Seems that no one is happy with the way autodraw currently works. I've been thinking about the possible ways to change the system for better, and have come to the conclusion that it might be best to return to the old system with a small change: make all autodrawing cards go to bottom of deck when destroyed or removed from game. I suppose this would mean creating a copy of the card and putting it to bottom of deck in the cases where they leave a ruin or corpse on the field. Thougths?

Apart from drawing unwanted default buildings for the domains that are supposed to be cast by Astridian Diplomat, in current system there are at least these serious problems that need to be changed:

It doesn't consider a card castable if it would become castable by simply using alabaster pantheon's ability

It's always one round too late: it just considers what you would have needed this turn for casting the cards you have in hand and draws that domain for next turn. For example if your creature with Vessel of Cathild dies at the end of round and you are left with no chaos domain, the autodraw won't draw you a new chaos domain card to hand even if you have cards that require chaos.

On the other hand, the current system would work ok if these problems were fixed. That shouldn't be that hard to do, right? The last two should be easy on paper, while the diplomat thing might be more complicated to get right, but surely not impossible?

I'd still like to see us revert to the previous system.

If Jed feels that domain denial is a problem with that system, then add the option to draw a basic domain card instead of your normal draw when that happens.

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Altren wrote:

I agree with Keyser, and that's what I'm planning to implement actually.

|| The Rise of the DCC | Plasmatium Netherious | Tastes Like Chicken | The Astridian Conspiracy ||

Guild -> | Platypus Rising|

I also think we should go back to the old version.

I hate that right now, if you can get 3 flux wells and are in a situation where you autodraw, basically all you need to do to keep ahead is keep spamming buildings with salvage and re-drawing them. I've seen a lot of games where one person was basically dominating the play at the end, but lost on glory because they couldn't dislodge the building spam soon enough.

Domain denial should be a valid strategy, but it does need to be balanced.

If people are careless with their domain buildings, there should be a potential for them to run out of them. If certain cards are too strong for domain denial (Negate, Tremor for example) then the cards should be changed rather than the mechanic.

If we do allow redraw of domain units, it should be limited to basic buildings and ones like the Vapor Mahal where it is a special ability of the card. Redraw on Faceless Lords or Astridian Diplomats would be too strong.

Please remember what I suggested. Invent the new building HOME.
http://thefarwilds.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1399&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=home Autodraw - is this what we want? topic

That should solve the problem.

The new autodraw is incredibly unintuitive for deckbuilding. Domain is a core mechanic of the game (it isn't even the fun part of the game), so why is it so clunky and misleading? It's just becoming a barrier to play the game - to be able to play the game you actually need to be able to cast stuff.

One unexpected consequence with the new autodraw is that if you have a certain combination of domain buildings in your deck, you might end up drawing a base of the wrong type, and end up being unable to cast your 1 domain creatures. And the 'solution' to this problem is to sometimes include certain basic buildings but not others, while other times excluding them, based on the combination of buildings you're actually dealing about. Such hidden mechanics is just going to make the game inaccessible to newer players.

NH and Keyser: I used to think returning to old system with changes in a few domain denial cards would be best, but then I realized the old system was annoying in many ways too. It forced everyone who wanted to get to 3 domains to use 7-9 domain cards and at least 4 bases, which had many concequences:

-It was frustrating to have to cycle three or four times to get for example a great oak instead of grove, while other times they were drawn in exactly the right order. This was a silly luck-aspect in the game.

-With a huge amount of domain cards it often happened that you would draw your hand full of them which often meaned defeat or being forced to mulligan. Again, this was a silly luck-aspect.

-Only really good decks that got to 3 domain levels were a few DL decks, because with enough domain denial cards it was easy to keep opponent at max 2 domains, eventually getting him / her down to 0. DL had some chance to fight this with massive creature removal and flux acceleration.

-It was kind of useless to expand because then the opponent just took out your original base and sooner or later you ran out of buildings for covering the well. Now we see a lot more construction sites being placed, which is nice I think. The old system was all about rushing to opponent's base and taking down his buildings.


Doesn't that just mean they were too slow?

Why would it be too strong, I don't understand. Faceless Lord is only good for getting to 2nd domain fast with a creature out at the same time (itself). It's rarely preferable to a Warren in later game. Diplomat is of course cheaper and a better fighter, but still a basic building would be better when you are about to lose a well. Also diplomat isn't a base and can't be used for expanding. I often place default building sites in later game.

PredatORC's solution might be good after some tweaks too.

Also, the current system would be just fine if the problems with diplomat, pantheon and the timing (check the end of the first post) were fixed. Last 2 of course applied to the old system too as far as I know. But the timing wasn't so noticable because you always drew a domain card to hand if you didn't have any in hand.

I've seen situations where one player had creatures dominating the middle and was capable of destroying a building a turn, but couldn't push the opponent off due to domain building spam. When one player can destroy a 7 flux building each turn, the opponent shouldn't be able to just recast it for free and be able to keep doing that forever.

Being able to redraw and cast a 1/4 creature that also gives domain every turn for free is very strong as well. Even now it isn't uncommon to see Astridian Diplomats which should be fairly pricey creatures cast and sacced to Altars the same turn since they're just needed for that domain for a card or two and when sacced the turn they're cast are effectively 0 flux cost (5 extra needed for investment).

Including domain buildings, cycling domain buildings is part of the game. Autodraw makes people need fewer domain buildings than is intuitive to players coming in from Magic who are used to needing about 1/3 of the deck be land. 7-9 domain buildings depends on the deck. 3 domain should be a challenge to reach in a competitive situation...not impossible, but not nearly as easy as it is now.

Most of the construction sites I see places are things like Bamboo Towers, Dank Pits, etc. It's still expensive to lose a 7 flux domain building as a construction site (no salvage).

You shouldn't be able to expand without considering defense at your original base.

It seems to me these attempts to "fix" the issue just make it more complex and clunky and create more issues.

The base building solution doesn't appear to fix any of the current issues...unless maybe the base building didn't have salvage, but then you wouldn't want it in your starting hand, only as an emergency measure.

I like the idea of "Fated" as a rare, unique keyword for a few cards.