In post 7015, Vecna wrote:
I really would also not remove the deck rigging. Sure its a complicated mechanism that can be abused, but it allows for a lot of creative uses that make this setup a lot of fun - might need some minor tweaks to avoid infinite loops though
. I think the real fun here starts when both town and scum teams have one and then you have to figure out which person above/below you in the draft is stopping you from abusing your awesome plan.
I agree Deck Rigging is a fun power, if a bit complicated for those not really paying attention, but it needs to be tweaked if it returns. I'd probably only have it cover 1/4 of suits next time as opposed to 2/4 and maybe alter it so the rigger gets told the bottom 3 cards of the deck at the start of the phase and then picks which one to put on top, so it prevents looping with card reviving to the Rigger and has to make more interesting decisions based on what's available to rig.
In post 7015, Vecna wrote:
The scum factional kill disabler: The downside of this card will get NEVER activated since town will ofcourse never lynch the person on this suit. Maybe make it apply to any death during spades so that scum has a shot at activating the downside, AND requiring the person to play better to avoid having to out themselves as having the card.
Yep, I like Beloved as a scare-power for town, but it needs to be matched to a different power for this reason.
In post 7015, Vecna wrote:
I personally feel a new deck of 104 cards needs to be used to determine trumps, so that all cards have equal probability of showing up. Card spy and deck rig still put cards on this deck. Deck rigging a card should remove that card from the game after it has become trumps so it cannot be card revived and deck rigged again. After a card has been trump it gets removed from the real deck as well so that Inventory can still be applied to the old deck.
I feel like the using the same deck for drawing trumps from is better as it helps minimise the amount of power active at once by making low-demand suits/ranks more likely to appear. It also allows players when drafting to select cards from ranks that feature a few mediocre cards in the belief that those are less likely to be selected, increasing one's own card's chances to be activated. I think reducing power as much as possible needs to be attempted in some way (which is why a Disabler exists in each different suit) to minimise the very high levels of swing already present in such a setup.
In post 7015, Vecna wrote:
Do you think the setup was within the realm of balanced and not favouring one side too heavily?
Very hard to judge after this one game. I think number-wise, 18vs 5 is ok....but....A LOT of very strong tools were not utilized this game. Personally I think there are (way?) too many cop cards in this game, and if town had picked more cops + card cops I think this game becomes virtually unwinnable for scum if a few of them come as trumps early. Defences against cops are only in clubs and diamonds, and requires a heavy investment for scum. On the other hand, scum could have made some killer combinations with card cops + vigs to seriously up our killing potential, but even then itll become a race against the clock to eliminate all the cops in time I think and you have a lot more card-cop liabilities.
The Cop powers and which cards they occupied were the most thought out because they have the most potential to destroy a scumteam. You have to remember that all the Cops were placed on Spades/Hearts cards, meaning that if all the Cops were taken, there's only one suit for each rank that a Cop can get an untainted result, as the two Queen of Spades Cop cards for example can't get activated by any Queen of Spades since they're in player hands.
There were two separate Miller cards to fakeclaim on Diamonds investigations for scum, and a GF/Ascetic/Roleblocker also in Diamonds for scum to take. The clubs Cop disabler was an important card for scum defense, but even if scum didn't want to take that, they had other defensive options too, such as; 2/3 of Cop cards were on Jacks/Queens making them vulnerable to Royalty Vigs and the 10 Cop had a PGO/Roleblocker available in the same rank and a Jailkeeper in the Queen which can provide chances to evade being investigated.
There was also thought put into which cards were to be put on the same rank for Cops; the QH, JS, 10H were the three Cop activating cards untainted by Disablers/Millers/GF's etc. but were also some of the most attractive cards in the deck; Jailkeeper/Card Flip, Suit Veto/Alpha Deck Rig, Alpha Vig/Fruit Allergy. 4/6 of those cards got drafted, which meant there were only two pure Cop Investigation cards in the deck.
A selection criteria I didn't see scum considering this game (which I think would be a good one for future scumteams) would be to select the premium cards from ranks they're scared about (particularly if they have good suit powers), which has the twofold effect of collecting some good powers and also reducing the chances of the powers they're scared of activating.
Like I said earlier, I think predicting which cards will be in high demand and which will be ignored (and thus, which cards will have good odds of being activated) makes for a fun draft metagame and is one of the reasons why I like the deck comprising of the left over undrafted cards.
In post 7015, Vecna wrote:
Scum having strongman on half of all trumps also probably makes way too many other cards a bit on the weak side for town since it makes all bulletproof/docs even less likely to save someone.
The card draw / card revive balance is a bit off. Card revive is a lot better in what it achieves since you can pick the card and person. But card revive has decent other skills (especially the 7-h) while all the card draw cards have have downsides, especially for town.
Agree re: Strongman and would probably only have it on 1/4 suits next time. I think the suit powers Card Draw comes with could be upgraded, because when you think about, you're likely only going to get one, maaaaaybe two uses of Card Draw at best, and if the card has a detrimental power on it, you might as well just draft a different card and pretend you drew it. I also like the idea of a Super Draw power (name a specific card in the deck, if it exists draw it to your hand).