From:	Felix Hoefert <FHoefert@********.DE>
Subject:	Re: A thought
Date:	Wed, 15 Jul 1998 13:36:53 +0200

Matb wrote:
>
> Ferris Bueller wrote:
>
> > What would you think if Shadowrun had a SideBoard. Atleast 10 cards.
> > I think that this would make decks a lot more effeciant.
>
> I've been playing with the idea for a while.
>
> In non-tournament games, you can pretty much swap anything into and out
> of your deck between games: your collection is your sideboard.
>
> In tournament games, though, sideboards can get out of control. At
> least ten cards means you can have hosers for nearly every type of deck
> - three each of Infected Chrome, SecDecker, and SecRigger - and you've
> already got Bar Fights and Wanteds in your decks for the mages.
>
> I've been running tournaments where players can substitute a card for
> *any* card in their collection, at a cost of five Reputation (since Rep
> carries over between games in tournaments).
>
> I've been thinking of a couple alternatives:
>
> - Change the Rep amount. Five Rep for one card is pretty big, as
> players usually want multiples of the same card for hoser purposes. (Of
> course, that's what I'm trying to avoid.)
>
> - Force players to declare sideboards. Something that I hated about
> Magic, actually, since I've often found that sideboards end up somehow
> integrated into decks during the middle rounds, to get pulled free just
> before the semi-finals.
>
> > Or is there something already to this effect. LMK what you guys think.
>
> I'm not really sure I like the idea of sideboards. Part of the
> challenge of the game is to build a good deck, and sideboarding crutches
> that. It takes a bit of skill to build a good Rigger or Mage deck, and
> there's some safety in knowing that only a few people will be playing
> with SecRigger or Major Drain: those whose decks are likely to be
> crippled by them (like, an Awakened/Amazonian Hunt deck, or a
> Decker-based R-3 deck). With sideboarding, you pretty much assure that
> those cards will be played, which makes life *much* rougher.
>
> It also means that there's a general shift away from cards with direct
> hosers (Deckers, Riggers...) and toward decks with fewer or no hosers
> (...samurai, trolls.) Which seems to feed directly into the ugly Bash
> Troll decks everyone says they hate to play.
>
> Sideboards also only work in really long tournaments, where you play
> two-of-three to determine a win against a particular player (no use
> sideboarding when you don't know what you're going to face just yet!)
> Right now, I'm still concentrating on smaller tournaments, where
> everyone pretty much knows each other's decks anyways, but I can see how
> sideboarding may not be an issue at all in small game stores.
>
I´ve found that sideboarding isn´t effective at all in smaller tourneys.
I understand you can only sideboard before facing an opponent the second
time. I small - tiny tourneys (3-7 people), this happens very rarely.
Another problem is that if you´ve sideboarded for one match, you might
be facing a toatally new opponent the next (as in quarter -
semi-finals), so the sideboard cards in your deck might have replaced
the ones you need now, and you can´t replace them again.

Felix