New strategies and Win Conditions

[Thesemindz]

I've been discussing with some of my friends one of the major problems we saw in Overpower, and I wanted to get some feedback from you guys.

As we saw it, Overpower basically had two win conditions, KO and Venture, and really only one strategy, do more damage then the other guy.

I always felt like this limited the depth of what I though was otherwise a pretty great game. Other games, like Legend of the Five Rings, had multiple win conditions which I felt added to the variation of decks you'd see played.

So we started brainstorming some new strategies we could apply to overpower.

So far, we've cosidered strategies including


Spying - forcing your opponent to reveal cards out of hand giving you the advantage.

Card advantage - consistently having more, and more playable, cards than your opponent

Control - limiting your opponent's options or forcing him to take actions on your terms

Anti-Shift - reducing or eliminating your opponent's ability to shift attacks, or penalizing him for doing so

Swarm - a lot of low level attacks intended to overwhelm your opponent with spectrum KO's

Rush - a lot of high level attacks intended to accomplish cumulative KO's and big venture wins

Defense - preventing your opponent from landing as much damage as possible

Teamwork - decks built around landing alot of cooperative attacks

Battlesite Destruction - destroying your opponent's battlesite quickly and efficiently

Resurrection - keeping your opponent from KOing your characters, this is different from defense because instead of keeping the attacks from landing, we are keeping the attacks from killing characters, examples of this would be Vertigo type cards

Burn - forcing your opponent to discard cards from his draw pile so he can't use them

Venture Manipultaion - either changing the venture totals, or moving around ventured mission cards

Salvage - cards that allow you to draw cards out of your dead pile or replay cards

Anti-Placement - cards that limit your opponent's ability to place cards or play placed cards, or force him to discard those cards once placed

Hero Cycling - cards that allow you to exchange front line heroes for reserve or vice versa


These are just some of the ideas we've come up with. Now, while there are already cards that allow for most or all of these actions, there aren't generally enough to flesh them out into game winning strategies. So we've had to create some new cards and card ideas to make up for that.

But what other strategies can you guys think of that you would like to see implemented in Overpower?


-Rob

[CCTelander]

Thesemindz
As we saw it, Overpower basically had two win conditions, KO and Venture, and really only one strategy, do more damage then the other guy.

Welcome aboard Rob!

You're dead on as far as the win conditions go, but, while I do see where you're coming from on the "only one strategy" comment, I'm not sure I completely agree.

First, if you really wanted to distill it down that far, the same could be said for about every other combat type game in existence. You could say exactly the same thing about the three other combat type games that I'm most familiar with aside from OP, MTG, Vs System, and HeroClix.

Sure, in order to KO all of your opponent's characters, or win by Venture you usually DO have to "do more damage than the other guy" (I could split hairs here and say that winning Venture doesn't necessarily require that you do more damage, just advance your 7 Missions faster, but that's just a minor quibble), but I wouldn't really call the doing more damage part a strategy, unless you're playing a heavy hitting deck designed to do just that.

The way I see it is that doing damage part is more of a goal. The overall plan you follow to get to that goal would be the actual strategy, with the individual actions you take to advance the strategy being tactics.

None of this, of course, actually takes away from your underlying point, but I do think it's important to make the distinction so things don't get confused.

As to your basic point, I think you're right that OP could use another win condition or two. It would help mix things up and probably add a lot to the variety of decks that were potentially successful.


Thesemindz
I always felt like this limited the depth of what I though was otherwise a pretty great game. Other games, like Legend of the Five Rings, had multiple win conditions which I felt added to the variation of decks you'd see played.

Personally I think the biggest factor that limited the variety of possible decks in OP was the fact that there were only 3 (4 if you count Shifting as a seperate strategy) basic strategies that actually worked.

You could build heavy team Defense decks that would basically prevent most Hits from actually landing. These were very successful, so much so in fact that many players started to think that defensive cards like Negates and the Character or teammate 9 or less avoids were too powerful.

Then there were the hard hitting Rush decks designed around lots of massive attack Specials, or smaller but hard to defend Specials, or both. Again, these decks were so successful that many players began to believe that some of the characters that excelled at them (like Heroes For Hire and Starjammers) were just too powerful, or that the low-level, difficult to block Specials like Heroes for Hire's Black Knight, were too powerful, or both.

And lastly you had Card Advantage decks, based around Draw 3s, Draw 4s, and cards that forced your opponent to discard cards. These didn't take as much flak since the other 2 strategies were somewhat more dominant, but there were some players who felt that even the draw and discard cards were too powerful.

In every case the problem wasn't really that individual characters or cards were too powerful, IMO, it was that there just weren't adequate counters provided, or enough other viable strategies available to actually make it attractive to play something other than the above Big Three. Increase the available strategy options and provide a few basic cards to counter some of the more heinous tactics and most of the problem goes away immediately.

Just my take on it.


Thesemindz
These are just some of the ideas we've come up with. Now, while there are already cards that allow for most or all of these actions, there aren't generally enough to flesh them out into game winning strategies. So we've had to create some new cards and card ideas to make up for that.

The list you have there is pretty comprehensive.

Like you said, most of the strategies you listed exist in "official" OP to one degree or another. It's just that most of them have never really been developed far enough to become actual, viable game strategies.

As far as additional ideas that you didn't list, that's a tough one. Off the top of my head I can't really think of anything you don't have listed in some form. Just adding the bunch you did list to the OP Arsenal would be a HUGE improvement.

Not coincidentally, we're actually doing just that, with some variations from your list above, with our Homemade cards.

OP LIVES!

Chris