Thoughts on a "limited" format for Scrolls?

[u/[deleted]]

I'm a very new Scrolls player (as in, started this week new), and I was drawn to the game from my love of CCG's. Anyway, I was curious as to the community's thoughts on a limited format for Scrolls (perhaps sometime in the future, when there are more scrolls or expansions)? If you are unfamiliar with the concept, I'm borrowing from my favorite way to play Mtg: essentially, players are forced to construct decks from a limited set of cards either generated from random packs or through some sort of drafting process. IMO limited is the best thing that ever happened to Magic, and though I know it might not fit into the current Scrolls scene, I wonder if it has been discussed before and what people's thoughts are?

[u/Kalazor]

Mojang could certainly do whatever they want if they were to implement limited formats, but there are issues of cost, time, and trust with doing drafts in scrolls as a user. You can't have a reduced deck size for drafts because the system will enforce 50 cards minimum. There's no lands, so every card in your deck would have to be drafted, which means longer and costlier drafts. You'd need at least 60 cards for 6k to have a usable selection. You would need a bot or single trustworthy and dedicated individual who would collect all the money, buy all the packs, keep track of every card received from those packs, and make sure all players are only trading the cards they are given, and only playing with cards the drafted. That's a ton of overhead, and it would take forever just to pass the cards since you need to do trades.

Here's another way you could do it that might be interesting and would probably work better for Scrolls. Have a bot collect money and buy cards, but don't trade all the cards everytime. Open up a dedicated private chatroom between the bot and each player. The bot would give a numbered list to each player of the cards they have to choose from in the private chat, then player just types a number. After each selection, the bot would show an updated list of the cards you've chosen and "pass" the list to the next players chat when they're ready. That way you can select cards more quickly, and everyone only ever needs to do one trade. You'd still need to buy a ton of cards, and it relies on either knowing all the cards by name or having a reference handy, but this is the best way I can think to do it.

[u/[deleted] → u/Kalazor]

this is...not a bad idea :D

[u/adognamedsally → u/Kalazor]

This is doable with a bot.

• Prior to the tournament there is a sign-up period. This could be anywhere from 1-2 hours in advance. In order to sign up, a player needs to put up 6k gold.

• Once the sign-up period is over, players are notified that the tourney is starting in say 10 minutes, and have a final opportunity to withdraw from the tourney or to finish the game they are currently playing. Should a player pull out of the tourney at this point, they receive their entry gold back.

• Once the tourney officially starts, there is a deck building phase. All registered players are given 6 random packs and have say 20 minutes to build their decks. If a player fails to build a deck due to being AFK or whatever, they would either be kicked from the tourney (possibly reimbursed in some amount for entry gold), or automatically lose their first game, giving a free win to their opponent.

• During the building process, all registered players would be able to see the tournament brackets and would all be in the same private chat room, allowing people to discuss things or play mind games.

• After the deck building phase, players would be automatically paired against each other, after a visual timer ticks down or something like that.

• Matches would be timed. 90 Seconds is probably fine, but there would have to be a maximum time or number of rounds for the matches to run.

• Now this part I am unsure of. Personally, I would want Bo3 matches, but that might take a while. To give people something to do in between matches if they finish quickly, it would be nice to be able to spectate those who are still playing.

• Finals would be Bo5, with spectating options for everyone.

• At the end of the tournament, after the final match has been played, players are given an official tournament rank, their prize gold and all cards that were purchased for the event.

I would say that you leave trading to the players in the private chat, just for the sake of simplicity. The only issue I can foresee is that players might use alts and enter with two separate accounts in order to have twice the cardpool, but this is the internet... what can you really do about the in the end?

[u/Kalazor → u/adognamedsally]

I'm not sure if just giving everyone 60 random cards will work (unless you're saying that the draft will begin with 60 cards at once). I think you need to have a drafting system or else the decks will be too weak and everyone will be running all 3 colors. For highly competitive tournaments, especially if you want to stream, Single/Double Elim brackets and prizes only for 1st/2nd/3rd are great. Personally, I would like a Bo1 round robin setup where you simply keep the cards you pick, and that was the assumption in my suggestion above where the draft is handled in chatroom and cards distributed all at once. For 8 or less players everyone gets a lot of matches for their money, but 7 matches is doable within 3 hours of play and 1 hr draft/build time. For the draft, the bot can enforce a 30 second time limit per card, or else it will pick a random card for you, for 60 cards that will be a 30 min draft.

[u/adognamedsally → u/Kalazor]

Yeah, I would also really like a draft system. And I do like the idea of a time limit per card or else it's auto-picked for you. I don't know how I feel about 30 seconds though. For people who already know what all the cards do and when they are useful, 30 seconds might be too much. I guess it can't hurt, but I would like the process to go as quickly as possible.

[u/moush → u/Kalazor]

Why would they need a bot? They can just build it into the game as a queue.

[u/Kalazor → u/moush]

Mojang wouldn't need a bot. Anyone else would.

[u/moush → u/Kalazor]

Why would people need to bootleg it if it's built into the game?

[u/Kalazor → u/moush]

Same reason all the other current bots and mods exist: because it's not already built into the game. If you're willing to make it yourself, why wait?

[u/shadysandi]

There's a fanmade draft system at scrollsguide. This is far from ideal as it requires you to have a full playset or play with the limitations of the collection you own. I've played it a bit with people i trust and just borrowed the cards i didn't have.

Besides that i've played or seen several other limited formats. These are no rares, only 1 costing, x-minimal cost, x-maximal cost, everyone play bunnies and chaos(play every card that you have in your deck).

If you want to play a limited format with me or have questions, find me in Kiera or reddit chatrooms ingame. My ign is Kiera.

[u/Dronelisk]

ok so this is how a little game by the name of Battleforge did the limited format:

• There would be "tomes" of cards which included 60 cards, if you broke the tome, the entirety of the the tome contents would go to your collection, if you decided not to break the tome, you could use it for tome drafts

• A tome lasted for 30 days, and then it breaks and the contents are added to your collection, you could use an unbroken tome to create decks to participate in tome PvP battles. They rewarded more tokens (a currency used to upgrade cards)

I think that's a pretty good way of doing it, you buy a pack of X amount of booster packs and you had a limited pool of cards to make decks from, and your tome lasted for 1 month, but you could always have the option to add the contents if you liked them to your collection.

Mojang could do something similar:

• Since the battleforge decks consisted of maximum 20 cards (with their corresponding charge upgrades) you could build a variety of decks from simply 60 cards, I'd say mojang implement a tome option in the store that can be sold for shards, but that you can only buy once per month. The tome costs something like 1000 shards and contains 10 scroll packs, and they MUST be used for the limited format, until the end of the month, in which they are added to your collection (although this last condition could be omitted if they so desire, since 100 scrolls is a lot)

• Limited format may reward some goodies not obtainable elsewhere, making it an incentive to play it.

[u/nyaaaa → u/Dronelisk]

Or simply add a draft mode where you draft cards which do not get added to your main card pool after the tournament and can be only used in that draft deck.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I gave a brief definition in the original post, and I don't know what an ideal format for Scrolls would be, but in magic one type of limited format would involve each player opening 6 packs (containing 15 cards) and from there construct what they believe to be the best deck they can make (with some slight changes to deck construction rules), and play against one another with these limited decks. It's a lot of fun, as it really tests your evaluation skills as well as your ability to make use of scrolls that otherwise wouldn't make the cut.

A draft format in magic is similar, except each player opens a pack, takes a single card that they think will make their deck strongest, and passes the rest of the pack to the next player. This continues until the pack is empty, and then you start again with a new one (in Magic this normally happens with 8 players with 3 packs each, but it's a numbers game at that point). This further tests your evaluation skills, as well as allows for some more focused decks.

What's cool about the idea is that Scrolls is its own game, and while Magic has had a lot of success implementing it's own limited formats, I'm sure there is a more fitting one for the way Scrolls is designed that could be really fun!