Draft Strategies

[sivousplay]

I thought this might be a cool thing to discuss both from the "general fun" perspective and it might give Marc a chance to see how people are evaluating things and make any changes if he saw something undesired taking place.

From my perspective, I think that the characters / portfolios are very cool and I will definitley focus on the Gems cards to try and get some of the cool portfolio enhancements. I also very much like the idea of being heroic and will therefore work to get some swords cards to increase my Hero Points. I would not be inclined to sacrifice either of these two for dragon stuff or for stat mods (stars) because I'm expecting to play an ECL character that's already had a number of stat mods.

What are the rest of you thinking?
jim

BTW, Marc brought up a very interesting point when he and I were discussing this offline ... if there are two suits that you're interested in then your MUST HAVE VERY FAVORITE CHARACTER has a 50/50 chance of sitting on a suit that you don't care about!!!

[marcq]

Originally Posted by sivousplay

I thought this might be a cool thing to discuss both from the "general fun" perspective and it might give Marc a chance to see how people are evaluating things and make any changes if he saw something undesired taking place.

From my perspective, I think that the characters / portfolios are very cool and I will definitley focus on the Gems cards to try and get some of the cool portfolio enhancements. I also very much like the idea of being heroic and will therefore work to get some swords cards to increase my Hero Points. I would not be inclined to sacrifice either of these two for dragon stuff or for stat mods (stars) because I'm expecting to play an ECL character that's already had a number of stat mods.

Please do let me know your thoughts on game balance and just your basic interests. While you may end up causing me to reduce something you think is very cool, be aware that imbalance issues can be spotted by several folks and you may not be the one to take advantage of it

Also, if something seems to be unpopular (such as a particular suit), I'll look for ways to make it more interesting.

Originally Posted by sivousplay

BTW, Marc brought up a very interesting point when he and I were discussing this offline ... if there are two suits that you're interested in then your MUST HAVE VERY FAVORITE CHARACTER has a 50/50 chance of sitting on a suit that you don't care about!!!

To carry that further, if there are two suits you want to focus on and two figures you really want, the odds of both figures being on your preferred suit is only 1 in 4.

Therefore, you need to decide whether you are more interested in a particular figure or more interested in particular suits. In the latter case, I would recommend coming up with an ordered list of figures (from most to least desirable) and doing your card-peeks/picks in that order (strictly).

For instance, you'd peek at the cards under your first and second favorite figures the first round. If neither of them had the suits you wanted, then you pick the 3rd most favorite figure (so that you at least still have a chance of getting your preferred suit). (Also, don't forget that you might be able to partner up with someone who is looking for other suits: "if you tell me where gems are, I'll tell you where you can find a dragon card.")

Whereas if you are really interested in the figure, then you'll just pick the figure and take whatever card you get.

[marcq]

My own suit preferences will depend on exactly what character concept I have in mind which will likely be strongly influenced by my first two peeks.

For instance, if I go with a human or elf, I'll probably look for more stats (Stars cards). If I go with a half-celestial, I may rely more on my stat mods and not go for any Stars.

If my first pick reveals a figure with a cool bonus card (like the -1 ECL card which is probably the best bonus card out there), I will likely try hard to make that figure work as a PC and that may shift my suit strategy dramatically. If I pick a cool card combo later in the draft, that could throw my whole strategy out the window and leave me with a very mixed hand of cards.

In general, though, my thoughts are to also favor the Swords and Gems suits. That tells me (as a ref) that I may need to beef up Dragons and Stars so I will take a look at that after I have Dragons worked up. I'll probably have Dragons done early tonight so I might try overhauling the cards and suit benefits sooner rather than later.

[SuperBeast]

I agree with Marc, if I plan on a Human character, I am going for star cards and hero points. Any other race will give me enough stat mods to not worry about star cards.

Amongst all this discussion, whatever happened to the idea of trading cards? If that is the case, then all will work out for the best. If I get a human without star cards, I am sure that there is someone with a high ECL race that did get stars I can trade with. Of course, this might be a reason to not allow trading, or at least limit the amount of trading.

[sivousplay]

About trading, my understanding is that you trade "card sets," meaning you don't just trade your suit card, but the figure/bonus card as well. So, the desire to keep a portfolio of certain characters will limit trading all by itself.

IF you don't care about the other members in your portfolio or are willing to work with whatever you get, then you are right, you should be able to trade more effectively. Still, with only 9 cards for a particular suit and 6 players, there will be multiple players trying to get the same cards making it difficult to get too much of any one suit without a certain amount of luck w/ your peaks and picks.

jim

[SuperBeast]

Oh, I see. So you have to trade your whole figure with someone else. I guess if you give up everything to make your main PC super tough, that might work...

It seems to me that the draft is going to be pretty complex, with some subtile stratigies involved. I look forward to have a practice draft.

[sivousplay]

And, don't forget there's the "poker hand" portion of the cards that gives you the chance to be firstborn, should you desire that. So, getting a lot of a suit or lots of a particular number may be something you try for to get the firstborn option.

The firstborn thing is pretty cool, but kinda dangerous for your PC, but if you decline firstborn (as the poker hand winner), you can still get a pretty nice reward. So, it also shouldn't be forgotten as something to at least consider when you're optimizing your strategy.

jim

[marcq]

Originally Posted by sivousplay

About trading, my understanding is that you trade "card sets," meaning you don't just trade your suit card, but the figure/bonus card as well. So, the desire to keep a portfolio of certain characters will limit trading all by itself.

IF you don't care about the other members in your portfolio or are willing to work with whatever you get, then you are right, you should be able to trade more effectively. Still, with only 9 cards for a particular suit and 6 players, there will be multiple players trying to get the same cards making it difficult to get too much of any one suit without a certain amount of luck w/ your peaks and picks.

jim

Jim is correct. You trade card triplets: figures, bonus and suit card all go together. That's why if your heart is set on a particular figure and you also want to get six Sword cards, then you are likely to be in a quandary because your figure is 75% likely to be on something other than swords.

To Jim's second point, it looks like Swords will be very popular which should make it very difficult for anyone to get more than four, at best. It might suggest a better strategy would be to focus on a different suit while picking up whatever swords cards you can manage.

[marcq]

Originally Posted by SuperBeast

It seems to me that the draft is going to be pretty complex, with some subtile stratigies involved. I look forward to have a practice draft.

I agree it will be complex; hopefully in a good way where multiple strategies can work and subtle counts (as opposed to a bad way where it is too confusing to get a character you want and no body is happy ).

I think some practise runs would be in order. In fact, it is something we could try for some of the schedule-conflict weekends coming up. Jim has given me some placeholder pics to use so that I can do a full figure set fairly soon so we can practice whenever.

Trouble is, without six people, it might be hard to do some dry runs. We'd have to play double hands whichis very hard. Better than nothing though.

[marcq]

Originally Posted by sivousplay

And, don't forget there's the "poker hand" portion of the cards that gives you the chance to be firstborn, should you desire that. So, getting a lot of a suit or lots of a particular number may be something you try for to get the firstborn option.

The firstborn thing is pretty cool, but kinda dangerous for your PC, but if you decline firstborn (as the poker hand winner), you can still get a pretty nice reward. So, it also shouldn't be forgotten as something to at least consider when you're optimizing your strategy.

jim

Yep- still more factors (by design) to optimize for. Here's what players will have to consider:

Figure preference
Effects of specific suit cards of interest (for instance, you might really want dragon armor or estates or some such)
Effects of holding n-cards of suit (for HP, stats, etc.)
Bonus card effects which will likely dynamically change your strategy during the draft (that's the intent )

This is an over constrained problem (again by design). I think as a strategy, players should create a figure-pick-order list which is a guide for what figures to peek at to learn where cards are. They should then consider what specific cards they care about, what bonus cards are really interesting to them and what general mix of suits they want. The latter will have to be something like:

Stars cards: none needed
Gems: 1-3
Swords: 2-6
Dragons: if I can get the trueblood card, 2 Dragon cards, otherwise nothing

[marcq]

In the interests of knocking the kinks out of the system (and in the interests of full disclosure), here's my draft strategy as it stands today:

1. Cards matter a lot and there are many figures I like. So, rather than setting my heart on one or two figures, I will instead make an ordered list of figures from most desirable to least desirable. Until I know what suit-bonus card is with a figure, then I might as well pick and peek in the order of most favorite to least favorite figure.
2. I will go through all the bonus cards and pick out the ones that I really find interesting. These cards could cause a change in plans if I can find a figure with them. Most of the others are nice but not worth going out of the way for. Improved ECL and saint are definitely cards that would make me strongly consider playing the figure attached. Sanctified on a cool evil creature like the ogre-dragon or the erinyes may also do it (although those aren't too high on my pick list probably so I probably won't get to find out before someone else does).
3. I will go through all the suit cards looking for cards I'd really like to have. At the moment, while I see lots of interesting cards, the only cards I'd really like to have are the Dragon armor, dragon ring and true blood cards in the dragon suit, and dragons only if I am tending towards a warrior.
4. I will determine what suit mix I want if my pick is tending towards a human. Separately, I will determine suit mix if my pick is tending towards a non-human. I may also work up a mix for spellcaster vs non-caster. The reason I may need to work all of these up is that luck of the deal and bonus cards may send me down different racial paths or classes and different races and classes benefit from different cards. Humans would like Stars for stats whereas many non-humans have plenty good stats and might benefit more from other suits. I need to put some serious thought into this however I suspect that in the heat of the draw, this 'suit favoritism' will go out the window.
   • Humans/elves: favor stars but try to get some hero cards. Also some dragon cards if a warrior.
   • Non-humans: favor either dragon or hero cards depending on the luck of the draw. Try to get the other suit to round out a little.
5. Special cases: do you try for 6 of a suit or best poker hand (for firstborn)? My thoughts are that it is not worth spending much time on pre-draw but if you cards start supporting either strategy, it is something to seriously consider. 6 Cards in a suit is generally quite potent. Firstborn or the bonus for declining (which I probably would do myself if I had best hand) are also a very nice benefit.

Other strategy notes: some players will be playing sophisticated strategies and some will not. Some may be all out for Sword cards (although I suspect these will be very popular and it will be hard to get a corner on these). Others will just have their eye on cool looking figures and will pick without too much care on the cards. Some will carefully consider trades and some might be very cavalier with trades. You might get lucky and draw all your cards or extract them from a casual trader. Or you might find them locked up in the hands of someone who is trying to execute your own exact same strategy. If you aren't flexible you are going to find yourself with a worse hand than you might otherwise.

A lot is going to come down to luck (which is why we will do this several times). Your favorite figure may be sitting on a bonus card or suit card that someone else draws first and will not part with. Or vice versa: a figure you want may be on cards too important to another player for them to part with. Flexibility and reassessment will be required.

[marcq]

Now that I've worked up all the cards (and cut them out- that's a lot of cutting), here's a few more draft thoughts that have occurred to me:

1. It's going to take a long time. It is complicated enough that I think each pick will take a little while. You have to do two peeks and then pick a figure from one of the two new peeks, an old peek or just take a chance on an unknown figure. If you assume 2 minutes per card select X 36 cards, that's 72 minutes. There are also 6 trading rounds X 5 minutes (?) for another 30 minutes. That's 102 minutes per portfolio. I suspect many picks and trade rounds will go fast but there will also be some slow ones and some breaks. Looks like it will be just the 2, possibly 3 portfolios in the evening.
2. Because there is trading in the draft, one reasonable strategy assuming your peeks don't reveal cards you want is to take a figure that someone else wants so you can get leverage on the trades. Of course, they may find that pretty annoying.
3. I'm not going to be able to test this system out on my own very well. I'll need some testers, preferably two so that we can each play two hands and see how this whole thing works. Anyone available for this weekend?
4. I need to add numbers to the bonus cards so that they can be easily cross referenced.
5. I've been planning this already but I definitely need to work up a cheat sheet listing all cards that people can use to plan their pick order and mark their "peeks". It will be a spreadsheet that you can sort ahead of time (by your pick order) as well as print for the draft itself.

[marcq]

I worked through a dry run tonight. Couldn't realistically do trades very well but here are some thoughts:

1. One likely strategy for most people is to use your peeks (and guesses) to try to find the figures with the cool bonus cards quickly. The ECL -1 cards and a few others are worth looking for.
2. It seems that it will be hard to optimize for a suit. I'd guess that one or two people will be suit heavy by luck and the rest will be evenly distributed. Of course, active trading for suits could alter that.
3. Between the suits and the bonus cards, I think players can end up with major changes in their character concept.
4. The only way to build straights for a poker hand is by heavy trading. It won't happen otherwise. I'm not sure that it is a given that there will be a flush or any particularly good hands.
5. At the moment, there are many weak bonus cards plus arrangement that are useless (like sanctify on a non-evil figure card). Probably about half the charatcers had uninteresting or useless cards and only 3-4 had really exciting bonus cards (like the half-dragon, half-fiend with the -1 ECL card- he would have been my PC )
6. Even with my virtual players pursung very different strategies (I tried to play them based on what each of you have said you'd be interested in), it seemed like you mostly ran out of good PC choices for a given player by about pick 3 although there were exceptions. Definitely want to make sure you land a possible PC pretty quickly.
7. I suspect that there will be heavy trading but if there is heavy trading, it is really going to jumble up the figures in your hand. that is, you'll end up with a really random hand for figures and will need to be careful that you have both a PC and a backup PC you like.

Not sure I'm going to change anything, at least without some play testing.

[Chris the Bigger]

Since the draft has changed to include all the cards face up, strategy is much less important but the fact still remains that if you are looking for just one figure the odds of it being on the suit you want is low.

Chris and i went throgh the figures and cards an d piocked our top figure choices and then ranked the cards in order of how they could be applied to the Figure we picked for our PC.

the odds of getting one of your top 6 PC figures is 100% so we started from there and worked down. Most of our top picks are non-humans so unlike Jim and Dan we'll be looking for other suits. I think the sword suit is going to be pikced over pretty good int he first part of the draft. the concept of hero points is pretty neat. I'd like to see how those affect them game so i am looking for my PC to grab a few.

also i'm no tset on any class yet. sinc ethis sounds like a heroic campaign and high magic i'm inlcided to not pick human as PC figures. all the non human races appeal to me. I'd play just about any class and some of the fugres i'd dual class just to make them more fun to play.

[marcq]

Here's my own thoughts on draft strategies given the current scheme:

With bonus and suit cards face up, your strategy is no longer a search for interesting figures sitting on interesting bonus cards. You already have all information available. Instead, your pick strategy early on should be focused on the right mix of ideal figure and interesting bonus card.

For me, bonus cards are very important since they could affect ECL by up to 2 or grant a substantial magic item. So I have a long list of suitable characters that I'd consider for PC and backup PC and I'll pick the first one on the list on a cool bonus card. You never know how the cards will fall and who will pick what before you so it is important to have a good long list of 'favored' PCs, at least 12 to be safe. Also consider that the odds of your 1st choice figure being on a 'green' bonus card is only 33% and your 1st two choices, only 50%. That is, even going first, if you are optimizing for bonus cards, you might be picking 3-5 down your list. If you are going last in the first round, you could be as far as 6-10 down your list.

After your first 2 picks, you really ought to have your PC and your backup PC selected with little reason for a change of mind after that. Therefore, picks 3-6 should focus on collecting the suit cards you want with an eye to your portfolio as well (although portfolio may not be too important for many folks).

Of course, if you don't care about the bonus card, then things are much simpler.

For me, bonus cards matter a lot so, my own strategy is:

• Create sorted list of figures. On this list, note which ones I would never consider for a PC regardless of bonus card.
• If I went early in the first round, I'll be going late in the second and there may be few good green card-figure pairs left. With this in mind, my sorted list of figures also notes the minimum bonus card required for me to pick second round.
• At end of round two, I'll reflect on what suit cards I want to collect. I might consider trading one of my first two picks for a suit card if my suit card strategy doesn't work with my backup PC's suit card.
• Rounds 3-6 I'll focus on collecting suit cards and probably won't worry too much about the figures. There is always a way to fit something into a portfolio.

Just some thoughts...