Siege SCG

[innuendo]

If you've been around here for a while this is take two of my game on lackey.  Last time I launched I severely underestimated how much time it takes to raise a newborn.  Lesson learned and the kid is growing up fast so we are ready to try this again.

Siege is a strategy and tactics focused card game set in antiquity where ancient empires battle for control of the known world.  Very much ground in reality the game focuses on tactics and careful incremental advantage instead of overpowered instant win cards or silly non interactive combo decks that plague other games.

In order to better schedule times to play as well as discuss the game in full we've set up forums at: https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/siegescg/index.php which if you are interested I encourage you to at least sign up and see what we do.  The forums are new but we're actively getting new players (they are just the lazy type of people who don't sign up for forums, don't be those people ) and we'll be setting up some playtesting via lackey starting as soon as you want it to.  I've attached a sample image for you just to get an idea what a card will look like, No art because if we decide to go to print I want to make sure all the art I use is licensed fully for that purpose and that takes a lot of time and effort we've spent instead on improving the game.

Hope to see you guys there!

[Dragoon]

Cards look pretty interesting, but I have a few hints here.

1. Use icons instead of words. Makes it easier to look at the card.
2. Remove the : at salary, also move keywords up in the text box.
3. Use icons with the attack/defense. It's hard to say what the numbers mean right now.

So far, this is all I could find. I will sign up on the forums. The game looks promising.

[innuendo]

1.) Icons create memory issues for new players since they would require a glossary of card icons and meaning to be kept with the player or shipped with new packs.  If there were a small handful of effects it would be much more likely that we would do this (VS system comes to mind with their symbols for flying and ranged), but the only things I can think of symbolizing is Attack and Armor and at this point while it's a possibility I would have to find some dang good symbol art for it otherwise it will look just like portal from magic and I didn't want to rip that nor did I particularly like how it looked.  It's something we've definitely talked about though.

2a.) The colon is there because it's possible for a salary to not be symbolized after that.  as in "Salary: Retire a select friendly leader" or something to that effect.  That hasn't been implemented yet but the keyword is formatted in such a way to allow for that possibility down the road.  Again it's something we've toyed with and then decided against.

2b.) There are several categories of keywords.  Most keywords are first in the card's text (see: Phalanx), Salary and two other keywords are classified as resource keywords and since they impact a separate phase of the game a design decision was made to move them to the end of the card.  It makes scanning your table easier during the resource phase (Where you pay salaries) to quickly ID how much you need to pay.  If we put it at the top of the card it would be competing with space for other keywords and could get lost on the table.  So in general we have done this for all keywords, they come first in alphabetical order.  However the resource keywords that impact only the resource phase of the game were separated for clarity and I think the distinction helps make the game easier to play.  I couldn't agree more though that keywords do need separated, it's just we have two categories to separate

3.) See answer 1, it is by far the most confusing part of the card, but it's a minor learning hurdle for most new players though so unless it really adds to the way the cards look (which from a design standpoint I wanted very simple card templates as you can probably see) it will be left out.  I'm open to the idea but it has to look nice and fit the card aesthetic for it to be added.

I hope you do sign up though, new players bring very good ideas to the table like these and I really appreciate the feedback.

[xchokeholdx]

some comments:

? the card type is sometimes not readable. Either lighten the background for dark text, or darken the background for light text. Maybe a drop shadow or outline around the text can set it apart enough te be readable.

? whatever happened to the "." at the end of a sentence? this will create rules questions.

? For a first set, there are too many keywords on cards. Just stick to one and 2. Trust me, people will turn away from games where they need to remember too many keywords (even if you place reminder texts on cards).

? Card costs. why does this need to be in the art? there is PLENTY of room on the cards to place it outside the art box.
What happens if you place a pretty chaotic (busy) art in the card? right, the card's cost won?t be visible anymore.
this is all moot of course if you never plan on using art...

Can you link me to the rules?

The template looks very nice overall, and I can?t wait to read the rules.

[innuendo]

I like lists of things to talk about

The card type line on leader cards is an issue.  I would prefer the font to be white there but the glare in that section makes it impossible or you get the same problem reversed.  It's on our list of things to fix but I have to get the time to go back and edit that image and that takes time.  It's very high on our "stuff to do" list though.

The period was an early design decision I made.  I didn't like run on paragraphs on cards so long effects that would normally require a period are split up by line breaks into their relevant parts.  It gives us some flexibility and readability that some of the effects in magic are hard to parse (especially split effects, for examples "you may do this -> if you do, [effect 1], if you don't [effect 2]").  The lack of periods still isn't required but it's just a design choice.  It hasn't limited readability yet and the extra line breaks have really helped.  I figure we could do both but it gets redundant to line break and use periods, just wastes card space with little dots (I'm not being 100% serious here, it wastes no space really, but I just prefer the way it looks and since the line breaks do the work of the periods by adding readability we chose to leave periods out)

You are looking at the legendary cards so they are the top tier rarity wise and in general more complex.  Plus It's worth pointing out this is not meant to be an everyman's card game, it is very much for the experienced card player and the cards and mechanics are tuned to that end.  Now I'm not saying we wont try to make attempts to make the game easier to play and as I've pointed out before I think about memory issues a lot for players with things like symbols and the like.  We've even cut several layers of complexity off the game in order to get to this point.  So we've moved a lot that way but the card's themselves really need keywords.  They are almost like creature types in magic in a sense that they define the cards.  In magic you have effects that specify goblins or wizards very commonly and effects that specify trampling creatures very rarely.  Siege does it a little different where each army you have that is keyworded is an army of that keyword type.  Now unlike magic they aren't just arbitrarily a goblin and unless you run other goblin cards it doesn't matter.  The types of armies in siege change how they play and are used.  For a while we even sub-typed them "army - ranged" or "army - mounted" but that was HUGE memory issues unless we just reminder texted every card which at that point we might as well have keywords.  So in general keywords are common but not to the point where I think we've over saturated the set.  Plus there is a strong influence in siege to build keyword centric decks since they do interact so well, this will actually help players identify cards that work together much the same way creature types do in magic. 

As for cost over art it was templated that way to give the name extra space on the top of the card without having a huge top bar to fit the cost in.  In general though I've put some different art in cards and they all look good with the cost there in terms of legibility for the cost.  The big symbols help that and were intentional, as well as the black outline of every icon.  That said if a particular piece of art is too busy up there all it takes is a quick trip to photoshop to darken or fade out that corner of the art and problem solved.  This also isn't uncommon for card games to do, see futureshifted templates in magic.

A link to the rules can be found on the forums here: Rules Topic

[Trevor]

The templates look pretty decent, but I have a few suggestions. You should really try to make the game text in black, and tweak the background colors to give good contrast. The white game text doesn't look as good because it doesn't give enough contrast. And you don't want to make the game text box so dark that it does.

The unit card has 2 and 3 as stats. There should be an icon behind them or next to them to show what they mean. CHeck out decipher's LOTR for a good example.

Your types and subtypes line should be self contained with a border.

I think it's kind of a shame to have your icons eclipsing the card art so much.

Your current textures are decent, but they are also a bit hum-drum looking. You should add more flare. Take a look at Decipher's LOTR cards to get a good example of adding flavor to the card design.


Make sure you use a font that would look nice when scaled. As a good test, scale your card to a width of 200 pixels. If you have trouble reading anything, you have a problem and need to redesign things. I suggest Times because it was designed to look good, but be very economical with space. Your reminder text italics font is obtrusively stylized. Avoid the temptation to use stylized fonts. The decreased clarity is not worth the modicum of extra flavor. There are better ways to get flavor.

The same goes for cost icons. You may find that greatly simplifying and making them more abstract makes them more iconic, and ultimately more useful. Take a look at the really simplified icons magic uses on cards like this:


Maybe you can get some ideas from my sample template.

That is from http://www.lackeyccg.com/ccgdesign.html.


Your posted images have yucky compression artifacts. Save them as decent quality jpgs.

[innuendo]

Hey I'll just be honest the templating and the style choices of the cards are really secondary to the gameplay...I would be much more interested in getting feedback on the game itself rather than talk about style choices we made for the template.  Not that I don't mind getting feedback on the template it's just not what I design cards for

[Dragoon]

Ah, you want comments on the game, say that beforehand 

Rule points:
- I like that you changed the term turn, but I dislike that it is season. Each season has other things happening. I recommand changing it to years and using seasons for steps.
- Why does the morale of the besieged decrease as fast as the morale of the besieger?
- I disagree with dealing wounds when morale is 0. Use a modifier for attack/defense instead.

[picks-at-flies]

Considering where I know Innuendo from, I find this thread hilarious so far :p

Innuendo:  I'll see you on your Siege forums.

[innuendo]

Picks hopefully we can find some time to play!

@Dragoon: The rules for laying siege have gone through a lot of phases since we thought of the idea.  At first it was a strict 4 season limit for the attacker (the attacker always lost), Only the defending player had Morale (the attacker always won), to now this where each player has morale and it works very well in the testing we've done (But my gosh does it need more).

It works very well since historically both the army laying siege and the army under siege had to worry about keeping spirits high on long sieges.  The attackers were far from home in filthy camps, the defenders were constantly on the verge of losing their homes.  If morale slips on either side, either by combat or by other means (cards with morale effects for example), the impacts to that army are huge.

Originally we had it where if you're Morale was 0 it was an auto lose.  Either the siege was lifted or the game was over.  That proved too decisive and too easy to manipulate.  These current rules work great since it allows us as designers more freedom to design cards, otherwise we would have to worry about some "perfect storm" or cards that took morale to 0 in an instant and then it would be GG every time.  As well as this it allows more deck types to be born.  Otherwise defensive decks always had to have a morale answer, now they don't and can instead work within the confines of wounds.

The reasons wounds were chosen were many.  It easily fits the themes in siege, lines up nicely with rations and other "upkeep" effects for how armies are treated if they aren't taken care of, and it wasn't too much of an auto lose (there are plenty of ways to deal with wounds on your armies, not so many to deal with attack or armor loss).  The wounds from a flavor standpoint are easy and I think if you went through the cards you would see this, not all wounds are "combat wounds" so to speak.  Some wounds are wounds of attrition where an army is just worn down.  Some wounds are even used to represent forces fleeing from the ranks (as in this case).  Basically if Morale is down you get a lot of deserters, which is very much in line with history.

All in all we've been really pleased with how this has tested and we've tried a LOT of different things to come up with the current version.  Now if more testing proves otherwise then we'll have to change it of course, and that's why We've been trying to get new players into the game.

[innuendo]

A little bump to say we've released the first version of our plugin in handy updatelist form at

http://siegescg.angelfire.com/siegescg/updatelist.txt

And we are still at the forums linked above.  I'm here most mornings and would love to teach/play with anyone.  Let me know if anyone would like to learn.

[Cyrus]

I'm pretty busy this week with work and my own game stuff but I could probably find some time to learn and play this, it looks fun.

[Dragoon]

I will take a look. I have a 3-month holiday to burn, so I have the time...

EDIT: Downloaded the plugin. Card type is VERY HARD to read. Please fix this.

[moselekm]

I wish I had come to this forum earlier; while being a long term Lackey fan, I feel ashamed.  I'd be all about throwing down some hours to learn and play this game, but my little shindig has be bogged down.  But definitely afterward.  After reading briefly it looks like a cool civilization-esque game.  Or maybe Total War would be better to compare to.  Either way, looks great.

[innuendo]

Well absolutely would love to play.  Let me know at our forums or here when you're available and we'll make it happen!