LackeyCCG

Recently I came up with a new CCG idea that would combine elements of both a CCG and bored games.  In doing so the game would also strive to eliminate "luck" as a factor in play.  It would allow you the ability to choose your starting hand as well as what cards you draw.  Additionally the combat system would be based on stats only, therefore no dice rolls would ever be required.  Would making a game based 100% on skill chase away potential fans in the CCG market? 

I mentioned this idea to a random stranger online, who responded with "If you can choose your starting hand and the cards your draw, what fun is that?"   I just want to make sure that "luck" isn't a necessary aspect of a CCG before I go ahead with my plans.  Thanks for any suggestions. 

in my opinion, allowing players to choose their opening hand would seriously affect replay value against  any given deck - players would quickly zero-in on the best hand with which to start. the random part of CCGs makes the challenge of adapting to a changing board position and the potential cards your opponent holds or might draw very exciting.

but top marks for thinking outside of the box. Please press on with your design and report your findings! You can't make a good burger without butchering a sacred cow.

True.  The idea behind a luckless CCG is it would force people to think retroactively.  (kind of like chess).   My CCG game uses a bored, and assigns cards "ranges".   Not sure if that would modify the result at all. 

i cast my vote as no however... I don't think u should be able to choose ur opening hand but what i would like to see is this. i understand luck plays a huge part in things and that's good keeps things exciting. but the one thing i would like to see in magic change is that you have one library that only has all non land cards. then another library that has all land cards. same rules would apply with lands such as only four of each but you draw seven cards and one land each turn. spells that ramp will grab from your land library. I just believe this would create a truly fair game each time. the dumbest thing is to lose with mana issues. I think then it would be all strategy and never having to worry about drawing lands. and since both players are given one land each turn it's fair. only issue i could truly see being a problem is with all mill cards. but i know magic will not change it's rules. but if u invented a game like magic with the not worried about mana screwed idea. i think it would do even better than magic. I know personally i've won a lot of matches to opponents that got mana screwed and i've lost a lot to my hand being mana screwed. just an idea ::)

Quote from: davidkramer on January 05, 2010, 03:48:42 PM
i cast my vote as no however... I don't think u should be able to choose ur opening hand but what i would like to see is this. i understand luck plays a huge part in things and that's good keeps things exciting. but the one thing i would like to see in magic change is that you have one library that only has all non land cards. then another library that has all land cards. same rules would apply with lands such as only four of each but you draw seven cards and one land each turn. spells that ramp will grab from your land library. I just believe this would create a truly fair game each time. the dumbest thing is to lose with mana issues. I think then it would be all strategy and never having to worry about drawing lands. and since both players are given one land each turn it's fair. only issue i could truly see being a problem is with all mill cards. but i know magic will not change it's rules. but if u invented a game like magic with the not worried about mana screwed idea. i think it would do even better than magic. I know personally i've won a lot of matches to opponents that got mana screwed and i've lost a lot to my hand being mana screwed. just an idea ::)

True.  That is one of the most frustrating aspects of MTG  (I myself have played for roughly 11 years).   Unfortunately that suggestion doesn't help my idea.  My theoretical game idea employes a very unique resource.  Each player starts with exactly the same number of resources, and resources are not automatically created at the beginning of each turn; rather, certain units have a "production" value.  At the beginning  of your turn your resources are "replenished" by a value equal to the total production value of all of your units. 

Since we where talking about MTG... lets put this in magic terms.
Instead of drawing lands in magic, you would start the game with a set amount of mana in your mana pool (and your mana pool would not empty after every phase).  Certain creatures/enchantments would have "during your upkeep, add (1,2,3,4,ect.) mana to your mana pool".  Although mana units would not be as powerful as non-mana units, they would be required to ensure you have the ability to play spells and creatures later in the game.   

This is basically the concept I've adapted for my game design.  Though I haven't even written up an instruction booklet yet :p

I say no only because "luck" as it were is one of the  most intriguing aspect of most card games - it is what makes poker so infuriatingly amazing a game, knowing you have the best hand, knowing you are a 98% favorite to win the hand and then having an opponent 1 out on the river - terrible, and also what makes the game so addictivly playable - and I think CCG's share that notion.

That desperate need for the right card at the right time, the feeling that hits when it works, the loss when it doesn't. Building a deck to the best of your ability and having it hit perfectly, having fun when you make something that by all logic should not work and yet it does.

Those are what make great CCG's in my op-ed... Cheers

I think you could absolutely do this. The game would become very control centric to beat combo though. It would be interesting because it would have a metagame where decks were able to play 4-10 different ways. If you could do this with Magic you'd see decks go VERY heavy control to remove threats before your opponent's combo can go off. The game would end up playing through card advantage (hello anything that makes you discard). I have an idea of what a good first hand in magic might end up looking like: Lightning Bolt, Spell Pierce, Volcanic Island, and two-four more lands and zero-two more spells (largely threat removal until you could get enough land down to start cascading or drawing).

At the same time, Go, Othello, Chess, Checkers, these are all fully deterministic and still fun to play. So I don't think the random elements are required for fun.

As an aside about magic: Magic would be a fundamentally better game if you had a land and spell library (minimum 24 for land, minimum 36 for spell) and you could choose which libraries to draw/discard from every time you had to draw/discard. You would choose your initial hand as "3 lands, 4 spells" or "1 land, 6 spells" to start. As a matter of fact... I think we should start playing this better game called land-library magic... :) I've more or less quit magic because my last half dozen games suffered from drawing too many/too few lands in mono colored decks and having nothing to cast while drawing mountains/discarding cards because I only had two mountains.

this isnt a totally new idea, people have been trying to create luckless tcgs for some time now including me. not to detract from your idea but instead, take heart that its something other ppl do believe is possible

the mana system you described is the wyvern style system dragoon mentiond by dragoon in his dark journeys topic. it could work

ill say no it wont immediately take off, not because of the idea but because people wont understnd your game idea as being worth playable without trying it, which would be a barrier since they dont think its worth it to begin with. like your stranger said, most people associate luck with card games because of how most mainstream card games work. and indeed they wouldnt be wrong, most mainstream games, if made deterministic in ths fashion, would fail utterly. if your going to make a luckless tcg, your goal would be to make a system that would support such a concept

ill give an example - like tokimo said, in the starting of magic, you could stack all your discard and counterspells in the starting hand, along with an appropriate amount of lands would destroy your opponent pretty much immediately. even if it could be played around, that would be an unfair amount of advantage in the beginning that your opponent cant really do anything about
however, the main point of the game is that it isnt magic, its its own game. say for example, that the wyvern style resource system is coupled with cards having (pay 2 to put this card in your hand). suddenly the game flow changes. it certainly wont be the same and looking at it still shows signs of being broken, but it is different from what itd be without such rules changes

might sound obvious but my point is that you dont know whether or not theres a collection of rules thatll balance out your game idea. my main advice is to prove your game idea is worth it; since your going off the beaten track, youll haver to learn WHY alot of games do not deviate from draw-randomness

True.  At the moment; however, there is only four types of cards in my game.  Units (which are like your creatures in magic), buildings, barracks (an advanced building), and upgrades.  I *may* add spells, yet I first have to gage if this would complicate the game too much, as spells would require a second resource to be developed.   

I also understand fully why most CCG include a degree of randomness. The "fear" is that if everyone was able to start with the best hand, there would be no creativity in the decks designs.  Everyone would play the same "best cards" persay.  Therefore I'd have to design the game with a "every card has a weakness" philosophy in mind. 

Yes.

Luck, chance, whatever you wanna call it is a part of mainstream crap ccgs. That doesn't mean that a game based on strategies and tactics would fail. (Well it might, herd mentality and all that rot.)

One of the things that I'm not sure people take into account is that while you can see your hand (unless I'm mistaken) you can't see your opponent's hand. So, although, you may think the game is going to be a piece of cake with your favorite killer combo you may end up gasping for air under that person's superior play.

Whenever I see ccgs that support "luckless" play (there are a few out there GIYF) the first thing that comes to mind is chess. The random portion does not (imo) add a great deal to a game, it is just another mechanic, that's all.

An idea that I like would be something along the lines of semi-random. Something along the lines of having a player draw the top 10 cards, choosing a 5 card hand and then shuffling the rest of them back into the deck (or the top 5 of each deck assuming there is more than one)

Did your idea include just the mechanics or did that come along with a story? Curious because I know that I have stories that have grown out of mechanics (most of them actually) and mechanics that have grown out of the game's story/background.

Also, the way that Dominion works inspired me to make this (y'know assuming that someone else didn't think of it already >.<) You would create a full deck of x cards but you would only use say half of the deck. Shuffling the deck and drawing the top 20 of a 40 card deck, 30 of 60, so on, so forth. I'm sure that would have it yeas and nays but I like it and that's all that matters really.

While the Wyvern reference is relevant, I prefer a StarCraft analogy (or any crts for that matter) for what you are suggesting. You have units capable of gathering or generating resources, units that will carry out orders on the battlefield, units (ie buildings) that will provide some sort of support to the player (as yet unrevealed, do tell s'il vous plait) and upgrades. (stim pack anyone?) 'Course that's just me.

I very much like the idea of a non-random ccg, or at least a ccg where drawing a random card is not the main way to acquire new resources. Personally, I think that it's the lack of motivation and perhaps attention that helps destroy these promising projects.

And that, is my two cents... for now.

couple questions and random thoughts:
1. would you have to stack your deck the same way every game, or can you re-order it every match?
2. how big is a deck going to be? putting a 60 card deck in 'perfect' order would be really time consuming, and incredibly hard. a 20 or 30 card deck, however, may be more managable.
3. I honestly think if designed well this could totally work, although maybe a lot of people wouldn't "get it" straight off the bat. As long as you're trying to make a million dollars though, I say go for it. The design well thing basically means that you have to design no card that is inherently better than others, just better in different situations. Gonna be tough, lol, but good luck!

Quote from: Cyrus on January 06, 2010, 01:44:01 AM
couple questions and random thoughts:
1. would you have to stack your deck the same way every game, or can you re-order it every match?
2. how big is a deck going to be? putting a 60 card deck in 'perfect' order would be really time consuming, and incredibly hard. a 20 or 30 card deck, however, may be more managable.
3. I honestly think if designed well this could totally work, although maybe a lot of people wouldn't "get it" straight off the bat. As long as you're trying to make a million dollars though, I say go for it. The design well thing basically means that you have to design no card that is inherently better than others, just better in different situations. Gonna be tough, lol, but good luck!

To answer your questions:
1) Unlike traditional CCG, a "match" in my game involves only a single, 50 minute long game.  The winner of this game wins the "match".   Indeed the win condition of the game is much more inline to that of collectable miniature game (such as mechwarrior) then a traditional CCG.  In my theoretical game idea, you don't actually stack the deck.  Rather you choose what cards you wish to draw.  Also the game calls for a constant hand size of 6.  At the beginning of your turn, you "draw" any number of cards until your total hand size becomes 6.  The "theory" is to encourage retroactive thinking and play style, aka drawing cards to counter what your opponent just played (and vise versa).   

2) Each deck would contain at least 30 cards, and no more then 45 cards. 

I'm excited about this.

Quote from: Tokimo on January 06, 2010, 03:29:59 AM
I'm excited about this.

I'll be posting an instruction booklet shortly :P 

make sure you doublechecked your mechanics. it is very easy to make a mistake that ruins the game flow somewhere down the line. not to be a downer but this is very important, please double check your stuff. your game should deserve nothing less

"One of the things that I'm not sure people take into account is that while you can see your hand (unless I'm mistaken) you can't see your opponent's hand. So, although, you may think the game is going to be a piece of cake with your favorite killer combo you may end up gasping for air under that person's superior play." - this is true but it is not as big an effect. the problem with nondeterministic drawing is that it makes the game play out in one fashion. the fact that this is unknown to both sides doesnt change this. ill ilustrate it better here -

suppose A has alot of counters and destruction stacked early and B has mana production for the early game. B means to play his cards but A destroys/negates them all. this is a rough thematic thought experiment but the general idea is that B is hosed from the get-go. however, consider if A had counters and destruction and B had weenie creatures(small, cheap creatures to swarm). A means to counter but B mad rushes everything down

in a luck-draw system, the key differences in how the decks work are there but there is the random opportunity to have a counter to your opponents cards in your hand, as long as it was placed somewhere in your deck list. with a preeplanned draw, you will never draw your counter if you hadnt planned ahead. in such a system, the opening hands will largely determine the early game, to the point that guessing wrong (which if you played fighting games, youd realise that such things are invariably, no matter HOW awesome you are at it, educated guesses) will severely cripple you with no chance for a comeback, because you couldnt draw the card you needed. the differences in the decks are amplified by a preplanned system because youd need a god read to completely mitigate what the opponent could do to you and failure to do so prety much wrecks your game

under axmans system, where the deck is open and any card is available to the option pool, this doesnt apply..... not directly. there will still be a degree of amplification of deck differences, how much depends on his system. if i played weenie rush against your counters, every time you countered my creatures, i can draw and throw out more. unless your counters/destruction was multi-targetting, my drawing + early lead will make your deck hard by design. under a m:tg deck, i might not draw every creature i could throw out, making it actualy a form of balance for the slower deck, by stemming the tide of things i can fling out. similarly, a counter-based deck rarely draws counters every single turn for this reason. draw luck works both ways

the fact that matchs consist of only one round doesnt help if what i said comes to pass. then the deck differences wont have time to be mitigated by side-decking or even player adaptation. remember, strategic thinking is fine but you can only play cards that you actually put in your deck

again, sorry to sound dismissve, to you, aardvark or anyone else in the topic. i dont mean to be and these are just my opinions after thinking about it. i just dont want you to get hurt getting hyped over a game and making an instruction booklet and all and having someone crush your dreams by exploiting the game. given that this is practicaly what i aim to do when i playtest or even build normal decks, youd come to hate ppl like me, who will look at your system for flaws. not to be mean, i just find spading enjoyable. but not everyone will be as nice, as caring or as respectful as me, so its best to try and spot the weaknesses BEFORE you set the rules in stone, not after. make sample cards, envision what the game will actually play like. dont fall into the trap that your players will play the game your way, players can be exceedingly annoying that way. you might think the game will be a 50 min strategy mind game with duelling personalities and each person provides a subtle counterpoint to their and their opponents tactics. the actual game might play as two people trying to summon the most cost effective monster in the deck. this is just general advice but take care. way too often people got burned at the last step because they didnt respect how wild rules can actually be. trying to make something new just makes it that much easier to get burnt


if youd like, im sure people would like to hear more about the games system. i personally would like to know more about the buildings, baracks and upgrades and their differences. youv mentioned the units but not the other three

what is the actual focus of the game? will it be heavy on the combat? and what exactly is the win condition

A luckless TCG eh? I would say that this is a very interesting concept, even though I know many people had thought of it. I understand that this is probally due to an attempt to reward a more skillfull player rather than a luckier one. I love this ideology and had been trying to do something similar too.   ;D

However, I think there are certain things that you will need to be aware of.

Firstly, I think you should decide what type of skills to you want to test your players. Is it movements? Or fomations? Or combos? Or memorising? Or metagaming? Or what? What skill do you want it to be the most important, the second most important and the least most important. By recognising what skills do you want your game to revolve around, it will then be easier to create game mechanics and of course, ultimately, to answer your doubt wether a luckless TCG is possible or wether will it be accepted in the TCG market.

OK. Now, I have learnt about your idea of deciding a your own starting hand and searching for cards at the start of your turn instead of drawing cards. (Enlighten me if I am wrong) However, I have not read anything about wether your hand will be opened to both players, as in both players can see their opponents hand. If you can't see your opponent's hand, there will still be randomness in your TCG. There will be times where you will find yourself trying to guess what cards your opponent have in their hand to make a more strategic move. This can be very much affected by luck even though it is possible to be make accurate guesses especially if you are a veterian player. Please keep that in mind.

Another thing is that you will most likely not know what cards your opponent has in his deck and this can also be an element of luck. Another words, in your game, knowing what your opponent have in his deck can give you a huge advantage by helping you to plan your moves.

If you make your TCG by following your system, what will happen to deck building? In ordinary TCGs, deck building mostly requires the use of probability, which is a unique part of TCGs. According to your system, probability will play little or no role at all in your game. And since there is no probability involved, it is possible for the player to create a 45 cards deck where there is absolutely no repeated copy of any card, thus creating an extremely versatile deck to face almost all different situations. Do you want this scenario to happen? This is something you need to think about.

By the way, I do not see a good reason to use a 30 card deck. (You said the decks will have 30 to 45 cards, if I remember correctly) I think you got this mechanic mixed up with the other common TCGs. Other TCGs might do this because there are luck factors to consider. In a 30 card deck, you will have better chance of drawing what you need versus a 45 card deck which has more options but more luck dependant. However, your luckless TCG is not the same. I do not see any advantage of having a deck with less than 45 cards. Why limit the amount of threats that you can do when there is no probablity involved in your game? I think you should reconsider this rule.

Another thing you need to realise that, an element of chance is not 100% luck base. A game with some element of chance can also be a highly strategic game. A great player will know how to deal with bad luck and try to make a come back from the dead while a not so good player can only win if everything turns out to be in his or her favour. Of course I know that many of you have issues with mana screw in Magic, but there are many other games out there that has element of chance but does not rely much on topdecks and good draws to win.
I suggest that you check out the Battle Spirits TCG which is published by Bandai. I did talk about it in my "fast game vs slow game" thread. You can go google it, search for the official site to learn more. While I am not sure that you will like the game, but I think you will be amazed by its unique game mechanics and you will definitely learn more about what does it takes to make a TCG that doesn't depend so much on luck.

You did wanted to make sure that luck isn't a necessary aspect of a CCG. I shall then give you my opinions.
Yes, I agree that luck is NOT A MUST in a CCG, in fact in any game out there wheter it is a board game or a video game. However, while element of chance always seem to ruin many games (I see that many of you play MTG a lot and have bad experiance about mana screw) but if you use it wisely, it not only makes the game more fun but also adds a lot of strategic moments in the game as well.
In another words, I am trying to tell you that luck is not a must an a CCG but it should not be taken lightly or looked down upon. Perhaps this is why most TCGs in the market out there contains considerable amount of luck elements. Those TCG designers out there are mostly pro game designers and have good reasons for that.

One last thing is that, if you really want to create a CCG that has not even a single element of chance (0% of luck element), you will still need to review your whole idea and probaly make lots of huge changes. Perhaps it will be better if you just say you want to create a CCG where luck is not so important but skill is.(Maybe a CCG where 80% depends on skills while only 20% on luck or something like that)





I am just trying to share my opinions with you. I do not wish to make you dissapointed or anything. In fact, I also dreamt of creating something similar like what you suggested, but on second thought, things doesn't seem to be that easy. I sincerely hope that my post will help you with your ideas. I am also hoping to get some freedback here. (By the way, I am not an expert or anything, so bare with me if I make mistakes and please kindly point them out)

Lastly, all the best and good luck on your project.

I guess "luckless" CCG isn't entirely accurate then.  My idea goes more for 80/20 :p.
To answer your question, you do not see the cards in your opponent's hand.  Each player plays with their hand concealed. 

Also, I did not borrow the "30 card deck" idea from other CCGs.  The main reason for that number is as follows
1) No resource cards.  The "resource" mechanics are built directly into certain units and all buildings; therefore, you do not have to have certain portions of your deck dedicated to "only resource" cards. 
2) Marketing.  The game (in theory) would be sold in packs of 6.   In order to create a deck, all anyone would have to do is purchase five booster packs.   This (in theory) would make the game appear alot cheaper than its competitors; therefore, increasing the demand for the game.  Additionally since each pack contains less cards, it could be sold at a cheaper rate which in turn would increase its demand.  Of course... this is all theoretical.     

Hidden information isn't the same thing as luck any more than your opponent in chess making a mistake is luck. The game is deterministic either way. There is a huge piece of probability and psychology here, but there's no luck.

The decks need to be card capped, without deck size minimums (unless you allow discard recycling in which case the decks need to have both a minimum and a maximum). If you allow large decks players will come to play with every non-worthless card in their deck. Kinda cool, but a bit unwieldy for tournament play. You should keep a limit on the number of cards you can have of the same type or you'll eventually see decks that are just lightning bolts and wrath of god in 4:1 ratios. I'd recommend a 0-40 card count for the deck.

Decks are in general going to be built to play control, combo, and aggro all at once. This is because if you build a specialist deck your opponent will swap tactics on you and kick your butt. If the deck max size is small enough people will be forced to specialize a little bit (20 cards or less I'd think).

Quote from: Tokimo on January 06, 2010, 02:59:28 PM
Hidden information isn't the same thing as luck any more than your opponent in chess making a mistake is luck. The game is deterministic either way. There is a huge piece of probability and psychology here, but there's no luck.

The decks need to be card capped, without deck size minimums (unless you allow discard recycling in which case the decks need to have both a minimum and a maximum). If you allow large decks players will come to play with every non-worthless card in their deck. Kinda cool, but a bit unwieldy for tournament play. You should keep a limit on the number of cards you can have of the same type or you'll eventually see decks that are just lightning bolts and wrath of god in 4:1 ratios. I'd recommend a 0-40 card count for the deck.

Decks are in general going to be built to play control, combo, and aggro all at once. This is because if you build a specialist deck your opponent will swap tactics on you and kick your butt. If the deck max size is small enough people will be forced to specialize a little bit (20 cards or less I'd think).

The card cap is 45 cards, with a minimum for 30.  At least thats how it stands now.
Also the game mechanics revolve around more combat than actual "casting" spells.  As such "control" decks, at least in regards to games like magic the gathering, wouldn't exist.  The three primary types of decks would be the following:
1) Aggressive decks.  These decks strive to win the game as quickly as possible.  Usually aggressive decks will utilize extremely fast and versatile units as well as aggressive assault buildings. 

2) Defensive or "turtle" decks.  These decks utilize a strong defense in order to keep their enemy from claiming their territory.  Usually turtle decks will use expensive but strong units and barracks in order to insure that their enemy never outnumbers them.  Due to the expensive nature of this strategy; however, turtle decks are slow to advance into enemy territory. 

3) Midranged deck.  These decks utilize aspects of both aggressive and defensive decks. 

30-45 seems reasonable.

Ah. I just assumed you'd see the presence of snipers. I'm not sure what my thoughts are on a game that doesn't see threat removal as part of it's gameplay. Seems in a lot of ways like it might end up playing where each player builds up an aggressive military as fast as they can and then launches an end all raid on the opponent. You might find that luckless and controlless don't go well together.

Apparently this is the topic where everyone writes books.

I think that a luckless ccg would be very possible. It wouldn't work with the currently popular Magic model of ccg's, because of the immediacy of play. A game where your starting hand is chosen would have to add in-game limits to prevent immediate interactions, or limit them to simple actions. Magic has many cards that, if gotten out, offer an advantage for a cost. Your entire deck is based on building a machine to generate these cards, and to gain their advantages. In chess, however, each move has an inherent advantage and disadvantage. Exmp. Castling protects your king, but locks him away in the corner, making smothering moves possible.
A luckless CCG would have to either have to have cards "effect neutral", or to have an opportunity cost involved. (Playing card X prevents you from playing card Y, which one do you need most?) The current resource model prevalent in the industry just wouldn't work, because you basically already have your machine made. The player to use their machine first would always win.

Lightning Bolt vs Spell Pierce is a compelling early decision. The only thing you would need to do to make Magic work would be to have a three-phase turn: Both players play a land, player 1 goes, player 2 goes.

Quote from: sneaselx on January 06, 2010, 05:26:03 PM
Apparently this is the topic where everyone writes books.

Yes and you must have a library card. No? Well, I guess I can make an exception. :P

Irregardless of everything that's been stated opined and what not I look forward to seeing you put your game and its rules into action. *raises hand* Future playtester right here. *and waves it around like he just don't care*

Unfortunate I do not think I can use the lackey CCG system to play test my idea : /
My game calls for a "map" and you play your cards on the map as you would a miniature game.  Unfortunatly the last time I checked lackey didn't really support anything like this. 

Create a background for the game page. That's what hackers did. Not sure about YuGiOh, I remember the mat that came with but I don't think that I've seen one for lackey. 'Course I haven't tried looking so that could be the problem.

You guys ever played BattleForge? Its a real-time strategy PC game. However, the units, spells and buildings you're using are not "fixed" like in most RTS. Each unit, spell, etc, are summoned with the "cards" you chose to put in your deck before the game started.
To have new cards, you buy boosters (with real money!) or trade them with other players, just like a CCG.

However, once you chose your deck and the game starts, there's no luck at all. Your "hand" contains ALL the cards of your deck, you don't draw anything. It's up to you to use them wisely. And even if you think you've got the best combo ever, you don't know what's in your opponent's deck, and you can have some pretty bad surprises.

This being said, I can perfectly imagine a CCG where there's no luck at all, where cards act as miniatures. And it would be AWESOME.

That's what I'm talking about.

Sounds interesting. Is it still around? I haven't done many pc games in a while.

It's a recent game, I think it was released last year. They're going to release the 3rd edition soon, so it's still alive. You can download the game and play for free to try it. They give you some crappy starting cards, and you don't stand a chance against other players in PvP, but you still can have fun with friends ; or simply play in PvE games (scenarios versus the AI).

I have heard of Battle Forge and watch some play on you tube, I have not actually played the game myself. Anyway, while I love battle Forge gameplay up to quite an extend, the thing is that Battle Forge is created as a PC game and is not really practical to do in a real life CCG. Especially if you actually plan to sell it comercially.

In Battle Forge, the game map is very huge if compared to a potential game map in a real life CCG. I think that is why there will still be lots of fun strategies even though the game seem "luckless". However, I think it is going to be very hard to do something like that in a real life CCG. You seldom play CCGs on an extremely huge board or playmat, do you? (At least not me)

I am not too sure about this, but Battle Forge may have terrains and stuff to balance its units. And if you were to try to use terrains in your game, not saying that it is impossible, but I think it will be very troublesome. And since Battle Forge have no terrain cards, (at least that is what I know) the terrains are predetermined when two players choose which map to play. If there are tournament senarios, assumung that no deck change can be made after registering the deck list, a player will have to make sure that his deck is able to function well in all maps. I gthink this can be a good way to balance cards and encourages creative deck building rather than just chunk in all the "good" cards in your deck.

If you like this system, you must make sure that all maps are predetermined and there are nothing or few cards that can change them. However, I released that most CCGs will instead have terrain or field cards to decide the terrain. And obviously, all players will use terrain cards that are to their favour. While I think it is usually fine to be this way, but in a "luckless" CCG, things might work differently. The deck building phase of the game can be ruined due to overly simplified deck building. And of course, please bare in mind that there might be some possibilities where a very skillfull player had finally built his best deck and do not need to purchase cards from new expansion anymore. This is because, I believe that in a luckless CCG, metagaming will play a very small role compared to other CCGs. In other CCGs, a certain deck can be fast or slow, hard hitting or high defence and of course stable or not. While your game might have the fast/slow or aggressive/defencive features, you will not really have stability since it is about probability, card drawing power and your chances to pull out a combo or chances to get screwed. In fact your game may encourage your players to create versatile decks to cope with all situations and therefore once a player had achieved his ideal deck, I think it is likely that there will not be any need to change or tweak his deck anymore.
In most online role playing games, one of the ways to encourage players to buy new expansions is to make new units or abilities stronger. But you normally don't want power creep in your CCG.

So to sum things up, I think a luckless CCG is PERFECTLY POSSIBLE, but there will be lots of changes to be made becaused of its huge differences compared to the other CCGs to balance the gaming environment and also tournament play.
If you are talking about selling it commercially, I think you might have ahard time convincing players out there that your CCG is worth playing and comparable or even better than other ones out there.
And by the way, while a "luckless" CCG is a good idea (even I love it and wanted to do the same for quite some time) I think we should NEVER look down on the element of chance. While it sometimes can make a CCG seems highly luck-based (Not all CCGs are like that), it does give the game some strategic moments (in fact in some games, many) and thrill since you don't know what you will get next turn. It is like you will not know what is about to happen tommorow, right? (Although sometimes you can predict that something is about to happen)


Of course, all these are just my opinions. I see you have started to work on your CCG already and hopefully this long reply of mine can help you a bit.
Lastly, good luck on your work!   :)

thank you for all the responses!
I've posted the rules for my "luckless" ccg (or rather CTG :P)
let me know what you think. 

Quote from: Zao on January 07, 2010, 11:18:21 PM
You guys ever played BattleForge? Its a real-time strategy PC game. However, the units, spells and buildings you're using are not "fixed" like in most RTS. Each unit, spell, etc, are summoned with the "cards" you chose to put in your deck before the game started.
To have new cards, you buy boosters (with real money!) or trade them with other players, just like a CCG.

However, once you chose your deck and the game starts, there's no luck at all. Your "hand" contains ALL the cards of your deck, you don't draw anything. It's up to you to use them wisely. And even if you think you've got the best combo ever, you don't know what's in your opponent's deck, and you can have some pretty bad surprises.

This being said, I can perfectly imagine a CCG where there's no luck at all, where cards act as miniatures. And it would be AWESOME.

It sounds similar to Alteil. How many cards in a deck of BattleForge? Alteil has 30, though you can only choose 25 to play since the other 5 are chosen to be something equivalent of a Shield in Duel Masters. Differs from Duel Masters, though, in Alteil you can choose which cards become your Shields, so the "Shield Trigger"s aren't anything random.