Random Decks

Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null

I realized that maybe Guardians just plays too well to be a really successful collectible card game. In the gaming environment we have here, two people playing with one large collection of cards, there's no feel that everything would be much better with a few more fancy cards. Everything just works, and works really well.

I mean, there's a pretty definitive upper limit on how well a randomly put together deck in Magic works. But in Guardians that exactly is the way Henrik and I have been playing the last few times. It was all Henrik's idea, and at first I was a bit skeptical toward mixing up all my cards like this, but I'm very happy I could be convinced :-) ... We just decide on the numbers for different card types, then draw that number of each. We've played with 40 or 50 creatures and 10 spells/magic items plus lands, shields, guardians and strongholds of choice. Bribery cards may be added by decreasing your number of creatures and/or spells accordingly.

It works wonderfully! Sure, you don't get those really lean and mean decks, but it sure is a lot of fun and you never really end up with something that feels completely unplayable. And you get a lot more large creatures which is cool! You never get as many two creature, 30 point armies as when you do random decks :-) ...

In short, here's the recipie:

1. Mix up all creatures and stronghold upgrades. Each player draws at random as many as he/she wants in the deck. We've played with 60 random cards in the decks so far, drawing 50 creatures and upgrades.
2. Mix up spells and magic items and draw in the same way as above.
3. Look through the cards you've got. You may discard up to three spells/magic items and draw new ones if you want to (no fun with St. Ballantine's Evocation if you've got no knights!).
4. If you've got space left in your deck you may pick bribery cards now.
5. Pick terrain, shields, stronghold and guardian.
6. Shuffle a lot :-).
7. Play!