Hello! I played a good deal of Deadlands: Doomtown (Doomtown Classic?), and still have my collection (12 cards short of a full playset…) I’m strongly considering backing the KS at the all-the-cards level. I have a few questions for the community
-It looks like it is fundamentally the same game, with a few small twists: Improvements are gone, Harrowed works differently, there’s no Fear Level, etc. I didn’t read the rules too closely, but am I really missing any big, sweeping changes to the game?
-Is the game backwards compatible to any degree? I don’t see why it wouldn’t be, but am I missing anything?
-From what I’ve read through a bit of lurking, a second base set seems to be a thing to get in order to have a really competitive collection?
-Is there a tournament scene active at Origins? It’s the one con I can make in life, and I’d love to be able to play some Doomtown there. The chances for me to play in my own playgroup are a bit lacking.
-Lastly, from a collections / completest point of view, if there are promos for Reloaded, are they separate, distinct cards, or are the alternate art / full bleed art versions of cards that exist?
Hi Tim, we would love to have you return to the Doomtown community! I’ll go down your list and see how I can assist
You’ll not find too many changes (I played Classic too). Here’s a few. Values are restricted to 4 of any specific value. So you can have 4 Ace of Clubs , 4 Ace of Spades, etc. Casualties are you can discard to cover 1, ace to cover 2. If you’d like I can go in more detail but it’s very similar indeed.
I’ve heard of players combining Reloaded and Classic as a fun format, no reason you couldn’t.
It’s not required to have the 2nd, especially as you add in more expansions , but you may want to pick up a second base if you really want 4x of those cards.
We plan on having a tournament at Origins 2018!
All promos are alternate art, nothing you have to chase down necessary to complete your collection
Let me know if you have any other questions!
David Lapp
Community Manager
Pine Box Entertainment
That’s an interesting change to the deck construction. I’m not sure that I’ve ever gone over that, except for maybe some of my really heavy cheatin’ decks aiming to always win shootouts.
The rest of the stuff seems pretty straight forward. Thanks for the info.
There is also an online community that can help fill in the gaps for folks who don’t have local playgroups (or who are simply crack addicts for more games, like me!). We use the OCTGN game client, and we’d be happy to help you get set up if you want to give it a try.
I have a few videos on my youtube channel (no audio) that shows what game play looks like, if you’re curious as well.
Lapp has covered the main points, so one of the few things of value I can add is that the deck construction limits he mentions (4x any given specific poker suit & value, ie. can have 4x 7C and 4x 7D) means that cheatin’ punishment doesn’t need to be quite as strong as in Classic, but some of it still bites!
The Pinebox blog (http://pineboxentertainment.com/blog/) has some introductions to each faction written by playtesters if you’re looking for something close to a particular mechanical/thematic flavour that appealed to you in Classic.
Tim, if you want to play at Origins and don’t have cards yet, Pine Box will provide them for you to use at the convention. We fully intend on also having extra decks at any in person event we attend to provide to players without cards yet.
The game you are returning to is fundamentally different perhaps than the one you remember so fondly.
Chiefly that shootouts themselves are “safe” and the game is strategically less about avoiding them at all costs and more about coming out on top of them.
Thanks Jordan. I spent a lot of time last evening reading the reloaded rules, lurking these forums, and looking at cards online. It does look like a different game - maybe a sibling to Classic? I had decks for every faction, but my two favourites to play were a shootout heavy “gun 'em down” Texas Rangers deck and a Maze Rats strike-jumping deck. It seems like both these things are absent to some degree in Reloaded - strikes really aren’t that much of a thing, and shootouts are much less deadly.
Weirdly the thing I think I might miss the most is Events. I never really played more than two or three in a deck, but they always added so much flavour to the game…
I miss events too, but I’m pleased to see the flavour of some of them lives on! For example, “A Coach Comes to Town” is still in the game flavour/mechanics wise but is now a Club rather than a Heart Event. I imagine this is much easier for the design team to manage too! Events prompted some weird Classic decks that weren’t fun to play against (such as the Sweetrock dude-less deck mentioned below).
Shooutout decks can still work well - Law Dog decks were performing very well during the Epitaph series of tournaments and they’re generally shooters. With some Shotguns and Point Blank (what you might remember as “Shootin’ from the Hip” from classic, if my memory is correct) and a good shootout hand you can still inflict some hefty damage.
Strikes are much less of a “thing” than before as the ghost rock seams have dried up. Design were keen to encourage in town interaction and tactical movement rather than significant out of town control points/income sources. There are a few out of town deeds, but generally with small income and no control points.
Classic was good fun, but Reloaded is a bit less prone to bonkers decks - fewer turn one victories or weird things like Sweetrock decks without any dudes. These were interesting feats of creativity but didn’t really feel like playing Doomtown.
Below are some good design philosophy articles from when AEG rebooted the game:
I haven’t played classic. That said, shootouts, while less ‘deadly’ are moments of opportunity for other cards like Soul Blast, Shotgun, and Point Blank. The shootouts that are to defend against an Ambush, Election Day Slaughter, or Ol’ Fashioned Hangin’ are often particularly deadly as well.
Because of the number of low cost deeds with control points, DTR usually has a lot to do with tempo. Even if opponents dudes were discarded instead of aced when you won a shootout and took control of the deed, it’s still often a heavy influence/CP swing.
Harlath - I’m reminded of one of my pal’s decks that only had Jacks and Fours in it. One the one hand, he couldn’t lose a shootout. On the other hand, he would automatically lose if you were packing Jackalope Stampede. So, while bonkers decks like that are “fun” in some sense of the word, I do understand the desire to reign the game in from those types of things.
I read the design articles sometime today! Thanks for the links!
Design were keen to encourage in town interaction and tactical movement rather than significant out of town control points/income sources. There are a few out of town deeds, but generally with small income and no control points.