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ToT is Star Realms with a Twist - Short Comparison
kmfdm
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Star Realms has been on the market for 8 years now and is among the most successful and popular board games out there (among the top 20 most popular games according to the BGG.com, and among the top 3 deckbuilders). https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/147020/star-realms
Quick rundown of the rules: The rules are pretty much the same, you have gold and power, each turn you draw 5 cards; gold is used to buy cards from the Tavern (called the Trade Row), which contains 10 cards, power is used to damage your opponent, which starts at 50 life - and instead of accumulating prestige up to 40, you damage your opponent from 50 to 0. You also have agents (called bases) with their own health, the taunt ability is called Outpost (that needs to be destroyed first before you can assign damage to your opponent - i.e. turn into prestige in the ToT). And there are 4 different factions in Star Realms - akin to patrons in ToT - which provides additional combos if you play multiple cards of the same color in the same turn.
The difference is that the ToT adds patron abilities with an additional victory condition, which Star Realms doesnt have, the Tavern has only 5 cards instead of 10, you accumulate prestige up to 40 instead of damaging your opponent from 50 to 0, and each player drafts 2 factions / patrons out of 8 each game, which adds variability.
This is pretty standard, as far as deckbuilding games are concerned, and ever since Dominion was released in 2008 (which started the entire sub-genre), there has been hundreds of Dominion-clones. I believe the ToT is among the best of them, while it lacks originality - the interface, alternative victory condition, card design, and integration into a MMORPG are extremely well done. For all of you who think that there is something massively overpowered or imbalanced, please note, that the cost/power rations in the ToT are standardized with other deckbuilders. The genre went through a decade of balancing, and there is nothing overly imbalanced in this game. Keep in mind that deckbuilders are always a struggle between rush versus combo versus engine/slog strategies.
One thing I would like to change, however, is the LeaderBoard rating system for the next season. I dropped three times now from #1 due to a single loss when I lost hundreds of points (even thousand in one case), and it took me another 20-30 wins (without another loss) to get back into top #3. There really should be an increase/decrease cap. Maybe if they take the formula from Chess ELO system, where each player that reaches Leaderboard starts from 1000, and then they gains/lose up to X points (usually up to 15-25) according to the opponent's rating (and the opponent loses/gains the opposite amount), that would fix the problem of such massive rating single-loss drops, as it is extremely frustrating to play atm when you are at the top of the ranking.
Quick rundown of the rules: The rules are pretty much the same, you have gold and power, each turn you draw 5 cards; gold is used to buy cards from the Tavern (called the Trade Row), which contains 10 cards, power is used to damage your opponent, which starts at 50 life - and instead of accumulating prestige up to 40, you damage your opponent from 50 to 0. You also have agents (called bases) with their own health, the taunt ability is called Outpost (that needs to be destroyed first before you can assign damage to your opponent - i.e. turn into prestige in the ToT). And there are 4 different factions in Star Realms - akin to patrons in ToT - which provides additional combos if you play multiple cards of the same color in the same turn.
The difference is that the ToT adds patron abilities with an additional victory condition, which Star Realms doesnt have, the Tavern has only 5 cards instead of 10, you accumulate prestige up to 40 instead of damaging your opponent from 50 to 0, and each player drafts 2 factions / patrons out of 8 each game, which adds variability.
This is pretty standard, as far as deckbuilding games are concerned, and ever since Dominion was released in 2008 (which started the entire sub-genre), there has been hundreds of Dominion-clones. I believe the ToT is among the best of them, while it lacks originality - the interface, alternative victory condition, card design, and integration into a MMORPG are extremely well done. For all of you who think that there is something massively overpowered or imbalanced, please note, that the cost/power rations in the ToT are standardized with other deckbuilders. The genre went through a decade of balancing, and there is nothing overly imbalanced in this game. Keep in mind that deckbuilders are always a struggle between rush versus combo versus engine/slog strategies.
One thing I would like to change, however, is the LeaderBoard rating system for the next season. I dropped three times now from #1 due to a single loss when I lost hundreds of points (even thousand in one case), and it took me another 20-30 wins (without another loss) to get back into top #3. There really should be an increase/decrease cap. Maybe if they take the formula from Chess ELO system, where each player that reaches Leaderboard starts from 1000, and then they gains/lose up to X points (usually up to 15-25) according to the opponent's rating (and the opponent loses/gains the opposite amount), that would fix the problem of such massive rating single-loss drops, as it is extremely frustrating to play atm when you are at the top of the ranking.
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Lysette✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭very interesting - so ToT is basically a slightly different version of an already existing, successful deck-building card game. I see this as an advantage actually - if it is basically proven successful instead of being original and new, but untested.0 -
Skvysh✭✭✭very interesting - so ToT is basically a slightly different version of an already existing, successful deck-building card game. I see this as an advantage actually - if it is basically proven successful instead of being original and new, but untested.
That's the problem people are having - they think that ToT is some sort of odd approach to traditional card games and are completely confused as to why you can't just build your deck before the game starts. Guess people complaining on the forums don't socialize enough to play board games with friends.
Of course, there are plenty of big and small things to make ToT different from Star Realms (which makes sense - every game with deck building as part or main mechanic I've seen/played had some twist to it). Realms games are also more fleshed out over the years, including multiplayer game modes, various expansion decks that either add more cards to each factions or completely new mechanics.(among the top 20 most popular games according to the BGG.com, and among the top 3 deckbuilders)
Those stats don't look correct at all.0 -
Skvysh✭✭✭
It's difficult to estimate Star Realm's real popularity, considering that it has been digitalized for a while now. Not sure how many Star Realm app users log their stats on BGG. I've seen the popularity lists being done monthly and they're based on number of plays logged on BGG (which I think is a silly thing to do in the first place).
If we go by sales, Star Realms has an edge due to being fairly cheap to get into (I bought first core box for like 13 euro but you can get it cheaper if pre-owned), in comparison to other deck builders like Clank or Dominion.
Of course, playing table top and playing on the app where everything's done for you and you can always look into what you and your opponent still have in your decks is a whole different experience as well, so even though it's the same game - it's a bit difficult to add up the two when it comes to counting stats, as people who like the digital version wouldn't necessarily have loved the original table top version.0