As players have mentioned previously, this game is a nice, quick game with great art and light themes. However, luck factor can make this game really frustrating to play at times, and while some players think this isn't a design flaw, cards are scaled in such a way that it is more or less flawed. There are cards that are clearly too powerful for their time (stuff like 17, 18, 23, even 35), and cards that hardly see play unless being forced to. I hold a 66% winrate over 700 games (which is definitely top 10 btw, along with 77 avg score), and I can go on massive win/loss streaks fluctuating from high 200 to low 400 ELO due to these design flaws. (Yes, the annoying power-leveling ELO modifier doesn't help) It's simply so inconsistent that it loses it's enjoyment at times. Hence I'd like to proposal one single rule change, or just ask to adapt it as a variant, that doesn't require the game to be reworked in any way.
The rules are simple. Now at the start of the game we have the advanced starting hand setup available, which mitigates luck by a tiny bit, but oftentimes you see your opening hand and you still know it's going to take a miracle for the game to even be playable. I'd like to propose an open draft by dealing 10 cards at the beginning of the game, then players drafting in the order of ABBAAB (if 3 players or above, this is just a S drafting, where players draft in order then in reverse). This makes the game perfect information at the beginning, makes the players' starting hand a bit more equally balanced, and introduces the skill of drafting as well. I believe the premier skill this game tests is drafting, and sometimes drafting a suboptimal card just to be ahead on pick order in the next rounds can be important (a skill top players repeatedly abuse). Hence, with perfect information, we know what our opponent's hand is, and we can plan out future moves, as well as play around the opponent's strategy (i.e. hate drafting). I don't know if the game developer or designer sees this, but please take this into consideration. I can accept sometimes losing due to unlucky sanctuary draws and whatnot, but I get really tilted when I get insanely bad starting hands, rendering the game a loss at the very start. As another player pointed out, the max ELO anyone has achieved in this game is somewhere around 450~460, even lower than Lucky Numbers and other heavily luck based games. This game actually requires a lot of skill to properly play well, including drafting, resource management (you need to know what objectives are fulfillable), sanctuary drafting etc, but with already so many places where luck alters the course of games, I think we can use some tweaking to avoid this turning into a "who has the better starting hand" game.
Any other forms of suggestions are welcome, just to make this game better. We have a lot of enjoyers here, so hopefully the devs/designer may see this and consider
The rules are simple. Now at the start of the game we have the advanced starting hand setup available, which mitigates luck by a tiny bit, but oftentimes you see your opening hand and you still know it's going to take a miracle for the game to even be playable. I'd like to propose an open draft by dealing 10 cards at the beginning of the game, then players drafting in the order of ABBAAB (if 3 players or above, this is just a S drafting, where players draft in order then in reverse). This makes the game perfect information at the beginning, makes the players' starting hand a bit more equally balanced, and introduces the skill of drafting as well. I believe the premier skill this game tests is drafting, and sometimes drafting a suboptimal card just to be ahead on pick order in the next rounds can be important (a skill top players repeatedly abuse). Hence, with perfect information, we know what our opponent's hand is, and we can plan out future moves, as well as play around the opponent's strategy (i.e. hate drafting). I don't know if the game developer or designer sees this, but please take this into consideration. I can accept sometimes losing due to unlucky sanctuary draws and whatnot, but I get really tilted when I get insanely bad starting hands, rendering the game a loss at the very start. As another player pointed out, the max ELO anyone has achieved in this game is somewhere around 450~460, even lower than Lucky Numbers and other heavily luck based games. This game actually requires a lot of skill to properly play well, including drafting, resource management (you need to know what objectives are fulfillable), sanctuary drafting etc, but with already so many places where luck alters the course of games, I think we can use some tweaking to avoid this turning into a "who has the better starting hand" game.
Any other forms of suggestions are welcome, just to make this game better. We have a lot of enjoyers here, so hopefully the devs/designer may see this and consider
