Topic of the Week - Fixed Market Deckbuilders

Boardgames
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Perhaps oddly specific. Also oddly rare as a genre?

We all likely know that Dominion created both deckbuilding and the fixed market, but while deckbuilding has overgrown the hobby like a Virginia creeper, the river market reigns supreme and the fixed market is relegated to the corner.

  1. Deckbuilding? Are you on the deckbuilding train?
  2. Did Dominion really create the genre or can you think of proto-Dominions that paved the way? I’m thinking here of Caylus, who “did pure worker placement first,” and yet games like Bus and Keydom did worker placement with different mechanics and Puerto Rico did the exclusive action draft without physically placing a worker first - what led to this?
  3. Can we build a list of fixed market deckbuilders? Why do you think it’s relatively rare?
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Here’s what I can think of immediately:

  • Dominion
  • Thunderstone (ha, anyone remember Thunderstone?)
  • Aeon’s End
  • Trains
  • Quest for El Dorado (a bit of a chimera as the market evolves, but it has piles and all)
  • Arctic Scavengers

And maybe we can add in games that use other tokens in a similar way:

  • Quarriors
  • Automobiles

I’m going to exclude Orleans, Altiplano, and Quacks from that list as those bits don’t function like cards the way the dice and cubes do in the bulleted games.

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Booooo!!! :rofl:

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My theory: the market is bigger (specifically within the hobby gamer demographic) for more randomness. Specifically the kind of occluded randomness that the river market provides: good for randomising the winner, but not as “in your face” as dice rolls.

Also, designing a fixed market deckbuilder is far harder. A great pick flops out in a river market: “woohoo! Yoink”. A great pick is in a fixed market: “uh, I guess I’m opening with that, again”.

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These ones are the only ones I like

  • Dominion - I went nuts on the expansions
  • Trains - Dom with nice spatial gameplay. I like the houserule where you can only score VP cards up to the number of stations you connect to
  • El Dorado - quick-to-learn easy game, but it does take a while compare to Dominion and isn’t as cool as I thought. Nowadays, there seems to be a better alternative to most Knizia games I’ve played.
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I agree! A fixed market is a bit less exciting.

I don’t have any deckbuilders but I do have a bag builder, Quacks of Quedlinberg which has lots of randomness!

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I think setting up the game really helps the river style too.

One of the big issues with Dominion is also its physicality it’s quite a lot of stuff.

I think the opening of a game of Dominion is also somewhat ideally just some kind of meditation to piece together what works and the rest of the game is a kind of automation I guess? Which I think is a bit of a terrible flow.

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I think I’ve only really played Dominion in this space. And that a long time ago. I still have it and a couple of expansions but haven’t touched it in years. I think it was the first ‘proper’ game I got.

Might have to get it out again!

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While I agree with the general idea that the flow is not ideal, the rest of the game is not automation. If you don’t adapt to what your opponents are doing, and your own luck, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

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I agree that fixed market DBGs are very front-loaded. I’ve enjoyed the first half or so of every game of Dominion I’ve ever played. Then there are no more real decisions to make and I am very bored. That is the main reason I much prefer changing market DBGs. I also prefer deck building as a means to accomplish something else rather than the entire game. I love El Dorado, for example.

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I agree with @Benkyo that it’s probably harder to design a fixed market. I always think of the early 3d platform video games - Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, even Jak & Daxter 1 - they had these open worlds. You didn’t even know where the stars / whatever might be and there was all this exploration. As early as Mario Sunshine it turned into a hub and spokes model, with a bit of an open world but really just a centroid with fixed pathways leading off and at the end of each one was a star. And then Galaxy and all the others which are still 3d but literally drop you onto a path and have you navigate it to an end space.

On reading why there wasn’t any more of the original 3d platform games, articles just said it was too hard. Each level/world needed an architect level of design and planning to make the pieces fit and connect - and people just wanted to drop things in place and move along without fitting everything together.

I think of that. Finding 10 cards that fit together in a balanced way, but also interesting enough to allow for varied replay is a tall order and not everyone is up for it.

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I’ve never played Dominion - if it’s got a fixed market is there a sort of agreed upon “best” build?

I would guess if I looked up Quacks someone will have done the analysis on what chips are under/overvalued in the game’s economy. I also think about Brass Birmingham’s fixed setup for your industries, although the randomness of your card draws and your opponents’ moves heavily affect what the optimal plays might be.

I assume Dominion has some randomness in other places to avoid “I guess I’ll buy x, y and z again”?

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Dominion comes with suggested deck sets which i think should be a must in variable set up games. You can also play randomly.

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So anyway I hated Dominion on first exposure. The absence of conflict, inability to pivot, and near absence of interaction drained the game of anything that interested me.

Nevertheless, you just have to play Dominion sometimes so I knew it reasonably well. When 2e came out, I wondered why the woodcutter had been removed. This led to some reading on deck builds and the theory of Dominion, which was interesting. I played some of the preset markets back on the old, old app (it was so good and so so free back in the day) and the game finally clicked. Maybe 10 years had gone by, as well, and my palate for games was much broader by then.

But yeah, Dominion needs, I’d say, at least two expansions (three boxes) to have it in a regular rotation. That’s a lot of space and money. There’s more set up, more tear down. It is a more elegant model, design-wise and level of play wise, but a more clunky model physically and financially.

Arctic Scavengers never clicked, and Dune Imperium killed it completely. I think the inability to combo (you can only buy one card a round, etc.) and the relatively small market - it just couldn’t pass the higher bar. I think of it fondly and would love to play another round, but if I never do that’s fine too.

I didn’t get on with Aeon’s End. It’s the kind of solitaire/co-op that I don’t like. Plan, build, hope that the cards come out in the right order, die, try again. I think you can git good, especially with the no-shuffle rule affecting that “cards in the right order” part, but it’s not the kind of learning curve or roguelike die-and-repeat that motivates me.

Quarriors didn’t gel. I think, like Scavengers, the abilities weren’t interesting enough.

Love Automobiles.

Love El Dorado, but I prefer the longer, harder maps that actually require deck strategy. I can see playing this out but at 1-2 per year it holds well.

Thunderstone is out there as this curio that I’d love to see and try. I know it’s a dead game, and that’s because it was always mediocre, but I’d love to see it as a museum piece. Has anyone had the pleasure?

But yeah, ending where I started - Dominion is ostensibly a better game than Star Realms. But Star Realms manages to compete, and to sustain longevity, with a $12 double deck of cards against Dominion’s $100 cumulative price tag and Empyreal size stack of expansions. I get the equation is weighted against it. And despite many internet-peoples’ voiced opinions, Dominion still sits unkilled as the archetype so there isn’t much room for more.

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I really like Quarriors. However I would agree that the abilities aren’t very interesting. For me I think of it more in the vein of Quacks, however it’s a much faster play than Quacks which I think matters enough. If you’re going in this wild random ride and the luck just isn’t on your side then having less time to sit in that is a boon and also being able to just try again more times is a nice balancer. I think when a combo kicks in your still get that satisfying thrill often enough and less to do between each buy is nice. I can also see exactly why you put it in this category but I get feels more of it being a push your luck game.

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This is my main preference too. As has been mentioned the flow can often feel off but when it’s a random input mechanism you can play with the odds to tune to your chosen strategy it’s potentially an excellent choice.

I think with changing markets in a pure deck builder the double variance of draw and market availability can easily be too swingy for my tastes. The counter to that is flattening the curve to stop that can then lead to lots of uninteresting cards. This is what leads to wanting it to be a supporting mechanism. Trains does this really well, acing the deck building in a Dominion sense won’t lead to victory as the board game aspect of it is too important. The cards do interesting enough things and getting a good deck balance to support your on board strategy is usually how you win. Good times.

I didn’t play much Dominion as the people I know did so in huge amounts when I was out of games so when I was back some had burnt out and some were too far in to handle playing with a noob and this noob couldn’t be dealing with their nonsense. So when I got trains as a way to play a bit with some of them they often reacted negatively. One felt that getting trash when building was just cursing yourself when you do anything good and there was a general feeling that the cards were too close to Dominion cards but weren’t as good. To me this highlights how much it’s about the on board play with deck building in support. This also is where I think the fixed market is good as it’s about making strategic choices influenced by your starting position, relative spots of other players, the map and the card selection on offer. I think it wouldn’t be as good with a random market as it would flip to pure tactical. This would fit with my experience of Tyrants of the Underdark which is much less strategic than Trains.

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Penny Arcade: Gamers vs Evil

Bet no one’s ever heard of this. It had an app way back in the day and is partly designed by Sottosanti (Neom) who I used to know.

It was fun as far as it went and was the first time I encountered stacked piles. There was like this boss pile which you had to attack or buy to get points, and each card below it increased the challenge. Neat mechanic but ultimately a forgettable game.

And thinking of that brings back Tanto Cuore, another failed Dominion killer with a very fraught theme. Fraught on the surface and a bit horrifying if you spend any time at all trying to apply the theme to the mechanics.

Edit: The Tanto Cuore page has a review by Starlit Citadel… I think I may need to watch that…

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I remember playing Tanto Cuore when i was new to the hobby. My immediate thought is that there’s no way you’ll see me owning this. @yashima can get away with it though. :squinting_face_with_tongue:

Now, if only there’s an Apothecary Diaries deckbuilder…

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I have heard of it, actually, and remember seeing it for sale both in brick-and-mortar and online stores. Never bothered to pick it up though, and didn’t know anyone who owned it to even try it.

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(I was away for a work event for a few days, haven’t yet read the thread, here are my answers nonetheless)

  1. Yes, I am. Lots of deckbuilders in my collection. Now that I got of the deck construction train, deck building has to suffice.
  2. I’ve always considered deck building a follow up or rebuttal of deck construction for trading card games and Dominion is the first one that comes to my mind.
  3. I am not a huge fan of fixed markets. I prefer the random markets which seems to be more tactical versus the strategy required to exploit a fixed market. I am trying to put into words that Dominion seems a bit like chess where you memorize openings and here you memorize strats for setups. In many ways this is a good/cool/fascinating thing. But it is not a thing for me.

Anyway, I think the only fixed market I currently own is El Dorado and it’s the combination with the race element that makes this one fun for me. On the other hand it’s not like we played this one a lot either.

I have played Dominion of course, there is no avoiding that. But only very few games with nothing but the base set and maybe first expansion/s? Because it was that long ago. if I had fewer hobbies and way more time, getting into the wealth of content and trying out strategies for various setups could be fun. If only I had a lot more time and way fewer games I am interested in playing more :slight_smile:

I have also played Aeon’s End. I liked the gameplay but not so much because of the fixed market but more because of some of the other intricacies about spells and the order of cards and the cooperative nature. However, boss battlers are very hit or miss for me with a tendency to miss. This one missed and was sold.

We used to own Quarriors because my partner loves dice games. This was one, I quickly began hating. Exhibit A) the quality of the dice was so bad that after a few games some of the symbols were hard to read. Exhibit B) not all powers were properly balanced and it seemed that once you got an exploit in you tended to be unstoppable. I don’t quite remember the details but most of our games someone pulled ahead in the first 3rd of the game and then the rest had to endure quite a while while they secured the win. But this is from memory. This must have been sometime around 2011 or when Quarriors came out.