No Reserve, what should be accounted for?

[corman02]

Been reading up on the forum since I came across my old cards and would love to teach my twin nephews how to play!

One idea I had was to introduce them to the game using no reserve heroes at first.  Since they will just want to play their favorite heroes, I feel like the reserve is where it could get messy if one likes a hero who can attack from the reserve and one doesn't.

So my question is, if you were to play with a no reserve hero rule, what would you have to account for in deck building, besides the obvious exclusion of anything that requires a reserve hero to play (i.e. any BC cards, "Reserve must skip a battle before entering")?

[Tussin]

i don't think it would change much... other than if you were deck building you would have to balance what you want out more if using just 3 frontline characters, but if you play 4 frontline it gives more options, but heavily favors defensive teamwork specials

[teesaw]

How old are the kids you're teaching?  I taught my son to play when he was just about 4, and I've always toyed with the idea of posting some kind of tutorial for teaching the game to little kids, but every time I've sat down to write it out It felt very self-explanatory. 

When I started, we didn't use a reserve hero, and we used a very limited pool of special cards (particularly because there was a reading challenge, but also because of the confusion that it presented) to basic avoid's and number-icon-attack specials.  We also didn't use spectrum/cumulative KO rules, and started each character with 4 "hearts" (chips, coins, pennies) and each successful hit would take one away.  We relied heavily on basic universe cards for our deck building, which was fun for him because he was just learning to do simple addition.  We ignored most of the meta rules and deck size limits...we also recycled all of the cards into a single pile (rather than Power Pack/Dead Pile) and the very first handful of times we played, we did a continuous (MTG/Go-Fish style) of game rather than hands/battles.  Missions/Events were some of the last things we introduced, although we probably could have brought them in sooner.

As an update to this, my son's in kindergarten now, and we've been playing the regular game for a year or so, now. 

Hope this is useful for someone out there.

[corman02]

This is some great feedback, teesaw!  I never thought of the idea of continuous hands (like in Go Fish), I think that makes a lot of sense to try.  I was also thinking of limited specials to avoids, number-icon attacks, and may make additional attack and/or combine for a single attack.

Thanks for the ideas, it was exactly like I was hoping for!  For the record, my nephews are 6, so I think it's a good age to start trying it out!

[teesaw]

Glad I could help and good luck - and let me know if you come across any variations of the game that work really well.  We're always interested in fun new ways to play. 

6 (my son's current age) is a great age for overpower - your nephews should get a lot out of the game.  The only advice I can give is to involve yourself up-front with the deck-building, even in the 'simplified' rules set.  A six-year old's deck can grow to 100+ cards, 40 of which being power cards under 5 - haha.   

When we started I made a few mono-color decks for learning the game, very close to the old '95 starter packs:
- Cyclops/Professor-X/Jean Grey (E)
- Hulk/Thing/War Machine (S)
- Wolverine/Hawkeye/Black Widow (F)

I'm working on a set of rules for a four-person booster draft format that I think would be fun in an imaginary world where you can make your own booster packs (although ziplock bags/white envelopes would make a decent proxy for boosters).  I'll post it on the site when it's ready to go.