How Many Cards ?

[Jesse]

I will finally be playing my first OP match in a long time tomorrow after work with a friend of mine that wants to learn how to play. I have created 4 decks for us to just play with. Premade to cut down on time so we can focus on rules, and gameplay. Anyway, as I was building the decks I kept filling like I have either too few or too many cards in them.

What is a good number of cards to have in a deck? All I know so far, is the 51-56 card minimum, and I know there are several posts on here about how many specials people prefer and about how many of each power card people like to use, but since I haven't played in so long I was wondering what the average may be or how many cards is definitely too many for one deck.

All feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[gameplan.exe]

I will finally be playing my first OP match in a long time tomorrow after work with a friend of mine that wants to learn how to play. I have created 4 decks for us to just play with. Premade to cut down on time so we can focus on rules, and gameplay. Anyway, as I was building the decks I kept filling like I have either too few or too many cards in them.

What is a good number of cards to have in a deck? All I know so far, is the 51-56 card minimum, and I know there are several posts on here about how many specials people prefer and about how many of each power card people like to use, but since I haven't played in so long I was wondering what the average may be or how many cards is definitely too many for one deck.

All feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Generally, all of my decks are 56-64 cards, but it's rare for me to even break 60. The idea there is that all of your best cards (the OPDs) are made more rare with a larger deck, so the smaller the deck, the quicker you get the "good stuff" but I wouldn't worry too much about it - especially for teaching a new player.

[BigBadHarve]

I've also found that 60 is about the sweet spot, on average. Though I've built some decks with significantly more and sometimes less.

There are some who believe the tighter the better, and that's not invalid. Though I think for training purposes you might even want to consider adding a few of the lesser used cards like BUs and Doubleshots. Once your recruit is more used to the game, he can decide what cards to use or not use.

-BBH

[Jesse]

Thanks guys. Right now I think I've got a couple at 62 and a couple about 66/67.

Part of this is I have added universe, lots of lower end specials and some duplicates - because I dont know his style. I even added similar builds for my teams, even going so far as to add universe etc that I dont typically like but want to even out with his deck as best I can for training purposes.

I appreciate the help. We'll see how it all plays out tomorrow!

[gameplan.exe]

Thanks guys. Right now I think I've got a couple at 62 and a couple about 66/67.

Part of this is I have added universe, lots of lower end specials and some duplicates - because I dont know his style. I even added similar builds for my teams, even going so far as to add universe etc that I dont typically like but want to even out with his deck as best I can for training purposes.

I appreciate the help. We'll see how it all plays out tomorrow!

exactly on point!

[Nostalgic]

You might check out the link below for training purposes. I think someone else posted this here.

http://www.davidjohnmarotta.com/op/teach.html

I used this to teach a guy who had never played before and it took about 20 to 30 minutes before he had it down. The only cards we didn't get in to were locations and double shots, but yeah I made the decks with basic universe and training cards.  He pretty quickly learned he didn't like these however... I definitely made sure to give him more powerful teams and I used a few cards in my decks I wouldn't normally due to there relative usefulness.

[Jesse]

You might check out the link below for training purposes. I think someone else posted this here.

http://www.davidjohnmarotta.com/op/teach.html

I used this to teach a guy who had never played before and it took about 20 to 30 minutes before he had it down. The only cards we didn't get in to were locations and double shots, but yeah I made the decks with basic universe and training cards.  He pretty quickly learned he didn't like these however... I definitely made sure to give him more powerful teams and I used a few cards in my decks I wouldn't normally due to there relative usefulness.

I will definitely check this out before I head to the shop tonight. I'm fairly optimistic about him catching on quickly. Right now he plays MTG regularly, and I know in the past he has played Pokemon (when he was younger) and Redakai as well as tons of miniatures games: Heroclix, Warhammer, Warmachine, etc so I think game mechanics and play itself should be fairly easy for him to catch on to.

Thanks! I will give an update tomorrow on how it went i.e. wether I suck as a teacher or he did good/bad for his first day.