Fight Klub

New post about card rarity from the Game Designer, Tim Ellington....snip:

Card rarity has always had an impact on TCG gameplay.

No matter the number of cards in a set, the rarity (availability) of each card has implications on both collecting a set and building a deck. Buying enough cards to get one of everything doesn’t always mean you’ll have enough of all the cards you want to build various decks. In many cases, the power cards are rare and you have to buy (or trade) more cards than you needed for your “complete set” in order to get all the copies you want for deck-building.

If you played Star Trek CCG or Star Wars CCG, you know that there was no card limit, and some decks could be abusive with high numbers of the same card. If such a card was rare, it made it difficult for the average player to build competitive decks. Conversely, if you played The Lord of the Rings TCG you know that the 4-card limit in that game hindered some of the above problems, but still left the threshold for a “play-set” measurably higher than a “collection.”

Fight Klub wants to do better than that. Much better.

In the Fight Klub TCG there is a structure to deck limits called 1-3-3, meaning one copy of any rare, three copies of any uncommon, and three copies of any common.

While it’s true that limiting rares to one per deck may make drawing a particular rare card into your hand during a game more difficult, note that the number of cards in a Fight Klub draw deck is only 27, less than many other TCGs. (Deck structures will be covered in a future post.) And since you can have up to three copies of any uncommon or common card, Fight Klub does something no other TCG has ever done as far as we know: it makes a play-set almost the same purchase point as a “collection.” In other words, this ratio means that if you buy enough cards for a full collection of any expansion set (30 rares, 30 uncommons and 40 commons), you will have roughly the same amount of cards you need for a play-set from that expansion.

Each Kilo has 10 rares and an assortment of uncommons and commons, so that over the course of a 3-Kilo or 4-Kilo purchase, you should get pretty close to a full set. Random assortment of cards within Kilos means some duplication, but with some trading or splitting of a 4th Kilo with friends, you should be able to put together a complete set/full play-set. A play-set in the neighborhood of $100.00 is extremely player-friendly compared to other TCGs on the market.

How does limiting rares to a single copy of each card impact gameplay? Fight Klub is designed to harmonize rare gameplay with cards that minimize the need for multiple copies. Character cards, cards that would otherwise be marked “unique” for gameplay purposes, and strong gameplay functions that need a natural restriction are all targets for rare designation.

There are two other things to consider with the 1-3-3 deck structure: (1) Because there is a 1-rare limit, when you get multiple copies of a rare card it’s easier to trade because anyone else with two copies of another rare can only use one at a time in a deck, and (2) We have a plan to address the possibility of making certain “rare gameplay” more available in future expansion sets, if necessary. Players will without question be a part of determining which cards see their gameplay repeated.

Playing Fight Klub TCG should not be a “rich get richer” experience. We want all players to have reasonable access to full playsets and the breadth of gameplay and strategy offered in this exciting new product.

So what about people who want to break the rules by playing with more than one copy of a rare card? Well, this is the players’ game after all. Decipher will officially support the 1-3-3 rule and a 40-card deck for competitions, but we will also have a section on the web to support, “street rules,” where the playing community will determine from time-to-time everything from the number of copies of a card to the size of the deck limit.

Tim

....snip, thanks Tim!