Steem Monsters: a design for a tournament mode

_{Steem Monster is a fully decentralized, digital collectible trading card game built on the Steem blockchain!}

It's almost a week since Steem Monster is playable for everyone that has a steem account and bought some card packs. I must admit it: while this game mechanics are pretty simple to learn, It does have some depth within.

The initial frustration while improving my fight "team" just disappeared when I found the right one that fit first 0 to 300 points "meta". After that, I had to do some changes for the 300-500 "meta" and so on. While there are some cards that may need some rework, this game still manage to catch my competitive instincts due to the need of continuously adapt my own fight team (or cards) to overcome the new "frequent" opposing team.

Best thing is this game change really fast due to the new rules (mana, splinters, gameplay rules) every few days: in this way there will be no real "end game meta" because things will hugely change everytime.

_{This screen shows the actual rules in terms of mana and available splinters (card colors)}

Still, there are some things that does not change at all. I found myself there are some summoners (along with card skills) that can hardcounter some fight team. This is true because in this game you don't have a lot of cards to play, so you need to choose them carefully: most of the times, the entire fight team is focused on just one strategy. For example in lower ranks, I saw really often a combo with Zintar Mortalis (meleed attack debuff) and Undead priest (melee attack debuff and health debuff). This was lethal to me, until I just started using a full ranged team: enemy debuff become useless and I started climbing the ladder again.

Let's sum up this preamble:

• The game itself has a shifting "meta"

• The player need to focus more on adapting to current ranking opponents and to current rules more than setting up a good for everything "team"

• The game is played around a small number of cards

• Behind each team there is a focus on one strategy

Tournament mode: fitting game mechanics

Let's consider a classic best of three match (bo3) between two players in an official tournament match.

There is no information on what the enemy player will use in the first round, so each player will just show up with a random team. The team that randomly counters the other win, gets the points. This system is totally random, so it has nothing to do with a competitive mode.

Since there is no RNG god to pray for drawing a particular card that can save us from a certain death and since this game focus a lot on just one strategy (like debuffing enemy, using magic attack cards, focusing on ranged units, focusing on enrage card paired with heals, etc.), the players need some information about the opponent so they can adapt their team.

While revealing all cards is a non-sense, I think that revealing summoners could do the job. A summoner is often associated with different kind of strategies and this will let the player have some room for thinking how to approach to the match.

So, in a bo3 scenario, during the first round, the first picking player will reveal his summoner to the opponent (but not associated cards, the "team") in order to let the second player to counterpick, while in the second round it will be the opposite (the second player will show to opponent the summoner he picked).

Other variables to take into account

Card level: letting all cards be level 1 will give a more fair prospective to every player but maybe will reduce strategy depth since cards with more levels will gain more skills.

Mana avaible: 20 mana should be the standard to create a strategy around 3-4 cards. Increasing mana may create more fun but also will let the player with most powerful cards to win over the player with less cards.

Bans: Should be players ban 1 card per splinter? Banning more cards is a non-sense since there aren't so many cards right now, usually banning 1 card from splinter is enough to decrease power of a certain overpowered team composition. Should also player ban 1 splinter each for the entire match?

Tournament mode: Summoner Draft

In this mode, each player will choose a set of four summoner that will be available for the entire bo3 match. In every round, both players will pick a summoner among the ones available in the pre-selected set. In case of a draw situation (1-1 in a bo3), both players will see the two remaining summoner of the other player. Each player will pick the last summoner but no one will know what will be the opponent pick until the round starts. This will reduce RNG factor (you have still an idea on what you opponent could use) and let the players use a bit more of strategy.

Tournament mode: Premade Team

In this mode, each player will choose four summoners with an associated premade team and then for each round they will choose a summoner+team to use against the opponent. Even in this scenario, only the summoner will be revealed in the picking phase.

Tournament mode: Random draft

In this mode, each player will have a set of random generated cards to choose from. Each player will pick a total of 10-12 (for example) cards to create a temporary collection, then he will pick a summoner (revealed or not?) and will adjust the team accordingly to his temporary collection. Fun thing is cards can be associated with any summoner color (so death summoner can have fire cards, f.e.)

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All this stuff is for involving community in sharing their thought about a future tournament mode, I left many options open and I would like to hear your thought!

Please share them in comments below!

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A special thanks to @aggroed, @yabapmatt and all staff of SM for creating such a wonderful game!