Fast game vs Slow game

[CCGer]

Hi guys. This topic is basically about summoning sickness. Do you guys like games with summoning sickness or rules that doesn't allow you to evolve a creature when it is just played this turn like in Pokemon? (Slow Game) Or do you guys prefer a faster game where creatures just enter the battlefield and you can start attcking with them like in Yugioh?

Faster games in my opinion are more dynamic than games where you need to wait for another turn before your creature is really in action due to summoning sickness. These games also add some strategic moments where you not only need to analyse what is in play but you will also need to predict what threats are possible in your opponent's hand to prevent a sudden assult from him/her. In slower games, a creature enters the battle field with summoning sickness. You already saw the threat coming and you can easily plan for defence. Prediction skills will then play a lesser role compared to a fast game.

However, I also think that summoning sickness actually has its advantages. It makes the game slow and more predictable, which seems bad for some people. But do you guys know that predictablity can actually encourage strategic thinking and carefull planning?

Look at chess, which is internationally recognised as a game for the mind. Both players have the same pieces in their arsenal and there are no hidden pieces or cards that are left unseen by any player. Both players can see every moves their opponents make. The only thing that is hidden is the strategy or planning in both players mind. That is why in chess, the winner is most of the time better at analysing the board, reading the opponent's moves and does better planning. That is why a chess winner is often refered as being intelligent because he/she win with tactics and strategy and not just plain guessing.

Do you guys ever hear some chess players saying things like any game with an element of chance is "inferior" to chess? Well, I won't say that they are perfectly right (in fact I strongly disagree) but what they say actually makes some sense. How are you going to plan your moves accurately if you don't know what is coming? Perhaps it won't be a problem for veterians in TCGs, but it can be a disadvantage for the beginners or the "not so good" TCG players. It will be more of a guessing game rather than a game of tactics and carefull planning. Especially if the game grows bigger in the future, there will be more cards to look out for and the beginners who aren't  familiar with older cards will be at a huge disadvantage. Than perhaps the game company will start to ban older sets, which is something I usually hate.

If you look at it this way, sommoning sickness actually makes tactics and plannig play a bigger role in a TCG. Personally, I like summoning sickness up to some point. What about you guys? I will be VERY VERY PLEASED to hear about your views.   

[Ripplez]

summoning sickness is to balance the game so that your immediate creature advantage isnt overwhelming. if you used the same system and gave haste to everyone, youd see why

[CCGer]

summoning sickness is to balance the game so that your immediate creature advantage isnt overwhelming. if you used the same system and gave haste to everyone, youd see why

True. But have you ever heard of Battle Spirits TCG? It is a new TCG released by Bandai and is designed by Michael Elliott who also designed Duel Masters.

Battle Spirits don't have summoning sickness, but the game play out very well. And considering the fact that Mr. Elliott who designed Duel Masters (a game with summonong sickness) choose to remove summoning sickness from his newly designed Battle Spirits TCG, one can easily tell that there must be other ways to prevent overwhelming immediate creature advantage other than summoning sickness. (Especially when the designer himself is very experience since he also helped designing Magic and Pokemon in the past.) Perhaps without summoning sickness, the game will flow faster and smoother. However, what I am concerned about is the lack of strategic planning (since you don't know what is coming until your opponent play them and it might be too late to fight back effectively). The game will also rely heavily on guessing the possible threats in your opponent's hand, which is a kind of skill but does not really seems that strategic to me. Personaly, I think these guessing elements are interesting and fun but too much of them can be really bad.

If you were to recreate Magic or Duel Mastesr or perhaps create a CCG that is similar, will you let summoning sickness stay? Tell me your opinions and reasons. By the way, I highly recommend you guys to check out Battle Spirits TCG since it is an interesting game with lots of creative game mechanics not seen in any TCG so far (it is very orriginal and will fascinate you guys, trust me) and very possibily the next big hit.

[Ripplez]

give the mechanics and how it balances summoning sicknes, its easier to think abot with that info

[Tokimo]

Haste vs non-haste is a difference between two cards. I think in general any game where cards have more differences, tactics will be increased.

If all creatures suffer summoning sickness, or if all creatures have haste, the game is predictable. In the game where all creatures have haste you can't see an attacking creature until moments before it's first attack, but you can anticipant it coming anyways. In a game where haste is a special quality, the calculus of whether your opponent has a creature with haste is actually more complicated.

Haste as an ability means more choices, more differences between cards, and more variance in what could be in your opponent's hand. I think all of those things equate to a more tactical game.

[sneaselx]

Possibly a better way to add tactical nuance without summoning sickness would be to make more powerful creatures easy to predict. For example, maybe you would need to have a certain type of resource or a specific card on the field in order to summon them, and that resource or card would be useless in normal circumstances. This way you can take advantage of fast summons to deal burst damage, but your opponent may have an easy counter. Trap cards in Yugioh somewhat alleviate the creature advantage.

[Ripplez]

what are the mechanics in battle spirits tcg that balance the intrinsc haste? you said it had new stuff to balance it out, itd help understand your points better if you gave an example or an explanation or something

[CCGer]

what are the mechanics in battle spirits tcg that balance the intrinsc haste? you said it had new stuff to balance it out, itd help understand your points better if you gave an example or an explanation or something

Well, I did say that Battle Spirits have new interesting mechanics, but as for balancing summoning sickness and haste, I actually just have faith in Mr. Elliott who design it. Since he help designed some sets in MTG and he created Duel Masters (both which has summoning sickness) and this time in Battle Spirits, he decided to omit it. I just believe that there must be a very good reason behind it based on his experience in many TCG he designed and played. By the way, Battle Spirits is currently the 3rd most popular TCG in Japan after Duel Masters and Yugioh. Its popularity is increasing rapidly and is spreading into the US. There is also an anime about it in Japan.   

The special feature of Battle Spirits is actually its resourse system and its gameplay. Before I go into detail, please note that the English sets are still new while Japanese sets are quite far ahead, and of course I have not play a proper Battle Spirits game yet. I have only just read the rules and try to understand it. I highly recommend you guys to check its official site (just Google it and by the way this game is from Bandai) to learn its rules in depth and of course look at card scans. There is also a blog written by its designer and he often talks about his gaming experience in other TCGs and compare it with Battle Spirits.

Now then, Battle Spirits (BS in short) use the core system as its resources. It is the most unique resourse system I ever seen. Instead of using special mana cards or putting any card face down as a resourse, BS uses counters which is called "Cores" as its resources. The resources are separated from the deck and thus there will be no mana-screw.

During the start of the game, both players will have 4 cores in your "tank" (I 'll just call it a tank). When you summon spirits (the creatures in this game are called spirits) or cast spells, cores will be used up from the tank and they will enter your Reserve. At the start of your next turn, when you untap all your tapped cards, you put all cores in your reserve back into your tank and you gain one more extra core in your tank. (you will need to stanby a lot of cores because you gain an extra one each turn) Therefore, your cores grow over time like you play an extra mana card each turn.

The unique feature of this game is stated below. (Warning! It can be very confusing because I am not good at explaining this. It is sometning very new in the TCG world.)
In BS all spirits have different levels. For example:

Card name: Spearman        Cost: 1      Reduction cost:1    colour: Red
Lv1(1 core)-1000BP     Lv2(3 core)-3500 BP     Lv3 (5 core)-6000BP

Effect:   [when it is Lv2 or Lv 3]-during your turn you may discard a card and draw a  card      [when it is Lv3]-discard a card from your hand to tap one opponent's spirit


I made this card up. Cost is of course the cost required to play this card and as for reduction cost, the amount of cost you reduce for each card with the same colour you have in play.
If you have a blue card in your hand that cost 3 and have a reduction cost of 2, and you have 2 other blue cards in play, you can play that card from your hand with only 1 core since the 2 reduction cost is played. So it is like this:
3 (main cost)-2 (reduction cost paid by having 2 cards with the same colour in play) = 1 (cost to play this card)
If you only have one Blue card in play instead, then it will be:
3(main cost) - 1 (reduction cost paid by having one card with the same colour in play) = 2 (cost to play this card)
You cannot reduce the card's core cost for more than 2. Meaning that you can only reduce 2 cost even though you have 3 or more blue cards in play since the reduction cost of this card is only 2.

In Spearman's case, If you have 3 Spearman in your hand you can play all 3 of them by just paying 1 core!!
Assuming that you have nothing in play. First, you play the first Spearman by paying 1 core (main cost), the second Spearman will be free because the cost is reduced by the first one (Reduction cost: 1) and so is the third one too!

Well, the BP is the Battle Points of course, just like ower in magic and ATK points in Yugioh. Now on to the levels, Lv (which is also one of the most unique things in the TCG world)

When you summon a card and it enters play, after paying the play cost, you MUST put cores on that card until it is at least Lv1. In spearman's case, it is 1 core. You may put more cores to level up your creature as well, like for Spearman , 3 core for Lv2 and 5 core for Lv3. However, you can only add cores on your spirit when it is being summoned and NOT ANYMORE afterwards. So you have to choose wisely. Here is an example:

You summoned Spearman by paying one core from your tank. You must add one more core from your tank or other existing cards on it so that it becomes at least Lv1. (You may add more to make it Lv2 or Lv3 of course). If you have another Spearman with lets say 5 cores on it, you may move one core from your old spearman to your new Spearman to make it Lv1. In this case, your old spearman level decreases from Lv3 to Lv2. You may also combine for example, taking one core from tank and 2 core from the old spearman, put all 3 on the new spearman and it becomes a Lv2. However you CANNOT add cores to any of your spearmans after that. So you must think wisely what level you want your spearman to be when you summon it.

If any of your card has cores that are lee than the number required for Lv 1, it is then "Depleted" (not destroyed) and sent to the grave. You can deplete your own creature during your turn.

The goal of BS is to attack your enemy's life until it reaches zero. It is played like MTG with its attack and block system where all attacks are directed to a player but the creatures in this game have no summoning sickness. Each player has 5 life and if any creature succesfully attack without being blocked will take away 1 life. In this game, you may choose to rush by summoning many creatures at Lv1 to attack your opponent's life or gather your cores to summon a big Lv3 to crush their weaker creatures or use effects. Generally, the higher the level of a creature, the higher the BP and high level creatures normally have good effects. In Spearman's case, it has no effect when it is Lv1, gain an effect during Lv2 and has 2 effects when it is Lv3.

In BS, whenever you are in trouble, you may deplete all your not so important creatures and summon a big creature at Lv3(the highest Lv is currently 3) with some devastating effect to remove the threats. Of course your opponents may do the same later during his/her turn. By the way, if a creature is destroyed, all its cores will enter your reserve and will return back to your tank next turn. (at the start of your turn, your tank gain back all cores in your reserve and also one more extra core) In another words, if you destroy many of your opponent's creatures, he/she will have many cores in his/her reserves which he/she can use it to summon more powerfull Lv3 creatures next turn. Be carefull!! I think this is the feature of BS that help balance off the all creature have haste problem.

Ah... What a long post. It can be very confusing and I might make some mistakes. Go to the official site if you need more details.

[Howl]

i just ordered my demo deck for this game it looks soo good.. Battle spirits looks like a game that could go sumwere i hope it doesnt end up like duelmasters which is no longer printed for the united states. i believe duelmasters was one of the best games ever created just because of how quick it could be even with summoning sickness, and shields instead of life.

[uankaink]

im agree with CCGer. summoning sickness remove some fun from the game. I've played some CCG without summoning sickness like Yugioh or Vs System... and its super fun.

Its add more dimension to the game. more unpredictable and more challenge.

I think many CCG was influenced by Magic, and summoning sickness is one of magic mechanics. It balance the game and tighten the gap between new player and advanced player. While the fast game usually ruin every newbie.

[aardvark]

My only grief with a wait-mechanic like summoning sickness is that I'm impatient. That doesn't take anything away from the game tho, imo. I like it just fine. When I first started playing I would forget and try to take my creatures over to raze some enemy arse until my opponent looked at me funny. And now that I'm starting up again I find myself doing it again occasionally. I can live with or without I suppose. It's just part of the game.

[Tokimo]

I know for my game I'm not using any summon sickness mechanics, more because it's more book keeping than anything (that and your attackers start in play). I might add summon sickness to villains, might not.

[CCGer]

Hmm... But how about the idea that summoning sickness can encourage more strategic thinking and carefull planning in the game? Like I said, predictability enables a player to predict accurately what is coming next and prepare to intercept it. (look at chess) If a game has no summoning sickness, it can be bad for beginners who have no clue at all about the threats to look out for and it is harder to predict accurately since the threats are hidden. The game will than seem more like a guessing game than a strategy game.

[CCGer]

Oh yeah, sorry for double posting. By the way, how do you guys think about Battle Spirits TCG ? (I described in length just now) Very interesting eh? So far I haven't even seen a TCG (whether it is in the market or made by people like us for fun) has such mechanics.     How I wish I were that creative..............   

[Ripplez]

it sounds like an updated 'fixed' version of duel masters. i like the resource system alot

*checks the website*

yeah. i might play it if theres a lackey plugin for it later

a reason battle spirits can get away wth haste builtin is because it has alot of creatures, its a combat based game. unlike a game like magic where you have a reasonable expectaton of creatures and spells(i mean instants and sorceris), in battle spirits you have significantly more of monsters when compared to spells

this might not be true in all other games but im sure it has an impact here : the high creature count means that in a 40 card deck, youll probably have a good amt of creatures to play. this means that even if your opponent goes first, youll probably not get stuck for lack of a blocker - there will usually be SOMETHING in your hand you can play to take the hit for you. contrast with m:tg, where the likliehood of having a playable creature in your hand in the first few turns isnt a given, due to the prevalence of sorceries and instants in the game, which usually do not give field presence. also, m:tg needs lands to play cards, thus shrinking your 7/8 starting hand by a decent amount in terms of playable creatures. battle spirits uses cores, which dont detract or add to the quality of your hand

as a result of these two features (the high creature count and hand-excluding resource system), it makes it reasonable to question summoning sicknesses role as a mechanic


sorry if this post comes abit too late, i couldnt post it at the time i wanted to and people had posted since then