Playtesting is everything. Some groups don't mind an unbalanced deck,
because they like having some "preferred" keepers to go after. I know
it's been fun for me, because while the others are plotting after
Chocolate, I can engineer a 5 Keepers or 10 Cards in Hand victory.
Ultimately, if your gamer group has fun time after time, it's a good
deck. Balance is best for introducing new players, though, because
then there is less advantage for the folks who are more used to that
deck and have strong ideas in their heads of the relative values of
each card.
Regarding the Bread and Milk, I propose "Bring on the bread and milk",
from an old Peanuts cartoon:
Charlie Brown: Snoopy, we're all out of dog food. All we have is
bread and milk.
<Snoopy glaring>
Charlie Brown: Getting mad won't help.
<Snoopy bawling>
Charlie Brown: Neither will crying.
Snoopy: Sigh. Bring on the bread and milk.
It wasn't brilliant or anything, just stuck in my head for over 25 years.
Not sure why.
Cheers,
Ankhst
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>
> I am one of those that went to great lengths! I created a spreadsheet
> with all the Keepers and Goals to figure out which Keepers were too
> valuable (used in a great number of goals) and which ones were weak (not
> used enough). I used that information to create new goals that leveled
> the playing field.
>
> I was especially concerned because I was creating a "Fluxx Greatest
> Hits" deck made up of cards from 2.0 through 3.1 and all the promo cards
> I could get my hands on. Since most promo cards are Keepers, that made
> the deck really heavy and I wanted to make sure I had enough Goals to
> keep everything balanced.
>
> In addition, I made sure to include cards that let you combat keepers.
> For instance, I inserted the "Keeper Limit 1" from EcoFluxx and made a
> "Keeper Limit 0". I also included 2 each of the Steal, Exchange, and
> Trash a Keeper cards and made a "Food Poisoning" rule ("If Poison is on
> the table, no food Keeper can be used to complete a goal").
>
> Thus far, the work seems to have paid off - the deck is proving to be
> pretty balanced despite being Goal and Keeper heavy.
>
> The only real way to tell if your deck is working is to play. Keep a
> record of which Keepers and Goals are used to win and use that
> information to tweak the deck until it's playing well. (The same goes
> for Rules and Actions - if your players groan when they see them, you
> should probably consider softening or replacing them.)
>
> Please be sure to share your creations with the list - I'm curious to
> see what you come up with!
>
> Chris
>
>
> S Mattison wrote:
> > The problem I have, is with Deck Balancing. I've seen some people who
> > go to great lengths (I myself have gone to those lengths as well) to
> > figure out how many of what type of cards have been included in
> > various versions of the deck, how many blanxx are included, and what
> > this all means from a mathematical and game-balancing perspective. But
> > is there really merit to it all? Does it really matter, whether or not
> > Milk and Bread have too few goals, and should share one?
>
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