LackeyCCG

Realm: A Game of Influence by Enkoder Games

Rules v1.3 (current as of 8/10/11)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ln8fS6PdwqIuoN52paasZ2xE2MfV2TNKZ_5Xx2LgpxE/edit?hl=en_US

I'm not too familiar with googledocs. If you need another format, just ask!
The rules are currently in various forms of disarray, so it would be reaaaaally helpful to me if one might read through them and tell me what doesn't make sense and if things should be reordered in some way to make the rules a more clear read from start to finish.

Feedback always welcome!

I'm very impressed by this. I'll look at it a bit more in depth later.

EDIT: do you think having to pay influence to attack might make people play too defensively? I think it's a good mechanic, in fact i love the influence thing in general, but the battles a whole seem to discourage attacking except when you outnumber them significantly.

Hmm really? I'll have to look more into that, the way I figured it the battles were still in the favor of the attacker, maybe too much, because of all the things that can add to your influence gained, while only your opponent rolling sixes can kill your dudes and make you lose influence. I do agree, however, that of all the rules presented, the paying for battles part is the part I am the most shakey about.

Also, this game is not necessarily about playing aggressively. To really have a successful battle squad while maintaining decent defense should be something that is kind of difficult, or at least takes more than the first couple turns. The game *should* play out with most people establishing their territories by building up structures and training units in the beginning game, small skirmishes and political battles in the mid-game, then closer to the end of the game all out war will ensue to drain the last of the influence for other players. Obviously, this will take some playtesting.

The battle system does seem weird in general. Testing indeed.

I think it's important for there to be a feeling of urgency and pressure at all times, not necessarily playing aggressively, but being pro-active.

I incorporated your influence wincon into my old ccg mock up rules and played some test games... lot of potential there, although it doesn't gel with those rules well. stop slacking!

winning and using your "influence" is an awesome idea. reminds me of The Spoils TCG, gaining and losing influence thing.

Never did play Spoils, even though it looks cool.

And yes I have been slacking, been a loooong weekend. Ready to dork out for the entire week, so I'll hopefully get some work done on this

Oh yeah I did make these... forgot to make any Action type cards... even in the rules... just noticed haha

(sorry they're huge)

(http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h379/vowofsilentium/Unit.jpg)
(http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h379/vowofsilentium/Structure.jpg)
(http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h379/vowofsilentium/Location.jpg)
(http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h379/vowofsilentium/Item.jpg)

Looking good!

Looks good.

Some Hints:
- Cost icons (but I guess you are working on them :P)
- Replace 'primary effect -' with 'Action:' for actions. It looks much better.
- If something is a cost for actions, them make it seem so. I.E. 'Dismiss this unit to add 1 food to your stockpile.'
- Replace 'x costs x to craft' to 'Craft: x' It looks better

Keep up the good work.

Yes yes, I hate, nay, LOATHE working with icons... but I probably should make some.

The Primary Effect wording is actually a rules text in a way. It is telling you that you can only activate that Effect during your Primary Phase. See how the money bag has a Resource Effect instead? That's because you can only use that Effect during your Resource Phase. This needs clarifying in the rules, but in my defense those aren't real cards soooo I'm at least a little bit more in the clear for now.

Here's a big problem I've been having with continuing work on this game... I've been playing a TON of games like Dominion and Thunderstone, both deckbuilding games, thus that's where my mind is at right now. I need to get my head back into constructed games a little bit and work on this... but of course, I have a sweet idea for a deckbuilding game :D

What would you guys think of a combat system like this...

Each unit would have Combat Effects that would trigger based on rolls made during combat. So, a Combat Effect would look like this (notes in parenthesis)

Combat Effect:
1-3: Combat Total+2 (will probably need a new term for Combat Total to make this look less clunky)
4: Combat Total+1. Select a Unit. Destroy it at end of combat.
5-6: Combat Total+4.

Battles would work as follows...

Each player rolls a d6 for each point of Combat on their units involved in the battle. Then, starting with the attacking player, assigns 1 d6 to each of their units in the battle (dunno if it would be back and forth, or one player assigns all at once, hard to say). Once all d6s are assigned activate the effect on each unit with a Combat Effect matching the d6 assigned to them (probably in the same order as assigning the dice, maybe the effects would trigger as they're assigned, again, hard to say, and the kinks can be worked out). Any unassigned dice are ignored (or possibly add +1 to Combat Total).

Player with the highest Combat Total wins, then all "at end of battle" effects are resolved.

As far as assigning dice to units with Unit tokens on them, I would say, for now, that you only assign 1 dice to the card with the tokens on it, and resolve their effect once for each token as well. This would be a benefit of using the smaller, trainable units, in contrast to the disadvantage that they all have to be placed to the same Location (working on rules for that, more on that later).

In this setup I'd remove the sixes equal death rule, which I thought was probably pretty poor from the beginning. Casualty of War would now be described as any unit who was destroyed during combat, even during the "end of battle." The rest of the influence drain calculation would remain untouched by this new combat system.

Any thoughts?

That's a fucking huuuuge number of dice :P

Quote from: Wisp on June 21, 2011, 06:26:20 PM
That's a fucking huuuuge number of dice :P

For the most part units would only have a Combat rating of 1-3, and realistically I think the most units you'd attack with at a time would be about 5-6. So the game would have to come with like 20 d6s or something, which personally I'm fine with, they're only about 10 cents.

I'm not a fan of dice myself. more than 3 seems like a lot to me. still playing it online it doesn't make much difference

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS of dice. Damn, the nightmares about Warlord ccg returned :(. Sorry, but I don't like this.

yaaaaaaaa...... no ... lots of dice for table top rpg yes but not for a card game

Well, if you like dice that much, you can also turn it into a dice based card game :P

I think I'm pretty much scraping this idea for the time anyhow, until I can come up with a combat system that isn't as cut and dry and just comparing some numbers. I've got a deck building game's rules almost full flushed out, I just need to design the cards for it, which shouldn't take all that long. Hopefully I'll have a flash of insight about this game and be able to finish it up sometime

there was this ccg where combat was handled by playing a hand of poker...

Quote from: Wisp on June 23, 2011, 05:14:50 PM
there was this ccg where combat was handled by playing a hand of poker...

I'd rather have a dice mini-game than a whole other mini-game to explain, personally. I'm thinkin of a system where the unit cards have no actual combat stat, but all that is taken care of in gametext in the form of Battle Effects. So battles would just be players taking turns playing their unit's battle effects. Thinking thinking thinking...

interesting... ever plated the pokemon tcg?

Hmm, an interesting idea.

You could use some kind of limited dice idea. I didn't had a lot against the dice, but it were just a sick amount. If you, for example, limit the amount of dice to five for each player. And each player in combat throws the dice, then, that player may choose some dice to reroll once. Last result counts. In this way, you could also add an effect icon to the dice, which players can assign to units with that effect. (archers, mages, etc.) You could only assign an effect dice to one unit.

Well, just some idea draft.

Working within that idea:

Combat could always be 5 dice per player, no matter how many units are in the battle. Units can have more than 1 die assigned to them, so it would be possible to attack with just one guy, and assign all 5 die to him, gaining each of the matching battle effects (the balance to this would be in the cards, not every unit would have a battle effect for each number). Some units could even require higher numbers than 6 for an effect, meaning they'll need at least 2 dice in order to use that effect. Also, Leader type units would allow you to reroll one die for each point of Leadership they have.

The layout of your attack and defense squads would be very important, you would want every number to be represented, but also with the right mix of effects to win battles.

As far as having icons on the dice, for now I'm going to pass on that idea, even though it is a good one for some applications. I'd rather it just be number based, if not only because it'll make the game much easier to implement into both lackey and real world product (which I do plan to make).

If this were the battle system, would you (anyone) propose using dice outside of battle as well? In one hand it seems like using dice only for battles makes it sort of throw in seeming, but on the other hand using dice in too many aspects of the game will make it too random.

Maybe political cards will work similarly. At the beginning of your Political Step, if you have any units with Political effects, you can roll 3 dice, and the same as combat, assign them to your units to trigger effects. I'd say 3 dice for this because most decks will not have many political effects anyway, and decks intending to abuse them will probably be fairly hard to counter anyway, so this rule inherently promotes attacking over politics.

I could also rework this entire thing to use a Destiny-type system like the one used in Star Wars by Decipher. Instead of die rolls you'd reveal the top card of your deck and take note of some number on the card and use that as the roll amount, basically. In this sort of system you can easily balance cards by giving them higher or lower values for this purpose. So cards that are "worse" than other cards are the only ones with 6s essentially. This encourages a much deeper level of deck-building, as you'd have to make sure you have some crappier cards to trigger the better effects on your good cards. Also clears up the need for dice at all. Hmmm stealing mechanics from dead games... already sort of stealing their Force Drain idea for the entire Influence mechanic, why stop there!?

I gotta say this has got me wanting to work on this more again, so, many thanks Dragoon!

Just a short comment about dice,

I've played a game called Dungeon Dice Monsters that used special dice. The dice had symbols called crests that were used for movement, attack, defence, and special abilities.

The problem was you couldn't do what you wanted without rolling the right crest. Sure it added tension to the game, but not the good kind.

I think dice can be used effectively, but it's not fun if they just hold you back. Good luck!

well if the game is just played for giggles and not serious tournament type play then it is fine.... can wait to see the finished project

You could print the dice on cards, like they did with the warhammer 40k ccg. (Dunno for different versions :P)

But I agree, having special stuff on cards allows for fun decks

For now, the rules have been updated and the combat system uses dice. I just can't get over my love of rolling bones. Hopefully this game will appeal to the few die-rolling card-floppers left out there.

For combat, like I mentioned before, each player rolls 5 combat dice, and then assigns them to their heroes (new term for unit, seemed more appropriate for this game). Most heroes can only be assigned one die, while others will allow you to assign them or others in their battalion extra dice, as well as manipulate the rolls or reroll some dice.

I designed two decks around the idea of the game only having Heroes, Items, and Locations, and while I think the play will already involve a lot of strategy because of hero placement and die assignment, I think there's still room for a few quick-play, action-type effects to be added in there. Will have to make room and see what the decks need in the form of actions to stay competitive with each other.

Starting to get really excited about this game. Time to start photoshopping together the cards so I can get some playtest decks ready (not to mention a lackey plugin, whoo)!

Updated the first post and the title, the game has a work-in-progress name now!

For some reason, I really hate the name.

Only 5 dice really helps combat.

Tell me how you really feel :P
...to tell the truth I kinda hate it too haha.
Any suggestions?

I'm glad you think that'll improve combat, I do as well. Sooooon I will have proxies to playtest with!

shit just got real

Quote from: Wisp on July 14, 2011, 08:56:49 AM
shit just got real

I think you mean that in a good way... can that phrase be meant in a bad way?
Played a solitaire game in a lackey plugin I made up real quick, rules seem to work decently. My only worry is that food is too precious a resource while materials are plentiful. This may be remedied by making items more powerful, or adding battle effects to them as well (they would use the same die as the bearer, adding another level to assigning combat dice). In a way items already make a lot more sense than they do in most games, since you only have 5 die to assign, its nice to have a way to add to your combat total without needing to assign any dice.

Anyway, that's what early playtesting lead me to. I've got a couple of people here in my town interested in helping me playtest at our weekly game night, so developments should be quick in terms of my lackey based projects haha

In every game I play I have a shortage of food at all times. ALWAYS. Maybe you should add a market card, which you can use to buy/sell stuff.

name stuff:
- Heritage of Kings
- Lords of War
- Rebellion

If you have more background lore, I might be able to think up more names :P

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=85&esem=4 this game looks epic. steal from it.

edit: the stole a lot of my ideas :P when are you around to test your game out?

After playing a couple games I've found that the food thing hasn't been too big a deal, and it adds a natural element of balance. For the most part, people will only be playing one hero a turn because they are only generating one food. Even with extra food production, however, you are only able to bring 2 smaller heroes into play in the same turn because of the general cost of heroes. Regardless, a resource trading card is definitely something that will happen eventually, if not in the base set.

One thing that did change after the first game was the way that Workers...uh...work. The way it was in the rules, a lone worker could sit on a location and 1) influence at the location each turn and 2) only be attacked to drain 1 influence (as long as they have a Hero on each of their other locations, at least), which you had to pay to start the attack anyway. So, I added a "+1 Influence if all opponent's Heroes at the battleground are Workers" to the influenced-gained-from-battles chart. So, now attacking a lone worker can drain 2 influence even if the rest of the opponent's territory is controlled, netting you 1 influence overall. This also adds an element of strategy to protecting your Workers that should have been there from the beginning.
The strategy that I was using with one deck that abused the old way the rules worked was to play 1 location (so I have 4 in my territory) and then stack 2 of them with my warriors, and 2 with workers. So they (or me operating another deck) couldn't gain influence through attacking my pile of warriors, and could only break even by attacking the worker locations. The new rule balances this strategy. It is still playable, but your warriors are going to have to work even harder to break even.

While playtesting I did notice one pretty important thing. Even while playing against myself in lackey (which I'm fairly bad at using in general) I was having a good time playing! The combat dice system definitely makes you think before attacking someone, as you have to judge their general ability to get high combat totals instead of having the number right there for you. I'm designing the first set to be a 160 card, 4-player starter box, so the cards are all fairly simple, but when playing the game you can really tell that there is a lot of design space, and that one day decks could be much more brutal to play with or against. Pretty exciting stuff for a game designer :S

Just printed out some b&w proxies to sleeve up and I'm supposed to meet a friend tomorrow for some playtesting, so here's hoping all goes well when teaching my first pupil!

Where do i get my plugin from?

Is there a beta plugin already, or is it only for you personally?

So far its just for me, I was waiting to do some first round playtesting irl to fix the plug-in up and share it. Unfortunately, this morning the power cable to my laptop was severed in half, rendering my laptop useless until I can replace the cord, which may be awhile, depending on how much they are.

On the brighter side of things I did get to do some playtesting today with a friend. The rules seem to work well for 2-player, but we can already really tell that they'll shine in multiplayer. Can't wait to have a couple more decks ready to play. Gonna be writing down ideas on napkins like the good ol' days til I can get that cable replaced!

Woop. I'm excited PS. ignore my PM i've changed a lot since I playtested yesterday.

A new laptop cable has been purchased!
Updates should be plentiful again

=D can't wait

Hey buuuuuddies....wanna help?

I think a 'key' thing my game is missing is some more keywords (see what I did there?)
Right now I only have four, and three of them (unique, loyalty, and diplomatic immunity) are more like game rules than actual keyword mechanics. So, if you've read the rules, do you happen to have any suggestions for keywords?

Here's what I've got so far:

Quote
Loyalty: X – “You can only play this card if you have a card that is a X in play”
The X can be any type of card, such as Human, Warrior, Item, etc. If a card has Loyalty: Elf it means you can only play the card if you have an Elf in play.

QuoteOverwhelm – “Drain 1 Influence from the defending player for every 2 points of Combat Total this battalion has greater the defending battalion.”
Cards with Overwhelm can help you take advantage of having significantly higher combat totals than your opponents by awarding you a drain of 1 Influence for every 2 points of Combat Total you have exceeding the defending player’s Combat Total. Overwhelm is an ability granted to a battalion when a hero in the battalion has the Overwhelm keyword in their game text.

QuoteUnique – “You may only have 1 copy of this card in play. This card is excluded from battles at battlegrounds where an opponent has the same card.”
Each player may only have 1 copy of each unique card in play at any given time. You cannot play a unique card if you already have the unique card in play. Also, unique cards are excluded from battles in which both players have the same unique card at the battleground.

QuoteDiplomatic Immunity – “If all heroes at same location have Diplomatic Immunity, the location is a Demilitarized Zone.”
Having only heroes with Diplomatic Immunity at a location turns that location into a Demilitarized Zone (it is still a location).

Overwhelm is really the only one that feels like a keyword ability to me. I want each of the four starter decks to be centered around a race, that is in turn centered around a playstyle, which is then in turn centered around one or two keyword mechanics. A lot of the 'feel' of a deck is made up of their hero's combat/political effects, but I'd like a couple more things like Overwhelm to really show player's what the deck is trying to do.
For example, Overwhelm is mostly featured on cards in the Orc starter deck, and most of the orc heroes have fairly plain combat effects, mostly adding high amounts to your combat total. A player that has played a game or two should easily be able to figure out that the key to winning with that deck is to stack a high combat total rolling crew and somehow give the battalion Overwhelm (there's an item and a react in the orc deck that already do this, but I was thinking of adding the ability to one of the higher costed orcs as well).

The orc deck seems fairly fleshed out and I can really start thinking of new cards to add to it in the future just by having these base mechanics for the deck. So, here's the decks I'm working on, as well as whatever brainstorming I have had up til now. Any input is greatly appreciated.

Elf Deck - The most balanced of the races. The elves have fairly good offensive and defensive combat effects and other abilities, as well as decent political effects to spice things up. One mechanic idea that comes to mind would be to somehow increase the importance of having a full-fledged 'community' in the elf deck "with all things living in harmony" (as an elf might say). So perhaps a keyword that awards influence drain bonuses based on the amount of hero classes (warrior, diplomat, worker, etc) at the location. This would make future sets always be exciting to elf players, because if there's ever a new class printed for the elves, their old cards would become stronger in general.

Human Deck - The human deck is going to focus on defense, politics, and "bombs," and thus play as a control deck. For this I really just need more ideas on how political effects can affect the game. An obvious one is adding to combat total at other locations, but during the political step, so everyone will know about it before they attack you. Most of the heroes will be guard-like, and have exclusion effects to stop early enemy onslaught. Loyalty is already a keyword associated with the human deck (mostly), as they are a proud race. I want to keep the control oriented cards feeling more separated from the rest of the pack, because look what happens when you make blue so easy to splash (mtg reference...)

Undead Deck - The swarm deck, the undead will rely on sheer numbers to win the game. They also have help from evil necromancers who have the power of black magic, giving this deck the most power in terms of select elimination. Basically you'll play the deck by training up a ton of simple, combat total adding skeletons, and clear the path for them with necromancers. Just off the top of my head, it seems like a good balancing keyword that could also be used on lots of cards in the future (or now even) would read "Fragile: At the end of a battle you lost, dismiss one hero at the battleground with Fragile." That's probably a horrible name for the keyword though, any ideas?

So that's my big wall-of-text update/brainstorm session. Even if I don't get any outside input I think it helped just writing it all out. But as always any input is appreciated. Thanks!

EDIT: I also still want to rename this, and probably call it an Expanding Card Game instead of Living, since that's sorta Fantasy Flight's deal

Overwhelm and Dimplomatic Immumity are the only ones that could be keywordized (With reminder and stuff) While the others feel more like traits/normal text.

As for the elf keyword, I would make it an pseudo keyword. I.E. One with All - Draw a card for each class among characters you control.

Fragile... Is a horrible name. Let me think about a different one. 'Shambling Remains'? Rotting? Decaying Bones?

Yeah fragile hurt to use even as an example. The word has to apply to non-undead cards as well for future use... Expendable is a way better placeholder term.

Expendable is indeed a better term. While I would go for 'cannon fodder' in design term and expendable in the game.

Redid about 50% of the cards today after a series of playtests. The two decks that I currently have designed are much more focused now, and hopefully more balanced.

The elf deck's basic strategy is simple mid-range spread and control, while the advanced player can set up ruthless battalions using Admirer of Legends and any of the few stronger unique elves. The deck also has a combat exclusion sub-theme that I will be expanding on in future expansions for the elves, which will give them a significant advantage over control style decks that rely on one or few late game bombs to win.

The orc deck is now much more efficient at being a beat down deck, utilizing overwhelm to the fullest. The basic strategy is straight up face-beating goodness, while an experienced player could find the real power in Grok, Orc Captain in combination with Battering Ram or Crushing Victory.

I suppose the cool thing to do is to "spoil" the cards I've mentioned above, or else I'd sorta be a dick. More playtest notes and general news on the way, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!!!!!

(http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/1478/admireroflegends.png)
(http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/3043/grokorccaptain.png) (http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/797/batteringram.png) (http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/2725/crushingvictory.png)

Overwhelm ? ?At end of battle, drain 1 influence from the defending player for every 2 points of Combat Total this battalion has greater the defending battalion.?

EDIT: Picked a new name, as is evident by the ever changing thread title. Step in the right/wrong direction? Weigh in!

REMINDER TEXT ON CARDS!
No seriously. It makes it easier for new players.

Admirer of Legends. Is it Combat Effect or Battle Effect?
Grok, Orc Captain. "If it is," > "If you do so,".

Also, "Select battalion gains overwhelm until end of turn"? What?

Unough nitpicking, cards look great.

If you used black text on a white background with a font like Times New Roman, you could fit a lot more text in the field and have it still be readable. Your current text seems fat and bold, and it doesn't need to be.

Figured I might be able to get away with no reminder text like all the other "living card games" I've been playing recently, since there's only about 4-5 keyword abilities and they are easily located on the back of the rule book. Unlike ccgs, which you have to buy packs and hope for the best, then track down rules somewhere, this game will be packaged like a board game, and you'll be expected to actually read the rules before you play. That being said, on the cards that have room, I will add reminder text because there's no reason not too, these are just playtest mock-ups, so they are missing that.

Good eye on Admirer, honest mistake there. They should all be called Combat Effects

The wording on Grok would have to be completely redone to sound right that way, but I'm not completely against that. The other possibly wording would be "You may assign a Combat Dice assigned to this hero to all heroes in same battalion. If you do, ignore all other Combat Dice assigned to those heroes." This seems better, honestly, so I'll probably change it to that.

Overwhelm is a Battalion Ability, meaning that a hero with Overwhelm grants the ability to his entire Battalion. This is explained in better detail in the rules, which is another reason it'd be confusing to put reminder text for it. I suppose it should read ...

Overwhelm ? ?At end of battle in which one of your heroes in your involved battalion has Overwhelm, drain 1 influence from the opposing player for every 2 points of Combat Total the battalion has greater than the opposing battalion.?

Obviously in the rules I'd need a glossary explaining the finer points of what makes a battalion "involved" and "opposing," but it seems straight forward enough for you gamer types :)

Select is the term I use for "Target" essentially. When something says "Select this does a that" it means you choose a "this" to before "that."

Nitpick all you like, it only helps me work out the kinks better!

Trevor, you're right, for some reason all the cards are in Georgia font. That'll be obnoxious to fix but necessary, not sure how that happened, just never double checked it I guess :/ I don't want to change to black text on a white background though, I think white on black is fine. Most people complain about reading black on white and not the other way around, in my experience at least.

Well, I guessed 'select' as your target word, but the wording is just weird. 'Select a battalion to gain overwhelm until end of turn.' somehow sounds better.

I wish there was some more nitpicking on my game.

Progress has been slow as other parts of life have started to pick up. Can't complain there, so to keep myself from complaining here, I put a little work in today. I'm working on an example few turns sorta thing that'll make learning the game way easier. Already got a couple turns done, but making a ton of example images takes forever, especially if you mess one up >:|

Anyway, I also had some decent mechanic/keyword ideas.

Static Abilities:
Expendable ? At end of battle, dismiss one of your heroes with Expendable involved in the battle.

Triggered Abilities (triggered when a combat die matches a combat effect with one of these keywords)
Lethal ? At end of battle, you may destroy one hero assigned a lower combat die than this hero.

Revive ? If your hero is destroyed during battle, return it to your hand instead.

Protect ? If your hero would be destroyed during battle, dismiss this hero instead.

Explosive ? At end of battle, destroy all heroes involved in the battle assigned a lower combat die than this hero.

Sabotage ? At end of battle, you may destroy one worker at the battleground.

I think I need to alter the test decks/rules a little/general way I think of the game by adding more workers to the decks. This has basically spawned from me playing a lot of RTSs recently, and noticing one golden rule: never stop producing workers! I think it makes sense for a game like this too, obviously the more resources you are generating the better, plus it will speed up the game, which was sort of an issue during playtesting. Hmmm things to ponder upon

Erm, what does "If your hero..." means. Does if affect all your heroes or do you have a single hero as your commander or what?

In magic terms it means "If a hero you control..." You attack with multiple heroes, so I think it's at least fairly clear

Worked on the cards today, startin to come together pretty good I think. Gonna print up some proxies tonight and get to work on playtesting this bad boy some more. Found some guys through playing EDH that live down the street from me and are into playtesting, so that should be some good news there.

Some notes on archtype design in this game, for those who may care...

1 - Efficient Beatdown - Using the most cost efficient face-beaters to gain an early advantage in achievable combat totals, effectively holding off more than a 1 or 2 location expansion (if that). Take out players with Overwhelm. Good matchup against expansion, bad matchup against control.

2 - Expansion - These builds take advantage of cheap "exclusion" effects to ward off serious threats while playing more and more locations and workers, until they are so far ahead in resources that they can play too many heroes for other decks to keep up with, and gain serious advantage with influence drains. Takes longer to set up, but is a more secure style of play. Good against control, bad against beatdown

3 - Control - Control decks in Realm play more like land and creature destruction decks from other games, and greatly benefit from a small expansion back-up plan. Early game they are trying to pump out workers or expand to one or two locations while using resource denial cards to keep other players as behind as they are on actual "meat" cards. Later down the road they use high-costed but deadly removal and lockdown cards to seal the deal, usually alongside a Paladin to deal the final blow.

4 - Swarm - More on this one coming later, still designing deck ideas...

Wait, you can't win with politcally backstabbing? Shame T_T

That's more for the player's to decide, isn't it? The control deck will have the highest concentration of diplomats and political effects, and its always in controls favor to make an ally early on so they can establish better, and obviously there can be only one winner, so you're going to have to backstab them at some point

I really like your cards, they are well made and original!

They need better fonts, but they're beautifully designed otherwise. (The font is fine for the upper-right number, but the rest of the text is a bit unappealing. I believe the design is half the game. I reject any game of which I can't bear to look at the cards. And the mechanics on your cards look pretty interesting to. I just might give your game a try when it's ready.

However, as we're learning in the SWTCG, you need to cut back on the text where possible. We've gotten a lot of feedback lately about how players don't like the walls of text.

The walls of text are pretty much going to be a must because of the mechanics. Having to put a separate ability for different die rolls means having to have a lot going on on a card, hence the simplicity of the design, allowing for a ton of text box space. I understand what you mean though, I just feel like it might be a necessary evil for this game.

I didn't realize because I just wasn't paying enough attention, but the fonts were not all Times like I thought they were. Stupid program defaults. The newer versions have better fonts, I'll have to upload an example soon

As always, thanks for the comments

Quote from: Cyrus on October 02, 2011, 04:33:11 AM

Stupid program defaults. The newer versions have better fonts

What program are you using?

Photoshop CS3... which I why I figured it would default to Times, but it chose Georgia or something