Doomtown:Reloaded

Other Games
41

When DTR was anounced I was hyped! A lot of people in my local area where still playing the old Doomtown, and this was a way to join them. I am not fond on the theme; Wild-West doesnt connect with me, but shortly before release I went on vacation to America and that got better.

I even printed all the spoilers so I could play before the game being out yet.
When the game was released I managed to get myself a deluxe box. I was so happy with it. All cool stuffs! I really like a lot of the mechanics: the poker references, the movement is really really interesting and complex. I love that, and I disagree with it being difficult to explain. But where playing there came up a couple of things that eventually turned me off the game.

First: There was a tournament and I brought the ‘Brass Bullet’ list. Basicly its 3 values, a lot of dudes, and just run into shootouts everywhere, which you win. I defeated all decks at the tournament, just by top-decking. I wasn’t to glad with that (proud that I won the tournament, though). Shortly thereafter everybody and his dog would only bring 3 value decks. The same trend seems to continue if I look up decks on dtdb.co.
For me the 3 values really breaks up the game. There is no such thing as really assembling a deck, its choosing the 3 values you want to run. In comparison with ANR: I can make a lot more combinations in that game, as with DTR there’s certain combinations that severely unbalance your deck because of your draw structure.

Combine that with my Mario Crane tryout: I got stomped time and time again against 3 value decks. Why? Because with 1 stud or even 1 draw I tend to almost cheat more then they do with my flush deck. The idea that this should be good vs cheating, and 3xvalue is highest stacked deck you can have (thus should cheat the most) makes the game deflate for me.

I hate it, but my cards are now collecting dust. My buddies tell me it got better with later saddlebags (only have first 2). That might be so, but seeing so few people still playing it, almost no fun decks at dtdb.co, and the sour taste of tens upon tens of games trying to make it work…

I don’t know. I tried liking it so much. But also I have limited time, and ANR really connects to me.

Don’t want to step on anybody’s toes or anything, but I feel the restriction added to have max 4 of a certain card colour/value made that even teh most stacked deck hardly has to cheat. Or so is my experience up till now. Then seeing decks defined by the 3 values they are made up of make me sad :confused:

1 Like
42

I’m currently selling my DTR actually.

The thing is, it’s a game with a lot of potential, I really like the shootout mechanic, the importance of positioning, the innovative deckbuilding and the theme but the rules design isn’t my cup of tea. It’s not streamlined enough for me. The “Job” rules, the move/boot your dude adjacent/home/town square stuff, the equip item & gagdgets rules and the complexity of pump actions + counting every turn the influence/control feels just clunky + the card wording is pretty horrendous on some cards. Also the board state can be clogged pretty fast, that’s an issue I have with AEG’s L5R too.
If you get the hang of the game and you have a dedicated playgroup, this game is really fun but it’s insanely hard to get new players into the game.

2 Likes
43

this 10char

44

To address this, this is very like the early days of the ANR meta where it was Gabe (and shortly after, Adromeda) and Weyland Tag & Bag as far as the eye could see. WasTag & Bag fairly easy to play and strong? Certainly, but things did improve shortly thereafter, and similar has happened with DTR. 16:3 decks are easy to construct but against an experienced player pool, they don’t perform well, even back at the core. Problem is getting that experienced pool first.

1 Like
45

I quite like Doomtown, but in comparison to Netrunner, it isn’t nearly as elegant. There are niggly, inelegant interactions in Netrunner but most of these are based around particular cards being released. In Doomtown, it seems like the inelegance comes from the base rules.

If there is one thing that turns me off slightly though, it is the lack of integration of the poker hands in the game. It’s not poker. It’s nothing like poker. The way deckbuilding works, the relative difficulties of achieving “good” or “bad” hands is way out of whack, and the ease of getting extra bullets only exacerbates this. I appreciate that the game is designed like this, but I don’t like it! It’s too far removed from real poker for me to “buy into” the concept of it being poker-based. If there was one single thing I would change it would be that the winner of the hand determines who takes a casualty (in Doomtown if you have the same hand “rank” you both lose a dude, regardless of whether you won or lost the hand). In real poker, this is often the most crucial thing: you “know” you’re both sitting on a pair, but does your opponent have QQ or 1010 to your JJ? In Doomtown it literally doesn’t matter. I would be much happier if it did.

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I would like it if we avoided posts that just say “this” and then artificially get around the character restriction (it is there for a reason). That is part of what the Like function is for.

8 Likes
47

I really want to like downtown it’s very cool and mechanically interesting. I think its learning curve is too steep and it is played too little near me for me to want to invest enough time to get any joy from it.

FWIW I think it would be improved if the combat mechanics were less coarse. 1 bad hand (4 pair out of 8 cards for example) and the game can be up. This would be ok, but you manoeuvre carefully for 20-30 minutes before this point.

I think some good solid net decks would be really helpful. It’s sad. I really want it to take off!

48

That’s the way I feel precisely. Having tried both, they were quite alright. Would I love to be good at Conquest? Most definitely. Would I be thrilled to win a Nationals and get to travel to Worlds? Sure thing! Would I drop out of Conquest Top 16 to play Netrunner? Yup.

I’d love to play more, but what I want isn’t a side game - it’s just more Netrunner, I’ve found. A side game is a nice substitute, but, yes… “I’d rather be Netrunning”.

49

I like them both for different reasons. Gun to my head, I think Netrunner’s the better game right now (and maybe fundamentally; it’s just more elegant). But Doomtown is good in very different ways to Netrunner - it isn’t particularly mathy, for example, and the spatial aspect is a whole other thing - so there’s just about room for both in my head.

No idea why I thought I could fit in LotR on top of those too. I can’t. The card pool just doesn’t stick in my head at all.

50

Nice. My experience was similar but in the opposite direction - I bought my Worlds ticket thinking I’d be competing primarily in Netrunner and playing Conquest for fun, but Conquest just grabbed me, and when Worlds actually came along I found myself dropping from Netrunner Swiss to play the Conquest elims and not looking back.

In many respects, I feel like we’re in a golden age of tabletop gaming right now, with tons of great games out there in all kinds of genres. If anything, we’re spoiled for choice!

4 Likes
51

This has been rattling around my head a bit, and I think it’s a good opportunity to tease out some discussion of the strategy of the game.

First off, I think we should establish that this is almost like asking “what do you do if I play a remote server face down and advance it once?”, i.e. there are way too many unknown variables to give a definitive answer. But let’s give it a shot.

Say I’m playing a Landslide deck (useful to consider since they’re the most likely to run away from shootouts). In that case I’ve likely used Irving Paterson and the home ability to play that Yan Li’s for free. I’ll also only have done that if I’ve got Make The Smart Choice in hand or a Mustang on Irving. In the first case your Ramiro calls out my Irving, who has to accept. That costs you one ghost rock and gains me one, due to respective traits on those dudes. In the second I just move Irving home with Mustang. I then likely use Androcles to gain one ghost rock from your Ramiro, meaning that in pure economic terms I’ve barely made a loss or have made a slight gain.

So what’s my next play as Landslide? I probably play another deed, or another two deeds. If you can contest them all: you’ve got a deck that’s set up to counter Landslide and will likely win. If you don’t, you’ll likely fall behind in tempo. But that’s extrapolating out way beyond where we started from and leads to too many generalisations.

So, regardless of the deck archetype I’m playing in this scenario, you’ve got control of my deed, which denies me the income and gives you a control point. Ok. But it also means that your stud (making the assumption that you’re only starting one, or have another one stud somewhere, as these are the realities of most starting posses) now has to boot to move anywhere, or to join shootout in town square.

That means I’m free to occupy Town Square, which is great for Sloane (and now Oddities of Nature). For the type of Kidnappin’/Holster/Shotgun decks that I tend to run, or an aggressive Law Dogs deck, your stud being all the way across the board from your home is perfect for me, because it means I can aggressively take out your other influence with impunity. For Hex or Gadget decks, I don’t care that you’ve taken one deed, because I’m just relieved that my key Hucksters and Mad Scientists have some breathing room to tool up. For a shootier deck, I’ve probably got the kind of tricks in hand that @db0 mentioned to defend the deed, if I even need to - but I might not want to, depending on the rest of my hand.

For A Coach Comes To Town, if your Ramiro is tied up contesting my deed then what threat is going to be leading that job? For playing your own deeds, what’s to stop me moving in to contest those if your main stud is at my Yan Li’s? If you defend those with low bullet studs or draws, then that’s a very risky move (particularly if those dudes are also the influence that’s keeping you afloat) and isn’t the kind of thing that you can rely on to consistently win games.

2 Likes
52

Yeah the game itself is deep and rewarding. In my book it needs only two things to thrive: fewer complex cards and streamlining of the rules. In ANR most arguments can be solved by fetching the structure of a run chart. In DTR not so much. Rules are scattered in the rulebook, faq and forum posts and its quite an effort to get the whole picture. Also rulings made on alderac forum are often not consistent. For example Bounty Hunter vs Clem in a saloon is ruled in the spirit of the game (following wordings directly the hunter token would not be removed!) but Auto-Revolver can do all the absurd stuff.

Im keeping my core set and will continue to use it as a “better board game”. Keeping up with the expansions is too much effort for me.

53

I played classic back in the day, and so Reloaded was on my radar for quite awhile, but once it was released I found the art and card templates very underwhelming. Didn’t make a purchase until just recently, taking advantage of the big AEG sale to get my hands on everything. As I mentioned in the AGoT thread, the local competitive Netrunner scene is real slow, and perhaps dying off, right now, so I’m desperate to get any game going (DT:R, AGoT, maybe even Conquest at this rate). It’s a fun game. Very thematic…

But what really separates Netrunner from the pack, and maybe even every other game besides Magic, is it’s amazing online presence. There’s tons of content out there, be it streams, articles, decklists, or this site, which is simply invaluable. No game even comes close. And if I’m not able to play a game as much as I’d like, at least I can read about it or watch it and absorb content. Until the other LCGs step up their internet game (Gomorra Gazette is a good start), they’ll always be second fiddle to Netrunner.

3 Likes
54

Ah, this is also one of my biggest gripes; very little community activity (and I am not part of the solution sadly, I’m more the lurker type), not much video content and net decking is not very good as there is not much selection following very little play overall it seems.

Looking at the list of all Sheriff Events that was just release I am also a bitt baffled over the lack of an event in for example Germany, seems that the game is not doing very well in spreading. Hopefully though, the list of events will lead some players that have not yet found a group/OP group to play with to the existing groups.

I hope that the game is just young, I remember when NR was about a year old, we had tournaments with 4 players at the LGS, now our last SC was 32 players. Working towrads that for DTR too now :slight_smile: (dreams)

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Germany is a special problem, in that Germans simply won’t buy untranslated games, and Pegasus has refused to translate DTR.

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And they wont let others play Netrunner with them either!? Hmmm, maybe we should just leave them to play by themselves, with their own games, they don’t come to us, we don’t come to them, this can never end well…

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The problem I have is distribution related- I can get all the FFG LCGs with free shipping from Book Depository, but DTR is not offered there. For players in Asia, shipping costs are a significant issue.

58

can we get some shirts with this printed & Stimhack logo on back?

I’m normally against shirts with statements, but I’d definitely wear that.

or even

“I’d rather be running RND”

probably better, even more jargony

1 Like