will move and kill really fast.

I don't think adding a minimum card limite in your deck will help to play what we want. Doing this you won't allow some combinaisons.
I really think you should search about cycling delay.

The question is whether enforcing a minimum deck size would stop some legitimate and desired tactical options.

Our current thought is not to ban some combinations of units, but to add extra cards (of a new type) to increase the deck to the minimum size.

Voice of Olympus wrote:

The question is whether enforcing a minimum deck size would stop some legitimate and desired tactical options.

Our current thought is not to ban some combinations of units, but to add extra cards (of a new type) to increase the deck to the minimum size.

I though about that too, but then are those card only penalty ? or useable for something ?
If it's only penalty so you ll see player starting to count cards to get the smallest one without having Penalty cards.

You don't directly ban some combinaison, but nobody will do that in this case.

Btw, moving a small army is always faster than controle a larger army and we feel that actually.

Instead of giving a penalty to small deck, why not give bonus to big one like : if you have 20+ card in your Deck Take 1 Omphalos card in addition, if you have 30+ card 2 Omphalos card, etc...

This won't reduce the cycling, but will give advantage to big army to balance Team (just an idea)

Voice of Olympus wrote:

The question is whether enforcing a minimum deck size would stop some legitimate and desired tactical options.

Our current thought is not to ban some combinations of units, but to add extra cards (of a new type) to increase the deck to the minimum size.

An idea comes to me by reading this: what about a new type of card with that effect: "play this card immediately: choose 2 cards in your discard pile, place it in your deck, shuffle and draw a card"?
It adds one card to the deck when drawn, so delays the cycling, and adds an effect that is not negative (a kind of targetted cycling).
By the way, I didn't thought of all the consequences of this effect.

The bonus for large armies is worth considering, though as you say it doesn't address the issue at hand.

The additional cards don't need to be entirely punitive.

The whole idea reminds me strongly of the Confrontation army building, where managing how many cards you needed to activate the army was a central point of finessing your force.

I suppose the real question here is whether there is a threshold number for cards in an army that makes sense to enforce - ie, one that both avoids crippling tactical choice, but removes (or at least heavily reduces) the battle cycle loop problem.

Or we could just ignore the whole thing.

Realistically, if someone knows how to do it, they can set up a loop regardless of deck size or whatever. You just spend the a cycle playing as few cards as possible and the next cycle use all the abilities to draw all your cards as quickly as possible, and both you and your opponent should have small decks at that point with most cards in hand at that point.

The best counter is to offer game-play and positioning so intense that a player cannot afford to spend the time holding cards to set up speed cycling. Rather than add rules to make it so players can't do it, just make it so that doing it is not a winning strategy.

The next best thing is to figure out how people are doing it, and add really simple limits to mitigate it. For example, if your hand is greater than a certain number, you cannot elect to pass (to draw a second card) or to discard an art of War to draw 2 cards.