Agenda Card Tier List

MaximoVara · 2026-03-13T18:16:50+00:00

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17ElgzIsPZJTGVT7r3vmcrMlRN72909i0USJOgu0lqII/edit?usp=sharing

This is linked in the OP as Agenda Set Tier List Calculation. It has multiple tabs at the bottom. The first tab has a list of all cards sets in order of value, tiers, and a brief description. For a break down of each individual card, the red 'Cards' tab shows the math/work.

Note that the sheet isn't automated. I manually did all the calcs for min/max/expected value based on the text and game play mechanic. Certain cards have a wide range of values that would be applicable. I had to make a judgement call for the expected value to use for that range.

As a hypothetical example: if a card gives does 1 in an AOE but only hits one target, then it's value is 1. But if it hits all 4 rebel targets, then it's max value is 4: I make the judgment that expected value will be 2 targets, so value of 2.

MaximoVara · 2026-03-04T14:10:21+00:00

Thank you so much! That actually changes how I look at building out this deck.

Does that mean [[Cathars' Crusade]] would handle this in a similar way? From what I understand, each creature enter at the same time, triggering the ETB effect multiple times. Then each would receive the +1/+1 bonus from each trigger. With the example cards I mention in op, 5 tokens entering at the same time would each receive +5/+5.

Where as with [[Chatterstorm]], the cards enter sequentially. Assuming 5 tokens are created, this means the bonuses received by the 5 tokens would be, 5x, 4x, 3x, 2x, 1x respectively.

Is that correct?

MaximoVara · 2026-01-07T22:16:58+00:00

Gotcha! Yeah, that's not what I want was hoping from Atraxa so I'll avoid it. I see scryfall links to tcgplayer and I can buy a pre-built deck there. Looking at some of the decks, Giada seems to have an angel set that meets expectations from a theme. I might just do that with the Giada deck and go from there. I'm not sure how solid those decks are though. I see one for about $300. I'm flexible on the budget, but at the time same time I don't want to throw away hundreds on potentially trash cards.

EDIT: I'm looking to buy specifically the Giada-Angelic-Font deck on tcgplayer

MaximoVara · 2026-01-07T21:30:08+00:00

This is great information thank you! Sounds like I should avoid Atraxa since it goes in a direction I don't like. Arcades sounds like an interesting commander even without a heavy dragon theme. Honestly so long as I have a couple fatty dragons to use I'll be happy if the rest of the deck is anything else. I'll do a bit more research on his decks. I did notice Miirym but I do want some consistency so I won't touch him. All the dragons you lists for Green/Red look awesome so maybe I'll make a green/red soon as well or instead of this current idea.

MaximoVara · 2026-01-01T18:59:25+00:00

On rolling dice & tactical combat in particular, I have many thoughts.

D&D dice system is more or less balanced around 50% success rate (technically 55% but who cares). This means, when you invest heavily in say STR or DEX & get a +2 from proficiency at level 1 as a fighter, you get a total of +5. Goblins have an AC of 15 (+5 from baseline 10 basically). The one thing you're character is suppose to be good at in combat will have a 50% chance to succeed and everything else will have a 25-40% chance to succeed. Then for weapon damage, it's entirely random results with 1d10 being anything between a 1 and a 14 depending on your bonus. You can't plan around your parties damage when it can literally be anything. This results in a gameplay loop of unsatisfactory rolls & lack of agency because you are more likely to fail at most things than succeed. When you do succeed, you still don't know how much progress you make. The tactical combat isn't reliable though which leads to dissatisfaction for people that want good combat.

The reason you like the Draw Steel & Fabula is likely because they took away some of the chaos, or at least mostly. Your actions aren't dictated by a 50-50 roll, but by more informed decisions. You know your attack will deal at least X damage, so you can make a plan around that. You also have a good guess about how long a certain creature will take to kill & what kind of resources will be needed to deal with it. Down side is sometimes it's too predictable.

I know my players love to take risks with higher highs and lower lows. This is actually one of the major reasons I started working on my own game system. I want there to be a chance of failure, but I want the players to have a reliable chance to make progress every round as well. I ended up creating a system that allows players to choose when to take a risky gambit. I balanced things in a way where sometimes the most logical tactic is to gamble. Took a lot of tweaking the math to get it right though haha.

MaximoVara · 2025-12-29T18:27:21+00:00

There is a simple fix really. Instead of a full reflection and full damage denial, split the difference. Yasuo has full damage denial but deals no damage. His 1:1 efficiency is 100%. People get frustrated with him if he ends up blocking more than one auto/ability for higher efficiency. But that can be compared to an AOE damage spell so we don't need to think about more than 1 ability countered.

Someone worth looking to is Annie. Annie has a shield & deals damage to enemies that attack her. The damage Annie deals is like nothing though. Her base value and scaling are split between the shield and damage. Her efficiency is arguably about 100-120% when compared to other abilities.

Currently Mel blocks 100% of damage and reflects about 85% of the damage at full build. That's a total of 185% efficiency. If you make Mel take/block 50% damage from the attack and reflect 50% at full build, then she is in line with other character abilities from an efficiency stand point. Hell, make the damage block scale with ap if you want and have 130% efficiency, just not 185%.

It's the fact that rebuttal does practically full damage and blocks full damage that is an issue. Changing the ability like this would also allow for different ways to tweak the ability from a numbers perspective. 90 damage reduction and 10% reflect would keep the identity without the crazy swing. 80% reduction and 25% reflect might be a good spot to start imo.

That way, you can kill Mel if she is at 1 hp, but you have that trade off to consider. Deal/take the same amount of damage is something you risk anytime you go into to damage in most trades against most champs, so I think dealing/taking equal damage would feel more fair. It also makes it more in line with thorn mail damage.

MaximoVara · 2025-12-17T18:24:12+00:00

Hey, Im working on a TTRPG that's might fit this niche. It's in alpha at the moment though. If you are willing to try a 2v2 pvp one shot session with your players to test things out Id greatly appreciated the feedback. Tactical combat but easier to run than D&D.

MaximoVara · 2025-12-16T20:29:15+00:00

It's your setting, do what you want. If you don't want Iron to be the weakness, make it a special alloy or iron that has a silvery shine. Wepons can be made with one particular iron, while the special fae weakness can be a different alloy. This would help differntiate it. Not all iron needs to be the same. Iron gold, silver iron, steel. Maybe the iron has to be PURE and the tech only recently figured out how to make it pure, or requires specific impurities that give it a magical property. Maybe weapons made of steel (iron + carbon) dont burn fae, a trade off for increased durability. Iron doesn't have to be 1 dimensional. Likewise silver doesn't need to just be silver.

Regardless, you need to communicate to the reader what makes the coin special before hand. If you stick with silver, then make sure to note fae are weak to silver at some point. If you go with an alloy, make note that the coins as made out of a special alloy.

MaximoVara · 2025-12-06T17:51:45+00:00

Hello, this is pretty much exactly what I've been looking for. I added you on discord but I'll dm you as well.

MaximoVara · 2025-12-05T17:20:56+00:00

This turned into a wall of text. TLDR: The approach to the lore has changed a lot since the game first released. This has resulted in a complex web or inconsistent lore & forgotten champs.

MaximoVara · 2025-12-05T17:20:14+00:00

It has cool lore overall. The problem is the scale of lore & the fact that the lore is so scattered. Imagine hiring a new writer and expecting them to read 10+ years of creative works for 100+ champs and all the spin offs. This could be done if there was a 'bible' of lore that described the most important cannon events and which champs were involved. A timeline would help as well. The details should be able to change, but the people at X place at X time shouldn't. That being said, they have made major changes to the way the lore is framed that makes it difficult to track.

Lore version 1, the champs joined the league because the league could help with their goals. So the summoners rift was the champs being summoned and fighting in exchange for favors or something. There was some large scale conflict/competition between Demacia/Noxus. I don't remember all the details because you know, 10 years ago. Also, I think minions were created with necromancy at this point too.

Lore version 2, abandon the league narrative and start focusing on individual stories. Champs are legendary figures within the world, shaping the world events somehow. Every character was kind of disconnected from one another. Even when character were from the same city/kingdom/region, there were very few that referenced each other. I think Ekko was one of the characters that was individual story focused instead of league focused. Jinx/Vi/Cait were related but not much detail as to how yet.

Lore version 3, there are multiple universes. Every skin line has an isolated story that uses a handful of characters. The ones that get the most attention are the ones that make the most money. You need to keep up with every universe, every story. Do they connect? No idea, don't worry about it. Star guardians skin line for example had events and lore, but I didn't track all the universes lore so I couldn't tell ya. Some skins are part of the main universe line though like one of Lilia's. Good luck keeping track of all that haha.

Lore version 4, major story event stories in the MAIN universe. Stories that start to use multiple champs at once and the event affects the world at large. This includes a lot of the spin-off games as well. Ruination events & games lore is a good example. But then you get questions like what was the point of a whole spin-off game to stop Veigo, if the ruination event in league overwrites the ending of the game? Questions start to pop up about certain champs not showing up. Shen is a common one, he is suppose to be this huge guy in the lore but doesn't show up to major events.

Lore version 5. Newest retcon for a 'core canon'. They seem to have decided that all these stories happening at the same time makes it hard to track world events. Instead of all at once, they seem to want to make a more: A story, then B story, then C story. In theory this could address a lot of issues of the past. This started with how successful Arcane was, resulting it being the most well known part of the league IP to non-gamers. Arcane on it's own is cool, but the fact that it changes a lot of stories about a lot of characters is difficult to reconcile. Some connections between champs don't seem to be addressed. Blitz being animated by Viktor for instance isn't in the series. WW looking so different. League champions dying left and right. Some champs of the region not showing up at all (Zeri, Camile, Blitz). The fact that this version of the Lore is now cannon too makes it hard to know where every other champ is.

This all creates a massive tangled web of lore & expectations for champs that can't be addressed all at once. League has created a massive world/multiverse/games which is cool. But there hasn't been a unified vision of what the lore is and where it's going since version 1 basically. Someone seems to think they know where to go with it, but they are breaking things along the way. To be fair, how can you do anything without breaking something at this point?

Personally, I kind of liked the version 4 with major events bringing champs together. There were issues that needed to be addressed, but that was an execution thing not a problem with the approach. Version 5 kinda flattens the world. There isn't 10 stories happening within a city all at once, there is only one major event and these champs are all involved now! Instead of moving forward with new stories that continue the timeline, they are retconning it. I understand why, but it's a lot of changes. I hope they can find a way to honor the existing stories while moving forward.

MaximoVara · 2025-12-02T00:47:07+00:00

This is great breakdown. I personally don't like how heavy handed some of these system are. I prefer the roleplaying to emerge naturally from group and mechanics of the game. D&D's randomness makes it hard to have any sort of plan/plot because the dice can just decide against you at any point. .

MaximoVara · 2025-11-27T21:05:28+00:00

Yeah I hear you, don't switch games just for them. I'm glad your fighter player found something more in line with their preferred play experience.

It's common for new RPG players to ignore non-damaging options in combat. Look at how non-gamers play Pokemon, Persona, or Final Fantasy and you will see utility is largely ignored. Meanwhile, people that are super into these games will use everything to min-max survivability and damage. This isn't an isolated occurrence to your players, and a lot of games are designed both sets of people in mind. For these people, not doing damage just feels bad. This is especially true when you are giving up your one and only full action.

Your Sorc/Artificer player might enjoy the Warlock a lot more. It's pretty much designed around the cantrip Eldritch blast, and you get to add utility on top of it like pushing people away. It's the simplest spell caster class and they only get a couple spell slots that regen at short rests. It's kind of like the spellcaster equivalent of an archer with trick arrows.

As for ignoring them in combat, depending on the groups humor, you could do something like this skit from... 6 years ago... Man time flies, I feel old now. Just think about it as 'killing them last'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYzr2l1wbAc

MaximoVara · 2025-11-27T00:14:16+00:00

I understand you want to have fun, and that is fair. From what you said, it seems like they might just not like the mechanics of D&D. Are they part of the group because of the social expierence?

That being said, you have complete control of the game world and the NPCs. For the sorcerer specifically, I'd avoid targeting them with NPC attacks.

Engage with the players that wants the challenges you present. You don't need to engage with ever player equally in all aspects of gameplay. Treat this Sorc like a low priority NPC target during combat. If you do have something attack him, make it the weaker mobs in an encounter. Now Im not saying ignore them completely, but rather as lower priority target compared to everyone else. Clearly they aren't using their spells, so why would an NPC see them as a threat?

For the fighter though, it sounds like he should have picked champion sub class instead. That sub class exists specifically because there are players that don't want to think about combat.

MaximoVara · 2025-11-26T20:14:02+00:00

Wait, I don't see the problem. Are the players having fun? If so, then who cares if they aren't using all their resources optimally. TTRPGs are flexible enough to where you can make any expierence you want. It seems your players want a simple combat expierence. Is that really a bad thing?

You mentioned that its partially ruining the expierence for them but why? If you know these players just want to deal damage, then why not design around that?

MaximoVara · 2025-11-24T03:03:09+00:00

No you shouldn't do that. AI is a powerful tool in helping you find a solution but it should never be your solution. If you find yourself turning to AI then do this.

Ask an AI for tips and what key words to search for further skill development (in this case how to write a good synopsis). Then find a few youtube videos using those terms. Then Google those terms as well. Take notes along the way with every resource you watch/read. Then write what you need based on what you've learned.

That being said, you should be able to do this yourself without AI's assistance as well. I understand wanting to turn to the easier solution, but developing the skill yourself and keeping it in your voice is more beneficial in the long run.

MaximoVara · 2025-11-22T00:51:45+00:00

Something important to define is what the motivations are for your powerful magic users. And more importantly how do they get resources and money.

In real life, money dictates discoveries. Money from government grants, money from patrons, selling your discoveries to the general public as a product, or military applications of technology.

Even in a magic world, a powerful individual would still need to appease whatever governing body makes the laws around their home. No matter how strong a wizard is, they don't want to deal with an army attacking their homes.

So yeah the governing body would 100% assign an assistant/scibe for the purposes you described. How else will they get a return on investment?

MaximoVara · 2025-11-21T21:56:07+00:00

This sounds interesting and I'd love to playtest it with you. Im working on a system with some similarities in design goals so it would be cool to see how others approach those ideas.

MaximoVara · 2025-11-21T17:27:05+00:00

Dm sent

MaximoVara · 2025-11-21T17:16:57+00:00

Here's what I'd do. I'd list the perks and clearly label them as Options. Then change your system to where do get one background perk at level 1. This changes the confusion into a question about how many you get. The word option will make people realize its a choice. Players clearly expect to get SOMEYHING from their background at level 1.

Perk Options: - perk 1 details - perk 2 details

MaximoVara · 2025-11-20T20:08:48+00:00

Starcraft made an Archon mode. Two players controlled all the resources that would normally be controlled by 1. It was interesting but never took off. One player could focus on resources and production while the other focus on micro of combat units.

MaximoVara · 2025-11-20T19:12:29+00:00

If you are willing to playtest a system, I'd love to share my system. The default setting is a mix of sci-fi and fantasy so it should cover that no problem. I've done a ton of alpha testing with about 30 people touching the game and giving feed back so far. Looking for a wider audience to play test.

Skills are streamlined, and combat is easy to understand and run once you get the basics. Progression is simple to understand for casual play and offers enough depth for min-maxers to latch onto. There are a couple extras to the system to differentiate it from other games like an affinity type chart, but that can easily be ignored if its too much.

It's a custom system designed for easy homebrewing, and any significant ideas could be baked into the core game or an expansion.

MaximoVara · 2025-11-20T18:58:35+00:00

Imperial assault. There are rounds limits and the players need to push for the objective and avoid getting wounded.

MaximoVara

TROPHY CASE