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The past few months, I've been working on the designs for a TCG based on the battle engine from "Princess Waltz." While I've got it pretty well sorted out, there's one particular piece of it I'm having second thoughts over: The fact that I've got it set up to use 2 decks.

(EDIT: Gameplay basics. Guess letting you folks look at what I'm trying to get help on would make it easier, no?)

1 deck works pretty much like any other TCG's deck would. You draw a card each turn, set number of cards in hand, yadda yadda yadda. That deck basically consists of equipment for your character and special techniques to help you defeat your opponent. The 2nd deck, which is basically 3 suits of cards of varying values, is used for determining who's attacking that turn and how much damage, if any, their opponent ends up taking. Each turn, you draw 5 cards from that deck, use those for just that turn, then shuffle them back in and draw 5 more the next turn. Main problem I have with this idea is that...well, 4 decks on the table would clutter things a bit for a match, and having to hold upwards of 11 cards in your hand at once on a constant basis could be a bit annoying.


After Fan Expo, I started thinking that I could drop the 2nd deck entirely and replace it with dice. Rather than a 60-card deck on top of a 30-card deck, it would just be a pool of red, blue, and green dice, with the different colors representing the 3 different suits. You pick 5 at random each turn (to get a random variety of suits) and roll them to determine their values. Would provide basically the same kind of variety that the deck would do, without having to work with 2 completely different decks for the same game.


The main thing I don't like about the dice idea, however, is that it takes away one mechanic from the point-cards deck that I really liked: point cards with extra effects, like being usable as a different suit or gaining values when used at a certain point in a turn. Aside from that, there's also the issue of how to randomize the dice pool effectively. Best thing I can think of there is a bag with 15 dice in it, 5 of each color. With a deck, this is a simple matter of shuffling.


So what I'm basically getting at here is what's in the poll.

Well, maybe this will help. (Took me a few minutes to figure out how to change a journal entry from "private" to "public".)

What I'm basically doing is exploring the option of replacing the Battle Deck with a dice pool.

Technically, yes, they could run on a single Battle Deck, as there's nothing specific about them whatsoever; aside from the non-basic Point Cards, they're as generic as the cards of a poker deck.

However, with the non-basic Point Cards, I think that would add at least some level of customization for each player to use for themselves. Plus, I find it easier to just have each player use their own.


EDIT: Now that I've taken a few minutes to think about it, my current limitations on the Battle Deck aren't too feasible. At best, I could probably expect people to run maximums of 6's, 5's, and 4's, plus a lone 3, of each suit to ensure high point totals...so basically, I'd either have to retool the limits to force some inclusion of lower-value cards, or go with the dice idea to leave things more up to chance.

If I changed over to the dice idea, what do you think would be a good way of going about it? I'm not coming up with anything better than the "5 of each color in a bag, grab 5 at random" idea.