In-element discounts will increase vault sizes, meaning that to keep War at 10-12 rounds, you'll have to pay for that -10% elsewhere.
I expect most Generals will be going for 24 copies of their key cards regardless of market prices, whether they're incredibly cheap or incredibly expensive. The leftover points from that 10% discount will, therefore, mostly be going into off-element cards.
An example, with some bloated numbers to see the effects:
Spoiler for Example:
As General of Team Darkness, I need lots of copies of my most important cards, Liquid Shadow and Cloak. Liquid Shadow costs 200 points, Cloak costs 100 points.
I also want lots of Skeletons, Antlions, Mindgates and Fire Spirits in my Vault, all costing 100 each, but I only have 10,000 points to spend.
With standard pricing:
I take 20 copies of Liquid Shadow and 20 copies of Cloak in my Vault. This costs me 4,000 + 2,000 = 6,000 points spent on my in-element cards.
I can now afford to buy 20 Skeletons and 20 Antlions, for a grand total of 10,000 points spent for my vault of 60 cards.
With discounted pricing: (20%)
I take 20 copies of Liquid Shadow and 20 copies of Cloak in my Vault. This costs me 3,200 + 1,600 = 4,800 points spent on my in-element cards.
I can now afford to buy 20 Skeletons, 20 Antlions and 12 Mindgates, for a grand total of 10,000 points spent for my vault of 72 cards.
With standard pricing, I spent 10,000 points to get 60 cards.
With 20% discounted pricing, I spent 10,000 points to get 72 cards... a 20% larger vault.Obviously, without numbers at exact intervals of 100 points each, this isn't going to be a perfect representation of what will happen in a real situation, but the point still stands.
In-element discount = more off-element cards = larger vault = longer War.
From here, after vaultbuilding, the options for controlling War's length are:
- Have a longer War. War will go on for another 1-2 rounds... potentially even longer, depending on the game-changing power and number of cards each team buys with their extra points.
- Increase discards. Larger vaults means they need to decay at a faster rate for War to end at the same time. Much more punishing in the later rounds, when teams are struggling to hold onto the cards they need to win matches.
- Decrease the number of vaultbuilding points. Lower the number of total vaultbuilding points so that vaults don't become too bloated. At this point, you have to ask yourself... is this actually better than having the much neater flat rate for all teams in the market?
- Let the WMs control the vault size decline with tougher Event Cards. Your call.
This has been my line of thinking for not wanting to give teams an in-element discount. I've had several experienced War players build mock Vaults for several teams for me, and I have already tuned the initial vaultbuilding points/discard values to end War at round 10/11 without any event card modification at all - our ECs will simply make small changes here-and-there over the course of the event to make sure everything is going according to plan.
A 10% in-element discount could mean another 1,000-1,500 points for some teams to spend on more off-element cards.
If you want to continue requesting this discount, I'll listen to your feedback, but I want to make sure you're all aware of the implications first.
