Aliens Vs. Predator Card Mockup

[Malagar]

sorry guys, my hands are currently so tied because of my job - but i really like your diaologe! here is a short babble, trying to contribute to this thread:

Regarding vanilla cards i have to add that i dont like them. back in the days when playing magic it was always a big downer when someone drew a vanilla card from a booster (except Sav Lions etc.).

After playing several ccgs, my group and me decided for ourselves to systematically delete all vanilla cards from our collections. this may sound horrible to collectors and story lovers - but in the mind of a power player, there is just no space for a green grizzly bear - with a nice story on it - but that sucks gameplay wise.

furthermore when starting designing games, we decided that a true tournament targeted game shall contain no vanilla cards at all. every card in a set has to have a special ability, there is still more than enough space in the text box to add story elements.

for both of us - tournament players and "tournament collectors" gameplay value comes before flavor. and every card has to be worth its boosters cost. the trick is to pump out new "worthy card" without breaking the power balance of the game system.

well, thats just my single minded oppinion.

keep up the discussion while i reduce the card title text font!

[Trevor]

Grizzly bears is only a bad card because there are strictly better cards you can get for the same cost. If there was no other 2/2 creature for 2 mana, grizzly bears would not only be playable, but it would be good. Vanilla cards are not necessarily weaker. Any card is weak if there are other cards to compare it to that are far superior. So saying vanilla cards are intrinsically weak is just not true.

Centaur Courser, Elvish Warrior, Blade of the Sixth Pride, Elite Vanguard, Grizzled Leotau, Horned Turtle, Kraken Hatchling, Leatherback Baloth, and many others are all examples of vanilla cards that are decent because they provide a nice power to cost ratio.

So the we aren't talking about making powerful VS weak cards, though printing cards with varying power is a good idea. We are talking about the existence or lack thereof of simple cards, and I am arguing that simple cards are a good thing to have in a well designed CCG. While they may not themselves be interesting, they make the overall gameplay more fun.

[Malagar]

hey guys,
I have new designs for you to wet your tastebuds and drool over! please note that i have not been able to make all the changes we discussed in this thread. theese cards where work in progress before we started talking about altering the template. anyway, here we go:

[Cyrus]

I R JEALOUS

[Ascent]

I look forward to seeing the adjusted images. I like that Location.