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Valinor / Re: Movie Masters - Sealed using only Boosters
« Last post by Phallen Cassidy on January 23, 2024, 07:50:45 PM »Beyond the individual card consideration, there's the overall culture consideration. In my playtesting, I found Moria to be one of the weaker shadow cultures; swarming requires more synergy than beatdown, and so is less consistent in limited. Having a powerful card like Goblin Armory at uncommon was an attempt to balance Moria with the other shadow cultures. (While I stand by this general comment, the specifics may be wrong. It's very possible that I was just making poor deckbuilding decisions with my Moria decks, and the culture is actually more powerful than I think.)
Looking at the lists with that in mind, you're right. It's worth discussing whether you want that though. A swarm deck has to comprise of a lot of cheap minions and I'm not sure there's any way to get that together here. I count around 35 cards that'll give you a minion costing 2 or less (including cards which pull other cards and minions that can play for less in some circumstances like Goblin Scavengers with Goblin Armory), out of a pool of, what, 234 cards? Only 10 of those could cost 1 or less. Swarm doesn't usually need very much synergy at all, stupid swarm (playing 1-cost minions regardless of culture) has won tournaments. In this pool of cards, though, you probably do need a lot of it. With that in mind, Goblin Armory doesn't seem very impactful after all. Strange to say, but true.
I think the probability of being able to build a dedicated swarm deck, assuming you pull the Moria pack and start with 10 swarm-enabling cards, is below 1% (and 1/6th of that to get Moria in the first place). Out of 99 Shadow cards you need at least 10 1-cost minions and 5 2-cost minions to get you up to 25, then fill in the gaps with any other swarm-enabling support you may have pulled. 10 successes from a sample of 90 in a population of 2100 plus 5 successes from a sample of 315 in a population of 2100. Instead, the way to go would be a deck that is probably 2/3rds swarm and 1/3rd beatdown -- play the biggest minions you can get and hope that stops opponents while you cultivate a swarm hand for key sites. Something around a 50% chance to at least get that together on top of those 10 swarm-oriented Moria cards from the pack.
All of that assumes that 7 minions on the table is competitive in a format where people are probably not too attached to any particular companion and have little to lose if Enquea kills one. There's a reason cards like Far Harad Mercenaries were printed as commons. If I didn't do anything wrong, swarm decks aren't really going to happen. Now, maybe that's good. I really disliked playing against swarm for my first few years in the game, and it means you don't need to worry nearly as much about RB support. Here Lies Balin is probably not a card worth handing out in that case. Players are led to pick between wounding and beatdown, more straightforward decks that play into the game's core mechanics rather than a deep understanding of the game itself. Up to you, really. Or I did do something wrong and swarm's fine
The FP cards being less splashable than the Shadow cards is a deliberate choice on my part, although it's certainly possible it's an incorrect choice. While splashing minions is easy, because they don't stick around, shadow support cards in a multi-culture deck have a high chance of getting stuck in your hand (what if you draw your Moria minions and Dunland support, for example).
I think for the most part, you don't bother with many Shadow support cards in a multicultural deck for this very reason. Even Goblin Scimitar isn't worth using if Moria minions aren't at least 50% of your deck, because odds are when you finally can play it you'll just draw a FP card. I don't know if the counterpart of stupid swarm has one single name, but it's the same concept. In sealed even a 9 strength minion can be terrifying, beating or tying most armed companions. A minion at 12 or more will require significant investment to beat. Cards with no spot cost like Saruman's Ambition and Goblin Swarms make sense with just a few minions of the culture since they're primarily helping you cycle. All that to say, I wouldn't have any concern at all with getting something usable from these pools for a beatdown or wounding deck. One primary culture and really any number of secondary cultures.
On the FP side, companions do stick around from turn to turn, and so cultural enforcement is easier to meet. A two-culture deck that can start one companion of each culture won't have any problem with spotting the necessary characters, provided they can keep them out of the dead pile. I tried to include multiple two-twilight companions in each culture at common to make this possible (this was hardest in , and Leader of Men has switched between common and uncommon multiple times).
I disagree here; just as you really don't need to arm minions, you really do need to arm companions. With your base of 11 cards from one culture and 99 cards split between 6 (and a half), even if you get 20 cards for another culture you may not have the cards to really draw you towards it for your deck. And if the bulk of those are commons that can't really contribute on their own, I would expect a real risk of players having one culture given to them at random and then whatever they can get from the 6 others to fill out a deck. Smeagol being a free starting companion would make him and any decent support a shoe-in for me.
Now, I agree with your hesitancy to just up the number of packs. It's not really sealed when you've got all the cards you want anyway. At the same time, without enough cards to build towards some direction it's still not really sealed. I think there's not enough room for strategy in the current layout. But again, I might be looking at this all wrong. You've done some simulations, maybe you can share a sample deck? Or perhaps PM me the code you used so I can run a few for myself?
Another option for a "base pack" is to format it the same way as the others. A group of 36 cards where you get 11 of them based on rarity. That's what I was thinking, at least, although again it might require the other packs to be restructured and I don't think that's a good thing at this point. But you can ensure that these are characters with little to no cultural enforcement and that the rares are solid starting companions or somesuch. I have not looked at companions the same way I looked at e.g. swarm above though, it's quite possible that things are fine now. That's why I was saying prioritize splashability for Free Peoples commons though, if a player only has 50 reasonably-usable cards then deckbuilding is more about detail than direction.
Ultimately, one of the reasons Draft works so well in Magic is that you can make your deck work after you get your cards. You don't really draft the core, you draft that cards you want to go around that core and then choose the core yourself. The core for Magic, of course, is lands. The draft pack and Hobbit Draft Game base deck basically serve this purpose, just provide it up front. You know what you're building from in those cases, and in Magic where you know what you're building toward. Either way, there's an anchor for it all. I think FPs in particular really need an anchor.
This is a tangent, but there's also an as-of-yet-unused part of Gemp's draft where you pull multiple cards at once. Players could have a choice between, for example, Legolas with two weapons vs Aragorn with his two weapons vs Gandalf with his sword and staff. It would be awfully complicated to wedge such a thing into this concept, I just felt it was worth mentioning for some reason. I guess we've talked about every other way to spice up sealed already so it seemed to fit