I've heard it argued that Netrunner avoids the worst of those problems by always giving you the option of drawing a card. Of course the flipside is making the game less random which has its own impact on the meta. Take that to the extreme and you have Mage Wars, which a friend described as "Netrunner chess"; there's almost no randomness, which makes for a more strategic game - but in its own way that makes it less fun, particularly between players of different ability.
Have you heard of David Sirlin's game Codex? It's not out yet, unfortunately, but I think it takes an interesting approach to this (I've yet to see how it actually plays).
The basic rules resemble Hearthstone, but rather than building a deck beforehand, you just pick one of seven 10-card starter decks, and 3 of 20 "codices", and then at the end of each turn you take two cards from your codices and add them into your deck. So there's still luck of the draw, but not to the extent of having to shuffle a 30 or 60 card deck beforehand. (Also you go through your cards Dominion-style rather than one-card-per-turn Magic style, but I'm honestly not sure as to whether that counts as an increase or decrease in luck!)
I've heard this compared to Mage Wars, but looking that up, it looks like that just lets you cast spells straight out of your spellbook, no deck at all. Is that right? So I guess Codex is another intermediate step there.
(As regards "mana", it doesn't follow Hearthstone, but rather takes the fairly-common approach where any card from your hand can also be turned into a mana producer (this permanently removes them from your deck, so you can remove cards as well as adding them).)
> The basic rules resemble Hearthstone, but rather than building a deck beforehand, you just pick one of seven 10-card starter decks, and 3 of 20 "codices", and then at the end of each turn you take two cards from your codices and add them into your deck. So there's still luck of the draw, but not to the extent of having to shuffle a 30 or 60 card deck beforehand. (Also you go through your cards Dominion-style rather than one-card-per-turn Magic style, but I'm honestly not sure as to whether that counts as an increase or decrease in luck!)
Sounds very similar to Dominion et al then - just slightly hybridized. I take against Sirlin based on his writings and his emphasis on reading your opponent which isn't a mechanic I find fun; I enjoy deckbuilders but there are plenty of them out there.
> I've heard this compared to Mage Wars, but looking that up, it looks like that just lets you cast spells straight out of your spellbook, no deck at all. Is that right?
Yeah - each turn you choose two cards from your spellbook and maybe play them.
Yeah Dominion is an obvious comparison, but I don't think it's a very accurate one, because you don't need to spend your resources deckbuilding; you just add in any two per turn. So while I guess building your deck during the game ultimately comes from there, I don't think Codex really falls in the deck-builder genre that Dominion started. Hence why I've seen it compared to Mage Wars, but I guess it's not quite that either. (Anyway Sirlin already did a Dominion take-off, it was called Puzzle Strike. :P )
> I take against Sirlin based on his writings and his emphasis on reading your opponent which isn't a mechanic I find fun
Huh, I'm surprised. There's a lot of dislike of Sirlin out there obviously but I haven't seen many say it's his writings they don't like. I think they're some of the best writing on game design I've seen! To the point that I'd basically count myself as a "Sirlin fan" even though I've only played two of his games of which one is pretty mediocre. :P (Namely, Flash Duel. Kongai, though, was great, back when people actually played it...) I don't think there's anything too advanced in most of what he writes -- a lot of emphasis on such notions as even playing field, cutting out extra steps that get in the way of playing the real game, the focus on contested skill rather than unconstested skill, that yes strong competitive balance is achievable -- but these are basics that all too often go neglected, IMO, so it's good to see someone explicitly talking about them. There seems to be this philosophy out there of "Well, we don't really need an even playfield..." or "C'mon, nobody can actually make a balanced competitive game with that many characters" and I'm glad to see somebody countering that. Whether he's good at it or not, Sirlin is, to my mind, somebody who gets what game design should be. Would you mind elaborating on what about his writing you don't like?
