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A rule change proposal for Dominants

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Master Q:
Something I see that still hasn't declined over the years is Dominant abuse. It's apparent to a good number of people that I've talked to even after the Dom limit was set years ago (an awesome change) that this is still a problem. However, I was more or less resigned to accept this conundrum as I couldn't think of an alternative to banning certain Doms, which I don't want to do, and I haven't thought on it again until recently.

Now, I know it might be taboo, but I'm going to bring up another card game, so bear with me.

I've been playing the Pokemon TCG Gameboy game recently, and, while that was more for a nostalgic kick than anything, the parallels in that game got me thinking about this one. Mainly, how they handled a similar "Dominant" problem years ago. Mind you, I don't follow the game now and am only passingly familiar with the game past the first sets. But they had cards that were essentially "Dominants" - Trainers. And they could be pretty ridiculous, as the Gameboy game has affirmed to me.

Long story short, the most powerful of these cards were reworked into things called "Support Trainers" (and some even given "Ace Spec" status), with the "cost" of playing only one per turn (one per deck for "Ace Spec" cards). I think you see where I'm going with this. While Redemption has different deck-building rules that don't allow for the duplicates like Pokemon does, unlike Pokemon, it does not have this limit on its most powerful cards. IMO, having the most powerful, splashable cards in the game be "costless" is something that we should move away from.

So, what would people think about amending the rules of the game to have all Dominants fall under a "one dominant per player per turn" rule? How would this change affect deck-building and gameplay? Would Dominants need to have a deck-building limit if this was a rule? Would the fast decks still reign supreme? Would you draw cards if you knew you couldn't drop Dominants to lower your hand count?

Very interested to hear your thoughts.

Crashfach2002:
This would ultimately ban New Jerusalem, but would add more strategy in the sense you couldn’t just drop SoG and 2nd Coming to simply end the game.  You would be a little hesitant to play one too early or even too late with the fear of the other one getting discarded or removed from the game.

Kevinthedude:
I support this. Banding and YWR get strong since you can't Woes+Martyr or Martyr+FA but this would reward planning ahead with the Woes and CoW FA is getting harder and harder to fit in decks anyway.

The Guardian:
I don't think I would be a fan of such a change. That being said, I really like cards that make it more difficult to play doms or more painful to do so. I think more cards like Fall of Man and Pithom would be good for the game so that dominants become more of a "last resort" option as opposed to an automatic play.

Master Q:

--- Quote from: Crashfach2002 on February 17, 2019, 01:27:25 PM ---This would ultimately ban New Jerusalem, but would add more strategy in the sense you couldn’t just drop SoG and 2nd Coming to simply end the game.  You would be a little hesitant to play one too early or even too late with the fear of the other one getting discarded or removed from the game.

--- End quote ---

Exactly! Things become much more strategic and TSC becomes less powerful as a result.

As for NJ, there exists simple solutions. Either:

A. Wait for set rotation or a reprint that does something different (I'm not holding my breath)
B. Errata NJ as follows: "Reveal Son of God from hand to rescue a Lost Soul."

B. still forces you to have both SoG & NJ in hand to use it and is very effective.


What I want to know is, if this were a thing, would the Dom cap be needed anymore? Would you clog up your deck with cards that are essentially only playable occasionally? Even if Dom cap didn't disappear, would this curtail dom power enough that the way decks are built shifts entirely?

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