New Cards

[friskers96]

I am probably going to regret starting this thread because every couple of weeks a new thread pops up talking about the appropriate number of cards to have in a deck, and the best way to trim a deck down.. Everyone has seen it, and most of us (including myself, at a time I was a champion of a thin deck) are guilty of it. It seems to spawn a lot of debate and has the potential to spark conflict like the Civil War.

Today I received my copy of Revenge of the Dead (*Toyota Jump!!*) I was reading through the Rule Sheet and there was a topic on adding the New Cards.

New Cards
The new cards in the Revenge of the Dead Supplement are designed to be shuffled into the existing Hero and Zombie decks respectively. The cards are balanced against one another in the order they are listed (The smell of Brains with Hedge Trimmer for instance) If you prefer, you can add them into your decks in balanced pairs of 1 Zombie Card / 1 Hero Card. This allows you to add in all of the cards or select which cards to add in or take out (it also allows you to add more cards in a balanced way if you get a second set of Revenge of the Dead for instance).

Word for word from the sheet also their is a list of the Zombie and Hero cards as stated in the instructions so you can figure out the pairing. I haven't checked the other rule books as of yet and I do plan to do so soon, but bottom line to the age old question seems to be, it will play fine as a giant deck or you can strip it down as per their list to keep it balanced. Play it how you want to seems to be the way. If I cant find a definitive list in the books I'm going to write them an email or try and catch J. Hill on BBG.

Let the deck war begin!!

[alderdust]

I'm good with them all together I mean the only thing it takes away is the zombie win condition of top decking which even when I'm playing zombie player think is a not so fun way to win...if rather eat human brains.

[samuraitrev]

Every card until Timber Peak is listed here http://flyingfrogwiki.com/ffpwiki/index...._Card_List

and Timber Peak
http://flyingfrogwiki.com/ffpwiki/index....Peak_Cards

Hope this helps, Enjoy Revenge of the Dead it's brutal!

[friskers96]

I checked the booklets and no breakdown list, FFPWiki has a jumbo list with no real connection. Separated all my cards into sets, removed Base Game and Timber Peak. Thought being those are staple cards to get the engine running. Dug through Hero Pack 1 and SOTF and this is what I came up with (GH is going to take time there is a lot going on there)

HP1
(2) Zombie Surge / (2) Hunting Rifle
(1) Hungry Dead / (1) Hero's Sacrifice
(1) Twisted Ankle / (1) Monkey Wrench
(1) Nowhere to Run / (1) " I know where it is"

SOTF
(2) Deadly Surprise / (2) Lucky Find
(2) Tide of the Dead / (2) Brilliant Idea
(2) Hopeless / (1/1) Stockpile: Guns/First Aid
(1) Tools of the Grave / (1) Shovel
(1) Fight for Survival / (1) Sledge Hammer

Again this is all my best guess looking at the cards and seeing what they do vs other cards in their set. Feel free to tell me if I goofed on it somewhere or if you feel the matching should be different. Growing Hunger is going to be a pain.

[StayPuft]

From everybody on here, I have heard that even with the giant decks, it doesn't unbalance the game.

From one of my gaming buddies, he seemed to think it does, at least as far as with the scenarios like Escape in the Truck, where you are looking for specific items.

Now, a lot of folks here have said that even that is not too terribly unbalanced, as they tend to balance it out with more of these types of items and more of the "Just what I needed" cards and ones like that.

My gaming group buddy didn't seem to feel this was the case, and he actually trims his deck down rather than playing with all of the cards from all expansions.

I have to admit, I tend to lean towards believing the folks here rather than believing my gaming buddy. Reason being, despite owning all the expansions, he actually never got a chance to play the game all that much before he started coming to our game nights. Not many of his friends played with him. In fact, there are several different things within the expansions he has yet to ever get to use.

I won't know for sure until I have all the expansions myself and try playing a few times with the huge decks. Then I will find out for sure. But, others here on the boards can probably comment on that a little more.

Let's say, for example, for Escape in the Truck. You are looking for a set of keys and gasoline. Two very specific items. Now, I believe I recall that Growing Hunger had at least one more set of keys, and I think it had more gasoline, but I don't recall how many. It also had some more of those "I found it" or "Just what I needed" type of cards. So, you can see that does help to balance that out despite the increased deck size. However, does that remain to be the case after some of the other expansions?

[friskers96]

I didn't really appreciate the effort they put into this until I saw the completed card list and had a good understanding of the cards and what they do. With all the talk of draw percentage on other threads and the opinions of other players really makes you eventually see that the big daddy deck is not too different that the standard base game deck alone, it just seems to work.

It never fails though, some one wants to thin it down, and I'll keep trying to crack that nut, there has to be a good way to do it.

[LabRat]

(05-25-2013 07:20 AM)friskers96 Wrote:  It never fails though, some one wants to thin it down, and I'll keep trying to crack that nut, there has to be a good way to do it.

Won't it work if you just remove cards per set? Set-wise, you know that the decks have been balanced and playtested by FFP numerous times already, so you can be assured that removing cards per entire set is balanced.

---

I think this is related to this topic - has anyone tried mixing all the cards without the base cards? TP has 45 Hero cards, Growing Hunger has 25, Hero Pack 1 has 5 cards - that's 75 cards total, well below my 90 card threshold.

[friskers96]

Whenever the topic arises I always preach the remove a set idea, they always want an element of it though. I'm guessing it mostly new players that want to thin it down. I remember the first time I played the truck scenario I got super frustrated looking for the gas.

[StayPuft]

Yeah, that is the one thing I am not sure about. I seem to hear different things from folks around here than what my gaming buddy seems to think. After you have all the expansions, is it fairly balanced, or does finding very specific items, such as in Escape in the Truck, become very hard?

[samuraitrev]

I never thin the deck down, I just don't see the need. Having bigger decks doesn't make the chances of finding scenario search items more remote because the expansions are balancd with other cards like Just What I Needed etc. Plus I've always thought losing a game for running down the Hero deck a bit of an anticlimax anyway (in theory). I've never seen it happen.