infinity deckbuilder things

[Something_Smart]

Interested to hear about the mechanics. I could rant all day about my favorite Dominion cards, but small mechanics choices have a big impact on the balance so I'd probably want to hear those before giving any specific ideas.

I'm a deckbuilder enthusiast and amateur board game designer (I haven't published or anything, but I hope to one day) so hmu on discord if you want to chat about anything.

[Something_Smart]

So each person will start the game with 4 unique powers?

Seems like it would be pretty hard to balance those, since there are generally a few things in deckbuilders that are critical (drawing cards and thinning your deck, usually), and lack of access to those could put someone at a disadvantage early on. Can you give some examples of what you would want the powers to do? (e.g. how strong they are, how much they impact the game)

I'm generally not a fan of deckbuilders having a rotating lineup, but it can be made to work. The big problem is when a key card comes up such that an opponent gets the first chance to buy it. This can be solved by not having any key cards that are insta-buys, or by having lots of cards that do any particular thing, but the former is boring and the latter is complicated. I like your idea of letting someone wipe the lineup if a card comes up they don't want an opponent getting, which addresses this issue and also the issue of the lineup getting clogged with trash nobody wants. Maybe you could also have some kind of mechanic that would allow people to reserve cards? That could be interesting.

The deckbuilders I'm most familiar with all have some kind of action economy that restricts which/how many cards you can play on your turn (most notably Dominion). I haven't played the DC deckbuilder (I read through the rules), but I would be surprised if the card design space didn't suffer because it doesn't have this; for instance, with no action limits, anything that draws two or more cards is kinda really good. Have you given any thought to whether you want to have something like this?

[Something_Smart]

Having played Dominion online and in-person a lot, the fact that it's a digital game makes long turns a lot less of an issue because people can click through them fast (as long as there aren't a ton of tough decisions in every turn). And, even though Dominion has action restrictions it's still possible to have big turns. Slay the Spire is also that way.

My worry is that "strong enough deck" in a game with no action economy just means "hoard all the draw cards". It looks like DC solves that by having conditional draw, so to draw a lot of cards you need to build your deck around combos. This seems like a good design space for powers to essentially give you +1 card when something happens, though that feels like it might be hard to balance. Is that the kind of thing you were going for?

I'm happy to help balance/brainstorm card ideas, but I would want to see some of your ideas for the cards and powers first to get an idea of the power level you're aiming for. The powers seem like the most important thing to generate ideas for, since they have such a huge effect on game balance.

[Something_Smart]

idk if anyone can help with this but how should i code the cards? should i just pass in the name of the card to the constructor and configure the class variables and "play" function based on the card name? should i have a separate subclass for each card?

Subclass is probably the "proper" way to do it, but either will work. Whichever you're more comfortable with, I guess.

is there a 3-5 cost card in dominion that gives you power and also cantrips?

-ace

"Power" = money? There are a lot of cards that are some variant of +1 card, +1 action, +$1.

[Something_Smart]

http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index. ... t_of_cards

This seems pretty useful for Dominion. Not sure how easily searchable it is, but it's sortable by a bunch of different characteristics.