Whatever Faction

[koikaze]

I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanna see more faction cards. I think that the faction card is my favorite card type, but Spoils isn't really taking it where it needs to be. In the card game Legends of the Five Rings (l5r), the faction (or in this case 'stronghold') card was one of the pivotal things in the game. It defied how much defense you had. How much starting gold you could produce (which defined your whole gold structure) and it had a starting threshold stat (honor). To top that off, the stronghold had an ability, similar to spoils. The problem I have right now is the fact that most of the other faction cards don't merit the 5 influence that you are giving up. I really hope that future faction cards will provide some more flavor to the game. I would really like the main trend of decks to no be the boring old tournament faction. Now on to my idea for a new faction card.

Whatever Faction
INFLUENCE 20

STARTING RESOURCE
Any 3 face down cards.

STARTING DRAW
7 going first, 8 going second

RESTORE RULE
At the start of your turn, restore all your depleted cards and detach all resources from your faction.

DEVELOP RULE
At the start of your turn, draw a card or play a resource.

DRAW
COST- Pay 3
EFFECT- Draw a card.

RESOURCE
COST- Pay 4.
EFFECT- Play a Resource


I lowed the starting had size, because you can go second and draw a card during your opponent's turn. Maybe It could be 8 first and 8 second, I dunno. So, essentially, You are trading 5 influence for 1 extra resource. On one side, you don't start with any threshold. But, on the other side, you get to pick which cards start face down. This provides a lot of room for creativity like laying some nasty flipups or placing critical combo components that you return to hand when you need them. Someone could also just take the added resources and just run with it by playing some double threshold resources. So, it you go first, you will be able to play any 4 cost 2 threshold card (pending you have a double threshold in had). This sorta just turns into a 1337. It seems like a fare loss of 5 influence. What do you guys think?

[koikaze]

Any comments? I would like to see more faction style cards,

[thegnomishone]

So there was speculation when it was first anounced that new factions were coming out as to how they would be different from the Tournament faction. Things like this were mentioned, but there is a concern for how an undestroyable card that fundamentally changes the way the game works can be properly balance. I like the idea, but it may be too much to start with 3 resources, even with a reduced hand size. One of my big concerns is that the hand-size limitation does nothing if the controller of this faction goes second. Turn 0 draw a card, turn 1 play a resource, you're at 4 resources with one elitism thresh, turn 1 Cowering golem. Alternately, you're looking at turn 0 draw, turn 1 resource, pay 4 play a resource, turn 2 resource, play a Martial Artist. The loss of Thresh is relevant, but with how many powerful cards have low thresh but cost more resources, this could be somewhat unbalancing.

[koikaze]

I can see where you are coming from, but you can get that same kind of speed via cards like 1337!

So say the person does play the Martial Artist. They are quite limited on having higher thresholds in more than one faction. They also most likely need to pack more resources than most of the other decks. The kind of speed the player gets with this faction can be replicated by other means. I think the main worry here is having the face down cards that have nasty flipups.

If the person goes second, the players would be about equal. It would make the "Whatever Faction" player seem like they really went first, except they have no threshold.

The main idea that I like about this faction is having face down resources. Do you think a better idea would be to have 2 resources but increase the starting hand size to 9-10 respectively?

[Qamar]

I like general idea of tradin resource icons for additional resource by starting with 3 face-down resources. But If it would be printed like that, for example Opportunism (http://www.thespoils.com/spoils/showthread.php?t=7599) or any potential future resource wit Flip Up would be unprintable. So I would add requirement that these face-down resources have to be staple resource cards. Another solution for this problem could be requirement that they be non-resource cards, but I think that this also wouldn't be good. It would be asking for trouble like Tolarian Academy.

If you want to prevent player from useing resources on turn 0, solution could be makeing starting resources start game attached to faction.