how to overcome stalemates? (new player question)

[Rischwa]

Hi,

I bought two tsg displays and one exodus starter display some time ago.

Recently I played my first games with a friend of mine using the starter decks.

Although it were our first EVE CCG games,

we are very seasoned TCG players (mostly Magic) usually with a good grasp on rules and tactical options.

That said, the matches were pretty disappointing, because only one game really finished through an early rush,

while the others resulted in stalemates, where attacking the others home system would have resulted in ones own

destruction.

I think this was "by design" at least in the starter decks due to mainly two reasons:

a) home region income is too good, so that even when you are forced back and can't contest other systems, you don't run into ISK problems.

b) the defensive bonuses on ships and starbase structures are too good, essentially often negating a lot of the attackers fleet

So my questions are:

- what are your experiences with that?

- is it related to the exodus starter deck builds, or is it inherent in the game (I haven't seen other cards yet)?

- if it is a common problem, do you have workarounds, like custom rules to make the game more dynamic?

Cheers

Rischwa

( http://eve-plh.com )

[Joseph Corbett]

My understanding was the kamikaze ability caused a lot of problems. Minimatar owned everything by base rushing. You flood their home base and then use kamikaze.

This is why they later changed the rules saying you had to control two outer regions before you attack a home region.

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[Joseph Corbett]

The starter decks are abhorrent btw. They're the least fun I have ever played of any starter deck from any game.

Most the games just drag on forever. Eve tcg suffers from what most complicated card games suffer from. There are only a slim minority whom enjoy the complexity. Most folks get bored with it. Those with skill crush their opponents and thee opponents never play again.

I do feel eve card game could work as a stand alone box game. An eve non-foil complete edition would be welcome.

[Josh Goldshlag]

As mentioned, this is somewhat because the starters lack the sorts of expensive cards that are capable of ending that sort of standoff, both ships and news cards. The upgraded starbases in Exiled are designed to counter the minmatar rush, which is pretty dominant until you get enough card variety to hard counter it.

Josh

[Rischwa]

Thanks for the replies!

So the problem seems to be the exodus starter decks and not the game itself. That is good to hear.

Unfortunately we atm don't really have the time to get into hundreds of cards and start designing decks.

Are sealed games (everybody starts with X boosters + maybe some general cards to build a small deck of) feasible with tsg boosters?

Maybe we'll just start with that.

[Jeremy Loscheider]

Since game-end is really the ability to mount an 8-point offensive strike in the home region, an economic engine is really necessary, which requires owning (at least at some point) an outer region to mine or exploit. With the exception of EVE Gate or one of the upgraded Starbases, that is - which gives an alternative win ability. 

I'd say a repack sealed game has some likelihood of being playable, while I remember the opened packs had really awful randomization. Sometimes you'd get the same card three times. Sometimes you'd get only Minmatar or only Caldari. A repack that follows a 9 common/3 uncommon/1 rare/1 region would probably work, especially if you have at least 4 of each race card in each pack. 

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[Joseph Corbett]

Unfortunately, the cards are much harder to get now. I bought 7 boxes of the core and still do not have enough cards to do much. The exiled expansion is super rare now. I managed only to get 1.

I tried making a cube. The income system was complicated and my friends didn't care for the game.

Is eve tcg still available on OCTGN? If so, you could play with all the cards for free. There is also the good old fashion proxy.

http://ccggamez.com/index.php?opcja=listakart&idgry=167

[Jeremy Loscheider]

There's an active trading community on BGG, but I understand what you mean. The game has been OOP for almost a decade now.

If you're sufficiently driven you could print off some of the cards you need from ccggamez's pics. 

Also, FWIW, I did post PnP decks (with CCP's permission) on BGG under the files section of EVE CCG's entry.

[Rischwa]

On Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 3:57:02 PM UTC+1, lostmyimplants wrote:

Since game-end is really the ability to mount an 8-point offensive strike in the home region, an economic engine is really necessary, which requires owning (at least at some point) an outer region to mine or exploit. With the exception of EVE Gate or one of the upgraded Starbases, that is - which gives an alternative win ability. 

Our experience was that even if you are entrenched in your home region, you might not win, but you can't loose either, because the other player just can't get enough of an advantage in ships to mount a successful attack, because they are all so small/squishy and the starbase structures and the defensive bonuses on ships (like ambush) kill/neutralize enough of the attackers fleet before actual combat begins, so that the attacker never had enough points for the home base (+ all the structures bonuses) after ship combat. But as mentioned that probably has to do with missing "late game cards" in the prebuild decks we used.

[Daniel Couture]

Not to highjack the thread but we should play with ships face down until there is a conflit in a region.

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[Joseph Corbett]

Nah! There are a lot of strategies. No need for ships being face down. I tried a variety of alternate formats. Eve is at its best as a straight up constructed format. Just as it was intended. Although, typically we shuffled up all the outer regions and those were passed out randomly. You could play where each players first 5 turns (are in the bubble) meaning that you build for 5 turns, no combat in order to get the game going.

If your having problems with someone having too many ships in the home region you can always play news cards that destroy people's ships.

Games are meant to go long. I cannot imagine finishing games less than an hour. There are too many options to consider.