(thread requested by @Farbs) Quick Draw Mode In the latest test build, Blue Manchu has introduced a new play mode called Quick Draw. How does it work? At the beginning of a Quick Draw game, each player is assigned three characters with random race/class combinations (so you can get unlucky and have three elf priests, but on average you'll have a balanced team). Then, for each character, in order, you'll see 10 cards in that character's hand: a pair of each quality from gold through black. For each pair of cards, you select one card to discard. The card you don't discard will be in your character's deck. If I have a choice between Mighty Bludgeon and Impaling Stab, and I discard Impaling Stab, my character's deck will have a Mighty Bludgeon in it. Once each character has discarded one card from each pair of cards, that character will have a deck of 5 cards and an empty hand. At this point, all characters draw hands normally and play proceeds as normal. Yes, you read this correctly: Quick Draw mode is a form of randomly generated sealed deck play! It's amazing fun, super replayable. I'm very excited about it, and I expect you all will be too once you've tried it. Want to test Quick Draw mode? Hop on the test server (http://test.cardhunter.com) and give it a go. You can either find an opponent to play with—in which case you'll want to use one of the two casual Quick Draw maps, Temple Tussle or Streams of Blood—or you can play against Gary in the map attached below. Please leave feedback on this mode in this thread for Farbs and Jon to work on. Cheers!
I tried a few games against Gary and it seems like it'd be a lot of fun against real people. Would it be possible to make sure each choice of paired cards is different? I got duplicates a few times.
I'm going to update the OP with screenshots at my first opportunity. @peonprop - I got that too! I agree that preventing duplicates is a nice idea, though I'm not sure how necessary it is.
I think this is pretty much what it's meant as - a classic draft mode (which is what the Arena in HS is).
Really Cool. I get a problem where my wizard draws trip every single turn. and my priest draws loner every turn
My worst character was an elf priest with no attacks, no armor, and the choice between Demonic Revenge and Demonic Revenge.
That is how it works with the current deck sizes, so while it's a problem for you it's not an actual bug. I think more deck sizes and tweaks to the system are going to get tested. This is definitely going to see some refinement before going live
Agreed, there should always be a choice so no dublicates. And why not have a bigger deck?! Sounds very interesting and I'm not usually interested in other modes but ranked play
Played thru both maps and gave stuff a preliminary rinse, I know its a rough version but these are my thoughts. a) Let's get the obvious ones out of the way. A 5 card deck is ... erm too little ? Looking at the cards, they bear the item source so I guess an algo picks 10 cards from a random pool of items under some constraints. I'd suggest 1/3 of the usual 36 card deck so 12 cards per char MIGHT be a trifle better. (1 drawback in 5 wasn't too bad on paper until I drew, Loner, Traveling Curse, Loner >> 20+ hp to 1 hp ... ) It also means that we go from a current 30 card draft to a 72 card draft. b) Visuals: Wasn't obvious what to do seeing the 10 cards on display until I noticed the glow around the edges. My experience in online drafts usually starts with a Round 1: Pick 1 of X cards, click confirm, wait, screen refresh with new pool, pick 1 of X-1 cards, click confirm, wait...repeat until no cards on screen. Round 2: repeat Round 1 etc etc... Perhaps an alternative way is to show X cards for my 1st char, X cards for my 2nd char, X cards for my 3rd char and then prompt 'Round 1: discard n cards from my 1st char.... discard n cards from my 2nd char... discard n cards from my 3rd char (as per the usual discard phase). Then repeat for opponent etc etc... c) Interaction: I like interaction in drafting, it gives another sense of awareness and counter-play. By interaction, I mean when drafting, what is discarded doesn't just disappear. It goes back to the pool, re-shuffled and drawn. The immediate problem with this would be warriors casting volcanoes etc. Are funny combinations a bad thing ? d) Booster packs: Woot! I like the possibility of announcing booster packs with cards grouped in nice packages. Its easier to call a draft and say 'we'll be playing <insert booster packs>' and just publish the card list on blog/wiki/forum. People can go do their homework prior. e) other food for thought: disconnects during drafting, leaderboard, ranking, rewards etc etc...
I was constantly clicking on the card I wanted to keep because that's how drafting usually works. I think it would be a lot more intuitive if it worked that way here too. It would also be easier to pick cards if the choice was expanded beyond two cards.
I really like it, A LOT! I do think the interface is not immediately intuitive, but it only takes one play to learn. And I do think super small decks and possible double cards are problematic, if one character draws Trip every other turn because they had to choose between two of them, they're going to be really out of the game! If the team makeup was always 1/1/1 (which could still have random races), then as long as race cards were not included in the card pool, it could be made that the 5 cards discarded go into the deck of your opponents character of the same type. This would: Give decks of 1o cards each Create a more interesting decision tree Allow you to know half your opponents deck (and visa versa)
I did some quick draw games and there is a real need of more cards. I had a game with two priests having both Demonic Power and some Vamp attacks, that was nasty. Plus don't forget that you can keep two crappy cards in hand and only draw the good ones over and over (warriors often get a redundant 17 damages bludgeon). Otherwise yup it's pretty nice, good job!
This is really cool idea, I haven't had a chance to test it yet but I feel like the character's decks could be a little more than 5 cards each.
12 cards as already suggested would be nice I think. green-gold-silver-bronze-paper-black 1-2-3-3-2-1 ?
The problem here is that there are currently only 6 (I think) Emerald cards available to players: Anvil Strike, Obliterating Bludgeon, Obliterating Spark, Enchanted Mail, Freeze, and Healing Rays, which makes it hard to provide choices for priests.
Wow this was fun to find. I'm interested in thinking about what it would take to give this some legs. I'm not sure completely random teams works, due to the volume of attacks warriors get access to. Multiple warriors is pretty nuts. I think the idea of 1-1-1 class teams would work better. To keep things "fair" I'd suggest a 1-1-1 random assignment of races as well ( in part because I would like to see more racial cards get added into the mix). More cards in the decks would be good too, with fewer cards one really powerful card can be hard to overcome when your opponent has it every other turn. I'd also like to see one of the card choices be specific to the race of the character, I think that's key to making the races feel different. Let them select between two racial cards specific to that race. It probably has to work with the interface, but going through the selection process twice for each character could work and should keep things moving fast. That would double the cards from 5 to 10, which would reduce the impact of any one specific card while keeping things fast and fun. On the second pass replace the neg trait with a racial choice. (I suggest this because the neg trait choice needs to be seen early, it's a choice that impacts your other choices in many ways). I agree with the UI suggestion that selection keeps that card, instead of discarding it.
What if you were shown three cards at each quality, and one of each is something found on the racial items? Then you pick one of each quality to discard for a deck of 10 cards.
