playing with a randomized selection of decks

We did an entire tournament like that in Denver a few months back. iirc There were 14 players and only two of the 14 players were completely happy with what they got.

mirddes wrote: does anyone enjoy this?

5 players each picking from a selection of unknown decks

does anyone do this?

I have. Its interesting to try and suss out what someone else had in mind with their deckbuilding "on the fly", as it were. So it makes a great skill builidng exercise, although the games themselves tend to be weirdly tentative, particularly early on as everyone is trying to sort out what they're playing...

It occurs to me that it would be fun to play a tournament where everyone built toolbox decks and then picked them at random. That way, there'd be fairly little confusion, and you'd have the pleasure of playing without too much planning of your next turns (since you wouldn't know the specifics of the deck too well).

DeathInABottle wrote: you'd have the pleasure of playing without too much planning of your next turns (since you wouldn't know the specifics of the deck too well).

Hmmm.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

If I don't know that this is the last/only Wake effect in the deck, I'll probably spend most of the game with most of my minions untapped. This is bound to increase timeouts, as potentially all of the players will be hesitant to play forward.

The Succubus Club variant isn't one I'd play in unless I was guaranteed to get my deck back at some point of the event and get to play with it. i.e. the top 5 decks are played by their creators in the finals, or something like that.

Half of the fun of the VTES is deckbuilding, you can kill it, but for what?

Adonai wrote:

DeathInABottle wrote: you'd have the pleasure of playing without too much planning of your next turns (since you wouldn't know the specifics of the deck too well).

Hmmm.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

If I don't know that this is the last/only Wake effect in the deck, I'll probably spend most of the game with most of my minions untapped. This is bound to increase timeouts, as potentially all of the players will be hesitant to play forward.

The Succubus Club variant isn't one I'd play in unless I was guaranteed to get my deck back at some point of the event and get to play with it. i.e. the top 5 decks are played by their creators in the finals, or something like that.

That would be a reasonable way of running it, yeah. Additional incentive for people to put real effort into deckbuilding for their opponents.

elotar wrote: Half of the fun of the VTES is deckbuilding, you can kill it, but for what?

You'd still be building a deck - you'd just be building it for someone else. And you'd be doing it for a change of pace.