Post by Scott on Apr 1, 2018 19:01:36 GMT
The purpose of the card pool mechanic is to prevent a player from immediately winning a combat by playing all of their cards in the first round.
On the face of things, this seems like a needless complication in a KISS style system. Granted, there are a few combinations of cards that can trivialize a combat (Death God + Multi Kill?), but even with those cards, the "auto-win" is still conditional. (You need a BFG, clear lines of fire, etc.) And when those stars do align, all the card pool mechanic means is that you "auto-win" on round 2 instead of round 1.
It seems the more elegant solution would be to delete and/or revise the OP cards, rather than design game mechanics around the OP cards. I made this change immediately when I started GMing HC years back and never regretted it. The combat in Logan's new game felt weird and clunky to me, having to deal with pooling cards again. This is especially apparent gaming online. It's easy with a physical deck to have separate piles, but Roll20 lacks any way to manipulate or flag the cards in hand.
On the face of things, this seems like a needless complication in a KISS style system. Granted, there are a few combinations of cards that can trivialize a combat (Death God + Multi Kill?), but even with those cards, the "auto-win" is still conditional. (You need a BFG, clear lines of fire, etc.) And when those stars do align, all the card pool mechanic means is that you "auto-win" on round 2 instead of round 1.
It seems the more elegant solution would be to delete and/or revise the OP cards, rather than design game mechanics around the OP cards. I made this change immediately when I started GMing HC years back and never regretted it. The combat in Logan's new game felt weird and clunky to me, having to deal with pooling cards again. This is especially apparent gaming online. It's easy with a physical deck to have separate piles, but Roll20 lacks any way to manipulate or flag the cards in hand.
