If you are playing the standard game (not the organized play scenarios, but the scenarios that come on the cards in the box), then I believe you are describing the correct method.
In the standard game, when the game ends you combine all the cards in your possession: your hand, your deck, displayed, discard pile, and buried. This will likely include cards you've acquired while playing the scenario. If you successfully completed the scenario, check what reward you earned and add it as well. (If it is a Loot card, you might have to make a decision among your group of who will get that card, since there is only 1 of them.) Then, rebuild your decks by keeping only the number of each type of card specified on your character card. You can also trade willingly with the other players. Once you have the appropriate number of cards, you are done. Put the left over cards back in the box.
It is possible that by this method you deck will not change after a scenario (if you acquired no new cards or decided to not keep any of the card you acquired) or it could change entirely (if you acquired so many new cards that you kept only the new cards and not any of the old cards). But it is likely to be somewhere in between, probably 1 to 3 cards per scenario on average in my experience.
If you are playing the organized play scenarios but without class decks, well, you are kind of in your own territory there, as no rule covers what to do in that situation. I think personally, I would not use the deck upgrade rules and instead just keep from the acquired cards and scenario rewards as if it was a standard rule game.
I'm considering picking up a class deck. But, i'm unclear how to use it. i play at home solo,
So, can someone describe how a solo player can benefit from a class deck, what rules might be associated with using the cards and building a characters deck after a scenario in this format of play.
Also, is there a class deck subscription, and/or a sub for the organized play scenarios?
I've read about them in a few places, but can't seem to locate them on the site.
Thanks
Possibilities for using a class deck:
1 - mix the cards in to the box when you add the new adventure - this is particularly handy if you're playing a class that isn't well catered for by a particular AP, as it means there are more suitable boons available.
I believe that Mike has said that it should be all or nothing when adding boons (I.e. If you want to add that Magic Weapon +3, you have to add the short sword and the light crossbows too. Obviously, you can ignore that rule, but you'll be making the game easier.
2 - play a regular AP, but use the OP rules for upgrading - so you get max 1 new card for the scenario. We did something like this, but allowed ourselves Loot and promos. How this affects the difficulty will depend on how well-suited your character is to their class deck.
At the end of the day, they're your cards so, provided you're not reporting scenarios for OP, you can do what you like.
Both subs are a "no for now."
This is how you use the class deck; you have basically two options.
1. Add the cards to your box. To do this, make sure that the adventure number isn't higher than the adventure you're adding. (Think of it as adding your numbered class deck cards to the adventure boxes.) Then play normally.
OR
2. Organised play style, where you choose one of the boons you gained during a scenario, and randomly draw a card of the same type and adventure number from your class deck's cards. If you also gained a scenario reward card, do the same thing separately; if you had multiple such cards for some reason, choose one.
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For the benefits: a class deck changes the boon distributions, making it more likely that you'll get boons useful to your class. This is especially notable with caster decks; with the Wizard or Sorcerer deck, your spells will favour Arcane more; with Cleric, your spells will favour Divine.
For playing at home, the best use for the class deck is if it contains a character you want to play. Then you play that character and mix all the class deck boons in with the normal boons in the box so you have a chance of encountering them during the scenario (and can use the Basics to build your starting deck).
Playing a home game with the Organized Play rules is really limiting and not worth it imo unless you also plan on reporting the sessions.
Thanks for the replies.
I like the idea of adding the cards to the box and playing as normal.
I realize it's my game, and I can do what I like, but what do others think about removing cards not related to the class, and replacing them with ones that are.
For instance, let's say I'm gong to play 3 new classes that are not in the base sets for a 3 player game. If I add all 3 of their class deck cards, the associated decks could get pretty large and even more diluted, not to mention that they will not fit well in the box any more, when new APs are added.
Does swapping out core set cards with class deck cards seem reasonable, or do you think that will unbalance the game by making nearly every boon something that one of the characters might be interested in?
Is there any standard list for the number of boons that should be included in the box decks for each type (weapon, spell, item etc.)?
I've never counted to find out if there is any consistency base set boxes, but if there is a base line number, players could swap out cards for the class deck cards while maintaining the same numbers of the original set.
Thoughts?
I think if I were to do something like that, I'd try to do it on a 1 for 1 basis, or as close to it as I could. And I'd be very careful to not simply discount a card too easily.
Having said that, just because the classes aren't in the base game, doesn't mean the character can't work very well with what is there. There is no fighter in WotR, but I see no reason why any of the Valeros characters wouldn't work just fine with the boons in WotR.
It is an interesting situation. I often play in groups where there is an "undesired" card. For example, Arcane-only spells when there is no Arcane skilled character. But I've not really considered removing those cards. Would it through off the general percentage of how often you should encounter a desirable boon? I'm not sure.
In my opinion, you should keep in all of the base set cards since those are the boons most relevant to actually playing through the AP. There is no "base set" that is common to all APs, and I highly recommend against mixing cards from multiple APs together (it dilutes/removes the atmosphere of the storyline). So if you wanted to play a class deck with S&S, mix in the class deck cards with the S&S cards. Then when you move on to WotR and want to play with the same class deck, take out the class deck cards from S&S and mix them with the WotR box. Don't mix in the S&S cards with the WotR cards though (you can, but they wouldn't really fit in with both the story as well as the box dimensions).
If you're playing with classes from multiple class decks, you don't need to mix in the CD cards if you don't want to -- only mix them in if you think the base set doesn't have enough good cards for that character. For example, I wouldn't mix in the Cleric CD with S&S as I feel the divine spells in the base set are already quite good. If you DO want to mix in multiple decks, the boon pool gets diluted very quickly. What I would do is instead of taking out base set cards, I'd simply only mix in parts of each class deck such that the ratios are the same as adding 1 or 2 decks (so if I'm mixing in 3 decks I'd make a pile of all of the B's, 1's, 2's, etc and randomly draw 1/3 of each stack to mix in to the box). You can of course do whatever you want, but I feel that would be a way to get in extra boon support for each class without overly diluting the card pool or making the card mix more or less powerful than was intended.
I'm a fan of deck building type games. So, I kind of look at the class decks as a way to provide more customization available to a player.
Currently, players get to customize a characters starting deck and then after that the progression of their character is dependent on random card draws to determine the rest of how a character progresses, and I'm not suggesting that this format would change, It's pretty annoying to get a scenario reward of drawing a random weapon only to get a quarterstaff, when you specialize in ranged weapons.
I'm not saying to eliminate the poor luck factor all together, but it would be nice to tilt the odds in favor of a characters progression, so if there are 3 quaterstaffs in the deck take out 2 and replace with cards that relate to the character I'm playing.
These types of decisions allow for a bit more pre-game thought into how to build the boon decks before starting a campaign, and this for me would probably provide more re-playability in the types of character combinations that could be made.
That's one way how I can see class decks being interesting for an at home solo player, and would make me considering investing in a few of them, basically allowing for more options. Just shuffling more cards into the deck without some type of pre-campaign planning just basically adds more cards to the stack. With 3 or more class decks introduce this way, the boon decks would probably remain in a much more diluted state than they were before.
I can see how my approach might unbalance the game. There's a chance that a player would become more successful in acquiring boons allowing more cards to be added to their hand while playing, which might be reshuffled into their deck, allowing for more health etc.
Anyway, it would take some experimentation and good judgment to make sure the odds are not stacked to much in the characters favor, but I think it would allow for a lot more creative pre-campaign decision making that to me adds one more dimension to the game.
Yeah, I can see what you're saying, and it could work as long as you keep power levels the same - so swap a Basic card with another Basic, a 1 with another 1, etc.
However, some class deck cards have different adventure deck numbers than the same card in the base set. Often, the CD version is higher (like a 4 in the base set may be a 6 in the CD), but I believe there were a couple that were lower as well.
As Hawkmoon said, don't discount cards though. You may run across a monster that is immune to piercing and slashing, then suddenly all of your ranged weapons are useless. If you removed all the bludgeoning melee weapons, then you're SOL. The way you propsed sounds like a reasonable way of going about it - if you do try it out let us know how it goes (like try one scenario with just the base set then try the same or the next scenario with the swaps and see if it works out to be better or too powerful).
That's sort of what I'm talking about. Probably will not get to try any time soon, since I don't have any CDs and am just starting out on WoTR. If I pick up a few CD's i'll give it a try on RotR scenarios since I'm pretty familiar with them.
My main intention is not to create a huge inbalance in the game, but to get a little more involved in the design of the boon decks for the characters playing, and then play it and see how it works out. I'd have to keep an eye on making sure there are still some less desirable boons available, but may actually be important as you pointed out. But if I screw up the design of the boons and find myself SoL on the last scenario, well then I guess I'm SoL.