Attrition Drafting: A Splendor-Inspired Variant for IADS 🪙💎

We're back! 🎉🎉

Madonna has a couple of blog posts in the oven talking about some of the business side of things -- from my perspective, I'm stoked with how much progress we've made getting IADS: The Game into some new brick-and-mortar locations, finishing the first commercial print of one of our expansions (now we won't be losing money with each copy! haha), and giddy to get back at some table-top matches as our community and event lists grow!

Madonna and I have been playing a lot of Splendor lately -- I had a shower thought and came up with this idea as a shift in the drafting Phase of the game.

1. Players decide on a total number of Attrition Points that will be available for each side.

2. Sort the cards by type, face up.

3. In a 1v1, Player/Team 1 chooses one card, Player/Team 2 chooses two, Player/Team 1 then chooses two and so on until one player/team has met the number of Attrition Points decided in Step 1. The other player/team then chooses from the remaining cards until they also have the same number of Attrition Points.

The standard draft rules still work great (I regularly try to out-economy my opponent by picking the lowest Attrition cards—and lose anyway 😅), but it'd be interesting to see sides with a different total number of unit cards. I think there will be a totally different meta with Intelligence and Deception Tactics as both are 0 Attrition Points -- I can see a whole new bluff-double-bluff of double-upgrading Intelligence or double-upgrading Deception Tactics to keep units from being revealed. The parts-limited nature of this version might also be interesting. Consider:

• Player 1 chooses a Multi-Role Fighter

• Player 2, thinking they're smart and awesome, chooses both Intelligence cards

• Player 1 could then "beat" those two Intelligence cards by grabbing

  • Both of the Deception Tactics cards (0 Attrition Points)

  • One Deception Tactics card and one of the four Upgrade cards (with the idea of upgrading the Deception Tactics, giving it an opportunity to block the second Intelligence card's Detect)

  • Two of the three total High Speed Bombers (to blast in while Player 2's Intel cards are getting detections over the course of Actions 1 AND 2 in Turn 1)

If you give this variant a spin, let me know how it plays out! I'm especially curious how shifting from hand-limited to parts-limited drafting might reshape the early-game meta.

Airplanes! 🛩️✈️

- Ric