Card Game: Special Abilities One – Castle Powers

Here’s where we are:

• Players battle by playing cards against one another. The highest card wins unless the same suit is played in which case the lowest wins.
• The value of cards can be modified if conditions are met.
• Battle is for control of the playing field represented by neutral cards.
• There are three ways to win, control all neutral cards either by winning battles for them or by replacing them with matching cards, or else by having your opponent run out of cards before you do.
• I’m trying to establish a game with a strategic depth that players can expand on. This involves making competing strategies that will never really come to dominate the entire game.
• Each suit and potentially card type is going to receive some sort of benefit that makes playing it unique. This will alter the game’s experience and allow for strategies to develop. But these bonuses must be carefully balanced against one another in order for the game to actually work.

Alterations to the ruleset:

• Setup: Players divide the deck equally between them and shuffle their own decks. They then take turns dealing and placing land cards one at a time until the agreed upon limit is reached. Next, each player, in turn, draws a set number of cards to their hand and places one to be their castle and draws a card to their hand. After all castles are set they place their general card and draw a card to their hand. After both generals are in place the first battle takes place. (I’m shifting to a more generic tone as it will make changing one section of the rules much easier and avoiding the specifics means that the same rules can be used for any number of players, lands, or cards in hand. I’m also thinking of changing around how many cards each person gets to hold from five at one time to four. This makes finding any particular card difficult and, so, should put a character in the defensive position at a disadvantage – something I like from a design standpoint because by being able to react to a single card from their entire hand they have a much better chance of having the right threat, so to speak. Likewise, restricting the number of cards in hand at the beginning of play when players are picking out their castle and general means they’ll have less chance of finding the “perfect” card – the one that’s going to be unbeatable. I’m also reconsidering how many land cards there are because my limited play testing shows that with only the four battles are very quick and getting to the point where someone’s cards are exhausted is rare. More battle fronts means more chances for people to claw back into things. But these are all the sorts of things that need a lot of games run to see if they’re going to work or not, I think.)
• Castle Bonus: When a non-face card from a particular suit is played as castle it provides a bonus to the player. (And exactly what we’ll get to in a bit. I can introduce the “no face cards” rule here in a sneaky way, too, by making it so that a face card – A,K,Q,J – provides no benefit while other cards do. Not only does it create a reason for my arbitrary decree and hand the choice to my players – it also creates a situation for a potential 5th strategy to develop. At the moment it’s a null strategy, as far as I can tell, but perhaps down the line there can be effects and abilities that are dependent on not having a castle bonus. But just because I can’t see a point to not playing a castle bonus doesn’t mean my players won’t. So, they get the option and the avenue to explore just in case it might turn out that there’s a good reason to do so.).

If you’ll remember from last time I decided that in order to create a game with more than one strategy for playing it I was going to have to expand past the rules I already have. By using the model of an MMO, I came up with the idea of having classes and special abilities – the things that make playing a mage, say, different from a bowman and from a warrior. And, of course, since I’m using the standard deck of playing cards, then those traits can map to suits and card values. Eventually I’ll want to come up with a variety of special abilities for my cards depending on where and how they’re played but that’s a big job and each new mechanic I introduce will impact all the others so I’m going to start small and build from there. So, the first thing I did was to figure out the “flavor” I wanted each suit to have. There are more cards of a given suit than of a given value so by starting there the basic underlying strategies that will push and pull over how to play my little game can find their natural partners. Each of those strategies – because I can see four of them at present – were mapped to each of the four suits as follows: Clubs – Offensive. Hearts – Defensive. Spades – Countering. Diamonds – Resourceful. And from that, through that, and because of that I managed to create a guideline about just how I’d like each suit to play when used in game. This, hopefully, will guide me through creating any bonuses that use these card as well as creating the design space needed to fit other abilities not tied to suits into the four cornered map I’m drawing (working on it at the moment, as soon as I have it I’ll post it for you to see, of course) with each suit bordering on the others. Because while they’ll be distinct each strategy can be complimentary to a few others so that players can use not just one but mix and match several depending on the cards in their hand (and later on, the construction of their deck but we’re starting with everyone having the same basic resources to tap and trying to make the most of them in their own unique way).

So, since I’m trying to start small the natural place to begin adding such bonuses into my game is through the castle cards and the pervasive, game altering effects that I want them to provide. Castle cards are the only card that a player will play that they can’t touch or otherwise affect in some way (Maybe. I have an idea or two about that but we’ll leave it aside for now). Because of that I feel they’re a good place for constant enchantments, if you will, of all the other cards a player will use – the ones that can be highly variable and fluid depending on the game. That way picking out a castle becomes a player declaring – in part – which strategy they’ll be trying to employ. It might not work out because of the hands they’re dealt but reacting to that chance and trying to figure out the best way to get what you have to do what you want is going to be a large part of the challenge involved in playing the game – and I, for one, think that should be fun (The idea of limiting resources spurring you on to greater creativity is one I’m fond of, after all). Placing the castle, then, can be analogous to choosing your race in an MMO. That opens up, generally speaking, the classes and abilities you’ll be able to use. And most of them provide some small but non-trivial benefit for being a member of that race – even if it’s only “cosmetic” in that you get to look like how you’d like. Now this is a wide-reaching effect, true, but it also should be, I think, a small one. Because that castle/class ability is going to be one that no one can touch and it’s going to be one that influences everything else. Making it amazingly powerful makes for poor design because in terms of my game “power” means the ability to create statistical advantages that increase your chances to win. Your opponent’s power is going to decrease your ability to claim victory. So each time an ability gets used it creates a measurable swing in the flow of the game. If an ability is incredibly powerful it can not just affect the probability but dictate it – I want to avoid a case where a player can just play a card at any point and just flat out win the game because that’s not fun. Finding the right card for the right moment, now that’s fun. Except in rare circumstances, of course. So the greater a chance an ability gives someone to win the less often I want it to happen – the narrower the scope that it can be used to win the game the less often it will happen and, conversely, the more powerful I can allow that effect to be. But the opposite is also true because effects that are happening all the time should only be building up small but significant advantages for the player. Either to oppose their opponent’s advantages or to capitalize on their own.

So, simply put because castle bonuses are going to be “always on” they can’t be too amazing or else they’ll break the game. The way to make sure no one ability doesn’t get too strong is to make sure that each suit’s ability is roughly equivalent to the other. Now, as I’ve said before perfect balance is an illusion – you can get closer and closer to it but you’ll never reach it. Not in a game with as many scenarios and exceptions and circumstances as I’m building. So there will be times when one castle’s bonus will be much better than the others. I’m fine with that, of course, just so long as those times don’t happen too often. Working to create the situation where your basic strategy – which your castle bonus should encompass – gives you a decisive advantage is what I’d like players to be doing. So, not everything has to be perfect here but they just have to be within spitting distance of each other especially if the abilities cover different aspects of the game. Even I’m not sure just what’s going to be important to players and what’s not – I have a rough idea but until this game gets played and discussed by people who are going to be much less kind and careful with it than I am it’s impossible to say for certain where the surprises are.

So, anyways, what I’m looking to do here is to have some bonus that’s going to crop up time and time again for a player. Doesn’t have to happen all the time (As, again, by limiting the situations in which it occurs I can notch up the power of the effect a bit). To decided what each suit’s castle power will be, I’m going to refer back to the design notes I created for each suit. I’ll start with Clubs because they’re the simplest to figure out.

Clubs will be offensive and constantly on the attack.

Clubs want to beat up their opponent. It’s just that simple. They want to crush them and smack them over the head until they can’t get up any more. They’re all about brute force and raw power. They typify the strategy of Offense, after all. So the thing to do is give them an advantage when they go on the offense. In my game exactly which player is attacking which – and how – depends. But, well, this is going to be a simple suit with simple need that likes a simple mechanic. Not basic but easy to understand. So, the simplest place where people can be considered to be “on the attack” is when they lay down an army card to “attack”. Clubs will have a bonus in that situation.

How exactly, they’ll get that bonus is a problem though as I can see a few options. But again I’m going to stick with the simplest answer. Although in some cases having a higher value in a battle is a bad thing (thanks to the ability of someone to undercut your stack with a lower card value of the same suit) in most cases it should be the highest value that has the strongest attack. So, Clubs will get an increase to their attacking power by gaining a bonus to their attack values. All of them. Any time they lay down a card to attack they’ll get an increase – a buff, if you will – to their attack value. But only, and I stress this, on the attack. When they’re on the defense their cards have their normal values. Their bonus will only work when they attack and not all the time (We’ll see why that’s important when we get to Hearts).

Again, it’s how exactly I’m going to give them that numeric bonus that’s the issue. And again I’ll stick with the obvious solution. The castle that each player will place will be a numbered card – if they want a bonus, anyway – so to avoid any fancy math I’ll just have the value of that castle add to the total value of a players cards when they’re on the attack. I already have this mechanism in game in the ability of cards of like suits and values to stack and add their values – the castle bonus would just be laid on top of this and push the maximum attack value as high as 50 (with a 10C as base and a stack of four 10s). So, here it is: Castle bonus: Club: When you attack the number value of your castle card is added to your total value in addition to any other stacking or other bonuses.

That’s pretty strong but since it’ll only happen half the time it’s not so bad. Especially when I have a natural balancing mechanism in Hearts:

Hearts will be defensive and the hardest to finish off.

So, if Clubs are about beating someone up then Hearts are about not getting beat up. They’re Defense. And offense and defense form a natural opposition. So, the logical thing to do here is to have the Heart castle bonus mirror that of the Club. Every time someone attacks someone defends so if there’s a bonus to attacking there can (and should) also be a bonus to defending. Castle bonus: Heart: When you defend the number value of your castle card is added to your total value in addition to any other stacking or other bonuses.

So that raises the maximum cap on defending to 50 which equals the maximum attacking value. I’m a little concerned about that because, in most cases, I want the offense to have the advantage of the defense. It just keeps the game moving for everyone. I already hae an answer for this in-game because in the event of a tie, the winner of a battle goes to the attacking side – the defender doesn’t need to get the same value as the attacker they need to get one higher but they can’t do that at the cap. But I’m suspecting that because of the way I have things set up otherwise that the defender will be at an advantage over the attacker in most cases. Letting them match the attacking bonus exactly might tip things even further in their favor. So I might want to lower that value a bit. I’m trying to keep things simple, though, and anything I’d do – half the castle’s value, subtract 5 from it, maybe - would give players another bit of math to keep track of and introduce more complexity. “Your bonus is equal to your castle” is nice and plain and simple and, I’d hope, easy to remember.

Still, I can do something to limit the power of the defending bonus. In fact, I’ve already done so. Because I’ve said “when you defend your castle’s value is added” not “when you defend you *may add your castle’s value”. It’s not an optional bonus it’s one that’s constant whether you need it or not. And, of course, whether you want it or not. When you play the same suit as your opponent, after all, then it becomes the lowest value that wins. Adding your castle’s value is going to push your value up no matter what card you play. Even using the lowest valued card – a Jack which counts for 0 – you get your castle’s value. If you have a 10 of Hearts as your castle and you , then you’ve played a 10 so if your opponent has played any heart less than that – and there are many – then they’ve won (so a lower card as your base might make sense). Hearts can protect against other suits but their weakness will be against their own suit. This works for the Club bonus as well and will make it easier for a defender to counter the larger it gets – they simply have to play any lower Club value in defense and that gets easier the larger the value of the stack gets. So, not only do these two bonuses oppose each other but they have their own built in release valves to prevent them from spiraling out of control.

Now, let’s move onto Diamonds:

Diamonds will concern themselves with hoarding resources and using them to draw the game out.

Now, here’s where we get into some other elements of the game. The battle mechanisms are obviously important but those are well covered by Clubs and Hearts. What’s been untouched is what happens after a battle. After winning a battle a player gains control of a piece of land and brings themselves closer to victory. But from what I’ve done so far after a battle is won a player also has a choice to keep the board the way it is or to change things around. The armies they’ll be using will change anyway but they have a chance to change their general, the land card, or both at the same time. They’ll also “seize” their opponent’s failed army to use in that process. To encourage people to alter things I have it set up so that if they make a switch they’ll put the two cards they’ll “own” – their army and their opponent’s or the cards they’ve swapped with those – back into their draw pile. Otherwise, they go to the discard pile where they’re out of the game. Leaving things the way they are, what I call controlling, shortens your draw pile. While changing them, what I call capturing, gives you another card to eventually draw, should the battle get that far. And if you have more cards than your opponent you’ll win when they eventually run out. So, whether a card is discarded or reshuffled, so to speak, can be an advantage. And since reshuffling is going to extend the time you’ll play I think it’s there that I want to concentrate the Diamond’s castle ability.

Cards and the ability to draw them have long been considered a resource in TCGs. You’ll find any number of cards in any number of games that let you draw more cards or even specific cards from your deck somehow and someway. But drawing more cards tends to shorten the game rather than extend it. I want Diamonds to be the class, so to speak, that plays with resources not the tempo of the game (Spades are going to do that and I want Diamonds to be somewhat opposed to Spades, conceptually anyway) so what I want Diamonds to be doing is to extend their game – or their hand - so that they’ll be able to have longer to find a solution to their opponent’s actions. They’re in it for the long haul, so to speak, so letting them not draw more cards right away but letting them draw cards later on by shuffling them into their draw pile makes sense. It won’t pay off right away but as the game wears down and their draw pile gets larger while their opponent’s dwindles then they’ll be at a significant advantage. One they’ve built up over the course of the game. And that’s exactly what I’m looking for, so: Castle bonus: Diamond: When you control land after a battle place one card in your possession at the bottom of your draw pile and the other in the discard pile instead of discarding both.

It’s a subtle effect and, I’m guessing, probably underpowered but I can figure out how to crank it up later. The general idea is that the choice between controlling and capturing is less of a dilemma for the Diamond player – they get something added to their draw pile either way. If they capture then they gain another potential turn. But if they control they don’t lose one. As long as they can keep winning even half the battles they’ll eventually bleed their opponent dry. But it won’t help them to win any battles in and of itself (except indirectly by continuously limiting their opponent’s options). So they’ll be tougher to put out of the game not because they’ll attack or defend better but through other ways. I’ll live with that for now until I can figure out a better way of drawing cards without speeding up the game.

Now, we turn to the last suit. The one I’ve held off on because it’s where I’m going to get wacky:

Spades will be about twisting the rules to the advantage of the player and using that to end the game quickly

Twisting the rules there reads, to me, as a counter strategy. When the Spade player stumbles across a problem they can slant things in their favor if only momentarily. I want them to oppose the slow and steady Diamond player so they’re going to be fast and furious. They’ll either win or lose quickly but either way they’re going to make a big splash doing so. If you’ll remember that means they’ll be the suit that’s capable of making the biggest swings in play but also the one who’ll have the hardest time finding a place to use those splashy effects to the best effect. They’ll be narrow in scope but extreme in result, making them perfect for a suit that’s going to counter the abilities of others. It’s a bit hard to prove but simply put counters have to be noticeably better than what they’re countering for people to play them. Because they’re only good in the situation where they’re needed to counter what they specifically counter then they can only be used there. So, because they might be wasted they have to do a lot of work when they actually are useful or else there’s no point to them.

Without altering the basic game rules too much there’s one place I can see that I haven’t touched on but is still available for a big, splashy effect: land. Each battle is over control of land and, up until now, the attacker has declared what land the players will be fighting over before the defender gets to respond. This puts the defender at an advantage because they’ll know the land card and can use it to stack and they’ll know the attacking card and know which value they’ll have to beat. But they’ll also know the stakes of the battle. If, say, the land is one that their opponent already has and they have no card that can beat their opponent’s then they have to burn a card away (or else, under the rules, they’ll lose – the game’s over when one player can’t or won’t, really, make a play and the other one wins) so they’ll get to pick which card they’ll throw away based on the rest of the battlefield and they can use that to their advantage. Not against a Spade player, though. Castle bonus: Spade: When you win a battle you may choose any revealed land card to capture or control not just the one where the battle has just taken place.

Now, what this means is that although at first the land cards are face down and won’t be affected by this ability after a few rounds they will be and the Spade player can pick and choose his battles *without letting the other player know where the battle is. And, since I’m going for uptempo here, they’ll be able to find one or more pieces of land where they have an advantage and just batter away until they control all the land and win (Or swap that last crucial card that will give them a conversion – all lands of the same suit or value – which will also win the game, just in one fell swoop) unlike a normal player who has to fight each battle on different and potentially unfriendly ground. Since this will be all but useless during the first few turns when the land cards are hidden I suspect that a lot of people will overlook just how powerful it can be – it’s going to gain in importance in the mid to late game. It won’t single handed win games but it should make for some extremely wild swings. Enough so your opponent’s carefully laid plans will be ruined in an instant. That’s exactly what I’m looking for here. The Spade player is going to be tricky and subversive by changing the rules around.

So, to sum up:

• Castle Bonus: Face cards do not provide a castle bonus. When a non-face card is placed as a player’s castle it provides a bonus ability depending on that card’s suit.
• Castle bonus: Heart: When you defend the number value of your castle card is added to your total value in addition to any other stacking or other bonuses.
• Castle bonus: Club: When you attack the number value of your castle card is added to your total value in addition to any other stacking or other bonuses.
• Castle bonus: Diamond: When you control land after a battle place one card in your possession at the bottom of your draw pile and the other in the discard pile instead of discarding both.
• Castle bonus: Spade: When you win a battle you may choose any revealed land card to capture or control not just the one where the battle has just taken place.

The next abilities I’ll add will be to the generals, I believe, although I might add them to land cards instead. But I don’t believe I’ll be placing any on army cards as they’ll be complicated enough thanks to stacking without anything extra.