Codex by David Sirlin

I’m not really sure how to judge “depth”. There is virtually no deckbuilding in the game, so everything is in the gameplay. I think the gameplay is much more complicated than Netrunner’s gameplay, 1 to 1 comparison.

The thing I’ve heard from the few people I’ve played with, and felt myself, is after your first few games you have no idea what happened. My first few games I got crushed, and had no idea why. But as I played more, I’ve learned smarter teching, how to adjust your tech up pace, etc… So I guess I think that there is a lot of depth there. I don’t think this game will be super enjoyable on the casual level. But on the highly competitive level, I think it could be very awesome.

Something my friend and I sorta realized is that there is very little randomness in this game. Your deck is usually around 10 cards, so it is simply a matter of which ones do I draw this turn versus next turn. This seems very cool to me, and makes it a skill intensive game.

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Not at all. Most of my Sunday this weekend is free, so hit me up.

Will do :slight_smile:

Exactly what I wanted to hear :smiley:

Netrunner has deep gameplay for a card game, imo, so being deeper than netrunner is a big plus.

It’s definitely a skill intensive game, but you can also still get screwed by RNG even with slim decks. For example in the late game your opponent invests a lot to kill your Tech 3 building, then one of two things happens:

(a) you draw Tech 3 units that you invested a lot to make available, can’t play them because your Tech 3 building is dead, and end up discarding them. Next turn you draw non-Tech-3s and fall way behind.

(b) you don’t draw your Tech 3 units that turn, rebuild your Tech 3 for free, and next turn you draw the Tech 3s and can play them like nothing happened.

Another source of variance is if your opponent surprises you by playing with a specific threat (say Flying or Stealth) and you tech for Anti-Air/Detection on your turn. It can make a huge difference whether you RNG draw your answer on the very next turn, versus 2 or 3 turns away.

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Yup, there is some randomness for sure. You can try to mitigate it though, by leaving 3 cards in your hand to draw 5, building a Surplus, playing cards that let you draw…

I do think this is an interesting mechanic. I can dump my hand at you this turn, but then I’m probably stunting my next few turns.

Also, you can affect your variance by deciding how many copies of a card to tech (1 or 2).

Regarding your flying example, well it sounds like you got caught with your pants down. And now you’re praying to the random gods to give you your counter tech fast!

I have not played near enough games to know for certain if any of these things are problems or not.

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I think the game is very deep from what I can tell so far, I think Codex has more meaningful tough decisions to make in a game. The full 3v3 hero mode is where it shines. The 1v1 is just for learning the rules.

I will take a look at getting TTS setup this weekend.

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There is also a Steam group that I just found out about:

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Played it a couple of times more, and now I’m hooked. Getting the entire set printed.

New problem: How do I hook others on to this? I’m starting to see more, so I can make good plays - but I’m not good enough to “play both sides” yet. Today my opponent felt behind the entire game, didn’t know quite what was going on and scooped when I played Duck and wrecked his t2 building (I’d win next turn anyway). He’s still interested, he saw some things he liked (veteran magic player), but that’s still not the ideal way to introduce people to the game.

Any tips?

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If you’re playing Bashing vs Finesse normally you should give the new guy Bashing. A basic strategy of “make Troq, tech for 2x Iron Man, tech for 2x Hired Stomper, always make worker, keep your hand full to cycle quickly” is pretty easy to understand and effective. Troq is a beefy hero and better than he even appears because heroes don’t cost a card to put into play (unlike a unit from your hand).

Probably the easiest Finesse strategy to understand is trying to grind out a critical mass of Virtuosos that synergize with each other (they are basically Slivers from MTG). I’ll try to give some other tips:

  • Early on your hero is mostly only good for casting Two Step which is the nuts, but don’t make her if they can snipe her using combat tricks. Remember that the level up can heal her which is a great way to spend gold without gimping your hand size.
  • Make a worker every turn and play one other card only, so that you draw 5 at end of turn. This maximizes your drawn options and speeds up your deck cycling. Breaking this rule at the appropriate time makes you win, and breaking it at any other time makes you lose.
  • Surplus is good and lets you play an extra card per turn, it’s basically the default add-on.
  • You need to start teching Tier 2 units a couple turns in advance of actually building the T2 building so that you can have enough T2 density in your deck. It’s fine to have a couple T2 units sitting dead in your hand early on as you’re not playing your whole hand out anyway.

Finesse can also do a thing with generating lots of chump blockers with Harmony while setting up for a big finish, and there’s a thing with 2x Appel Stomp where you just sideline their whole patrol zone by chaining them. But those are too hard for a beginner to execute.

As for scooping when behind - this is just a thing in Codex as comebacks aren’t super possible. The patrol zone gives a defender advantage that means the behind player won’t get overrun immediately, but there’s no explicit comeback mechanism. In Netrunner you can often keep playing to make a Hail Mary access or a lucky psi, but Codex has moderately less randomness so when you’re losing you normally just lose (barring RNG Jesus helping out).

It’s closer to Chess where if you blunder a knight without any compensation, you know your opponent can play safely enough not to let you back in the game so you might as well resign.

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Good tips, thanks. The last two teaching games were once as Finesse and once as Bashing. As Finesse it felt a bit unfair to just pile on the Virtuoso synergies, but it’s probably better than for the new guy to never get to the point where he sets those up. Or, hmm. I could give him Finesse and then purposely fail to disrupt his synergies? (Leave him a unit or two to Two Step, don’t kill his Tech 1 to prevent him playing Star Crossed or Nimble Fencer.)

Surplus should be good for Finesse, but less so for Bashing (you need Tower to shut down Dancer rush. Or maybe I should build Surplus so the opponent can use Dancer Rush.)

I’ll explain the bullet points!

Having now played several full 3v3 games on Tabletop Simulator, I can say that the game is really good. Been enjoying myself immensely so far.

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After four starter games I jumped in and got the Print and Play done (at a copyshop, and the quality is surprisingly high). Can’t wait to try 3v3, hopefully tomorrow!

is there a way to checkout 0.0$ bill without giving cc details?

(or may i ask for a link to 0.0$ starter set pls?)

I linked the starter set billing details request to my PayPal account and it went off fine.

That said, I’ve played 3 games of the core set (RvG), and the game is amazing. Will be printing the rest of the colours sometime this week, hopefully.

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I got the starter set without giving any info at all except email, IIR. Just added it to the cart and checked out.

I’ve played the game quite a bit, the more I play the more random the game seems. It’s actually crazy how much more random the game is than at first glance.

Imagine you tech in 2 centuars on turn 2, on cycle 2 the probability that you get a clump of 2 centuars is 50%, 50%!

Coinflips like this are common, I estimate there are around 5 major random events a game each one with around 50% chance of favoring one player, this is a small enough sample that random events will play a larger factor than you might think at first.

That being said it’s still not very random at all, it’s just odd how it seems at first to be chess, but it’s actually more like chess 960 than chess.

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I’ve played 3 games of full 3v3 now and for now it doesn’t disappoint. May have hooked a couple of new players too!

I think I both agree and not with @edmund_blake_nelson, I don’t find there’s much randomness at all - for a card game. But it is a card game, so there will be randomness, specifically if cards sync up or not. There’s a lot of randomness eliminated by the small deck and teching, and you can also control the size of your deck.

Combos are hard to set up here, because you can’t “save” cards until you have all in hand (except, of course, if you’re playing blue!) I do have a combo in mind, but half of that combo is having Omegachrons either in hand or forecasted. Much more manageable! But in general, avoid build orders that rely on two cards being in the hand at the same time.

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most of the randomness is on turns 1, 2 3 and 4.

Specifically
You can go first or second and going first is a significant edge.

You could draw merfolk prospector on turn 1 or get rekt. many other colors have a similar extremely powerful card that isn’t good if they aren’t played first, and are extremely powerful on turn 1.

You could draw your spells on turn 1 or 2, and you really really want to draw them on turn 2.

You can draw your tier 1 tech in or out of sync. If they are out of sync that is a huge edge.

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How are just he Red and Green decks? I don’t really want to get the whole deluxe set now, but I haven’t had a chance to play since worlds (Purple vs Black at the time) and need to fill out the backer survey now :slight_smile: