Now that a lot of the cards of Doomtown:Reloaded have been spoiled, I’m seeing a lot of people expressing an interest in teaching their friends how to play Doomtown by using the new rules but old cards, since those are what is available. Many simply prepare normal Doomtown decks, and simply stay within the rules of deck construction (no more than 4 cards of the same suit & value) as well as using the new casualties and avoiding card types which are not available, such as Events and Improvements.
While this goes a long way to approach the feel of the new game and see how the new rules play out, unfortunately the costs of deeds and dudes, as well as the availability of various spell effects can easily throw the delicate balance out of whack compared to what one will experience when playing Doomtown:Reloaded using only its own card pool. It is still quite easy to build degenerate decks using Doomtown:Reloaded rules that are boring or impossible to play against.
So, in this post, I wanted to provide my own personal home-rules on how to tweak your deck construction and costs in card in classic Doomtown, to get an experience that more closely approaches what you’ll find when playing Doomtown:Reloaded. This is all completely unofficial and merely approximation of what is available in DTR. I don’t guarantee perfect results, but I hope you’ll find it useful both when teaching new players or when you check things out as returining ones
Deck Construction
- No more than 4 cards of the same suit and value
- No events or improvements or cards which refer to the fear rating.
- No more than 4 total production out of town among all your deeds. No more than 1 control point out of town among all your deeds.
- All In-Town deeds should have control points (and optimally, abilities as well)
- No more than 1 spell that reduces influence (i.e. you can put 4x Blood Curse in your deck, but not also 4x Babble On)
- No more than 1 action that reduces Influence
- No card effects which prevent movement to specific locations, or prevent targeting dudes, or prevent call-0uts.
- No non-deed card effect which provides ghost rock without being a job or requiring your dude to be outside your home in some fashion (that means, no original Blackjacks outfit)
- No card effect which provides Victory Points
- No card effect which can ace or discard dudes without it requiring the dude causing it to be in the shootout, or in the same location. (that means, no Ezzie)
- No card effects which destroy deeds or reduce control points in any way.
Cost/Upkeep tweaking
- 2 Ghost Rock blanket discount for all in-town deeds. This means that Pony Express would cost 3.
- No deed has upkeep. Any deed with upkeep now has 0 production instead.
- All dudes with 2 or more influence have at least 1 upkeep. (I.e. a dude with 2 inf, 0 bullets which costs 4 and had 0 upkeep, now costs 4 and has 1 upkeep.)
- All dudes with 2 or more stud bullet or 3 or more draw bullet, have at least 1 upkeep.
- Any dude who has a combined stud bullets and influence of 4 or more, requires at least 2 upkeep if they don’t already.
- All spells cost 1 Ghost Rock to bring into play
- All deeds with abilities provide their ability to their controller always. Never just the owner.
All other Doomtown:Reloaded rules apply. This means, no extra card for most influence at Nightfall, new casualty rules etc.
Let me know how your experience with decks made and played under these home rules feel.
