From: mrizzo@mpd.tandem.com (Mike Rizzo)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board.ce
Subject: Deck Maintenance
Date: 8 Sep 92 23:29:22 GMT
Reply-To: mrizzo@allwedo.UUCP (Mike Rizzo)
Organization: Tandem Inc.

Nick Sauer has produced an excellent procedure for generating CE decks. 
However, there are two areas where I believe some discussion is called for.

1. The Attack card distribution has been made uniform with a mean value of
11 and a "bell-shaped" distribution of other values around this mean. But,
the original deck distribution did not have this kind of distribution. 
Although the original deck had a mean of 10.75. The median value was more 
like 9 and the modal values were 6 and 8. I don't know whether the original
distribution was intended or not, but it is not clear that replacing it
with a more symmetric distribution is an improvement. Also, the even to 
odd value ratio was roughly about 2 to 1. Again, it is not clear what is
bought by making it 1 to 1.

2. The more important area is that concerning the assumption that there 
should be a preferred ending point. With all the variants that have been
proposed and all the variants that will be proposed, I believe it would be 
better to start with the simplest beginning and allow for any combination
of variants. For example, Flares are an expansion which some may not wish to
play with every time, as are Kickers, Moons, Multiple Powers, etc. But
always adding 12 flares, either crowds out the possibility of adding other 
non-challenge cards or makes the deck too large. (I think 200 total cards is
pushing this limit.)

It would be better to first decide what variants will be used, determine 
how many non-challenge cards this will introduce and then build the deck with 
the appropriate number of challenge cards. This process must retain the ratios
of the original deck. So for instance, suppose I want to use Moons, Prisoners,
and Flares. Let's say Moons introduce 2 Edicts, Prisoners introduce 10 Rulings,
and Flares introduce 6 flares. Thus I have 18 non-challenge cards. Therefore,
I need 36 Challenge cards including 12 compromise cards and 24 attack cards. 

I use a matrix which introduces 10 attack cards at a time maintaining the 
correct mean value with each increment. There are 10 increments for 100 cards. 
When the 10 increment is added, you start over by adding increment 1 again,
and so on. This procedure allows for decks of any size. Thus in the above
example, we would need 30 attack cards, 24 rounded up (Since I rounded 
up I would need to add some additional non-challenge cards to get the 
ratio correct).  These could be drawn from a pool of general edicts.

Thus we have removed almost all constraints as to what is and isn't in a 
particular CE game. The only non-challenge card which seems to be absolutely
essential is the Moebius Tubes. But I could see playing even without that if
a group so chose. Thus if we group each edict into an "expansion set" of
related characteristics, we now have a mix and match way to build a 
particular game of CE. My own set has 19 such expansions which encompass
all official edicts and expansions and all the unofficial expansions I have 
added.

Another interesting variation is to decide on total deck size which implies
a given number of non-challenge cards, and then let the players in turn
select one non-challenge card to include until the right number is reached. 
Then add the challenge cards as appropriate.

To summarize, start with any and all expansions you want to include, and add 
the appropriate challenge cards to support them. 

Newsgroups: rec.games.board.ce