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Author Topic: Black Market without supply cards  (Read 5630 times)

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Kuildeous

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Black Market without supply cards
« on: June 20, 2011, 01:22:41 pm »
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 I just had a thought about streamlining the Black Market deck for me. Sadly, I won't be able to test this out probably until next weekend, but I thought I'd throw it out for the identification of flaws/opportunities.

A little background: I placed all of my cards in one Dominion box. While the idea of having tabbed dividers was appealing, I took a different sort of advice. I put all my kingdom cards in little baggies. Rather than shuffle the randomizer deck and go hunting for specific cards, I just reach into the box and pull out 10 kingdom cards. The upside is that it's pretty quick (though there is the unwrapping portion to contend with). One downside is that I generally put the cards back in the box in chunks, so the cards aren't really randomly drawn. I offset that with scattering my choices, but it's generally a price I'm okay with paying.

The Black Market deck does get kind of weird. I fish around in the box and pull out three bags. If you want one, pull a card out of the bag. This means that the cards don't go to the bottom of the deck. When playing with a Black Market deck of 119 cards, this generally isn't that big of a concern.

But, it's a bit of a pain, and I often veto Black Market just to keep the game running more smoothly. That's just not fair. I wondered if there was a way to play Black Market without relying on the huge store of cards. That's when this idea hit me.

I could use my randomizer cards again. I'd have that stack plus a stack of blank cards. If a Black Market card is purchased, that randomizer card is placed to the side, and a blank card goes into your deck. Naturally, these cards cannot be completely blank, as that would make multiple purchases confusing. The blanks can be numbered, with the randomizer cards sitting off to the side, indicating the number represented (could be with number chits or placement of cards).  At the end of the game, all blank cards go back to that stack, and all randomizer cards go back to its home. No need to put away 20 different kingdom cards.

Though, after having written this out, it still sounds like it's a lot of hassle. Maybe it looks simpler to me because of how my cards are stored, but I'm afraid I don't see that big of an advantage compared to pulling cards out of a box.

So, I guess I've successfully talked myself out of this method, but since I wrote this much, I'm not going to let it go to waste. Are there suggestions on how to make this still work, or is it beyond salvage?
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rod-

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Re: Black Market without supply cards
« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2011, 01:43:32 pm »
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To me, this sounds really easy for "gameplay" situations, although it would take you 10-20 minutes to set up:


1) Put all randomizer cards into a "black market baggie"
2) Put all blank cards into a "black market deck baggie": Number them (2 of each number)


When you play black market, you pull out 3 cards from baggie, when you buy the card, you pull out the 1st 2 numbered blank cards:
1 goes next to the randomizer card you bought in some set aside area, the 2nd goes into your discard.  When you draw a blank, you just have to compare back to the original, which is sitting right next to the like-numbered card.


Cleanup is just a matter of re-sorting the blanks and re-bagging the randomizers, which is fast and simple.
You're not going to find a better setup than that for black market.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Black Market without supply cards
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2011, 02:35:32 pm »
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 I had thought of another downside but neglected to include that in my original post. In the rare chance that you buy more Black Market cards than you have blanks, then the system breaks down (e.g., Fairgrounds strategy).

Although, if you are looking at a possible 20+ cards from Black Market, then you're basically in it for the long haul, so the time to pull cards out of the box is just a drop in the bucket.

I have a different downside in that I don't have room for the randomizer cards in my box. I suppose that's a good reason to stash away my Pirate Ship/Native Village/Island/Trade Route/VP mats. They're not required anyway.
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Young Nick

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Re: Black Market without supply cards
« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2011, 10:27:08 pm »
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Somewhere on BGG, I saw a fantastic fix for the Black Market deck. I'm surprised more people don't use it or support it. I can't say I've gotten around to using it myself, but I know I should. I just don't play face-to-face enough to care. The general procedure is as follows:
Take one of every kingdom card (regular backing, not randomizer-blue). Use this as your Randomizer deck instead of the blue-backed cards. After the 10 are drawn for use in a game, find the rest of the cards (the remaining 9) from their original spot (in the box or in baggies or however you do it). The unused Kingdom cards that are from the randomizer pile work as the Black Market deck. Draw 3, and then you can place them in your deck immediately, no need to find the actual copy from wherever its stored. After the game is over, return all cards purchased from the Black Market deck to the pile and 1 of each of the 10 used in the Kingdom (11 if Young Witch is present). It can be a hassle if you are looking for a specific set of 10, but in that case you can just pull the 9 out of storage and find the 10th from the single-copy deck if it is needed.

Basically, use one of the 10 regular-backed cards instead of the blue-backed to make your Black Market deck.
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Personman

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Re: Black Market without supply cards
« Reply #4 on: June 21, 2011, 05:00:27 am »
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I thought everyone did that.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Black Market without supply cards
« Reply #5 on: June 21, 2011, 10:13:31 am »
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Basically, use one of the 10 regular-backed cards instead of the blue-backed to make your Black Market deck.

Oddly enough, we never did—not even when I did have all my cards in easy-to-find places.

I'd be concerned about someone (mainly me) forgetting to put a card back into the randomizer/Black Market deck. I remember being bored enough to count my randomizer deck one day and found myself short three cards. I had wondered why I had played so much without seeing Chapel show up once. Turned out the randomizer was included with the other cards. I don't remember the other two cards, but needless to say, I wasn't playing with a full deck.

And that was a series of mistakes I made with cards that technically look different from the other cards.

It is indeed a cool and convenient idea, but I think I would ruin it.
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DsnowMan

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Re: Black Market without supply cards
« Reply #6 on: June 21, 2011, 10:32:12 am »
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Our group finds it amusing that you can tell when someone either has or is about to draw a black market card (we use the randomizers).

I could imagine using the regular backed ones, but I have 2 problems:
1) My cards are in a binder, including the black market randomizers (spread over ~10 slots). I don't want to have the take out the 'black market deck' every time when I'm not playing with black market. If not, how do i get the 10th card? Ideas?

2) I just know at some point I'll forget to pull one card from each pile when the game is over and replace them in the black market deck. Do it once, and mayhem ensues.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Black Market without supply cards
« Reply #7 on: June 21, 2011, 10:39:44 am »
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Our group finds it amusing that you can tell when someone either has or is about to draw a black market card (we use the randomizers).

It really is a subtle difference between a regular card and a randomizer card, but it is very obvious to me. I even have new people ask what the difference is. Even when I put them side by side, some people still don't see the difference unless I point it out. Maybe I'm doing them a disservice when I do that. Better to never notice than to turn a subtle change into a glaring difference.

Do you play with Stash? I could see that being an issue, because the blue-backed card would look like every other blue-backed card, which defeats the purpose of Stash.

Then again, Stash would continue to be an issue if the nonrandomizer card were included. Though, maybe seeing Stash coming up in Black Market would add a little spice. 
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DsnowMan

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Re: Black Market without supply cards
« Reply #8 on: June 21, 2011, 11:13:38 am »
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I don't have the actual promo stash cards, but if the randomizer app we use picks it we'll use the blanks. Then of course we can't tell where it is in the deck, even though you are supposed to. We've got it ass-backwards and don't care.  ;)
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Kuildeous

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Re: Black Market without supply cards
« Reply #9 on: June 21, 2011, 11:54:23 am »
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I don't have the actual promo stash cards, but if the randomizer app we use picks it we'll use the blanks. Then of course we can't tell where it is in the deck, even though you are supposed to. We've got it ass-backwards and don't care.  ;)

Of course, if you use blanks for that, you could just shuffle them face-up for the same effect.
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