Spellslingers

[Matt']

"I want to build a deck-building game"
"A Collectible Card Game/Trading Card Game?"
"No"
"Like building Magic with 80 cards?"
"More like playing Magi Nation with Aubrey"

Drafting with 7 Wonders was so much fun, I think we should include that mechanic.

How many players? Magic plays really well with two, but can also be played with more. If we want it to be played with more, the game can be more 'autobalancing', but it can also be more political (like Risk). We can take the politics out of it it if we use the 7 Wonders mechanic, where you can only affect (or be affected by) the players to either side of you. That works fine with two players.

Now--THEME.
Magi-Nation/MTG wizards with critters battling it out?
Pirates?
Nations/Empires?

[Maugh]

Here's what I was thinking.

Limited card pool, with some commons, rares, and uncommons, which just means that there are fewer available in the total card pool.

Options: Draft mechanic vs Constructed Mechanic:

Draft Mechanic:
Advantages:
By limiting the total pool to a fraction of the whole, you can create a Dynamic setup from game to game. It's a nice touch, like dominion's pile-picking.
Passing hands around is fun.
Plays fast. Deckbuilding is part of the immediate game. It's a fun process.


Disadvantages:
Reduces control over the strategy, since you can only pick from the available cards. Could be an advantage, if you consider less control as building a game that is kinder to weaker players, but there are, of course, much better to self-balance a game.


Deckbuilding mechanic:
Advantages:
More complex interactions, with much higher control over specific combinations.
Themed decks become very possible.

Disadvantages:
Deckbuilding is slower, but can be fun in its own right. Fascinating, even, just less social.
There could be some oddness in determining who gets what card when two people want the same card.


Of course, there's nothing to say that you couldn't do both options, either a draft or constructed formats, (MTG does,) but that makes it more difficult to build in either.


More later.

[Maugh]

On the how many players question, I don't know, but it might be nice to incorporate an attack mechanic that involves both players at the same time, to keep that simultaneous play mechanic in the game. That does lose the action-response mechanic of most ccg action games, but it gains speed in play.

I'll try to explain why I was saying "more like MND with aubrey." Because we played out of the same pool, there was no advantage for the person with this or that rare in their decks. It also meant that we could play out pretty much EVERY combination, in some way or another, and explore a ridiculous variety in the kinds of decks we built. It was fun to talk about, and ultimately, was a way that we spent a massive amount of time together. Sitting around and discussing options for what should go in or out and why made for a lot of good conversation.

The themes and combinations of themes is another thing that made the game so interesting. MTG did the same thing, with slivers, spikes, rebels, merfolk, etc, but MND did it better, with the combinations of magi, relics, spells and various critters. Mixing regions and testing what wierd interactions we could find led to some fascinating theme decks.


They did have a few problems, though. Their core game mechanic led to snowballing, which was hard to get around. In an effort to simplify, they combined a few stats that ought to have not been combined, and it created problems. Ultimately, they had too many regions and not enough cards in those regions for it to work out, and they ended up with balance issues when they rushed a few of the sets. Last, the game had the potential to last a very, very long time. The mechanics needed to be written in a way that played a little bit faster than it did.


So the goals I would have in doing something new would be this:

1. Limited card pool, (Say 300-400 cards,) which both players pull from.
2. Three to four different Regions/colors, each with a specific strategy at its core, and with multiple possible themes.
3. Game mechanics that play fast. Maybe not so far as timing turns, but turns need to play out quick, like Dominion.
4. Plays two to four players smoothly.
5. Allows a drafting mechanic, or alternately, a constructed format.
6. Casters, critters and nuke magics are a must.
7. BALANCE.

[Maugh]

High speed play:


One of the goals with a game like this is to get it to play fast. The faster the better, really,
The two games that I can think of that play the fastest are Dominion and Ticket To Ride, and I was trying to understand precisely why.

TTR plays quick because there are really only three options you can do with your turn. You can build, pick up cards, or pick up tickets. The secondary choice of where to build, which colors to pick, or which tickets to keep return them.

Dominion plays quick, not because the options are so limited, (they're not,) but because people know their options before-hand, and can play those options out based off of the money available each turn. By turn 5 or 6, people know exactly what they're going for, they're just waiting their turn to get there.

So, keys to fast play: Clear choices, limited choices, and the opportunity to pre-think their play.

[Maugh]

Resource Options:

First off, games use resource mechanics in order to pace games and create choice. Players can't play all of the cards, just the ones that they can afford.


Other games:
MTG has resource cards, But that royally screws with deck construction and draw patterns.

WOW CCG uses all cards as resource cards, fixing the construction problem, but leaving cards face-down on the table, and coming off as a total MTG rip-off.

MND uses energy, which doubles as HP. Doubling as HP is a problem, because it means that resource generation and healing methods come out to the same thing. It also means that players who spend their resources are also at risk of dying. It's a messy system, probably one of the weakest part of their game.

7 wonders, interestingly, uses a good resource mechanic, kind of like magic, but without the tapping.


Tiled Resources:
What if we put a resource value in the bottom right-hand corner of some cards, and tiled them like 7 wonders. When that card is discarded from play, it can instead be tiled out for resources. The resource given depends on the critter.

in magic terms, you can play a 1/1 critter for free, and when it dies, it tiles under the character to increase their 'aura'. The 2/2 plains critter requires one tiled resource of the same value. A 5/5 could require up to three or four. Maybe of multiple colors for some, but that would get into more complicated territory.

This could create a sort of natural progression, stepping from one kind of critter to another.


Actions per Turn
Another concept I thought of pulls from the RPG and from board game realms. Characters get a certain number of 'actions' per turn. That limits the actions and actually should help speed play.


Just some brainstorming.

[Matt']

HP being MP was a major issue with Magi Nation, and one of the major reasons I never got into it--I'd seen it used for MTG, and it was just too abusable.

"Reduces control over the strategy, since you can only pick from the available cards"
--Arguably, that IS a benefit, because picking cards becomes a strategy. Which can be very harmful for new players, because knowing which cards to pick is critical--everytime you don't take the best pick, you pass it to someone who can then take the best pick. Notice that 7wonders only plays 3+?

If you are trying to duplicate the magi-nation XP, draft is not the way to do it.

Deckbuilding is fun, but it also takes a great deal of time.


Dominion and Ticket to Ride are my 'go to' games for people who've never played anything more serious than Monopoly. Dominion WORKS because the impact of your deck-building is immediate. Buy it, use it two turns later. Dominion would be a very different game if you started with 20 cards in your deck. Ticket works for much the same reason--'buy' something one round, and you can use it the next. Very little delay. As such, they are excellent 'learn as you go' games. I don't think that's what you are going for.

But that's not what you are going for, when you mention those games. You mention that because there are fewer long moments of calculating the 'perfect play' that make MTG such a bitch.

If you want to a build a 'constructed' card game, with pre-built decks... do you want to build a constructed deck?

QUESTIONS:
DECKS
A) Decks built before the start of play?
b) Decks built using draft mechanic?
c) Decks built from piles, a la Dominion?
d) New cards added to deck from piles?

RESOURCES
a) Mana, a la MTG
b) Face-down mana, WoW CCG
c) Token pool - Magi-nation
d) Settlers (& Ticket to ride(?)) - discard cards
e) "Sufficiency" - 7 Wonders --costs GGWB, can play as long as you have GGWB. Also has $$.


MISC.
a) Deadlands had an interesting mechanic--all cards had a poker value, and if you ever revealed an illegal poker hand (2 of the same card) your opponent could play a 'cheatin!' card for some benefit. Not sure if they used that to control the number of cards you could include in the deck as well...

b) Scott and Clayton played a shit-ton of 'random deck' magic--27 random cards, 13 appropriate lands, go.

[Matt']

"Attack mechanic that involves both"
--Huh? Seven Sea had continuous involvement, because players took alternating actions until the end of a 'share turn'.

ACTION MEASUREMENTS
a) Tikal style Action Points?
b) Settler's "Trade, then build"
c) Dominion "1 Action, 1 buy"
d) Seventh sea alternating actions shared turn.

MISC
Dominion forcing everyone to discard the hand at end of turn is something that really helps prevent 'snowballing'--even if a player knows to save a 'good' card until later when it will be more useful, they cannot. Which eliminates the choice to use something now or use it later.

SHARED POOL OF CARDS
"Because we played out of the same pool, there was no advantage for the person with this or that rare in their decks"
That is the issue that makes duplicating that experience very difficult--for you and Aubrey, choosing who gets what cards is easy. But were it you and I, competing over a card we both wanted....some sort of formal mechanism is needed. (There used to be fierce competition over who got certain cards.)

[Matt']

FACTIONS, NUMBER OF

"they had too many regions and not enough cards in those regions for it to work out"
--They started with 5: Arderial, Cald, Naroom, Orothe, and Underneath
--Added Core
--Added Wave and Kybar's Teeth
--Added Bograth and Paradwyn
--Added d'Resh and Nar
Net, 12, which is clearly too many.

7th Sea followed a similar dynamic--Started with 6, added two more, and then added one more, with Ship/Captain upgrades for existing Factions. As an ongoing CCG, they actually 'killed off' a faction leading to loss of playerbase. (For a 'fixed box' of cards, that's a non-issue.)

So, # of factions--Critter themes were a big deal. No, a huge deal. Spikes, Slivers, Angels, Goblins... I don't think 3-4 would be enough, unless you had multiple 'races' per faction.

Four is a bad faction number--automatically defaults to a 2v2 battle, (as a 3v1 is unbalanced). RTS usually goes with 3 for a reason--makes for unstable alliances, but good status quo preservation.
--2! gives 2 possible combinations of Faction elements
--3! gives 6 possible combinations of Faction elements
--4! gives 24 possible combinations of faction elements.

--MTG effectively has five, as well as an 'unaligned' faction (artifacts). 7th Sea also has an 'unaligned' faction.
--In 7th Sea, you can't START with a non-faction crew, while you can hire one later in the game.
--L5R you can hire anyone, but you pay 2 more $$ for a non-aligned character.

Last night, I was thinking 3 Factions, with each card having a "Yes/NO" tag indicating whether it will work for a faction or not. (Some will work for only one faction, some won't work for 1, some will work for all). That gives you 7 different possible allegiance characteristics.

MISC
"MND did it better, with the combinations of magi, relics, spells and various critters"
---you will have to explain how and why

"The mechanics needed to be written in a way that played a little bit faster than it did"
--What specific mechanics?

[Matt']

[Matt']

[Matt']

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[Matt']

[Maugh]

Spellslingers.
All right. Through the magic of excel, indesign, and manic energy, I have a working demo of a game up, with about 95 cards to pull from. It was easier than I thought. Aubrey helped me brainstorm some concepts, and the mechanics we're talking about have made it pretty easy. Running with the working title Spellslingers.


High Concept: (What is the game about?)
The idea is of two casters dueling. At their disposal are arcane equipment, spells of various kinds, and a host of summons. The goal is to beat down the opponent before they beat down you.


Casters:
Each player is represented by a Caster, (*coughmagicough*) who has a set amount of life, a native aura (explained later,) a set of starting cards, and an ability or two.


Deckbuilding, card types, and rarity.
The player's deck consists of 40 cards, a mixture of spells, equipment, and summons. Each card has a rarity value. This determines how many copies of that card may be in a specific deck, as well as how many copies come in the the full set. (for example, the fireball card has a rarity of 3, so a deck can include 3 copies, while a pyromancer's spellbook has a rarity of 1, so only one copy can be included in each deck.)

Spells come in two types: Enchantment and Sorcery. Enchantments stay in play, while sorcery cards are discarded when played. Equipment tends to add abilities to what the caster can do. A player can have only one copy of a specific equipment in play at any given time. Summons are critters. Many casters, equipment, and summons have abilities. Each of these abilities can only be used once per turn. (terms largely taken from MTG, and should probably change.)


The Aura System:
Many cards have an aura requirement to be played. A player can only play a card if their caster has enough aura. Casters will start with a "native aura," but this is too low to play most cards. They will have to build their aura up in order to cast bigger spells.

Many other cards also have an aura value. When a card is discarded from play, the player may instead slide it under their caster so that only the aura value at the bottom is showing. This adds to the Caster's starting Aura, increasing the power level of the spells they can cast. Casting spells or summons does not generally require that a character discard this aura, so it should increase as the game progresses.

Some spells and abilities demand that a character discard aura from their character. This sets up a decision-point where a player has to choose whether to spend their aura, or save it to cast bigger stuff. They cannot discard their native aura, so they'll at least be able to cast minor spells.

(I've only got one faction right now, but casting off-region spells would be possible, they'd just have to trick in a way to get more than one kind of aura rolling.)


Death and Dying:
Critters and Casters have a Life value, and Critters have an Attack value. When they take damage, damage is tracked by dice. If the damage is higher than their life value, they die.

A critter can attack once per turn, but not on the turn they are cast. When they attack, they choose a target, and attack the target directly. Damage is dealt simultaneously by the attacker and defender. A critter can only attack an opposing caster if that caster is undefended, meaning they have no critters in play. A caster cannot be defeated if they still have a creature in play.


Draw:
Players draw one card at the end of each turn. No hand limit.


I was going to use an action-point mechanic in this, but when I was gold-fishing it, it really didn't need it. The Aura system seems to work well, but that's just my own goldfishing. I need a live brain to play against. Not tonight, for sure, but soon.

A 3v3 mechanic for the casters would be very interesting, but I want to get the 1v1 functional first.

Anyway, This is very much riffing from other games, but the purpose is to really see how the Aura system could work out.

Thoughts?

[Matt']

Seems pretty reasonable.

Term is equipment or enchantment?
Are there any instant/interrupt style spells? (Ie, the stack).
Are their any spells you can play on the other players turn at all?
Do you intend to use 'burning aura' as a regular mechanic, or as an exception. If the latter, it needs to be kept as a card effect, and not part of base rules.
Any limit on the number of spells/effects you can play per turn?

Rarity value seems a good way to do things--with an expanding CCG, card power is variable. With a fixed deck, power level (assuming sufficient playtesting) is pretty fixed.

TERMS: 'Base Aura', not 'native Aura.
Did you proxy the game out with 1+ factions/colors? Any 'gold' cards?

Why tracked by dice? Are the dice being rolled? If not, you should say 'tokens or dice'.

Creature damage is 'fight' damage--each creature can choose a target.
Is their summoning sickness? If so, what prevents me from targetting creatures as they come into play?
Can I fight a single creature with multiple creatures?
Can I 'band' multiple creatures so that they fight a creature at once?
Under what conditions must I attack a creature, and under what conditions can I attack a magi?

ALTERNATE: Instead of a declining balance life-total, use a 'max damage' number--ie, the mage survives until you manage to deal 7 dmg to the mage in a single turn. No pile of tokens/dice to track. Thus, to win the game, you have to have enough critters out to deal that much damage, while your opponent tries to reduce the total size of your army to less than that.

SNOWBALL
Where is the snowball preventer? Are you going to make reset style 'wrath of god' or 'armageddon' spells the default balancing mechanic? Would certainly prevent anyone from getting too far ahead, but could make games go far too long.

40 card decks. What happens when people run out of cards?

[Matt']

What is deck building mechanic? Pick or draft?

Oh! That's a novel concept--Rochester style draft: Lay out 40 cards, and players take turns picking cards until all are gone. (Do this twice, until both players have full decks). Process can be hastened by letting players pick multiple cards at once--2 or 3.

Alternate mechanism for deciding conflicts on cards: Amber style 'revealed bid' formula---Ie, both players have 5 pts--when a conflict over a card arises, players choose a number of points to bid for the card, secretly, and then reveal it--highest person gets it. Then each person gets 5 additional points.

I DO like the Dresden files 'reduced refresh' rule--fewer points each round, but fewer abilities. Wonder if something like that could be built in, maybe between mana/turn and cards drawn/turn....probably a different game.

[Matt']

I was staring at the MTG planeswalkers last night, and thinking about magi-nation, and something clicked. If you were not previously in the know:

http://www.dragonguardian.com/mtgblog/w ... walker.jpg
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/images/article/070926-2.jpg
http://www.mtgplayers.com/images/tezzer ... seeker.jpg

Number in southeast corner is both their starting HP and their MP. One ability to refresh it, two to use it.

Its something I think we could do well to adapt. I'd suggest converting the 'refresh for effect' into a straight refresh, and then keeping the other two abilities.

Call each magi a mtg style 'lord' character, which gives a +1/+1 to a certain type of creature--provide a 'faction mechanism' that rewards you for playing faction appropriate cards, without too harsh a penalty for playing off-faction. Then you can mix and match factions and cards, without worrying too much about which magi belongs to which faction.

[Matt']

http://www.wizards.com/mtg/images/tcg/p ... 6mhgr5.jpg
http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/5070 ... alina2.png
http://images.community.wizards.com/com ... g?v=144900
http://static.starcitygames.com/sales/c ... walker.jpg
http://www.wizards.com/mtg/images/daily ... garruk.jpg
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/images/article/070926-1.jpg
http://s3.gatheringmagic.com/uploads/20 ... markov.jpg
http://www.mtgplayers.com/images/nissa-revane.jpg
http://www.mtgplayers.com/images/gideon-jura.jpg
http://www.mtgplayers.com/images/venser ... ourner.jpg
http://www.mtgplayers.com/images/koth-of-the-hammer.jpg
http://www.coolstuffinc.com/images/Prod ... M10183.jpg
http://www.5colorcontrol.com/images/fan ... 0Bolas.jpg
http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/595/ ... ranns3.jpg
http://www.wizards.com/mtg/images/tcg/p ... 6mhgr5.jpg

[Matt']

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Im ... &type=card
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/images/article/070926-4.jpg

[Maugh]

That is really similar to the magi mechanic, actually. However, I wouldn't want to keep the HP and MP as the same stat. It makes things really crazy, and makes people too cautious to play cards, as it actually brings them closer to death.

Magi-Nation did something similar with the on/off region cards, where there was a very minor penalty for casting most off-region cards. (one energy.) THe problem was is that in some cases, that difference was really minor, (single, high-powered critters,) and in other cases, it was crippling. (Swarm mechanics.) Figuring out how to make dual-region decks was actually a very interesting way of playing the game, but the penalties were outright backwards.

The Aura mechanic can do this in a similar way, but it reverses the priority. It's not hard to get a low Aura from two different regions, by playing some 0-req cards, which means that low-to-cast (weaker) critters should be easier to play, while serious heavies were harder to play off-region.

By having cards 'burn aura,' as it were, especially in the magi abilities, then it can provide the build-and-expend resource mechanic that I think you're looking for.

It's an interesting setup. I can see why M:TG has adopted the magi concept. The problem with MTG was always that monsters seemed like fixed or stagnant figures. They were either dead or at full HP. The spikes and counters helped that a little, at the expense of bringing in the same hp/mp duality that plagued MND.

The Aura is a resource that either permits something to be played, a threshold with no other expenditure, or can be expended for particularly brutal effects. That lends the game to dumping a bunch of critters all at once, after which people start releasing big guns for heavy offense. I don't know if it really works or not, yet, but I really want to test it out.

I have a group from 7-9. Are you available for a few minutes afterward? I'll give you a call later. I DO Have the cards with me today.

[Matt']

Decking mechanic might not be a terrible way to count HP--in no way diminishes present options, (although it does mean drawing reduces your life, and draw and discard mechanics are much pricier than in MTG.

On a class project today, until about 7. Got to go out to Holiday to walk a site. But yes--we have reached the point where we need to play rather than to talk.

[Maugh]

So are you available after 9, for an hour of so?

[Matt']

Was good to play. Not until I played with blank cards did I realize how much color/pattern encode information found on magic cards into my brain.

[TheMatt]

Star-Wars had an interesting decking mechanic--two discard piles: Used and Lost. Used was what you discarded. Lost was for 'killed' creatures and a limited number of 'use once' interrupts.

A really nice game, actually, but very strange. What killed it? Hard to say. It was very early on, contemporaneous with magic...I recall a fierce learning curve, and painfully confusing rulebook. Probably that. Learning it from experienced players, as an adult, it took me well over half an hour to learn.

Probably because it used terms like "Force Drain' when it meant 'discard from your deck to your lost pile'.

Wonder what MTG would be like if every point of damage discarded 3 cards...

[TheMatt]