If you are familiar with Hyper Juken, you will know that scrying, looking at cards from the top of your Arsenal and placing them on the top or bottom of your Arsenal, is a big part of the game. It happens at the start of each turn for the turn player. This has some ramifications that limit design space; hand filtering and actual scry are of less value as it's built into the game. Likewise, it can be pace breaking, giving each turn an entire process of setting up your draws.
This decision was made early on for two reasons;
Firstly, the Ki system. To play Hyper Juken you need Lv0s or cards that will be sent to the Ki Pool and by looking at the top 4 cards each turn, it ups the chances of hitting a Lv0. Most Arsenals come with 8x Lv0s, 20% of the Arsenal and provided you send the entire 4 cards to the bottom of your Arsenal, that gives you an 86% chance of hitting a Lv0. If you go a further turn, it brings it up to 96%.
Secondly, to cater to people who don't typically like Life Deck systems. If you can look through your Deck for specific cards, what gets sent to the Discard Pile as damage doesn't mean as much, especially with the generous healing in Blue and Red. You can see specific cards reliably when both are put together.
Over recent months, the discussion about design space had come up a few times in card design. The built-in scrying every turn making any card that scried independently, altered scrying or filtered the hand of much lower value. Why use them when the game gives you so much to start with?
Then a discussion on game pacing came up and it made me sit and take pause. We were discussing another game that pauses the gameplay to effectively create a subgame to determine how the gameplay will continue and just talking about it in a negative light caused me to reflect on Hyper Juken. It behaves in a very similar way at the start of turn. Playtesting was like yes, it's because you were overcompensating.
Some things were discussed, such as lowering the scry, but I went with my gut. The point of the scry is Lv0s, resources. Let's make it a part of game setup and just draw to hand size afterwards. The likelihood of hitting a Lv0 is fairly high after 20% of the Arsenal has been looked through, failing less than 15% of the time and this is a number that can be altered in different ways such as Arsenal construction and card effects.
Worked a treat. We both hit our Lv0s reliably. The game progressed far more naturally, card reoccurrence did its job and it worked out well. So much so that after the initial game, it was like "Yeah. This is it.". Moving Scry to game preparation flowed much better than the system currently in place.
Later in the day, we tested A3's current progress. Moving Scry 4 to game preparation rather than turn phase just worked out so well, playtesting eventually just incorporated it into the standard format you're familiar with. Effects that interacted with the Arsenal and other zones were doing the job the scry was doing in many respects. No one missed Lv0s, everything just went as it should and worked. Very similar experience with better pacing.
I haven't officially said I'll change the rules of how Hyper Juken is played now, but the new format will incorporate this change and I'm very much leaning towards the change being made in the standard format. Tell me if you think it'd be for the best or if you have a go with this change, how it feels.
Till next time friends, thanks for reading,
-Erik
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