Hey folks,

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I'm DMRawlings, and I'm fairly involved in the /r/customhearthstone community (more-so on their Discord). As a big Dominion fan from ages past, I've been keeping a close eye on The Bazaar, and wanted to speak up after watching the March Update. A couple of really interesting design topics were raised in the March update, and I wanted to give my two copper on them.

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Starting Deck and the Economy

I like the idea of standard coin progression, since every resource-based game since the start of time has included a feels-bad land-screwed state. I can understand why Reynad and his team would want to explore something else.

The problem with static progression like that is that there are no surprises for your opponent, and it can lead to games playing out in same-y ways. In The Bazaar, if there's a linear economy, there will always be optimal selections that will appear on turn 3, 4, etc... if you curve out like that you're maximizing your odds of victory and assuming all goes well, you've mathed out your future turns.

I'd like to consider a hybrid approach to the problem instead.

What if you begin with:

• A certain flat gold amount (say base 2)
• A subset of your starting cards are Coins (say 3 or 4 out of your starting 10)

This accomplishes a few things:

• You'll have a base income that gradually rises, ensuring that early Coin luck doesn't sink you
• You'll have variance in Coins on any given turn that nudges action and prevents a player from having full knowledge of their or their opponent's next turn
• You can guarantee a number of starting coins in hand on turn 1 as a way to calibrate for first turn advantage/disadvantage (which I don't think I've heard Reynad talk about yet)
  
• You can use the remaining 7 cards in the starting deck to express the class identity and get the player started down one of several paths based on what they get on turn 1 versus turn 2. Maybe one class is more attack-y than others and starts with more Attack cards, or one class starts with specific spells that aren't strong, but reinforce what the class is all about.

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I worry that by allowing gold saving, you encourage Alpha Strike strategies where you save up for the really big card and get it early, causing you to cruise to victory. This could encourage HS-like "Hero Power, Pass" turns, which I don't think is good for a game.

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Cross-Archetype Synergies

I think that Reynad has spotted a genuine pitfall with his mechanics as is. If the match comes down to who gets the most archetype cards every match then assuming both players play perfectly it's up to RNG as to who wins. This really comes down to a problem with decision making. In Monopoly, if you land on an unbought property you almost always buy it unless you're broke, and the same is true right now in The Bazaar.

If you've devoted to Fire as a Wizard, and you see 3 cards:

• Good not-fire card
• Good not-fire card
• Average to shitty fire card

You almost always want the fire card. This removes a meaningful decision from the game, because there's no way that the good not-fire card measures up to the decent fire card. I think there are a few ways to muddy the waters a bit, and make cross-archetype play more advantageous.

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Approach 1: Empowered cards

What if you made some of the bigger cards have either bonus effects or entirely different effects based on other cards you've played this turn.

Imagine a theoretical "Flaming Potion" spell. This spell fits in either an Alchemist or Fire archetype. If the last card you played was an Alchemy card, it does X, but if you last played a Fire card, it does Y (or maybe it does something, then gets a bonus thing based on X or Y).

This gives you cross-functional versatility. If you only spec'd Fire, it's useful, but if you splashed in some Alchemy along the way you can use it either way. When I'm making decisions early on, I'm more compelled to pick a decent Alchemy card because Flaming Potion exists.

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Approach 2: Components

What if cards had built in Component tags. These would be properties that other cards could reference to power up their effects.

Imagine a theoretical "Bonfire" Fire archetype spell. This spell does X, but for each "Wood" card you've played or hold in your hand it does extra X.

This gives you the ability to select cards from other Archetypes because they have Components that may be useful in powering up later effects (in addition to being useful themselves). If you chose the average Fire card, you may get to do more Fire stuff, but if you picked a good other Archetype card you might be able to meaningfully use that Component later.

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I hope this has given some food for thought. Let me know your thoughts, and feel free to ask me any questions.