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With Maulifaux gaining popularity I have started to wonder. Whats the more popular way to add a random element, Cards or Dice?

I like the way using cards keeps the overal game fair, IMO stopping one side being so lucky they win the game regardless of tactics is great. On the other hand I enjoy dice more, possibly because it's what I am used to.

Whats your opinion, dice or cards?

Dice

Oh man, i played a miniature game with cards before, it was very strange expeience. overall i don't see one being fairer than the other you have 1/6 chance out of rolling any number so its not like dice are unbalanced its more about cards "balancing out" your rolls (does that make any sense?) cards pretty much guarantee your going to "roll" every number eventually which is more annoying than realistic...
it also makes you change your tactics if i have one card left and i know i haven't drawn a "1" i'm not making an important "roll" with it.
This is all coming from the random game i played (some free ww2 game) so it may be off base, but theres my 2 cents.

Dice. I like how they sound.

I voted dice, because I am an old school gamer. I've been throwing dice around for over 29 years, now.

That said, I LOVE Malifaux's card mechanics. Dice are just my favorite.

Eric

Joetaco wrote:Oh man, i played a miniature game with cards before, it was very strange expeience. overall i don't see one being fairer than the other you have 1/6 chance out of rolling any number so its not like dice are unbalanced its more about cards "balancing out" your rolls (does that make any sense?) cards pretty much guarantee your going to "roll" every number eventually which is more annoying than realistic...

Rolls will average out eventually but may be very uneven during a particular game. Cards will always give an even distribution of results.

That said, I think that drawing cards is only useful for games with low amounts of 'dice rolling' as it's more time-consuming. Can you imagine drawing 140 cards for a charging squad of ork boyz and then sorting through to decide how many had hit? Then drawing another 70-odd for wounds, etc.

The biggest flaw with cards is that most people can't shuffle to save their lives and have no idea how much shuffling is really required in order to get the cards well distributed.

There have been some interesting card-based mechanics out there in RPG's (I've tried developing some of my own, haven't ever quite gotten it to work) and WHFB had card-based magic as recently as, what, 4th edition?

For direct combat resolution, though, I think dice work better for anything over a certain amount of "results" needed, especially in a bigger model-count game like 40k that's decided by Buckets-O-Dice resolution (such as in Scott-S6's Ork example above). In smaller games it's probably a wash, except that if you're required to use a specific deck of cards, and you lose a couple, you're boned whereas when you lose a couple of dice you're still perfectly fine.

What I think would be interesting, though, is to integrate card-based effects into a wargame. Something using a Magic-style constructed deck (or a standardized deck like in a Steve Jackson-style card game) to allow players to cause special effects to occur in the game could add an extra dimension to play.

There is a reason I play dice oriented games (D&D, Warhammer) and there is a reason I don't play card games (UNO excluded because thats just plain fun).

While I think Malifaux's card based system works and is interesting, I don't like how the cards just directly replace dice, I don't think it adds all that much to the game and cards have all that space on the front of the card to do something.

As posted above, I've actually been writing a game where the cards handle all sorts of resolutions in the game, not just random numbers, but special effects from being hit, to tabletop weather effects, pre game/mid game events, etc...

In a way, it's very similar to how Fantasy Flight has been handling a lot of its board games, where they replace dice with sets of various icons and interesting interactions generated by cards.

Give me the clatter of dice any day. Drawing cards lacks so much.

Playing Epic as Chaos was fun because you got this neat deck of black cards that you had to use as a combination of hit points for your greater daemons and special ability cards to play. But that was in addition to the normal rolling of dice for to hit, etc.

I hadn't realized that Malifeaux (Trying to spell that word makes me ) was entirely card based. If nothing else, it'll be a novel mechanic for a while.

Magc8Ball wrote:For direct combat resolution, though, I think dice work better for anything over a certain amount of "results" needed, especially in a bigger model-count game like 40k that's decided by Buckets-O-Dice resolution (such as in Scott-S6's Ork example above). In smaller games it's probably a wash, except that if you're required to use a specific deck of cards, and you lose a couple, you're boned whereas when you lose a couple of dice you're still perfectly fine.

Malifaux uses a normal playing card deck but they do offer a fancy version.

The reason malifaux is suited to this is that it's a game with few models and few dice rolls. The smaller the sample of dice the greater the chance of having significantly skewed results. (e.g. rolling 10 dice with an average of 2 is not particularly unlikely but rolling 1000 dice with an average of 2 is much less likely.) Using the deck ensures that the dice rolls for the game are perfectly distributed.

ETA, Decipher's Star Wars CCG had a similar mechanic but a little different. All the cards had a number in the corner and you would draw a card as a random value used in combat resolution. The interesting bit was that the number on each card was not random - powerful cards had low numbers, weak cards had high. (Darth Vader would always be a 1, for example). So if you stacked your deck with rock hard cards it made it harder to get good draw values.

Hi folks.
I think that as long as the game is well defined balanced and fun to play , the method of randomisation is irreleveant.

Some games suit cards only .
Some games suit dice only.
Other games work best with a mix of cards and dice.

As long as its the most suitable method for the game , thats all than matters.

TTFN

It isn't that one is simply better than the other, it's that different mechanisms suit different systems.

I'm not sure there's much value to the idea that drawing cards produces 'more even luck' - while you will end up drawing the same average on your cards as the other guy what matters is getting the right numbers when you need them. Getting 3s when you need 3s and 5s when you need 5s will still result in some people having luckier games than others.

Card mechanics can get really interesting is when they're not used as a randomiser but as a deliberate choice by players. A Game of Thrones has a really interesting mechanic where players add one of seven cards values to their army strengths, and they can't play that card again until they've used all their cards. So you keep track of what cards your opponent has used against you and the other players, looking to strike him when his hand has only low cards left.

I'd vote for both if I could.

Certain games won't work with a deck of cards. 40k is a good example of this, it would be to time consumeing.

Certain games, like Malifaux, work extremly well with a deck of cards. It adds another couple of elements into the game that you couldnt get with simple dice rolls.

I really enjoy the malifaux system. I think its less of cards, and more the fact that I have some control over a really bad string of flips with the cheat fate mechanic.

WarWizard91 wrote:There is a reason I play dice oriented games (D&D, Warhammer) and there is a reason I don't play card games (UNO excluded because thats just plain fun).

And this reason is...?

I'm all for whatever works best. A neat, if gimmicky, idea is to have a card (index cards work) for each squad/unit in a game and do alternating activations by shuffling both sides together and drawing.

I must say I enjoy the cards mechanics more. But this may be to do with how awesome Malifaux is, and how fun Freebooter's Fate is (even though it's rules suck)

I enjoy the amount of control you have in malifaux, being able to change whether something hits, wound, or whatever, and playing against your opponent poker style (playing the player not just the cards) makes it really enjoyable.

In Freebooter's Fate the hitting mechanic is very fun. You have a series of cards with different body parts on each. The attack picks a card for each attack their model gets, showing that the attacker is choosing where he wants to hit their opponent. And the defender simultaneously chooses an amount of cards for their defense stat, showing where they think they will be attacked. You then compare cards, and if you hit an area that wasn't defended you then go on to see if you wound etc. I just find that it makes for a really cool, story driven game. Seeing your crew kept slowly critically wounded specifically in certain body parts is good fun =]

Oshova

Balance wrote:

WarWizard91 wrote:There is a reason I play dice oriented games (D&D, Warhammer) and there is a reason I don't play card games (UNO excluded because thats just plain fun).

And this reason is...?

Hmm lets think about it. If I play with dice and don't play with cards maybe the reason is because I like one and don't like the other. Use basic inference.

WarWizard: It's just that usually when people say they do or don't like something it is normal to give reasons or annecdotes to explain why.

But hey, if you want to post short pretty non-informative posts, then carry on =D

Oshova

Being a D&D player for years, I've learned to enjoy Dice.

I'm not familiar with the Maulifaux card system.

Do you put the card back in each time you draw one and shuffle it?

Do you keep the discard stack to the side until the draw pile is depleted?

Malifaux makes you reshuffle a lot so it's the exact same thing as having dice. It doesn't actually change your odds any.

I prefer indexes, which can be implemented using cards or dice or hands if one is so inclined. Rock-Scissors-Paper, for example, can be played using cards or dice or hands.I'm more inclined to have the index depend on the relation of pieces on the board rather than something above and beyond what's happening on the board. I don't think Chess would be improved by trying to hybridize it with Poker, and I don't thank Poker would be improved by adding in an element of space (it already works with time and material). Seeing as games like Warhammer are about what happens on the board, I'd like to keep as much of the game on the board as possible.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Malifaux makes you reshuffle a lot so it's the exact same thing as having dice. It doesn't actually change your odds any.

I'm gonna disagree with you here cause once you know where your cards are at in relation to the deck, stacking the deck is pretty simple, even with a cut from your opponent.

This is also why I voted dice.

Settlers of Catan has an expansion by which the dice are replaced by a set of cards. Instead of rolling the dice, the players select a card which tells you the number of the areas that are producing that turn, and additional event information to help ameliorate the advantage of the person in the lead.

But the neat thing is that instead of reproducing the ideal distribution of 2D6, there's a 'Year end' card shuffled into the last five cards in the deck. Instead of going through 36 cards and encountering each and every permutation of 2D6 in each cycle, this card calls for you to reshuffle the deck. Insofar as I understand these things, I believe that this limits the deviation from the ideal distribution to a single deviation.

Oshova: I just gave my base opinion. OP asked dice or cards. I inferred dice with my response, and listed the games I like that involve dice. Now if you want a longer more informative response, which it seems you do, you may be dissapointed. I guess the reason why I prefer dice is that I just find drawing cards not as fun as throwing some dice.This has led me to play the games that I play making me even more biased towards dice. As you can see it isn't a very complex informational reason, I just like dice.
I wish I had some cool story to go with it like, back in my hay day I was a master craps player. Yet all I have is the knowledge that I just like dice.

I hope this is a better response. I thank you for when you called my comment pretty though.

Edit: I guess another reason I just thought of was that dice are more durable than cards are.

See that's better, just a little bit of information. It's just better than stating what you like . . . and that's it.

Amittedly I'm sure we all do it sometimes . . . I'm just in one of those moods tonight. But I'm glad you tookit well, and all. I never want to offend people by them taking things the wrong way (easily done on the internet) ahwell . . . yes your post was pretty . . .

Oshova

Nurglitch wrote:Settlers of Catan has an expansion by which the dice are replaced by a set of cards. Instead of rolling the dice, the players select a card which tells you the number of the areas that are producing that turn, and additional event information to help ameliorate the advantage of the person in the lead.

But the neat thing is that instead of reproducing the ideal distribution of 2D6, there's a 'Year end' card shuffled into the last five cards in the deck. Instead of going through 36 cards and encountering each and every permutation of 2D6 in each cycle, this card calls for you to reshuffle the deck. Insofar as I understand these things, I believe that this limits the deviation from the ideal distribution to a single deviation.

God I love Catan!

DICE, have to be Dice, card reminds me of stuff i don't want to remember

WarWizard91 wrote:I inferred dice with my response

You're using the word infer, when you obviously meant imply. I guess some posters will put up with that sort of thing, but frankly, I can't imagine why.

You were sooooo close, but no cigar.