PVP - this really ain't your brothers pokemon cards (thread 2.0)

[briggs]

Aloha!

I deleted my previous thread, since it was so out of date, lots of misinformation and stuff...

Contrary to beliefs, dice are a valuable tool in both miniature and card games, they help to provide fairness when it's needed.
In our case, we use dice to resolve combat.
So, before you continue reading, if you have a problem using dice, read no further.

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Currently, this game is categorized as "Pre-production" due to no funding as of yet. Thus, everything you see in this thread is to be considered temporary (especially the artwork, props to the real artists, to whom I shall be giving credit).

What is PVP?
PVP is a brand new kind of card game that uses a similar battle system used by many popular miniature games, but has the depth and strategy of a card game.

I remember something about encounters in your last thread?
Encounters are massive raids, (think world of warcraft). Each encounter comes with a number of bosses, 10 random promo cards and an end-expansion boss fight that can be played with a team of 3, 5 or 10 players.

Ok, time for spoilerers!

the INCREDIBLE artwork was
created by iosifchezan of deviant art

We have a brand new card template, as you can see, (still a work in progress).
We've also included some new mechanics, a point system to prevent overpowered combos is one of them (something we have to be very careful about, since there's no draw deck).

The game play

The game consists of four phases:
1) Power Up: Ready all of your ability cards during this phase.
2) Combat
3) Power Down
4) Combat

Two teams of three players fight it out until one of the teams is victorious. But in order to give it a little bit of fun, both teams are always two phases apart.

While Team A is in their Power Up phase, Team B is in their Power Down phase. Both teams enter a combat phase at the same time.

So the breakdown is this: Your Power Up phase                > Combat phase > Your Power Down phase                > Combat phase, repeat.
                                   Your Opponents Power Down phase > Combat phase > Your Opponents Power Up phase > Combat phase, repeat.

Each team member will control one character and an array of abilities and armor, your team is given a certain number of points to use towards all of the players on your team. You can even add special tokens like Hit, Critical Strike and Spell tokens to give your team a unique advantage. (cards and tokens all cost points).

What tokens do:
It takes 4 Hit Tokens to reduce the required die rolled to hit by 1 (example: you have 4 hit tokens, you only need to roll a 3, 4 or 5 to hit with that dice.)

Same thing with Critical Strike tokens, it takes 4 to reduce the required roll to crit by one (in stead of just a 6, a 5 or 6 will become critical).

How Combat Works
Each player gets a certain number of dice they roll each combat phase. Every roll of 4 or 5 is a hit, and 6 is a critical strike dealing an additional point of damage.

A good example would be a character with 4 attack, 4 hit tokens and 4 critical strike tokens.

You roll 4 dice, you get two 3's, a 5 and a 1. Because of your four hit tokens, the 3's become hits, and thanks to your crit tokens, the 5 crits and does an additional point of damage. You deal 4 points of damage to the other teams Tank.

You use various ability cards to boost your character during combat, this is done by taking turns between teams and players in those teams (Team A is the attacker, Player furthest to the left is player 1 on that team).

To determine which team is the attacker/defender, we use a simple ruling of whoever had the last Power Up phase is the attacker.

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I'm sure I'm forgetting something, so if you have any questions just make a post
Let me know what you think of our new template!

[Dragoon]

Rules, at last!

Wow, card looks very awesome, but I don't see what the 5 in top of it means..

[Tokimo]

The card design is looking pretty good and has me interested. You lose me at the name PVP and the raid bosses, but that's just because of my personal interests and if I had a friend who introduced me to playing against a raid boss I might find I really enjoyed it.

[reelhotgames]

Nice so far. Though how we got from the awesome Starship to this still baffles me...

As for dice, YEAH! Dice are such a great tool when used right, they add an element of fun - excitement, mystery and luck to the game that can really enhance. I am a RISK nut, and as simple as the dice rolling is in RISK for combat, I LOVE it. Always have. Actually felt like the realities of combat in that game - sometimes luck takes the tiny army to victory, sometimes they get wiped out, and sometimes the fight is rough and dirty and both side suffer for it.

I think card games with number match ups lack a little of that fire and random luck - how many times in a movie can the bad guys shoot their guns and miss the good guys, but the good guys have deadly accuracy. Its a conciet to the nature of happenstance, that dice can emulate, so cheers for the bravery in using them! Nicew work so far.

[briggs]

Rules, at last!

Wow, card looks very awesome, but I don't see what the 5 in top of it means..

That is the cards cost. Because we don't use a draw deck, and you start out with all of your cards in play, it's the best way to balance the game to prevent some pretty insane card combos.

Nice so far. Though how we got from the awesome Starship to this still baffles me...

Haha! Yeah, me too

I forgot to link to the big version of the card in my first post! ack! Well here it is, in all of it's glory.

[xchokeholdx]

First, some props:

? Good to finally have some rules to read.
? Sample card looks good, but why not simply let the textbox be in the lower part only, the "overlap" so to speak of the art is not needed. Especially when these cards are your Warriors, not a one time throwaway card.
? Gameplay sounds interesting. As I understand, I need to be on my guard during powering down, and make the right decisions when to attack.

Things I do not like so much and could be improved:
? You can not play this game with LESS than 6 people? wow.. wouldn?t a 1vs1 (with an optional multiplayer rule) be preferable?
? With no draw deck and all cards already in play, would the game not be a matter of looking for the weakest point and exploit it?
? I personally hate games with Dice so I won?t comment on that.

Can?t wait to see more cards and a sample deck to print and test. So far, it looks a bit like Anachronism, which I liked a lot.

Gimmimoar!

[briggs]

You can not play this game with LESS than 6 people? wow.. wouldn?t a 1vs1 (with an optional multiplayer rule) be preferable?,

You will be able to play with 1v1, but each person controlling multiple characters.

And since there is no draw deck, secret hands etc, this game is easily playable with one person alone controlling both teams.

With no draw deck and all cards already in play, would the game not be a matter of looking for the weakest point and exploit it?

This has been, without a doubt, our most challenging feet to overcome. Cause this is a huge problem if not handled right.
We feel that we've finally balanced it all out, between Class specific cards (mages, paladins, knights, rangers etc) and the cost system.

But the dice in combat is what really makes this work, it provides that bit of randomness and luck you would get with a draw deck.

[briggs]

SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!

Today, we will be revealing the Mage Rune (used to be called Abilities) Trees.
Each class has two trees (or strategies) to choose from.

Up first, is the Mages Radiation Tree:
(4) Radiation Poisoning: Combat: Mana (2) > Increase dmg done by Radiation Wave by 1 for each fire token on each enemy until the end of the combat, and then place a fire token on all enemies.
(6) Radiation Wave: Mana +1 Combat: Mana (4) > deal 1 dmg to all enemies. This dmg cannot be absorbed or ignored.
(6) Focused Regeneration: Mana +2 Power Down: Flip this > Gain 1 mana.

Similar to the Fire Tree, Radiation takes awhile for it to build up its power. But then it strikes with a killing blow.
While Radiation is powerful, we felt that the lack of direct damage, and the fact that it does take 7-8 turns to build up those fire tokens, it puts Radiation at a slight weakness. However, this is the Tree to use for pvp.

Next up is the Fire Tree:
(4) Pillar of Fire: Power Down: Mana (3) > Deal 2 dmg to target and place a Fire token on it.
(4) Call of Fire: Power Up: Flip this > Gain X mana, X is the number of fire tokens on all enemies you can spot and then remove those tokens.
(4) Heart Burn: Power Down: Mana (4) > Deal X dmg to target. X is the number of fire tokens on him and then remove those tokens.
(6) Focused Regeneration: Mana +2 Power Down: Flip this > Gain 1 mana.

The Fire tree uses a similar strategy to that of the Radiation tree, however, Fire does have direct damage only. Radiation uses Chain damage.
What's unique about Fire Mages is that they do not do their damage in the Combat phase, rather, in the Power Down phase. This makes healing the massive amount of damage a bit easier.

The concept we had for Fire Mages was that build up of power, then have insane burst damage that might be able to be healed through. And once that burst damage is dealt, you can't do it again for awhile.

The Fire Tree was designed more for Raids rather than pvp, however, it can be deadly in pvp. But we feel that Radiation would do more good because of the massive amount of damage it deals to all enemies at once instead of just one target.

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We'll be posting the Cleric tree some time this week

[Dragoon]

Sounds awesome! However, I find it weird that a mage has a radiation tree.... Just a weird name for a mage tree...

Can you combine these two trees into one? Also, radiation = 16 value(?) and fire = 18 value(?)

[moselekm]

Looks pretty interesting.  Maybe I am just an old Hero-Table-Top fan, but Radiation should just be a debuff tree only.  Unless there is already a committed ability/class to debuffing, Radiation should be the best candidate for it.  And having someone like that on your team seems like a great new tactical element.  Kind of like a Bard, but only debuffs.

[briggs]

You can combine the two trees, yes. But we are still considering changing Fire Tokens to Radiation Tokens for that tree.
The reason we have them as Fire Tokens now is to reduce costs, why have an extra token to print?

Radiation is at 16 right now, but there's a promo rune that comes in the first Raid that costs 2 and is pretty nifty.

There are two classes with Debuff trees (One is called Possession and the other is called Disenchant), it's pretty fun

[moselekm]

Awesome.  I definitely can't wait to see more information released.

Is it at all possible to play the game with less than 3 /heroes/ per team?  Like I understand, as you said, that 2 people can play against one another and simply have control over 3 /heroes/ [decks?].  But it seems like it may get a bit cluttered that way.  Is there a reason 3 was chosen per team?  Game length, mechanics, etc?

[briggs]

Mechanics and length for sure, you have to have one healer, one tank and at least one damage dealer. Otherwise the game would just go on way too long.

[moselekm]

I forgot to ask.  Do you have a website with updated information of how the card game is coming along?

[briggs]

No website yet, we're waiting on finding some financial backing before we do much more with the game.