Idea for a Wargame using Cards

[Typherion]

This is an idea for a card-based wargame so simple that I would be amazed if nobody had thought of it already. It's mainly inspired by the Warhammer miniatures game.

My thought was that basically you can just switch the miniatures for cards and make a wargame that is much cheaper, faster and easier to play. This is in exchange for losing some of the aesthetic value that miniatures have.

The way I imagine such a game is as follows:

• Each card represents a unit of infantry, archers, cavalry, a warmachine, monster or hero and has a point cost corresponding to its power.
• Players build a faction-based army deck by including cards up to a certain point total.
• Before the game, players could place terrain onto the battlefield and then "deploy" their units by placing them face-down.
• Deployed units are then revealed once the game starts.
• Players either take alternating turns or complete a series of phases simultaneously to have their units march, shoot, fight, etc.
• Units would have scores for movement, melee combat, ranged combat, defense, life and morale.
• This may be not be popular, but I would probably have units move between zones on a grid and use dice rolling to decide combat results and to influence long distance movement.
• Players would roll a number of die equal to the unit's relevant score and count the dice that show 4+ as a success.
• Wounds on a unit could be represented by a die sitting on top of the card.
• The game would last until one player had earned a certain number of victory points from destroying enemy units, or some other system.

As you can see, it's a pretty simple idea of converting a wargame into a card game. Because all cards start in play, there is no resource management and players can focus purely on their strategy.

The only similar card game I can think of is Summoner Wars, but that still has resource management instead of complete deployment before the game starts. Although I'm mainly working on another game at the moment, I'd be interested to hear what people think of this idea.

[Dan55]

I think you might have trouble finding the right type of gamer to want to play this.  You'd either need miniature gamers willing to part with the visual aspect of minatures, or card gamers willing to do without the convenience of the card game.

Having said that, you might like to look into DBA (or Hott) as miniature games where your idea might actually work.

[Typherion]

Thanks for the suggestion, I took a look over Hordes of the Things. The rules seemed fairly complicated, although not as much as some wargames with miniatures are. (Checking my old Warhammer rulebook reveals that it is 288 pages!) I would be going for a level of complexity that is not much more than Summoner Wars, and nowhere near that of most miniatures games.

However, I'm convinced that wargames using cards is a huge untapped market based on the success of Summoner Wars. For those unfamiliar with it, Summoner Wars is a popular recent card game played on a 6x7 grid. Players summon units and walls onto the grid in order to defeat the opposing player's commander.

While the grid I was thinking about for my idea might be slightly larger, say 8x8, it seems clear to me that the mechanic of moving cards on a grid is viable and that players enjoy it. When you think about it, cards actually make much more sense than miniatures anyway because you have the special rules for each unit and piece of terrain right on the card instead of having to remember or look them up in a rulebook. I think there are a lot of gamers out there who like wargames, but just don't have the time to muck around with the miniatures anymore.

Designing the combat system seems easy enough:
Units engaged in combat could roll red dice equal to their Combat stat and blue dice equal to their Defense stat, counting each 4+ as a success.
Your unit's Combat successes would be negated by the enemy unit's Defense successes.
Any leftover Combat successes would be dealt as damage.

This makes combat a single roll of the dice for each player - a massive simplification from some wargames (eg: 1) roll to hit, 2) roll to wound, 3) roll armor save).

Units could have special effects based on their equipment, eg: spears give a bonus to Combat when the unit is charged.

The most difficult element might be designing the movement system, making sure that it encourages strategy. Not sure whether to have some randomness to make long-range charging uncertain or not...

[Ziadross]

I agree that a wargame using cards would certainly be more convienient than miniatures to an extent. Cards are cheaper and easier to design and obtain but lack the look and feel of 3d figures on a living battlefield. If you were going to design a wargame with cards to represent the units I would incoporate more features and mechanics unique to cards rather than try to completely emulate a miniatures game. Use the double sided nature of cards to conceal units, represent when one is damaged or weakened, or show that a unit has been altered such as a trebuchet unpacking or pikeman unit readying spears. I would suggest making the cards square and using an arrow to show direction. This way you could incorporate flanking and increase strategy. I think movement will be easy. Asign a number value for squares with mounted units and such moving faster. If you represent facing as mentioned before, position becomes very important.

Just my two cents. I love projects like this.

Cheers

[Typherion]

Thanks for the suggestions. I definitely agree that things like facing, flanking and line-of-sight are important to include.

The potential issue I see with movement is this:
In the miniatures games I've played, the ability to correctly guess distance is an important skill because it can determine who has the advantage when two units engage each other.
But when using a grid, movement becomes predictable and players might be reluctant to advance their units if they know for certain that they will be charged the next turn.

I guess as long as the charging unit doesn't get an advantage this won't be the case. Instead, the most important factor will be where the units engage rather than who charged who.

Going with fixed movement speeds seems like simplest option and the best plan for now. A more complicated system can always be made later if fixed movement isn't working.

At the moment I'm thinking the battlefield will be either an 8x8 or 10x10 grid.
Players can deploy their units within the first 2-3 rows of their side of the battlefield.
Units will each have a Movement score as follows:
1: artillery
2: infantry, archers and other ground troops.
3: heavy cavalry, chariots, monsters, etc
4: fast cavalry, flying monsters, etc

Moving through difficult terrain will either reduce the unit's movement by 1 space or force the unit to roll dice equal to it's Movement score to see how far it can move.

Ranged units will have ranges that allow them to generally shoot at infantry for 2 turns and at cavalry for 1 turn before the gap is closed.

[Malagar]

Im already working on something like this, the only thing we decided to remove is inch/cm/tile based movement. Instead we divided the battlefiled into zones. Its a lenghty process, but the project is still active. It also includes high-quality pro art:

http://www.godsandminions.com

PS: Im thinking about creating multiply games out of the artwork library. So there would be a core background world and art stock. Then there could be Game Variant a.) that uses no inch-measure, Variant b.) that plays like a regular wargame and so on.....

Besides that, Im a 20+ years wargame veteran myself. well, i have to say: love the idea! It has not been seen often, but it has already been done. Checkout battlegrounds: fantasy warfare for example:

http://yourmovegames.com/battleground_index.html

Cheers
-Malagar

[Typherion]

Hi Malagar, I've been following your Gods and Minions project with interest so I'm somewhat familiar with it. I think your movement system is really innovative and cool because it seems like it will capture the essence of tactical movement without needing lots of table space. But I feel that having access to all your units from the start of the game is another key difference.

That said, the game you linked to is pretty close to what I had envisoned. Its standing orders mechanic probably simulates the difficulty generals had with relaying commands to their troops very well. I also think how the card design makes each card look like a group of miniatures is a nice touch.

Probably the only things I would change is simplifying the combat resolution down to 1 roll per player and making movement grid based in order to get rid of the need to measure distances. However, I don't think these changes are different enough from Battleground to motivate me into developing this game idea further at this point. I'll be making a big post soon to update my main project "Summoner" very soon instead.