An Additional Damage Draw Modifier? (–)

[jeff]

One thing that's come to light in recent playtests is that it's possible to do a lot of damage with a turbine that's built with that purpose in mind. I was honestly surprised with how high it's possible to push up the average damage for a given turbine deck and still have the deck be functional for (e.g.) general maneuverability.

On one hand, dealing a crap-ton of damage in a single shot (shots in the high teen aren't all that unusual for decks built with that in mind) can be really demoralizing for their targets. On the other hand, there's not an overwhelming VP advantage in dealing substantially more than the current tier's threshold for gaining a victory point. There's some benefit in blowing up opponents because that makes them lose victory points and (probably) waste at least part of a turn of activity, but that's a relatively diffuse, far-away benefit.

It's not clear to me that damage rating need to be reduced across the board, but that's one solution, and the most obvious one.

Another possible solution that occurred to me while I was revising the rules today was to add a third damage chain icon, a "–" (minus sign) to the existing "+" and "x" chain icons in order to give a little more texture and nuance to the card design options. The "–" would function in the obvious way, subtracting one from the number of cards yet to draw, as opposed to the "x," which ends all remaining draws.

Thoughts? Non-obvious downsides? How complex do you suppose this would be, in practice?

[theJBRU]

Damage draws are already mildly complex, This variation sounds like it would add to that in practice.

"Draw a damage card, check icon. No 'X' so I'll be drawing another, has a '+' so I get one more total. Draw another, now I have a '-' so I get one less total. Wait, how many do I have left to draw again?"

Some of this might arise from the fact that the maximum number of draws varies from player to player. To vary damage strategies without leading to massive-damage-optimized decks it may be easier to simply cap all damage draws at a fixed number of cards. The difference then would come from different minimum draws and composition of cards in the deck that allow additional draws.

"My damage rating is 2, so I get two damage draws. Flip, flip. Oh, they both have '+', so that's two more. Flip, flip. Ha-ha! Those both have '+', so two more. Oh, wait, max damage is 5 draws, so just one more. Total."

[Kevin]

"Draw a damage card, check icon. No 'X' so I'll be drawing another, has a '+' so I get one more total. Draw another, now I have a '-' so I get one less total. Wait, how many do I have left to draw again?"

pretty much what I instantly thought as well
ts to much bookeeping

its already a struggle to reference your min/max damage draws and make sure you aren't cheating

So I would just take those epic shots (that are fun, for that guy) and make those the rare limited choices. For glass cannon cards that allow the player to get that high, they need to have more downside.

So obviously, fragile is a downside, but we could push that. High damage cards come with like x2 or x3 fragile icons, or we just add x3 in that bubble- so now you have to really consider your situation. If you wanna pop 50% of an enemy tank, you as well get 50% easier when they shoot you.

Additionally, while more complex, we would add another space for an icon under the damage draw- so when you flip this uber damage draw card, something else negative triggers. Adversely, when you flip a weak boring damage draw card, thats weak- it does some other perk like heal or refresh a card, ect and you just fullfill everything as you flip

[jeff]

So, "Too complicated," is what I'm hearing. That's fair.

There are probably a lot of ways to attack individual cards that are high damage. I'm not sure that all high-damage cards necessarily need to be fragile. Making them very low resource cards — or no resource cards — is another tactic. Sure, your tank can deal lots of damage, but also, all it can do is drive slowly in a straight line and spend all of its time aiming.

Let me throw this question out there: Aesthetically speaking how many points of damage should an "average" shot deal, in this game? Or, if it works better for you, what range of damage for a shot should the average fall in?