Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I head
out the door and deliver an episode to you while I walk the dog.
I'm Brendan Riley.
Well good morning listeners it's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
The sun is up, there's not a sky a cloud in the sky but there are still
plenty of cicadas.
I learned we have about two more weeks probably.
We have a person who comes by once a quarter to spray around the house to keep bugs down
and they said that we shouldn't see any more after the 4th of July so looking forward
to that.
Hopefully I won't get dive bombed today.
They don't seem to be too numerous today so maybe we're at a low in the activity or
maybe we are on the downward side.
We can hope.
So thinking about what to talk about today and it occurred to me to Google or to go into
my podcast feed and search for the phrase "deck building" to see how often I use that
or when I do. Because it occurred to me, while I have done episodes about like favorite
games of each mechanism type and I did a couple episodes on gentle player conflict.
I've never actually done an episode where I just talk about what I like about deck building
games.
So that's what I'm going to do today.
This episode is four things about deck building games.
So just to make sure we're all on the same page here and I suspect most of us are but
I generally hold to the completely arbitrary gaming convention that's used on boardgamegeek
and in other places to distinguish between games that you create the deck before you play
and games where you start with a sort of standard deck and you augment that deck
while you're playing.
So games where you created a deck before you play would be something like most collectible
card games, something like Lorcanna or Magic or Android Netrunner versus deck building
games, something like Dominion is your your product typical example or your stereotypical
example.
So today I'm talking about deck building games games where the deck is built while you play.
So I'm going to talk about four things I like about playing games in this genre or the
games that focus on this mechanism and then I'll give a few examples in that mechanism
for how it appears in different games.
As always I'd love to hear your feedback on this maybe what is your favorite deck building
game and when when do you get to play it you can share that information over on board
game geek and guild 3269 to pick up and deliver guild.
I'm a little behind on my board game geek feed so apologies if you've posted something
there and I haven't replied right away I'm trying to get caught up but I subscribe to
too many things so like I'll log in and I'll knock I'll mark I'll skim through and mark
100 threads red and the next time I log in there's 100 more to read so it's getting it's
getting difficult to catch up and the summer I'm not spending quite as much time in front
of my computer so there it is.
All right to start with I really like that deck building games offer a lot of variety
that comes through setup and player choice.
Now those are two distinct things I could say variety through setup and variety through
player choice but I'm going to kind of lump them together because they sort of have to
do with the notion of the market or the idea of the market.
So there are as I can think about it really two primary models that get used for the
market in deck building games there is the market of the set market of cards which is used
in Dominion & Arctic scavengers and what's the third one that oh Aeon's end all three
of those use a set market of cards meaning at the beginning of the game you pick out some
number of cards from the set that's in the box it's usually not as many as the whole box
has so you're not using every card in the box you're usually picking some set of them and
those are the cards that are available in the market to buy and generally those are available
until they run out and then you can't get any more and everybody kind of has equal access
to them though that's not always the case.
What I like about that kind of setup is that you can then decide which cards to include
in the market and the game often offer you different sets of suggestions based on kind
of maybe how you want to play or it suggests that you randomize them with the idea of being
that part of the fun of each game is trying to find the optimal mix of cards to buy based
on what's available this time around.
I think the ultimate example of that is Dominion particularly as I read or heard from people
who have like all the Dominion expansions you know they have literally dozens or maybe
hundreds of different card sets to choose from and they build the game by randomizing those
cards as there's a card choosing mechanism you can use an app or you just have like I
think each card set has one card that's like the just the name of the card and you shuffle
all those together and then deal out ten and that's your market.
So I really like that as a way to create randomness and options in the different kinds of
games that you have access to.
Other different kinds of cards you have access to.
So the other kind of card market that you see in games are the river of cards.
Now the river has an advantage as it manages and disadvantages.
In a cooperative game I think the river is excellent.
The river makes for an interesting kind of variety and challenges the players to think more
tactically about what's available because the stuff's not always available right.
It's coming through and it goes away as people buy it and that's when we get new things
but you don't have the same array of things available all the time.
Games like Ascension and Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle and Legendary all use the river mechanism.
So I think the river mechanism is really neat and it's actually my preference.
Now in competitive games the river can be a little frustrating because sometimes it will
seem to benefit your opponent more than you.
I've had games of Star Wars deck building game where the river doesn't
benefit the player like river benefits one of us more than the other to a level where
it feels bordering on not fun.
That doesn't happen often but it is one of the dangers of the kind of randomness of the
river model.
So in the market element of setup I find that very compelling.
I also like the other side of it which is how player choice creates a variety in play because
in most good deck builders there are multiple ways to approach winning and part of the idea
of the game is to outthink your opponents and outplay your opponents in assembling a good
mix of cards to purchase.
There are a lot of things to balance but the overall mix of skills that are available and
so you have to figure out how those slot into the game versus standard strategies that
you always have available to you or are always good.
Those two things together make for really interesting play.
So that was thing number one to say about deck building games.
I love variety through setup and player choice.
Number two, cool gimmicks.
I am a sucker for a game that uses a neat novel mechanism.
That deck building games have a history of innovating on the things you can do with the deck building
skeleton.
If you look at Dominion as the sort of arch-typical example, I am assuming everybody knows Dominion
just in case you don't.
You are trying to build a kingdom and you build the kingdom by accumulating points in your
deck.
The point cards generally don't do anything else for you so the more point cards you buy,
the less effective your deck is.
You kind of want to wait some amount of time before you buy too many point cards.
But at the same time, if you wait too long then someone else will buy more point cards than
you and they'll win.
Or if you try to build an elaborate machine by assembling other things in your deck you
might have a really cool deck at the end that doesn't earn you any points.
That's kind of the standard model for how deck building games work and usually you get
some resources that allow you to do something in the game.
And then some resources that allow you to buy cards.
In Dominion you are allowed to, each turn you can play, you can take one action and you
can buy one card.
And so a lot of what you're doing in Dominion is getting cards that give you extra actions
or let you buy extra cards.
I really like games that come up with some sort of gimmick of what to do other than that
central model.
The first and actually my preference over Dominion is Arctic scavengers.
In Arctic scavengers you have a totally different set of things you can do on your turn.
You can do more than one action.
But the real gimmick is any cards you don't play then you send to the brawl and the brawl
is a sort of shared contest for a really good card that you win by sending people and strength
rather than by spending money.
And the mix of those two things works really well.
And gives you a consideration that's different from the considerations you have in something
like Dominion.
With other games there are other gimmicks as well.
I'll name just a couple more that I really like.
In big book of madness you have this gimmick of the space on your board, the reserve they
call it I think.
And in the reserve when you put a card in the reserve it's now available to anyone to use.
And this is a really cool way to keep the game flowing and to make it actually feel
cooperative.
And Valley of the Kings and Dale of Merchants in both of those part of what's interesting
is you have to pull apart your deck.
In order to score points you have to take things out of your deck and put them into the scoring
area at which point they stop being effective as scoring.
They stop being effective for you as cards you can use to do stuff.
A lot of times the better scoring cards have the better powers on them so you don't want
to send them in the scoring because you want to use them but if you're not sending them
in the scoring you're probably going to lose.
So I like that gimmick.
I really do enjoy deck builders that have a board space where you're using your deck building
mechanism to move stuff around on a board or do things on a board.
Of course Martin Wallace was sort of cutting this ground with a few acres of snow and other
similar games as we've talked about recently.
And you also have something like Clank which has you moving around on a board using the
deck building or the tyrants of the Underdark does this really well or more recently
lost runs of Arnac and Dune Imperium both involve deck building combined with other things.
Now those games deck building really feels like one of a sort of mix of mechanisms as
opposed to like in a handful of stars where a deck building is still the center of the
game because as you use your cards to do things on the board whereas some of those other
games have other things like yeah they have worker placement there as well so sidelines
the deck building a little bit.
But I really do or another good example of a gimmick that I just a clever change.
gimmick it's a pejorative so maybe that's not the right word to use but a neat innovation
that I think adds to the gameplay experience.
One of those would be Aeon's End.
This is just a really clever shift at the end of your deck once you've bought all your cards
and played all your cards then you flip the deck over from the discard pile to the draw
pile and you do that by just turning the deck over you don't shuffle it.
That one shift is incredibly interesting as a mechanism or I just played
Quest for El Dorado last night.
That game is really interesting because there's a limited market of six cards and then there's
12 more that are available but you don't play you don't get to buy any of the available
ones until if you're the person who buys the last card in the limited market then you
get to pick the next card from the unavailable ones that will get moved up into the available
category.
Of course you're doing that and then other people take turns so you could actually not
even get a chance at that card because it's empty.
So that's really interesting.
So cool gimmicks, something I really like in deck building games.
Next up I will say I really like that deck builders feel like they have a nice mix of
randomness and control.
The randomness I already talked about some but a big piece of the randomness comes from
how the cards come out of your deck that that has an interesting element where sometimes
you just get screwed by the way that the cards got shuffled together.
Of course each game handles this differently that never happens in the end because you're
the one who put the cards in the order you put them.
So if you get screwed by the order it's your own fault.
So sometimes randomness really hurts you or like I was talking about it with a game that
has a river market sometimes the river will feel like it's really screwing with you.
Other times you'll get exactly the cards you need exactly the right moment and that
feels really good as well.
You have this nice mix of cards that flow through for you.
Those things together are really interesting and fun and I like the way that all of that
works together.
In particular I like the way that some of the games add as part of the play of the game
the ability to manipulate how random your deck is and how much control you have but usually
with an opportunity cost.
For example sometimes there will be cards that you can buy that help make your deck run
better but don't do anything else to advance your game.
So in Quest for El Dorado for example there are cards that you can buy that let you draw
more cards.
This is actually a pretty common technique in deck building games where you can get cards
that will let you get more cards and since cards are actions usually being a little draw
more cards is a useful and effective way to make your deck build work better.
And once that card is in your deck it usually is pretty effective because it starts to come
up and every time it comes up it helps you.
At the same time the turn where you buy it you're not advancing into the other things you
need.
So if you wait too long to buy it or you buy the wrong engine advancement card you might
find yourself actually hurting yourself by spending too much time making your deck run
better.
That was the situation I was talking about with regard to Dominion.
I also like that a lot of games allow you to remove cards from your deck and that in many
games being really good at a deck building game definitely involves removing cards from
your deck because whenever you buy a new card from the market it's almost always better than
any of the cards you could have bought that any of the cards you started with.
When you buy a card from the deck it's almost always better than any of the cards you started
with.
So removing a card from your deck is generally pretty good if you can remove the cards that
you started with that are bad.
Now one interesting example counterpoint to this is the Game Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle.
In the most deck builders the cards that you buy are good enough that it's almost always
a good strategy to buy a card when you can.
Not always.
Once you have an effectively running deck buying more cards that don't do what your deck needs
to do to be effective is difficult.
With Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle that is amplified dramatically because the most powerful thing
you have in that game is your characters bonus power.
This character in that game has a bonus power that they can do that gives them power, something
that they can do that other players can't.
And when they do that it's generally a very effective piece of the collaborative puzzle.
For example and it's been a while since I played so I can't remember precisely but for example
I believe that Neville is or Harry gives people extra lightning bolts when something happens.
And a big part of doing well playing with Harry is to maximize the likelihood that something
is going to happen so that you can give people the extra lightning bolts.
So every time with Harry every time you buy a card in the game if it's a, even if it's
a good card, if it's not a good card toward activating your special power you're probably
making your deck worse not better.
That's a really interesting mechanism to me.
The other thing I find interesting is that many of the enemies in Harry Potter have you
flip card, have you reveal your next card in your deck and then like lose it or discard it
or do something if it's a good card.
But if it's your basic regular card then nothing bad happens.
Sometimes the things that are bad are pretty bad.
It'll make you lose a card or sometimes it'll make you lose health or there's also to stuff.
So one of the things I find really interesting is trying to balance that question of how
much to buy versus keeping some of those basic cards so that you don't fail because you
didn't keep enough of those basic cards because you keep getting hit by enemy action because
you've made your deck too powerful.
And weirdly we found in the Harry Potter game that you and you did decide what your deck
is doing very early and only by cards that help you do that thing.
That was generally the way we were most successful.
Which could be really frustrating because then sometimes there's just cards that nobody
wants or nobody can buy and the game doesn't have a market circulation mechanism and it
makes it less fun.
Like it's not fun to buy a card you don't want so that the market will change.
So we actually added a mechanism when we played where if you didn't buy a card on your
turn you have the choice of discarding one of the cards in the market and then drawing
one new card in the market.
So that way it does revolve a little bit and that works.
That's nice.
I like that.
So all of these methods involve making choices to minimize the negative effects that randomness
can have on your play.
And I really like that deck builders have a very specific set of systems.
Kind of comment throughout the genre that let you do that.
Right, the final piece of the puzzle, the final thing I wanted to talk about in terms
of deck building games is I like a game that punishes you for having what I call.
Eyes too big for your stomach.
This is a thing my parents used to say when I was a kid because I was a light eater when
I was young.
That's not really true anymore but when I was younger it didn't eat a lot.
And so sometimes when I would order food or whatever I would order more than I could
eat and my mother would say I had eyes too big for my stomach.
And I carry that metaphor around the idea around because I think deck building games,
especially those with a river.
Games will offer you lovely shiny things that actually are bad for your deck because they
look cool and maybe they do a cool thing but if they don't fit what you're trying to do then
when you buy them they take up space in your deck you draw them and then you're not able
to play them for whatever reason or not able to use them well.
This also happens for the end of a game that if you have a very well functioning deck sometimes
it's tempting to take a card that looks really cool or does something really cool.
If you're not thinking about the flow of the game this actually happened to me in
Quest for El Dorado last night we played we were toward the end of the game and I had bought this card
that basically lets you have the chance to take a much better card.
So it's a good card to have early in the game because you'll have time to take another
card get that in your deck and use it but I had bought it too late in the game so on
my final turn when I had a chance to win instead I had a card that let me get
another card.
And then the space where I wanted to be able to play a card I needed I couldn't instead
I had to I had this card that I couldn't do anything with except get another card and
that new card I got goes in the discard pile.
So I was hoisted on my own petard and I was too big for my stomach I'm like yeah I'll get
a great card next time well was too late in the game to take that card when I did.
And I love games that demand you pay attention to the flow of the game where your choices
and your goals should change over time that the ebb and flow of experience in the game is
part of what makes it really interesting and I think deck building games often do that
really well.
Another good example of that is the game Clank. Early on in Clank you maybe won a lot of strength
but you also won a lot of movement and you also want a lot of gold so you can buy things.
At the end of the game you just want movement and if you don't have movement all that other
stuff is not useful to you.
But if at the beginning of the game you only take movement you really focus on getting a lot
of movement then sure you're able to run around but you can't buy any of the cards that
give you points.
So there's an interesting back ebb and flow in the game where at some point you want to
switch to buying cards that are good to give you points because you're probably not
going to see any of them in your deck again.
At the same time if you do that too early or you just buy movement cards the whole time
then you're having a deck with almost no points in it you have to get all your points
from your treasures which usually won't win you the game.
So that's sort of choice I find really compelling.
So what do you like about deck building games?
Head over to Board Game Geek Guild 3269 let me know if you want to see some links to other
episodes where I've talked about deck building games those will be in the show notes at
rattleboxgames.com.
You can send me a direct message on Board Game Geek wombat929 or on an email.
And then at rattleboxgames.com.
Well thanks for joining me on my walk today.
I hope your next walk is as pleasant as mine was.
Bye bye.
Brought to you by rattlebox.com.
[MUSIC]