Game with Multiple Win Conditions

[xchokeholdx]

Multiple win conditions can enhance gameplay, but you have to be very, very careful with it.

If you create a win condition that goes too much outside normal gameplay, it will not only take away interaction, it will force players to include cards in their decks that they do not want. Players should be able to hinder ANY opponent's win condition with a normal deck. Take a look at most of Magic?s win conditions, the more or less all fall inside the normal Magic gameplay. If you can keep it like that, it will surely enhance gameplay, but multiple win conditions will also decrease interaction..

It also depends if multiple win conditions are in the RULES, or on CARDS.

[Cyrus]

I was thinking of having them be in the rules, but with cards to physically represent them so at the beginning of the game you reveal which win condition you're going for.

For my idea for a game, each win condition would involve characters around roughly the same group of locations (how many unique places do they really go in the harry potter movies?)

the only problem is balancing out when both players are playing as "good guys", there might not be a whole lot of "duelling"

Or I might just use a totally different rules set for this unachievable property, lol.

Thanks for all the input

[Alastair]

As I've said previously I think multiple win conditions are important and I dont think you should have to state at the start of the game which win condition you're going for (you wouldnt reveal your objectives to the enemy prior to going to war). In Magic you can win by decking your opponent (forcing them to run out of cards), getting their life points at or below 0 (of which there are multiple ways of doing that), and various other special conditions like poison counters, etc... as well as many ways of defending against such tactics.

[infinitehope]

it would really depend on the mechanics of the card game itself, some lend themselfs to multi-pull win conditions some dont. If the set up for the win condion is possible, but hard, then sure. But make it so that a player could not build a deck where all possible (6?) win condions exist in one deck... unless of course thats what your after...

[Cyrus]

My idea was to have 6 or so win conditions that each had the same amount of steps, need of resources, and specific cards involved, and you'd basically be trying to tune your deck to do just one of those things really well while trying to also have cards that would foil other strategies.

Regardless I don't feel like starting work on another game, haha.
The game I am mainly working on has two win conditions, basically one for aggro and one for control. The "Aggro" or "Point" Victory is a lot like mtgs, each player starts with 30 points that represent their Hold on the area you are fighting over, and if you reduce these points to 0 for your opponent then you win. The "Control" or "Absolute" Victory is acheived by shutting down your opponents ability to Recruit new Units. I'd have to explain the entire rules for the game to explain how that really works, but I think its a good couple of win conditions, seeing as the Absolute Victory really just cuts out the last few turns of the game that the controlling player would need to achieve the point victory, but allows for decks to be fine tuned to achieve one or the other more specifically so it opens up some more deck building strategy.

[Tokimo]

Skipping the last few turns might be frustrating on a close game for an aggro deck since they might have enough in play that they'll pop the control deck before the control deck can pop them in a fight to the death.

[Cyrus]

Skipping the last few turns might be frustrating on a close game for an aggro deck since they might have enough in play that they'll pop the control deck before the control deck can pop them in a fight to the death.

Well, here's some more in-depth rules to explain what I meant.
A player can only Recruit new Units to a Kingdom Location or an Outpost. Kingdom Locations are the three Location cards you start with in play, and Outposts can be set up on other Locations with specific cards and Leader-type Units throughout the game. A Kingdom Location becomes a Besieged Location when an Opponent gains Control of it (has Units there while you do not). It would go back to being a Kingdom Location if you were able to gain Control of it again. A Location loses an Outpost if your Opponent gains Control of it as well.
So a Control deck is really more of a Swarm deck that can protect its swarm in my game. The objective of which would be to Besiege their entire Kingdom and stop them from building any Outposts. If they do manage this rather difficult task, the Opponent would have no Locations to bring in new Recruits to, so rather than playing out the rest of the game without being able to play anything (Units are very important to my game) and slowly dying from your Opponent's Influence (which I will get into in another post sometime) you instead just lose immediately. It is also a design decision to limit the playability of decks that use very few Units. The game should always be about tactical movement and battles between Units, and this encourages that.
Fortunately, this victory condition it is not as easy as dropping three Units and moving them over, because there are three Location Placeholders between you and your opponent's Kingdom Locations that you must move your Units over, and most Units can only move over one space a turn. Also, just because you can lock down one Besieged Location doesn't mean they can't Recruit Units at one of their two remaining Kingdom Locations and get rid of your Units nice and quick with battles.
My idea behind what would be a Control deck is a Deck that utilizes the faster Units in my game (ones that can move more than one space a turn), and cards that somehow prevent the Recruiting of Units at certain Locations for one turn. That way you could move in and take out their first Units while using your carefully placed Action cards to stop them from backing up their Kingdom Locations.
However to stop a winning player from completely dominating once they have an advantage, after every battle there is a Reinforcement Step in which the losing player draws cards equal to half the damage they took during the battle, rounded down.

Wow I really started rambling there, I've just started tweaking the game rules again and I'm pretty excited about it, haha

[Tokimo]

Okay, that sounds like a good time to skip then. In my experience I tend to concede a lot of magic games right after my draw phase when it becomes apparent that nothing I can pull next turn will save me.