Are there secret controls in Caravan that don't show up on the UI?

[Melody]

I'm still having trouble playing, even after watching or reading a dozen guides

When creating your deck how do you move your cards left to right?
When in the actual play, how do you select different cards in your hand? I've seen people do it and some say it's your number keys/pad, but that doesn't work for me
Sometimes I find none of the buttons do anything, like I've trapped myself by making a wrong move, and I'm forced to forfeit the match. Why is that?

Am I required to find cards other than the starting deck?
I just need the two caravan achievements and then I can forget about this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game

[Vex Hilarius]

Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the cards. You need to place at least one card down for each of your 3 rows before you can add a card on top of another card, you can't start building if you have an empty row.

The base deck you get from ringo is sufficient, no need to find more but if you want to git gud you have to plan out your deck.

[Amanoob105]

There's also the very real possibility that on your PC that game is just busted and unplayable, like it is on so many others.
I know that no matter what computer I've loaded NV on it's never once worked and from what I hear the only people to get it to work tend to be ones that modded it back to functionality.

[LSD]

It's like Pazaak in KotOR: you can play with the starter deck, but it's hard to win with it.
On the other hand, as soon as you start buying cards for your deck, it becomes hard to lose with it.

[Melody]

Originally posted by Amanoob105:

There's also the very real possibility that on your PC that game is just busted and unplayable

i feel like it must be busted. if i modded it back to functionality would i still be able to get the achievements for playing it?

[westrud]

I doubt it's busted, the controls are just incredibly unintuitive.
Look up "Trusty Caravan Guide | Fallout New Vegas - Simple Deck Set Up and Strategy" on youtube, it's what helped me go from not having any ideas how to even use the controls, like you, to winning thousands and rarely losing with the starter deck.

[Johnny Casey]

Maybe because I got used to this caravan game, but I didn't find the controls to be too cumbersome. Using arrow keys to navigate and the 'function' keys being clustered around WASD area feels not as bad. I believe lot of people get confused by the lack of mouse control.

That being said, adding / removing individual cards to your deck before the game starts IS indeed a pain in the butt.

[Death Approaches]

arrow keys should work, as do the movement keys, wasd...

you definitely want more cards than the starting deck, there's certain cards you should always buy when you find them, just think about how the game is played and your tactics; do you want to be adversarial and ruin his caravans, do you want to hit 26 fast and furious, etc... they're cheap anyways, just buy them all if you want, but deck management gets a bit goofy when you have tons, so once you adopt a working playstyle, stick with it.

if you have moves available, there was a play to do, the game ends on it's own if you're truly beaten or have no options... are you not considering your face cards, especially Jacks? Surrender is for when you're so beaten you just give up... shouldn't happen much, or ever.

refresh yourself on your how to play caravan holotape or notes section. or watch a tutorial, it's dead simple.

[Johnny Casey]

By the way, caravan cards for sale will only appear on [ITEM] category during barter. It doesn't show up on [MISC] category, unless you have a mod that fixes this.

[Jothoflo]

Wanted to add some clarification on the keyboard controls because I sure didn't pick up on this, and only figured it out by accident. After you have played your first three cards to start your caravans, any card you try to place afterward, you need to press the DOWN ARROW to move the card down the column. Before figuring this out, every time I tried to place down a card, the game showed it as an illegal move (card was red). Moving the card down a position within the column made it work (for me anyways). Hope this helps!

[NightmareGats]

Just make sure to download this mod:

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/81002