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Rolling Turbo Adaptive

2019.12.13

The TFTCG's Turbo game format is an excellent game option, especially when opening a bunch of new booster packs; however there's not a lot of skill to it. This rumination adds two concepts that turn Turbo from a random distraction to a complex yet still rapid game.

Adaptive

The first concept to add is Adaptive. This is a concept from Keyforge which allows for players to open two random decks and deal with one of the decks being dramatically better than the other. Applying it to TFTCG goes as follows:

1. For Game 1 of the match, each player opens their two packs and plays as normal.
2. For Game 2, each player swaps their decks. Otherwise they play as normal.
3. If the same deck won both times (i.e. the score is 1-1), then the players bid to see who uses the winning deck. This begins with the player who opened the winning deck bidding 0 damage points. Then the other player bids the damage points they will put on the deck, and back and forth until there is a winner.

Some notes:

• The loser of the last game chooses if they will go first. This leads to an interesting dynamic where the loser may be willing to bid more damage.
• Normal Turbo damage still applies. If the winning deck had to place two damage due to star-point differences, the bid-damage is applied on top of the star-point damage.
• It is advised that the health left on the winner in Game 1 and Game 2 is recorded as that may be valuable information when it comes time to bid.

By using the Adaptive mode, a great card doesn't mean you auto-win, and a weak card doesn't mean you auto-lose.

Rolling

The other issue with Turbo is that there is no deck building. You get what you get. When playing multiple Turbo matches, Rolling construction allows for some deck building to occur, without turning it into a question of who has the larger card pool (due to money or length of time in the game). It works as follows:

1. Play Match 1 as normal (with or without Adaptive mode).
2. For Match 2 onward - each player opens only one pack.
3. They choose 1 character from their previous match deck, along with one Rare, two Uncommon, and four Common battle cards. These are added to the newly opened pack to form their new deck. The other character and seven battle cards are put aside.
4. Play the Match as normal (with or without Adaptive mode).

There are lots of advantages to this method of playing multiple Turbo matches:

• It allows for a small amount of deck-crafting (this is why you open the new pack before choosing which cards to include from the old deck).
• The deck-crafting still presents real dilemmas; if you build a great deck you'll have to rip it in half in the next match. Having to discard via the 4C/2U/1R pattern keeps the eclectic feel of Turbo, yet you get to discard cards that are too specialized after one match.
• The bidding of damage points is yet more TFTCG math.
• When opening a booster box, you'll get 14 games from a box instead of 7.5 games. You play with every card you open, but you get to play with your favourites more.

You may want some house rules when playing a lot of Rolling games. You may want to rule that alternative-win and reshuffle cards can't be kept. Cards that take advantage of the 12-14 size deck are fun, but it won't be fun to play 14 games with them. You also may want to restrict the number of copies of a battle card to 2.

Tried this? Would love to hear your comments.