Research & Development: CCG centered around fusion [Working Title]

[nickyinprogress]

Alright I'll check the turn order out, though if its a matter of conciseness I'll do it after I test the game.
The die roll thing is noted, I'll take care of it too.

As for the redrawing, the mechanic I had was you could re-draw as much as you liked without showing it to the opponent, but each time your starting hand size is -1. Obviously, you can't re-draw when you're left with 1 card. I'll consider your idea.

I don't get how I have to maintain the order of cards in the discard zone however, can you explain?

Yes, "healing" your deck is an option. Perhaps after testing, even seeking cards out of the discard, making discarding an even better option, though this one is probably limited.

The template is on the way, and yes there are right and left half cards, so one image is on the right, another to the left. Having it combine visually is a big part of the game.

Punishing them for not fusing may seem like that in the rulebook, but there are ways where playing a half creature that only lives one turn is a good thing (e.g. A creature Trait that says when it's Unstable, it gets a boost, or even act as a kamikaze creature). I did find a hiccup, I wanted players to have a chance to fuse a lone half on the next turn, but the current system kills it off beforehand.

It's gonna become:
"You can put down a half creature on a turn, but if on the next turn you STILL don't fuse it, it dies."

EDIT:
What if instead of the rule of "Maximum of 30 creatures in the 50 card deck", I have a rule "Minimum of 10 Level 0 cards in the 50 card deck"? So that you won't redraw forever if you only have 1 Level 0 card in your entire deck?

I did the math, an obligatory 10 level 0 creatures, 50 card deck, 5 card starting hand? That's nearly 70% chance to get at least one playable creature. If I reduce that to 5 creatures, that's a 40% chance.

[Typherion]

I don't get how I have to maintain the order of cards in the discard zone however, can you explain?

I was just thinking that because the cards you put on your Favor Altar must come from the top of your discard pile, it means that players might have to be careful not to change the order if/when they want to check a discard pile, because it could change which cards are on top, and therefore which cards are put onto the Favor Altar.

Now that I think about it a bit more, you wouldn't want any of your really important cards to end up on the Favor Altar because it seems like removing them from the game.

Also, another small thought about milling as a victory condition - if the game ends immediately when a player's last card is milled, then that last card is effectively blank because you will never have a chance to play it.

Now, this might not be a problem for you, but if you think it is a problem, you could solve it by having a player lose at the end of the turn their deck is milled, or alternatively a player could lose when they fail to draw a card because their deck is empty.

[nickyinprogress]

Hmmm... I have no solution for that. Any ideas? The only must is paying Favor from the discard, so that the discard pile has better use and you don't lose your deck any faster than it's going to be.

Some possible solutions I thought up:
1. Reduce the creature's levels. Instead of Level 0, 1, 2, 3, just have 1,2,3 and you start at Level 1. This way, you only waste 10 cards over your entire deck at maximum in the Favor Altar.
2. Have Intervention/Traits that let you trade cards in the Favor Altar with a card from your hand/deck

As for the last card being blank, I totally agree. The win condition becomes: "When your opponent has no more cards in his deck at the start of your setup phase." When you deck out during the opponent's Combat Phase (most likely so), he ends his turn and switches to your own turn. When you finish your turn and switch back to the opponent, THEN you lose.

Any issues with this one?

EDIT:
Pay favor like you normally do, but instead of playing cards from the discard, you draw 1 from the discard, then play 1 from your hand to the Favor Altar.

[nickyinprogress]

Template finished!!
And it's also a usable card!



Need a level 0 creature that can get 2 damage to your opponent's deck on the first turn? Firstborn's your man! Though he quickly becomes useless after that. A really REALLY early game card. Note that a damage of 2 is very uncommon for a level 0 card.

Comments?
On anything really, I'm starting to make a test deck list. Explanation is up there.

[DavidChaos]

First, small comment on the halves thing; doesn't it seem even more restictive to deckbuilding if you need a left and right half to go into decks?  Otherwise, I kinda like the idea; very unique-feeling game, where everything is really a combo.

[nickyinprogress]

Wow, you're right now that I think about it. The problem is not the halves, but the resource system. An effective starting hand needs at least 1 level 0 left half and 1 level 0 right half. With a 50 card deck, say that 30 are creatures, equally divided that's 15 left & 15 right halves. Of the 15, an equal divide means 5 level 0 left & right halves. Bad.

Resource system overhaul:
Sacrifice a card from hand once per turn to the Favor Pile. You tap them like lands in MTG, but then you can take 5 cards in that to make a Methodology Pile, and place Intervention as Methodology as if you're spending 5 Favor to get a constant powerup.

This will work better because you won't have dead cards in your hand just because your level isn't high enough (which it won't at the early game). Worst case scenario, you get costly cards, but playable as long as you have enough Favor to tap.

If the argument is "But what if I don't have enough resources!"
That just falls on the player's resource management.

[Typherion]

The template is on the way, and yes there are right and left half cards, so one image is on the right, another to the left. Having it combine visually is a big part of the game.

On combining cards visually, I was thinking that you could also design the template so that not just the art, but also the stats on each card line up with each other in a way that makes them easier to use. I'm not sure yet what your plans are for combining stats so I can't suggest anything further.

The example card gives me the feeling that the style of this game is going to be cute, quirky and maybe a bit creepy - is my feeling close to what you're going for?

Also, does 0 Defense mean that Firstborn will die from the next damage it takes? In that case, would 1 Defense mean that it would take 2 damage to kill it?

[nickyinprogress]

I was struggling with this, especially wanted the name to join up. Unfortunately, I'd have to sacrifice the card art, cause it was losing focus. A shame, but as a designer, this was my design decision.

Combining stats is just through addition. Attack 2 creature + Attack 2 creature is Attack 4. Slowly, the process goes like: See the left half's Attack, see if any effects affect it as a half, put that amount of dice on top and do it on the other. Finally, check if any effects affect it as a whole and add dice to that. Say that it ends with 5 dice? Then roll 5 dice. For defense, no rolls though, so no dice, just count em'. Shouldn't be that hard.

The style will be cute quirky and creepy, yes. Creatures won't be just the typical ones, I'll go insane and make ice cream people, cacti on fire, chinese take out noodle octopi, you get the picture.

The numbers were placeholders really, I really didn't think about what I put on it. Since defense is basically health, a defense of 0 means on the next turn he dies. There won't be a lot of defense 0 creatures, but there are some that even utilizes this disadvantage by being a cheap donk. Medium attack, zero cost, zero defense, can't be fused, almost like sending a bomb to be exploded then discarded.

I'm lovin' this feedback, if you have more do tell, I need to know people's concerns to fix this.
As I said, this was primarily for me making card designs & illustrations, BUT it'd be worth ten times more if it's playable, and a longshot but possible HUNDRED times better if I sell it.

[Dabem]

I like the template, and I like the style.
I've liked this concept from the beginning and have been following it for a while now.
I'd like to playtest it as I think you have a solid concept. I already have too many projects I'm a part of so I'd likely just help in the critiquing and playtesting sense. That said I have a few concerns and thoughts to address before I would be willing to get involved further.

I'm not a fan of the theme. I don't want to play a demigod, and the altars thing seems a tad creepy to me. I thought it was going to be more of a Mad Scientist sort of thing (which I love the idea of) before I read the rule book. I'm not likely to play the demigod theme because I'm uncomfortable with it. I understand that may not be a common issue, I'm just being honest.

The dice thing seems very random, but a little like gameworkshop in a sense. Right now you hit on a 66% chance. That means if your opponents defense is 2 then you need to have an attack of 3 to really have a chance at defeating it, and even then it depends on how the dice fall. If they have a defense of 3 you need a 5 to have a good chance, etc. If your opponents defense is 4 (which I imagine will only be very powerful creatures) you will need a 6. The gap widens as values get higher. Attack/defense values will need to reflect that.

If I understand the rules correctly you will have to go through 7-15 turns before you can play your strongest cards? That seems messed up! I want to have smothered my opponent by turn 15! How long does this game typically take?

Do you have enough cards to make test decks with?

It's been a couple of weeks since your last post here, have you had a chance to make the test decks or do any playtesting?

[nickyinprogress]

Currently making a test deck (with simple cards and mechanics), but progress will definitely be slow on the count of other actual work to be done and the fact that I just spend 4 nights freezing camping up a mountain.

Because making CCGs are new to me, issues like this don't really come to mind. Never considered the speed of playing strong cards, though that has been fixed. Will tell about it later, right now I gotta sleep and thaw my feet XD

[aardvark]

Awesomesauce. Love the idea and especially the template. I hear so many people whining about how cards look "just like" Magic on the Geek when someone is designing a new game. No one can dare make that complaint here. It looks really good. (And makes me really jealous. Wish I could come up with that.)

[nickyinprogress]

Like I said, I was in the mountains for half a week and I've done some thinking (in addition to all the other comments). A few changes:

1. I returned to the original story of Mad Scientists, in which two villains (or villain groups) have moved in next to each other. Obviously, each tries to kill the other.
2. More of an aesthetic change, the level-up powerups become parts of the villain's tower. Same mechanic really, use resources to play it permanently. Perhaps though, separate this into a separate deck.
3. Remove harsh penalty of playing half creatures, but adding rewards to fusing. Lots of effects will trigger at certain combinations

I was thinking way to complicatedly, which is why I barely have any cards for testing. Lemme fix that right now.

EDIT: I forgot to mention. Yes, progress will be slower than a snail's pace. Uber-busy, and I can't show what I already have cause my notes are really messy XD

[Dabem]

I praise your reply to your critiques.

You resolved not only some of my issues with the game but those of some of the others.

It actually makes sense that some rewards would trigger with certain combos, since some creatures would be more suited for battle than others. I would also recommend having some with generic rewards for fusing. For firstborn above you could do something like 'this is effect is ignored when firstborn is fused with a level 1 or higher creature.' That's way too wordy but I think you get what I mean.

[Typherion]

I was just thinking some more about combining cards visually. This is probably completely unrealistic to do without the support of a big company, but I think you could check out Redakai. http://redakai.co.uk/go/redakai/game

It's a game targetted at young children, but they have this cool system where the cards are transparent and you lay them on top of one another. For example, there are 3 different colours of attack cards, and you put an attack on top of the character to check if it beats the character's defense against that colour, and which zone it damages on the character.

Also, the cards are holographic so when you put an attack on top of a character it makes it look like the fireball or whatever is affecting the character.

Like I said, it's an unrealistic idea but it might be something interesting to think about.

[Kevashim]

Regarding the challenge faced in ensuring a reasonably playable starting hand. Perhaps consider an adjustment to the first turn card draw.

Instead of

"both players shuffle their decks thoroughly and draw 5 cards from the top. If a player is not satisfied with the initial hand, they may return their hand the deck, shuffle and draw a new hand with one less card than his original."

how about using instead

"both players shuffle their decks thoroughly and draw 5 cards from the top. Each player may then select and discard any number of cards, redrawing from the top of their deck afterwards until they have 5 cards again. They may only do this once."

This helps to ensure that each player has a decent starting hand. Players are immediately penalised for discarding and redrawing in this way as the win/loss condition is by decking out. Effectively a player is sacrificing "health" and some mid/late game cards in order to get a better starting position for themselves.