QUOTE (Hags888 @ November 20, 2007 04:55 pm)
I absolutely think that counterproductivity contributes to a bad design regardless of whether you intend the deck to be weak or strong.
CONTRADICTION! This is always cause for great joy when doing proofs, so forgive me. I refer you to where you say, "I think Maul's design is great." And yet, Maul's is another good example of cards working against each other. Let's look at the red deck as it relates to his talent set. There is an argument to be made that Wrath and Choke are redundant, but there is nothing more redundant than adding a red deck to 9 Power Attacks. Also note that the red deck is significantly counterproductive to his Blinding Surges, and also that Blinding Surge weakens itself -- it is a stronger card the first time it is played. Maul simply can't afford to play Blinding Surge and take the full hit sometimes because his red deck doesn't afford him the support to sustain his health during other attacks. Similarly, once one Blinding Surge has already been played, that full damage has been taken and it is significantly less likely that the other one will be usable. There are games where I discard the surges over battle droid cards because they are completely worthless, and I suspect I'm not the only one. So here's your example of another Hasbro deck that uses counterproductivity to weaken a deck -- this time with a strong result. I'm not saying that the result of making cards work against each other is necessarily a weak deck... just that it's weaker than if they did work together -- and that it is not bad design to utilize this method to get that result, whether toning down an overpowered deck to being powerful or toning down a powerful deck to being weak.
QUOTE (Hags888 @ November 20, 2007 04:55 pm)
If your intent is a weak deck, then use weak cards....not powerful ones that weaken when used in the same deck.
This isn't a point I'm interested in arguing, since it is pure subjective opinion, but I simply disagree here: using weak cards results in a low ceiling, low floor that has the same poor chance against everyone. I believe the result of a good design, even of a weak deck, has a variable power level depending on the opposing character; it matches up better against some decks than others.

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo-clock.
- Orson Welles