|
The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017
While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
Click here for more
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
| |
The Vs. System is markedly different from other trading card game systems. Not only is it a rarity to find a game system that spans several different standalone games yet is designed with enough care to let the individual "games" be played together, Vs. uses several ideas that are innovative, and in some cases completely unique. The end result is a gaming experience that stands out from its competitors and offers refreshing new takes on ideas that TCG buffs have seen rehashed time and again. Creativity! Originality! Low and behold, a new dawn awakens!
. . .
Well, that was actually sort of my reaction when I played my first demo games of Vs. last December. I was pretty impressed. However, once the rush wore off, reality hit: if this game is so unique and original, how the heck do I make sense of it?
 It actually can be quite daunting. In a game with a nearly - unheard of draw dynamic, a resource concept that uses both a turn-regenerated expenditure system and a threshold cost, a power-to-cost ratio that's set on a steep curve, and initiative instead of strict turn-based play, it's not easy to sit down with a spoiler or a pile of cards and figure out a tourney-winning deck. Sure, you can look at cards' effects and see which ones are attractive, but can you judge when they'll be attractive? It might be possible to look at a 2-cost character and judge how useful it'll be on turn two by comparing it against other turn two cards, but how useful will that card be on turn three, or turn four, or beyond? It might be easy to prioritize a set number of card slots for 1- and 2-cost characters, but how many 7-cost characters should your deck include?
This is the first instalment in a short series of articles that will try to help you find the answers you need to approach the Vs. System. I'm going to look at the mechanics that make it so different from other games, and deconstruct them to make them easier to digest.
Today we look at the immediate difference that's apparent when you sit down to play your first few games of Vs., regardless of universe. In most games, each turn begins with a draw phase, and this game is no exception. However, in Vs., you draw two cards per turn instead of one—in my memory, there's only one other game that ever tried this, and uhh . . . dead men tell no tales. So currently, this mechanic is unique.
Veteran players of TCGs in general realize the importance of deck manipulation - there's obviously more to getting what you want out of your deck than luck, straight drawing, and search cards. There are also important factors that are a bit more complicated, some positive, some negative. In the positive column there's deck thinning—the more cards you get out of your deck that aren't what you're looking for, the higher your chances of drawing what you are looking for when you make a random draw. These cards could be placed into your hand, put directly into play, or discarded. It doesn't matter—as long as they're out of your way, it's a positive thing within this context.
In the negative column, there's offensive recursion, like when your opponent sends things back into your deck randomly (or worse yet, to the top of your deck) in order to decrease your odds of drawing the card you need.
In between these two factors is self-recursion—sending your own cards back into your deck. If you're sending back cards that you want to see again, you're naturally increasing your odds of drawing into them, but when you do this you're also decreasing your odds of drawing anything other than the cards you returned to the deck.
It's a simple concept. Where it gets complicated is when you start actually breaking down the numbers to try to calculate odds of drawing what you want. The numbers themselves are not the hard part; if a player wants to know the odds of drawing certain things right down to specific percentages, a calculator or a bit of mental math and cognitive dissonance is going to get the job done. Where it becomes difficult for most players is when they try to make sense of the numbers themselves in relation to the game. Consider the following scenario.
I want to increase my odds of drawing a certain card. There are 30 cards remaining in my deck, and 2 of those are copies of the card I'm looking for. The odds of topdecking one of those two cards is at this point slightly higher than 6.6 percent. Now, say that I have the option of returning one card from my discard (or, in Vs.'s case, the KO'd pile) to my deck and shuffling the deck after I return it. The card I am trying to draw is a candidate for this recursion, so all is well. If I decide to return that card to my deck, my chances of topdecking the card become 3:31—slightly higher than 9.6 percent. This is where a player has to look beyond the math and numbers of the game, and utilize his or her skill specific to the game at hand. The player must ask him or herself if the 3 percent increase is worth taking action, and possibly paying costs for that action. Though it can be very worthwhile, 3 percent isn't much of a difference on its own, so the player is immediately confronted with the question of what other actions can be taken in conjunction with this single action to turn that 3 percent into 10 or 20, instead.
 I don't think many people actually sit and run such specific numbers through their heads for every single move they make. The problem you can slip into if you do, is that you become focused on numbers and lose track of the game—your opponent's reactions and possible options. The thing that separates good card players from superb ones is instinct. The ones who can make the number-related judgments without doing specific calculations come out on top. A player experienced in one TCG is generally going to do better at a new game than a player who has never played a TCG before, the reason being that the veteran player already has certain instincts developed.
And so, we get to Vs., the game that turns these instincts on their heads. Since the standard draw every turn is two cards instead of one, there's an extra mathematical complication. Actions can't be weighed by the old number-crunching instincts, as there's a huge difference in gameplay when you're drawing double the amount of cards you're used to accounting for. Games of Vs. currently last between six to eight turns on average. With your initial draw of four cards taken into account, that means you're going to be seeing between sixteen and twenty cards of your deck in most games, without using anything to manipulate that total. Of course, there are cards even in the initial Marvel release that can play with these numbers. Plot twists like Signal Flare, Faces of Doom, and Tech Upgrade all let you search your deck for certain types of cards, thinning your deck of these cards so you can use your draws to get to others. Other plot twists, like Common Enemy, Mutant Nation, Unlikely Allies, and the mighty Primary Directive, all allow you to draw additional cards beyond your usual two per turn. There are character cards that have similar effects, such as Forge, Cheyenne Mystic. All of these can help you make the most of your straight draws.
 With a few cards that have effects like the above, you'll generally see between one third to one half of your deck in a standard Constructed game (assuming you stick very close to the minimum 60-card deck parameters). This is an important figure when considering deck building—you might not have a lot of time in the early game to draw specific cards, but by the late game you'll have about a fifty/fifty chance of seeing any one-of in your deck with a bit of aggressive deck management. That said, deck building by recruit cost should be done according to a slope. A conventional deck should have many more low-cost cards than high-cost cards, since by the time you get to the point where you can use that Jean Grey, Phoenix Force or Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria, you'll have had ample time to draw into it. Character cards in particular need to be balanced carefully—what could possibly be more frustrating than having to commit that Magneto, Lord Magnus that you drew on turn one to the resource row, where it will likely never be seen again? With the number of cards you're going to draw over the course of the game, you don't need to include three copies of your more expensive powerful cards to give yourself a good chance of drawing one before the game ends.
With the two-card draw mechanic, Vs. challenges the instincts of veteran TCG players. Now that this mechanic and its ramifications have been explored a bit, you're hopefully one step closer to adjusting to the play style that Vs. requires.
Thanks for reading! Next up, I'll be profiling the challenges and choices presented by Vs.'s resource system.
|
| |
| Top of Page |
|
|
|
|
|