Blend Deckbuilding?

[OrionPax21]

Ok, so we all know you can mix Munchkin genres, and some blend pretty smoothly, while others... not so much. I'm still pretty new to Munchkin, having bought Zombies a couple weeks ago, and naturally, after playing 3 or 4 games with my group, I decided to buy a ton of other sets all at once. Earlier this week, I bought Zombies 2, Cthulhu 1, 2, & 3, and Bites 1 & 2. Originally, the plan was to just shuffle 'em all together and play, but after looking through a lot of the cards, I was worried that some themes might get too watered down, to the point where it just ends up being frustrating when someone gets a class or race specific item and no one ever sees that class/race/whatever.

So, I figured the easiest way to circumvent this issue was to pull out a good chunk of the specific items. That, however, presented the tricky problem of throwing the ratio of items to other things in the treasure deck way off. This got me to thinking about just breaking down and reconstructing the entire Treasure deck using cards from the sets I have, which led to thinking about doing the same with the Doors. I'm wondering if other people have done this with their Munchkin collections, and what their experiences have been. Has anyone found certain ratios of card types that work the best? How many monsters of each level, number of classes/races/mojos/etc., best number of cards for each deck? I've been thinking about this as a Munchkin "Cube" project (Cube is a custom draft format for Magic: the Gathering for those that aren't familiar with the term), and would really like to hear other peoples thoughts on it.

[Mister Ed]

I haven't done any blending, to be honest, but you might want to look at Munchkin 7, which was pretty much designed to facilitate mixing different sets.

[TheBiff]

I love deck mixing. However I dont love all the cards from all the sets. I went to extreme of making a spread sheet that gave me the percentage of card types for both Doors and Treasures. So in Doors there is Monsters, Monster Enhancers, Classes/Race, etc. Then I took the cards from each set and that way I could have a pretty balanced mixed deck which worked great.

However the three sets you have a pretty good for mixing. Bites and Zombies go great together because they have Powers and Races in common. Cthulhu does have either however that isnt a bad thing because if you mix in that deck with either Zombies or Bites now you will have races and classes. Just by playing around with different mixes you will know what cards dont fit and you can just take them out little by little.

[Gospel X]

Theoretically, ratios should not be too much of an issue with those decks. What I think would be the biggest issues would be the occurrences of each game's special types. For example, Munchkin Bites has bat monsters that can be wandered in without using a wandering monster card. This gets watered down in blended games. Cthulu has the Cultist class and the possibility of the game ending outright if everyone becomes a Cultist. Again, this can get watered down in a blended game.

What I'm considering doing in my next blended game is pull out those specific cards (if not all of them, then most of them - let the rest by random) and shuffle the remaining decks together. Then I'll shuffle those special cards into the top half of the deck (or less, depending on the size of the deck) to guarantee we get some use out of the specials.

[RevBob]

I go about this completely differently, by letting the ratios take care of themselves as I simply chop the decks in half.

Basically, I take each set and split it as evenly as possible. That is, if there are seven GUALs, three go in each pile and I set the odd one aside. Ditto for classes, races, one-shot items, and all that. That's the easy part.

Stage two is taking related sets and abnormally significant cards into account; since they depend on each other, they need to stay together. Davy Jones is a prime example (and a big set). Take that set and build one as close to it as possible from the other cards; it's not going to be perfect, but you can get pretty close...and then you add one set to each pile.

Monsters and restricted cards come next, and the same principles apply. Split the monsters up as evenly as possible, do the same with signature equipment, and use a strength in one set to balance a weakness in another. An extra Loaded Die in one deck can balance a Reloaded Die in the other. Eventually, you come to a point where you have a small core of unsplittable cards from that set, but since you're blending, you have a corresponding small core from your other set(s) - and generally those will work together to take you the rest of the way home. Otherwise, just balance it as best you can.

If Andrew will permit it, one day I'll write up an article on the subject for the site, with examples and completed breakdowns. I've got my Munchkin 8 set mostly prepared to add into my split Fantasy decks...

[Kauboi]

I, too, am a HUGE fan of blending. The interesting, and frankly hilarious, results are too good to pass up.

The only point of confusion for me is remembering what class and race cards count as what. Truthfully, when we blended Zombie, Booty and Impossible...with loyalties, accents and mojos, it threw us for a loop at first.

If I may say, however, Munchkin Impossible is my group's favorite blender. Very seamless addition to the others.

=K

[OrionPax21]

As far as I know, Class/Race/Mojo/Accent/Loyalty/etc. don't overlap, ie;, only other classes will make you get rid of your current class. Zombies has Mojos, Cthulhu has Classes, and Bites has Races. One of the biggest reasons I'm not mixing the Fantasy stuff in is because it overlaps these sets on Classes and Races.

I'm not worried about the "free wandering monsters" mechanic from Bites (bats) and Cthulhu (-goths) personally, my group hasn't been using those rules anyways. I'm more concerned with the specific to-use items and powers, especially ones that don't really do anything unique. Having an item that can only be used by a Voodoo Zombie seems pointless if it doesn't do anything besides a +3 bonus.

Right now, I'm trying to figure out what the best deck sizes would be for these 3 combined. The Treasures deck should be fairly simple, I think I'd want it to be around 1/2 the size of the total for the 3 sets combined, which should be easy enough by starting with weeding out the less useful cards, and less unique, cards. Doors could be a bit more tricky though, mainly because I'd like to keep in all the Class/Race/Mojo cards, aside from evening them out a bit. There are only 4 copies of each Zombie Mojo and Bites Race, but 5 copies of the Cthulhu Classes, except Cultists, which I have 9 of. Also, the Powers in Zombies are less interesting (to me, at least) than the ones in Bites, and there are multiple copies of each (3-4 of each Zombie power as opposed to 1-2 copies in Bites), so those will probably get thinned out a bit.