Summoners CCG - Read the rules, see if you want to playtest. :)

[snowyy]

Hi everyone, this is my second go at tryinmg to make a CCG. I have just finished the first draft of the rule book, and have created the plugin, including 50 cards atm. I hope i can find people who are interested in trying this game out.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B84LWjag753EOGE5NjMzMjgtMTk3Ny00MzVmLTk2ZmItOWVmZDVhYzU0Mjcz&hl=en_GB

Im hopefully that that link will work and lead you to the rulebook, if i get interest i will upload the plugin and people can try it out. Because of the way is designed im not sure on the costing of teh cards, so it would be great if we could get testing out the game!

Thanks for any comments and feedback

[snowyy]

I can see some people are put off by the size of the rule book, or maybe opening an external link, so i will explain te basics of the game.

You both start with a deck of 30 cards and 60 life force.
To play cards you use some of life force.
Summons are played into either teh battle zone or the support Zone.
Summons in the battle zone fight either summons in the opposite battle zone or the opponent
Support cards don't attack, but can be protected by your own creature.
You win when your opponent life force goes down to 0

[Dragoon]

It's only nine pages.

I still have a hate against the icons.

I dislike forced attacks, but I can live with it.

I will give the rulebook a better look when I have got my required amount of sleep.

[innuendo]

Not an issue of size of the rulebook for sure.

It seems from high level resource optimization options to low level card interaction that there is a real lack of depth.

I'm trying to mentally play out different interactions and what possible cards could be interesting in this setting and the range seems rather, finite. A lot of it is the barebones combat system (see: aforementioned forced attack, lack of ability to reassign cards between rows/rank, simple 1v1 fighting, etc). And this is coupled with a pretty linear resource system (life = resource).  I see the point, but it's simply a race to the bottom.  The only point that matters is the last, so why not just play your biggest card *every* turn? Surely the opportunity cost of playing it early and letting it do battle for more turns is worth the risk of slightly more exposed life force. Especially since you can't swarm with small cards (see: 1 summon/turn rule, again very limiting on depth), there is almost no advantage to small cards (especially early in the game).

I'm curious to see if this evolves for you, some of the systems are tailored enough to be interesting, but there isn't a lot of meat on these bones yet.

[snowyy]

I agree that the one rule i was worried about was the one summona turn. I wanted to test it at that to start with. I have thought of some other mechanics/abilites that will affect cards, such:

Overwhelm - basically enabling this summon to aid a summon next to it in a fight.
..... - There is already a card that allows you to change a summons position when it enerts play, need to come up with a name for that
I was also thinking of inclduing small creatures, like goblins, and they say when the enter play you can play an additional creature that turn, maybe having a spell like that aswell. So people can make some kind of swarm deck.

One final idea was to have some kind of delay ability, where a summon would be rather expensive to play normally, but you can play it delayed and in enters play in a number of turns.

Im hopeing after played some games we can find good things about the design, bad things, and aspects that need improveing on

And thanks alot for the comments.

I like teh concept of having life as the resource because its flavourful and also it makes it like a race, and shows the risk - reward side of a game.

[innuendo]

The issue with off loaded those mechanics to cards is that the core system is still fundamentally very simple.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the system does not explicity warrant unique combinations of cards to arrise, instead it is very "matchup" based. Most of the depth of card games come from how cards combine and team up to become greater than the sum of parts.

Your system, at a structural level, almost removes that aspect.  Unless the support mechanic becomes more interesting (the support creature for instance applies it's defense to the front line creature), so that there was a system level interaction between cards, I feel you'll end up with very rules heavy cards to support the level of interaction needed.

Essentially what I'm saying is, if your system doesn't support interesting interactions, and you attempt to put it all on card keywords, you'll run the issue where every card has 2-3 keywords just to be interesting. I'll say this is something I run into with my game at times, so i'm not speaking from a place of ignorance.  The point is, you will have an issue keeping the number of interesting interactions diverse enough to keep me as a player engaged with the possible strategy.  It seems currently to always be "fatty up front, resource guy in back" If there was some implicit function of hte back row guy other than "just not attacking" that might make the choice more interesting (see: previous suggestion of combined defense).

As for your last point of risk reward.  Unless you have a real option for someone to do 20+ damage a turn (which is bad and would lead to horribly volatile gameplay), there is no risk in spending your first 40 points.  So why not play a 40 point creature? My point is if you play a 10 point creature and I play a 2 point creature, sure I have "more health" but not in any real tangible sense are you at "more risk" than I.

The only time risk comes into play is when I have <10 life.  THen you have the issue where it's almost impossible for me to play cards to catch up, because playing a card I need to survive dooms me to failure.

It's a novel idea, I'm not saying to not explore it, but it's not going to be very risk/reward as you hope.  With the advantage of board position in your system (1v1 combat lets you 100% mitigate damage if you have fatter summons), it seems to be strictly better to just play the single largest card you can, as soon as you can, and then not play anything else once you get to 10 life. There is no risk in spending the first 50 life force if you can reasonably guarantee you wont be attacked for more.

I hope you don't mind my direct approach to feedback.  I'm not intending any of this to mean there is nothing about the game I don't like. I actually really like a lot of the elements you were able to streamline. I'm just worried you need to increase the interaction in combat for the rest of the system to have enough legs to be interesting. Specifically looking at unique, rules level, functionality for support armies.

[Typherion]

Hi, just took a look over your rulebook and thought I'd tell you my thoughts.

First thought was I like the look of the card template and rulebook. But as others have said, maybe icons could be improved.

I don't like forced battle. I think you could easily get into a situation where two opposing creatures with low Attack and high Defense are forced to keep attacking each for no reason forever until the game ends...

I sort of like the life as resource system but it would need a whole lot of tinkering. You have a deck of 30 cards, but even if each card cost an average 2 life then you will never be able to use every card. I can forsee players just going all in with big cards and winning, or conceding on turn 2-3.

It does need some more depth, otherwise if you summon a little creature you are paying life, losing card advantage and wasting your turn all at the same time.

I've been trying to develop a card game called Summoner here:
http://www.lackeyccg.com/forum/index.php?topic=671.0.
I thought I was close to finished with rules when I first posted here, but I was nowhere near done. Good luck!

[innuendo]

I sort of like the life as resource system but it would need a whole lot of tinkering. You have a deck of 30 cards, but even if each card cost an average 2 life then you will never be able to use every card. I can forsee players just going all in with big cards and winning, or conceding on turn 2-3.

It does need some more depth, otherwise if you summon a little creature you are paying life, losing card advantage and wasting your turn all at the same time.

Yup, exactly my concerns as well, but you put them more concisely

[snowyy]

Ok Guys, Thanks alot for all your feedback, i really appriciate it, and agree, i need to think of somthing to make 'small summons' better, without giving them actual abilities.

The reason i came up with the rule of making summons attack every turn is because there is no real downside to attacking atm. Because they don't 'tap or 'fatigue' a play is always going to want to attack anyway.

I like the idea of support cards fortifiying health, my worry about that is there could become stalemate situations where each summons defence is stronger than their attack.

I will have a think andsummbit them later, if anyone has any ideas i would be more than happy to think about them

[snowyy]

One idea i had is that for every summon in support area every summon that is put onto the Battle Zone costs 1 less.

[Ascent]

Increase the numbers to 2 digits and you'll increase depth. That's why you see so many fixed-attack games with multiple zeros, because they're using the zeros to draw attention away from the fact that their using two-digit math, though I find the practice is not necessary. Just make your numbers double digit and you'll increase the possibilities in what you can do to enhance interactions. It will become a battle of non-summon cards enhancing the summon card. The single digits currently limit this aspect significantly. The other option would be to use dice to roll attacks. (Like SWTCG.)

Also, the mechanics are quite simplistic and very controlled. As a result, there's not going to be much complexity in play. I guess that's just another way of saying what they said above.

To counter this, I suggest considering tossing in another mechanic to the game that can help you to diversify the game. You might try Summon stacking, with each version adding its effects and/or stats to the top of the stack, You could introduce field obstacles or challenges. Whatever you add, it should provide some sort of complexity in play that makes the game less of a back and forth and more about how you pump up your Summon and face changes in the game state. It may sound counter to this, but having more attacks per round (such as 3 attacks per Battle Summon) back and forth can allow you to rely more upon your playing skills and less upon your building skills.

[snowyy]

Thx for the feedback. Increasing the digits is a good idea, ill just need to re-format the cards so the numbers don't look to squashed.
I like the idea of making it more complex. I tink changing the rules o you can play as many uons you want in a turn may help.

It is likley everyone will dump all their summons on their first turn. But then the opponent has the decision of which summons to defend with, so thats not nesasarily a good idea.

[magnaangemon01]

Why have summons attack every turn? If you want more strategy and depth to the game, why not make Mill Summons and Burn summons? You wouldn't want to attack with those as long as the job is being done. In my opinion, forced attack must go. That's just going to make players very annoyed or frustrated if they have to attack with, and maybe even lose, the summons that are helping them to win. When I think of forced attacks, for some reason the Frieza Saga from DBZ comes to mind and that can get real old, real fast.

Also, I would suggest more than 50 cards for your first set before mass releasing your game. 50 cards doesn't really give your players a lot of deckbuilding options and it can get pretty annoying when everyone is playing the same deck.

I also like Ascent's idea. Why not make Summons that effect summons in the game while in the support zone or have summons that have effects based on certain cards in any part of the field or how many summons are in your support zone. Not to sound rude or mean, but your game has no depth or strategy. It's just who has the biggest beatstick. You have a good idea but you need more diversification and strategy. That added with more cards and your game might even make it off the ground because an essential to most games and why they succeed is because of the options and strategy they incorporate into deckbuilding.

[snowyy]

The only reason i had the rule that summons had to attack every turn was because there was no downside to attacking. Because they don't 'tap' to attack you are basically going to attack anyway.

I have a few more than 50 cards now, but i agree i need more. I didn't want to make loads and then post them on here to have a huge rule change, then have to re create/ change like 100 cards.

Also, there are cards that effect summons while in the support zone, and cards that effecc other cards in another field. Thats why i tried to make the other aspects simpler. My aim was to have a simply game at a glance, and then have the complexaty in the card interactions.

Also, i chose 30 cards for a number of reasons:

1 - No mana/ resource. There for im not going have 1/3 or 12 the deck taken up by that.
2- Starting with only 5 cards in hand
3 - I wanted people to have the chance of playing with their favourite cards, for example. If someone had a booster pack and opened somwthing really cool, it very likley it will go into your deck. You then also have a higher chance of bein able to draw that card.

You actually have near enough the same deck building choice as magic the gathering.

You have a minimum of 10 different cards you have to have.

In magic you have 60 cards. - 24 for lands, making 36.
36 divided by 4 = 9.

Ok, so there is a bit more diversity in the number of lands, and what the lands do, but it still gives the players enough deck building stratagy i belive.

Moving on to 2 MAJOR ideas i had:

1 - Rarities

I was thinking about card rarities but i wasn't sure if a really wanted them, however, using them will actually improve gameplay. There will be 4 rarities:

Common
Uncommon
Rare
Legendary

Cards will be set in their rarities like the following:

0-4 costing - common
5-6 costing - Uncommon
7 + rare or Legendary

There will then be 3 main formats to start with

Apprentice summoner format - Common cards only
Battle Summoner format (Main formart)

1 different - legendary card in deck (so you can have 3 of the same card)
2 different rare card - (so 6 in total)
5 different uncommon cards (15 in total)
6+ common cards (18+ in total, you can have less other rarities and more commons if you wish)

It means people won't cram in all the huge creatures, givies smal creatures value. It also givies players deck ideas, such as good rare 'build around' cards.

Final format is Master summoner format - Any card goes.

So thats my first idea. My second idea is in terms of gameplay

Attack and Defence stance:

When you play a summon you may choose to have hav it in either attack or defence stance.

In attack stance the summon can attack (If they want to, im taking out the rule that creatures have to attack each turn!!). (thinking about allowing summons to attack the turn they enter play, but not sure)
I defence stance (tapped position) they can't attack, however, they have increased defence. You add the defence of the summon behind it in the support Zone.

Im hopeing that this adds a bit of complexity to the game, and decision making. My only worry is that it creates stalemate situations where a summon can't kill a defencive summon, but we will see.

What do people think about the proposed changes?

[Ascent]

Anachronism relied upon single units battling against each other, bumped up by 3 standard card types that were used for every hero. Its starter deck featured a handful of heroes with their 3 standard cards. 10 expansion packs marked the initial release. If anything is limited, that sort of setup is. However, it had a mechanic related to angle and distance at which the cards approached each other, more as if they were miniatures facing off and you could mix and match the standard card types. Thus, it was the combat mechanic that made the game interesting and unique. It really doesn't matter how limited the deck construction is. The mechanics are always what matter. Use the mechanics, not the diversity of deck constructions, to make the game interesting. If you have 200 cards and only able to play 4 cards together, that's a such a huge variety of combinations that you're not likely to play the same deck twice if you played a tournament every day for a year. So clearly, there's no problem with diversity in this game's design, but a problem in the complexity of play alone. It's currently too simplistic. That's all. A little more complexity in play is all the game needs.