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Whoa! That's a big change. It changes the game down to the fundamentals! I have to admit I don't understand the change. I mean, if the change is going to be made I'm glad it is made at this early stage of the game but I don't think it is a necessary change.

What follows are the musings of someone just spewing thoughts off the top of his head. I assume the designers had reason to do this, I mean it isn't like we've heard a lot of complaints about people decking out. Usually the complaint is the speed at which souls can be attained, not at which the deck runs out.

I'm interested in seeing how this plays out but I honestly and humbly think this might be a bad decision. I'm not Math major but it seems like increasing the deck size by 20 cards makes for trouble if you leave the limit of 3 per card in place. 60 is an arbitrary number as far as I know. I know it has become the standard for CCGs but why are we falling in line with that?

My first guess is that the designers, while working on the next set discovered games slowing down and thus requiring more turns. Whether this is from a continual flow of souls back and forth or a stalemate as players forced each other to lose souls (not reap, simply lose) and thus kept the game going longer.

Looking at it from a deck standpoint, the change waters down decks significantly. 40 cards at 3 max yielded a minimum of 14 different cards in a deck. Going to 60 means we're adding 6 more cards at 3 ofs and bumping the previous 1 of up to a 3 of. So now we're given a more standard distribution of cards but at the cost of the overall quality of the deck.

Maybe this is a good change and I simply haven't figured it out yet, but I don't understand the reasoning behind it and that causes me to respond from my gut. I don't suppose Ryan will give us any more feedback on the motivations of the change.

Also I'm curious if this means starter decks will begin coming out in 60 cards instead of 40... If it does, then this also changes the limited format. I assume not or else they would have had a much larger announcement about the changes.

Very interesting. Guess I'll go home and tweak the decks to be 60 cards instead of 40.

Uhm...I had a hard enough time getting Two players to join me for regular Hecatomb casual games....now you want me to explain to them that WotC is changing the deck size limit to 60 cards, therefore totally screwing up the decks they(and I) have spent hours building and tweaking for 40 cards?

Thanks alot. I can see Hecatomb quickly taking up precious closet space in the near future.

I don't get it at all. I almost considered this an April Fool's gag if it wasn't December. This game is on a timer, how the heck are people decking out at such an alarming rate to justify a drastic increase in deck size?

derSturmer]This game is on a timer, how the heck are people decking out at such an alarming rate to justify a drastic increase in deck size?

The problem is, that with a 40 card deck, you're pretty much guaranteed to draw into your power cards, assuming you've got three of each in there, every single game. Most often in multiples. With a 60 card minimum, you will still probably see them, but as you're drawing about half the deck instead of three quarters, there's a much greater chance you won't see any.

60 cards is an industry standard for very good reasons. Hecatomb started with 40 because we started with a fairly limited cardpool. Now that we've got more cards, and more on the way, 60 is the way wrote:

Billiac]The problem is, that with a 40 card deck, you're pretty much guaranteed to draw into your power cards, assuming you've got three of each in there, every single game. Most often in multiples. With a 60 card minimum, you will still probably see them, but as you're drawing about half the deck instead of three quarters, there's a much greater chance you won't see any.

I see your point in that with a greater card pool then bigger decks make sense, but why deal with powerful cards by making the decks bigger instead of simply beginning the long tradition of a banned and restricted list? It seems a very odd way to address power levels of cards.

The problem is, that with a 40 card deck, you're pretty much guaranteed to draw into your power cards, assuming you've got three of each in there, every single game. Most often in multiples. With a 60 card minimum, you will still probably see them, but as you're drawing about half the deck instead of three quarters, there's a much greater chance you won't see any.[/quote]
I see your point in that with a greater card pool then bigger decks make sense, but why deal with powerful cards by making the decks bigger instead of simply beginning the long tradition of a banned and restricted list? It seems a very odd way to address power levels of cards.

Billiac]60 cards is an industry standard for very good reasons. Hecatomb started with 40 because we started with a fairly limited cardpool. Now that we've got more cards, and more on the way, 60 is the way to go.

Industry standard? This game has 5 sided cards and is about ending the world. Not exactly something which follows the standard. I think that going to 60 simply because it's what people are used to is a poor reason to do it. If they were going to fall in line with Magic and VS why not also move the card limit up to 4-ofs?

The more I think about it, I suppose it is a good move in the long run. But I think that the timing was quite unusual and the lack of any sort of explanation is odd as well. In a time where the goal is to get the game out to the masses and to bring new players in, it seems quite odd to make the game more difficult to get into.

Magic has Mark Rosewater and various other people to address the playing populace about changes. They explain the reasoning behind it and discuss it from their standpoint. I would love to have something like that for Hecatomb. I really just don't understand the logic behind this decision.

Ryan did say in the OP that it was to expand deckbuilding options and to allow for longer games, maybe that is as simple as it is. They get paid to playtest this a lot, so maybe they know somethinig we haven't figured out yet. Now I've got to figure out how to make my deck work with 20 more c wrote:

Okay then?

Shouldn't this announcement be up on the main Hecatomb page somewhere? It's rather drastic and important after all.

I'd like a little more back up as to why they're making this change as well. Adding twenty cards to each of my decks is going to be rather difficult. In fact I'd just built a Greed/Corruption weenie deck that was about fifty cards and felt it needed slimming down!

I guess that it could add more variety to games, as (at least currently) if you and your opponent are using one or more of the same dooms you're going to be playing a lot of the same stuff. But surely the best fix for this problem is to release more cards?

Making games more competitive by making it harder to get at your powerful cards is another possible reason, but that just means it's a lot harder to make viable strategies in your deck. Paticularly for those of us who don't own three copies of every rare. Still this could be be argued as just making the whole process more challenging, but I can't say I'm hugely welcoming this decision.

At the end of the day yes, I can just play with a 40 card deck at home as I don't really play competetivly. But I wouldn't mind giving it a go given the oppurtunity, so i really need to try to keep my decks as legal as possible.

Still, just have to try it out and see how it goes I guess.