suggestion to make vanilla cards worthwhile

[rajule]

suggestion to make vanilla cards worthwhile

I've noticed that vanilla cards ie: cards with no tokens or trigger affects tend to become neglected once players gain access to cards with some utility.

My suggestion is to add special cards that either exclusively affect tokenless cards, or have a stronger affect on tokenless cards hopefully making them a consideration in deck building rather than something exclusive to starter decks.

since they would affect all non gold tokenless cards they could also be used on locked cards to give them back some utility.

I'd like to ask the community 1) if they feel the same way about vanilla cards not being utilized and 2) if you like my suggestion brainstorm possible affect ideas.

The first one that came to mind for me was a strength multiplier like the old warhorn. not sure if it should affect all instances of target card like thunderbolt or just the target card like swallow. but I wonder if we'd still run into the problems warhorn brought with getting some ridiculous str values.

perhaps anoother affect would be similar to braenn's ability you play the special on one of your cards and it does damage equal to that cards str on an opposing unit.

 

[4RM3D]

Vanilla basically means the base game. So this has nothing to do with whether or not the card has an ability or not.

Regardless, while "those" (basic) cards aren't played much, they aren't the only ones. Even cards with abilities never see the light of day. This only gets worse with every expansion. And the only real way to solve this (without using power creep, which you shouldn't), is to add unique mechanics to new cards which synergize only with certain decks. One of those mechanics could be adding cards that profit from basic cards (without abilities), like you suggested.

 

[DMaster2]

It's an "issue" of every CCG. Basically they are just the starting food, and you work to get better stuff. Part of the learning process is to unlock better card and replacing older ones.
I don't see a reason to make them "worthy" and i don't even think it's possible. I mean look at Yugioh and all the support for normal monsters. Yet that deck is just a fun/casual one that get wrecked by the meta decks.

 

[RickMelethron]

Vanilla basically means the base game. So this has nothing to do with whether or not the card has an ability or not.

uhm... what..?

pretty sure "vanilla", in every card game, refers to cards without text/abilities/effects/whatever

 

[RickMelethron]

It's an "issue" of every CCG. Basically they are just the starting food, and you work to get better stuff. Part of the learning process is to unlock better card and replacing older ones.

not true... vanilla cards are supposed to have higher stats than cards with effects, as it was in classic hearthstone... chilldwind yeti used to be played quite a lot in druid decks back then.

the issue is that most games revolve around synergies and disrupting your opponent's plays, which makes certain effects much more useful than raw stats. for instance, if NR had a vanilla bronze card with 10 strength, people would still play balistas over that.

I don't see a reason to make them "worthy" and i don't even think it's possible. I mean look at Yugioh and all the support for normal monsters. Yet that deck is just a fun/casual one that get wrecked by the meta decks.

well, just last year the Blue-eyes deck was one of the main meta decks in the game. dark magician decks were also quite strong, but didn't see much competitive play due to some consistency issues.

PS: yugioh is a game that relies on archetypes, and yes, it's pretty impossible to build an entire archetype just with normal monsters...
PS²: there has been a new archetype which relies on normal monsters recently released in japan, it's called "Spiral, the Phantasmagoric Dragon" and it's quite strong. (but has weaknesses which bar it from competitive play)

 

[4RM3D]

pretty sure "vanilla", in every card game, refers to cards without text/abilities/effects/whatever

Maybe that's specific for card games then, but not games in general:

In PC games, the term "vanilla" is often used to describe the original version of a game, which has not been modified with third-party addons, developer updates, downloadable content (DLC) or patches.

 

[RickMelethron]

Maybe that's specific for card games then, but not games in general:

we're talking about cards in a card game, not the game as a whole... so yeah.

and if we were talking about ice cream flavors, the meaning would be different as well.

 

[4RM3D]

we're talking about cards in a card game, not the game as a whole... so yeah.

and if we were talking about ice cream flavors, the meaning would be different as well.

Except that I didn't know the term 'vanilla' had been mutated into something else, which created quite the confusion.

 

[rajule]

Just so we're all on the same page about vanilla. this is the usage I was going for

adjective
informal

1. 1.
   having no special or extra features; ordinary or standard.
   "choosing plain vanilla technology wherever you can will save you money"

 

[Ugralitan]

Cards with no abilities are generally used as reference points. Every faction has one bronze and one silver textless card. They can be used as cheap vanguard troops when you are new and lacking a good collection.

Fiends or Manticores can be used as food for Ekimmaras/Frog at the lack of other options. Actually the chance of seeing those textless cards are larger then seeing Nilfgaard faction gold card which is called as Assassination.

 

[rajule]

It's an "issue" of every CCG. Basically they are just the starting food, and you work to get better stuff. Part of the learning process is to unlock better card and replacing older ones.

You may be right that they possibly designed them to be replaced, but if that's the case I think that's lackluster design in a card game to make something that's intended to be obsolete. They could still fill the niche of being beginner cards easing someone into the game, but then later on maintain usefulness with the addition of these special cards.

In general I feel ladder progression in any game is a bad idea. it causes power creep and I feel is a bit lazy.

 

[Tungdilboindil]

A little change that i would make is to change the strength of the silvers from 10 to 12 (like Fringilla) and change geralt from 12 to 14 (probably with the change to NR so they cannot add +2 to neutral gold cards, but I'm not sure). If you think that's not enough, those silvers could also get weather resistance. This way, using a silver slot for those cards might actually be worthwhile, because now they're only good as placeholders.