I really would not bother too much right now with the design of the cards (e.g. Cost-wise). Maybe the final rules don´t ask for an extra cost on the card, or needs 4 more, etc..

I think the best way to handle that is when you get to that bridge. The basic card design looks very good right now, so I would leave it at that. when the Final rules are there, then you´ll know exactly what your cards need and the great puzzle can begin.

As to comment on the cards above, I really like the cards with the 2 “bars” at the side.

Have you tried to create color variances in the background to distinguish between card types? I think it could be a way to help players creating decks and to increase the overview of the cards you have in hand.

As for the logos,

Elves – green, leaf
Mermaid – blueish Trident
Order of Dawn – Yellow to brown fading Sun or moon. (half circle)
–
Loyalists: Red, shield
Knalgans: Purple crooked hand, allthough this could be exchanged with the Undead one..
–
Undead: black, withered heart (not comic style heart, but real human one)
drake: brown, profile of lizard-like face
Northerners: White/silver, Horned helmet

Would be my take on it, as you are dangerously close to “magic” territory here, and a lot of players would immediately scream “ripoff” at the very first sing of a Blue waterdrop icon on a merfolk card.. and immidiately compare your creation with the mothership…

As I said, I haven’t read the rules, but I did want to make a comment about how easily a system where I choose who I attack and fights are always 1 v 1 becomes a simple arms race to the biggest creature.

Agree on that one, hence,in the most recent rules I work on, I don’t use a targeting-system. Instead I go with the MtG way of handling it: Player assignes his attackers, and then opponent his defenders, if any.

My concern is this; while it’s generally less “fiddly” in terms of tracking things, the balance of the game tends to be much more fragile because all combats have relatively large effects on the game board.

Would you mind explaning more about the balance-thing? I don’t follow. *hides in shame*

Only time the outcome of a combat has a really huge impact is if a) you block with a key creature to your strategy and you get it killed. If so, why did you risk blocking with it? ; ) b) You don’t block, and a really huge opposing creature does massive damage to you. Then again, for the other player to ever have such a super-attack dealing creature in play he’d need to have paid for it… and in that process he sacrificed other things he could have done for the gold.

About tokens as life: I have a memory of discussing it somewhere above actually. Drawback, except for the eternal tokenizing, is that such a system will usually require you to move one additional token compared with the system where you place tokens on a creature when it gets wounds: In the token-as-wounds-system a player would never place the last token on the creature – instead he’d discard it. The same can’t be said about the tokens-as-life-system (Yeah, it’s not a huge difference, but what little difference it is, I’d argue it’s a case against it clearly. Or..? Hrm…)

Are you familiar with the CCG Warlord;Saga of the Storm?

Nopes. Sadly I’m only familiar with MtG and DoomTrooper, and due to costs I won’t ever become really familiar with anything else except free CCG:s.

But please do tell. Is it good? What potential do you see in it? And how does it measure up to MtG? If you’re interested in “porting” WTactics into an already existing system I’m all fine with that if you want to do it I’d be happy to set you up.

First; I did catch a bit of back and forth about how the kind of HPless system you are talking about functions in magic. As I said, I haven’t read the rules, but I did want to make a comment about how easily a system where I choose who I attack and fights are always 1 v 1 becomes a simple arms race to the biggest creature. Even breaking it down so 1 large creature can be brought into conflict with many small creatures, the value of that depends on the circumstances in which it happens.
My concern is this; while it’s generally less “fiddly” in terms of tracking things, the balance of the game tends to be much more fragile because all combats have relatively large effects on the game board.

Second, I wanted to suggest some alternate versions of the schemes you’ve already discussed for HP;
Tokens as Life; There are some games where instead of adding tokens as the creature/character takes damage you place tokens equal to its Hit Points on it when it comes into play and then remove them as they take damage.
Similarly, some games use cards (taken from the draw pile, discard pile, hand, or outside of the game, depending on the effect desired) placing them under the cards in game for various reasons; actions taken/available, hp/wounds taken.
Those are some quick variations I saw that you overlooked in your breakdown.

I’m going to be mulling on this game for a bit, thinking about suggestions. Are you familiar with the CCG Warlord;Saga of the Storm?

One thing that comes to mind though, would every one of the 54 cards have to use unique images (only exist 1 time per deck) or do they allow us to have 4 identical cards in the deck?

I think you guys should get the print/development wiki page going, and start collecting info about services etc in it. Would be cool to get the overview we need.

they are China based, but sometimes have crazy deals.

They only print 54 (normal poker deck) cards, but you can fully change the front and back to whatever picture you want.

I still have a coupon in my mail for printing a 54 card deck with whatever design I want for 9,99 US $, INCLUDING S+H.!!!

too bad they don´t do real 60 cards decks, but I guess this is a too good to be deal to give up. I know over at Boardgamegeek and boardgamedesigners forums, there are loads of POD services to choose from.

I personally have not tried any of them, but we should keep an eye out for those to be able to present them to players when the need arise.

I’ve just been waiting with it until there’s a little bit more content in the Wiki on some basic stuff. I think it will be done in the end of summer.

another option would be to have a mix of both worlds:

as you wrote:

It has also been noted that other CCGs usually use HP-Tracking if the attacker chooses the target and don’t use HP-Tracking if the defending player chooses the target. No reasons have been mentioned for this so far.

You can mix this up to get an even better and perhaps more interesting system:

Option A:
• All creatures have 1 HP, and there is no Attacker of Defender status, but players alternate turns assigning creatures to another. (I assign my creature A to your Creature Z, my opponent does the same for his Creature Y to my Creature C, etc..)

this can be expanded of course, by adding rules like: This creature may not be assigned to xxx; This creature must be assigned first/last, etc etc..

This way, players will sometimes (depends of why goes first) be able to take out that important creature, and sometimes be able to protect it by assigning it to a weaker one.

Option B:
• Creatures have different HP (varying from 1-6 for example), and there is no Attacker of Defender status, but players alternate turns assigning creatures to another.

Loser of combat takes a wound token. If wound tokens=life value on card, creature is killed.

This way, we can easily differentiate between stronger and weaker units, but players will still be able (depending who assigns first) to protect/kill the creature of their choice.

Even though I prefer to have creatures with different life point, I think Option A would be the way to go. It makes a cleaner game, and with gametext on cards, we can make sure that Wose is stronger than a goblin:
Wose gametext: Opponents my not assign Goblin creatures to this creature.

I think if you really want to have a successful game, tokens should be kept to a minimum.

Edit by snowdrop: Changed the [quote] tags to < blockquote > (without spacing).