The Doomtown Reloaded base set contains quite a few cards that are still solid choices for their value slot, if not considered staples for certain deck types and strategies. My experience of other LCGs suggests that this isn’t usually the case. With that in mind, is it as important to ‘stay current’ and to have access to everything in order to build competitive decks in Doomtown as it is considered to be in other games?
While I’m aware that I’ve played this game a lot and know the cards and strategies well, I think it’s certainly possible to have fun and win games without a full card pool to pick from. I put this theory to the test at the Hartlepool Tombstone series event, you can read the results of that here.
The base set offers several options/basic themes that work well. Starting with one of those, playing some games and then identifying areas of your deck that need extra support and tracking down the relevant expansions to provide that should leave you with a solid competitive deck without needing to own every card ever printed. While playing you’ll also be expanding your knowledge of other decks and developing the important skills of reading your opponent and their deck’s gameplan. By doing this you’d also be avoiding the information overload that can come with being swamped with new cards after buying into an expandable game several years into its life, which I know is a factor for some people.
I’d be interested to hear thoughts/experiences on the subject.
I play Shadowfist pretty regularly, and in Classic Shadowfist (all the cards ever printed) you do not need to stay current, at all. With Modern Shadowfist (all the cards printed since Inner Kingdom Games acquired the licence) you don’t need to stay current, but it certainly helps. The interesting thing is that there are a number of players who got into the game in Modern, and play Modern decks in Classic, and do exceptionally well.
I play Call of Cthulhu LCG and I do not have a complete run of it - it got shuttered by FFG before I bought all of it, and it’s now nigh impossible to track down. I’d say you don’t need a complete set of the game to play, but then again, I only play in one event (a tournament at Origins) a year, and it’s super casual.
I play Netrunner very casually, and, yes, you really do need to remain 100% current with it if you want to be at all competitive - or at least that’s been my experience with it.
This is an excellent idea and I enjoyed the linked report at Dtdb.
The deck I played at GenCon 2018 with made the cut and had 32 cards from the base set: Sloane Town Square blitz is simple to play too! Some other factions might have a tougher time with a limited card pool than others. Could easily push this closer to 52 (54 including jokers!) base set cards by adjusting deeds/dudes/goods, but core strategy of the deck would be unaffected.
I think Law Dogs would find a “just base set” environment particularly tough as they were hamstrung with poor starting dudes for much of the AEG era. Clear from tournament results over the last year or so that Thunder Boy and Hattie rectified this. Fourth Ring would lose some of the complexity/toolbox that makes them powerful, but they’d still have Blood Curse and Hex Slingin’ so they’d probably be alright!
I’ve advocated a 2x Base set, 1x Saddlebag, 1x Pinebox, 1x playset set of a specific card as an interesting handicapping experiment if people have different collection sizes or just want to experiment with a different environment. Expansions add excellent bullet catchers (base set lacks 1GR drifters) so any casualties hit you harder, plus starting posses are tougher for some factions/deck styles if they don’t have Jake Smiley.
Look forward to seeing how your deck evolves as you add expansions at each event.
Very similar to some of the Netrunner non-tournament building variations.
Shadowfist has three major alternative builds. First, the ubiquitous Highlander (which is Bicycle in Doomtown). Second, pick three letters of the alphabet: all the cards in your deck must start with one of those three letters (would be nigh impossible to do in Doomtown). The third one requires a specific understanding of the Shadowfist rules to explain.
I like fooling around in Bicycle, at least I did in Classic, because you get to see cards that almost never, ever come out of the collection. “um, I guess I’ll use a Walking Stick in this slot? Because it’s the least hot-garbage card in this poker value? Sure.”
I think the Base Set / Saddlebag / Pinebox / Playset variation would make for a good challenge. It’s different then Bicycle, in that you aren’t going to be forced to use less gooder (sic) cards than you normally would.
Since i had quite long pauses in playing regulary i also like the Base Set / Saddlebag / Pinebox idea for local play and then evolving the deck.
Looking at all the cards when building a completely new deck i’m prone to thinking about it longer than actually playing it (or ending in despair) >.<
With this i also like that you could have a use for cards you would never touch if everything is accessible, a bit like CrazyCatTim suggested with Bicycle.
My second outing with my limited deck (now expanded with 2 saddlebags) resulted in a win at a 14-player tournament. Report and list here. The core of the deck is still the same cards from the base set, I went for options to add a bit of variety in dudes and deeds and to get Willa Mae for my starting posse. I’m happy that a strong deck can be built from a limited pool, and this event series and the last one providing promos of Henry Moran and Willa Mae definitely helps round out starting posses with a cheap bullet catcher, which is a noted problem with the base set.
Congratulations! This is great. I tried to make the point in the “Buyer’s Guide” that Doomtown’s deckbuilding restrictions made it friendly to players building their collection and think this underlings it.
