In the last post I wrote about the initial planned composition of the 300 card cube. The last thing to think about structurally before I move into actually picking cards for inclusion is how players pick their outfit starter packs and what goes in them.
Note, if you don’t care to read all the waffle about how I designed the cube, you can head straight to the latest ruleset for the Doomtown Cube.
As a reminder, outfit starter packs are the key to making a draft format work for Doomtown, as they ensure players have the mandatory home card for their outfit and a suite of supporting cards planned mainly to be made up of dudes from the outfit. I covered the concept of outfit starter packs earlier in this series.
Outfit Starter Pack Selection
Without yet having tested it, personally I think random selection of outfits is probably best, with players not being bound to reveal which outfit you ended up with. This is the fastest selection process and creates scope for uncertainty and bluffing during the draft portion. But play groups could of course use whatever approach they feel like.
Another approach that allows some agency and keeps that uncertainty in play is to have players pick them one at a time, but not reveal which outfit they picked. The first player to pick has their pick of all outfits, but will have no idea what other players have chosen whatsoever, and player two will know exactly which faction they have. By the time player 4 picks their faction, they’ll know what other factions are being drafted (though not who has them), and nobody will know what they pick, but this advantage in knowledge may be offset by picking 4th when the most powerful or preferred outfits have already gone.
This approach does take a lot longer though, unless players are already very familiar with the outfit packs – so it’s one I’d try later on in the lifetime of the Cube.
Outfit Starter Pack Structure
Each outfit pack needs 1-2 outfit homes. Most outfits have at least 2 options, and some have 3. Including multiples gives the player more options for drafting strategies and more flexibility when it comes to deck building. Note that homes don’t count towards a decks 52 cards, so these will be on top of the 20 cards I’m planning for.
The core of the outfit packs of course has to be the outfits dudes. From memory, outfits have in the region of 15-20 dudes (they certainly have one for each face value and often multiple options at several of the values). I am going to put some outfit dudes in the cube itself though, and of course there’s that magic number 13 I talked about before (matching the number of cards in each suit in a poker deck), which makes me think the outfit packs should have 13 cards – possibly even one of each face value, though that decision will have to wait until I review the dudes available in each outfit.
That leaves 7 cards, which I intend to split between actions, spells, goods and deeds that are particularly on theme or important to the outfits strategy, and non-unique deeds (our basic land equivalents which will ensure everyone at least has some basic economy available to build their deck). My gut feel is that 3 of the former and 4 of the latter is right.
So that gives us the following contents in each outfit starter pack:
- 1-2 Outfit Homes
- 13 Outfit Dudes (potentially A-K in face value)
- 4 Non-Unique Deeds
- 3 other cards made up from Actions, Spells or Goods
- Total: 20 + Outfit Homes.