Hearthstone

[Sir Bruce]

Thinking more about it, I'm curious why you want non-random draw? Maybe it makes it more skill-based in piloting but the amount of netdecking would be even greater and that very likely would actually lower the piloting skill since netdeck guides would have a detailed list of precisely how to play which cards in which order and how to respond to all threats.

And I'd bet a decent chunk of money the meta would be 90+% freeze mage and control warriors trying to counter freeze mage. Which sounds boooooooring (to me at least ). At least there'd be a few people trying to pull off double-innervate Druid shenanigans.

[SevenSpirits]

Tacking nonrandom draw onto an existing card game just makes no sense.

But even if you were making a brand new card game with nonrandom draw designed in from the start, it seems like a pretty awful idea to me. The game is still partially determined by randomness (which deck you get matched up against) and still partially determined by skill (probably less, because you don't need to compute probabilities). The biggest effect by far would be to remove variety, and it doesn't really have any redeeming factors.

[Cheater Hater]

In general, games that want any kind of casual audience need a certain amount of randomness, such that it's possible for any person to beat even the best person occasionally. We can see this with Hearthstone compared to MTG: the mana system is fixed in Hearthstone (thus mana screw doesn't exist), but there are a lot more competitive random effects. If you wanted non-random draw, you could only be able to play a random number of cards per turn.

[yuris125]

Non-randon draw is an awful idea. Randomness of the draw is is the cornerstone of all card games. In Magic, the cards which set up your draws are banned in all but the most powerful formats

Cards below are not in standard, banned in modern, and restricted in vintage (!). Only legacy allows full 4 copies of each card - and any blue deck starts by putting those 8 cards in



Wizards' reasoning for this is that cards which set up draws make games play out in the same way time after time, making people bored with the game quickly. It's not an issue in legacy because of the format's diversity and overall power level, so even if your plan in ever game is to make a 3/2 flyer for 1 mana, protect it with counter spells, and attack the opponent 7 times, there are plenty of things opponent can do to interact with this, and you need to make a lot of decisions based on which cards you have and which cards you suspect the opponent has. But again - the variety very much depends on the draw, if both you and the opponent had the same cards ever y time, it would become boring very quickly

I don't understand where the idea of non-random draws came from in the first place tbh

[flugauto]

Thinking more about it, I'm curious why you want non-random draw? Maybe it makes it more skill-based in piloting but the amount of netdecking would be even greater and that very likely would actually lower the piloting skill since netdeck guides would have a detailed list of precisely how to play which cards in which order and how to respond to all threats.

And I'd bet a decent chunk of money the meta would be 90+% freeze mage and control warriors trying to counter freeze mage. Which sounds boooooooring (to me at least ). At least there'd be a few people trying to pull off double-innervate Druid shenanigans.

I guess there cannot be more netdecking than there is now. As I see in the streams, right now there are just a few decks that people play, there is almost no variety. Try to build fun decks and you end up salty, because rng makes fun decks unreliable.
Every deck has effective counters, including freeze mage and control warrior, the problem is how to reliably get the counters.

Tacking nonrandom draw onto an existing card game just makes no sense.

But even if you were making a brand new card game with nonrandom draw designed in from the start, it seems like a pretty awful idea to me. The game is still partially determined by randomness (which deck you get matched up against) and still partially determined by skill (probably less, because you don't need to compute probabilities). The biggest effect by far would be to remove variety, and it doesn't really have any redeeming factors.

I absolutely agree that there still remains a lot of randomness, like which deck your opponent has, how the random effect cards play. But random draw is the biggest killer of most fun decks, removing this radnomness increases variety.

In general, games that want any kind of casual audience need a certain amount of randomness, such that it's possible for any person to beat even the best person occasionally. We can see this with Hearthstone compared to MTG: the mana system is fixed in Hearthstone (thus mana screw doesn't exist), but there are a lot more competitive random effects. If you wanted non-random draw, you could only be able to play a random number of cards per turn.

Removing the random draw allows you to beat even the best opponent, if you have the right deck. But it also allows you to play many more decks, that are just unplayable with random card draw.

I don't understand where the idea of non-random draws came from in the first place tbh

This is just my personal feeling.

[yuris125]

Out of curiosity, how do you imagine non-random draw? Do you stack the deck before the match, choose which specific card you want to draw every turn, or start with the whole deck in hand? or something else?

[Sir Bruce]

I'm not sure what fun decks you mean that aren't currently viable - ones that rely on multicard combos in classes that don't have ample card draw (Inner Fire/Divine Spirit Priest) or rely on drawing the perfect first 5 cards (warlock murloc)? Or maybe tribals that are underpowered (pirates!). And non-random draw wouldn't fix that power problem anyway.

Liquidhearth's power ranks currently has 21 decks (each with multiple variants) that are all viable on ladder up to high legend - you'll see them all on popular streams and even a lot of them in tournaments. My last 20 ladder games were against 8 different deck types or so. There's so many types of each of control/midrange/aggro/combo/burn/etc/etc. Sure there's some seemingly fun variants (why won't pirates work ) that aren't very good right now but the variety of the ladder seems way higher than what would dominate in a stacked deck variant.

[flugauto]

Out of curiosity, how do you imagine non-random draw? Do you stack the deck before the match, choose which specific card you want to draw every turn, or start with the whole deck in hand? or something else?

Choose cards at the beginning of every game. Choose which specific card you want to draw every turn. Choose when you play a card draw like Arcane Intellect.

I'm not sure what fun decks you mean that aren't currently viable - ones that rely on multicard combos in classes that don't have ample card draw (Inner Fire/Divine Spirit Priest) or rely on drawing the perfect first 5 cards (warlock murloc)? Or maybe tribals that are underpowered (pirates!). And non-random draw wouldn't fix that power problem anyway.

Liquidhearth's power ranks currently has 21 decks (each with multiple variants) that are all viable on ladder up to high legend - you'll see them all on popular streams and even a lot of them in tournaments. My last 20 ladder games were against 8 different deck types or so. There's so many types of each of control/midrange/aggro/combo/burn/etc/etc. Sure there's some seemingly fun variants (why won't pirates work ) that aren't very good right now but the variety of the ladder seems way higher than what would dominate in a stacked deck variant.

Yes, combo decks are a good example, and pirates too; when you get the combo or when you get the right pirates, the decks are good, but you often dont get them.
21 decks is very few, and the bottom of the list are not very good to play, you can expect lots of losses.

[SevenSpirits]

I can see how you would think that decks relying on combos become better when draws are nonrandom. But I don't see how you're making the jump to "more decks will be viable". I'm pretty sure that decks are only viable if their power level is close to that of the best deck. My guess is that stacking decks increases power level disparities and therefore means that fewer decks are viable. What is your reasoning?

[Sir Bruce]

Agreed with SevenSpirits. Even if a pirate deck is viable on ladder perfect draws (maybe but probably not), pirates are definitely not viable if your opponent is also getting perfect draws!

And I dunno 21 decks seems like a bunch to me. I can play almost any playstyle I want and always have multiple classes/decks to choose from. I'm a little sad I can't run a weapon/pirate but that's about that tribal's power level, not rng.