Card Drawing & Discard Cycling?

[Tokimo]

What prior art are these for these mechanics?

Most games including Free Realms, Magic, Pok?mon, and your mom's favorite TCG have 1 card per turn draw at the start of the game. Rage has 1 card per turn draw with a 2nd deck (The combat deck) that draws much much faster (1+1 per character I think, but it's been a while since I played, although that's not a persistent hand). Sailor Moon has 1 card per turn draw with a hand refill at the end of the turn (Magic can be played where you draw 7 new cards if you run out, but that variation is even less popular than first turn land drop, lol).

Discard cycling seems to be similar. In general games where you draw 1 card per turn seem to have discard be a 'permanent' concept. Games where you draw like a crazy artist tend to feature cycling the discard pile back into the deck.

What thoughts on draw rates & discard cycling do you have? Any particular interesting options you've seen a game do that you'd like to share? (For reference I'm pondering a 3 card draw phase with discard recycling).

[Cyrus]

For me this comes down to how hard/important you want deck building to be. If you only draw 1 card a turn, you are only likely to sometimes see only 10-15 cards from the deck before the game is over. If you draw tons of cards then you are more likely to see your whole deck.
Its two different deck building ideas, really. Either you are trying to build decks that can win with any combination of 10-15 cards from it, or building decks that really shine the more pieces of it you pull out.

[malarious]

I always liked the concept of controlled drawing.  I have a minigame (read as short and quick even to empty a full deck) where you play what you want and at end of turn you can discard any number of cards to gain energy for them.  At start of your turn you draw back to a full hand.  Which means you open options by discarding but also move closer to a loss.  Cards were added to allow putting cards back in deck, but some were also added to find a card you want from the deck for whatever goal you may have.

In yugioh making a deck to draw or "deck thin" allows you to achieve a result faster by keeping only important cards... for instance mystic tomato > mystic tomato > mystic tomato > sangan.  In one turn you could burn off 3 or 4 attacks and when sangan dies you got another card from deck of your choice within its limits.

Drawing only one card generally results in more controlled games with most people adding other cards to draw more.  Now this also means first person to draw more cards gains an edge though so its a questionable mechanic.  Drawing back to full or to a certain number is a reliable balancer for some things but a great way to get uncontrolled combo decks.  Some games allow choice mechanics too, like Bleach.  In bleach you draw  a card then either draw another card or play an energy, and do that step again. So you always draw one but can get up to 3 in a turn.

How you handle cards is based on the game and if you want to allow decking.  Sometimes the mechanics are specifically made to work with deck destruction (like mass ressurections).

Hope that helps some

[xchokeholdx]

In most of the successful CCG's out there, drawing is THE key to winning the game. A lot of times a game comes down to Topdecking, and drawing the right card you need/want.

Personally, I hate this kind of gameplay. You usually only get to draw 20 cards tops (that is 1/3rd of your deck!!), thus making me ask the question why we simply ca not have 20 cards decks..

I prefer to create games where players can influence themselves how many cards they draw each turn (albeit at a cost of course), making players dig deeper into their deck has both benifits and negatives.
benifit: both players have a greater chance of getting the cards they want, and have a better feeling of being "in the game". If you lost the game on the 7th turn, and only got to see 15 cards of your drawdeck (1/4th), players will mostly feel left out of the game.
Negative: Combo decks have a greater chance of "getting off".

[Tokimo]

The point about combo decks was very interesting. As an experiment I tested out the concept of having your entire library as your hand and was a little surprised when I could achieve first, second, or third turn wins with many of my non-combo aggro decks.

[Ripplez]

you must make it fit your game. if you draw more cards per turn, then this means that yuo will access more cards faster, making it more likely youl have counters or threats concernign your opponent. it doesnt just influence combo decks, youll have more destruction in your hands, counterspells, monsters to replace ones that die in battle. this means if your opponent flinches you can do alot after, depending on how your resources work. this means that alot will hapen but each player can basicly mould their hands each turn

i had another game idea where your deck was your hand and yuor deck was just the lands yuo coud play (it was slightly more complicated tan that). it doesnt play the same way, more options => more threats and counters at every step turning this into more liek a fighting game than anything else. just a mental exercise

xchokeholdx : necropotence

end-of-turn discrds returning to your deck has a chance of you redrawing the same cards again. i dont knw how thatll affect the game but i doubt itll go by with no reperscussions

[malarious]

Two things...

1) About returning cards to deck, use good cards activate shuffle card then something to view top cards, people use these all the time to try to stack the way they need.

2) Forgot to point out, the more cards get drawn earlier, unless a special balance is in place... it bias's heavily to first turn.  It seems balanced because they take turns but you also end up with one side having a bunch more options than the other if you draw multiple cards.  This is inherent in most games but if not set up for it drawing 3 cards means I have a larger option pool and can take a quick lead, then depending on its effect I can do more damage in a shorter period.

[Cyrus]

2) Forgot to point out, the more cards get drawn earlier, unless a special balance is in place... it bias's heavily to first turn.  It seems balanced because they take turns but you also end up with one side having a bunch more options than the other if you draw multiple cards.  This is inherent in most games but if not set up for it drawing 3 cards means I have a larger option pool and can take a quick lead, then depending on its effect I can do more damage in a shorter period.

Some games have gone around this problem, in a way, by having card drawing be at the end of turn instead of the beginning

[malarious]

In some systems, that also means you can spend what you want and draw your counters at the end.