Origins: Game Research & Discovery

Hello Shadow Era fans! This is Razcrux bringing you some personal insight into the walk of the land.

From left to right: Razcrux, Nachochez, Soothslyr and Mojumbo

This is my first solo-post to the Design Team blog, for those of you who do not know me yet, my main function in the Design Team is to develop future cards, oversee the new sets, and develop the various "Styles of Play" of each hero / class / faction.

Basically I come up with new cards, new game-features, and mechanics. To do that one needs to be very aware of the strengths and weaknesses of each class, the current meta, and what the long term vision is 10 sets into the future... (and so forth)

I feel that being good at anything generally requires a lot of learning, continual growth, and an open mind. I probably check out at least 10 new games a week, and read up what I can along the way in different places (blogs, games, forums) and stay up to date on our Shadow Era community forums (especially, but not limited to, the card suggestion threads, PFG forum, etc.).

It was really spectacular to see all the cards printed, the huge posters of art at the event and all of the positive responces we were getting at the fair. The card quality is huge, people loved the game, and it translated very well into the physical games. Every day we had a tournament, and on each day the number of people who showed up to play in the booster draft nearly doubled.

I really think everyone is going to be very pleased with the absolute high premium quality of the product, foils and cards. No corners cut here! (except on the cards which have nice little round ones)

(We had probably the best visual presentation of any booth)

(here is a Shadow Era booster draft tournament I got to oversee, people in the photo are sweating as they unpack cards to build their killer decks!)
 

(...And some random fans posing as Jasmine!)

Game Designer's Paradise

Origins was not only a wonderful way to meet most of the team (Anurak and
GondorianDotCom couldn't make it), the fans, demo the game, and share our passion -- it was also "creative heaven". In-between demoing and running draft tournaments, I got a chance to explore some of the other games on show and to check them out for ideas and inspiration.

I love learning new games and you always generate ideas from exposure. I hope you will enjoy reading some of my observations and quick reviews.

Games with cards, that employ duels:

• P.O.W.E.R. (by CoreGames)
• Summoner Wars (by Plaid Hat)
• Conquest Tactics (by Zeitgeyser)
• Mage wars (by Arcane Wonder)
• Guild Quest (by Omnivers)

 Deck building games:

• Nightfall: Dark Rages (by Alderac Entertainment group)
• Ascension: Storm of Souls (by Gary games)

And some other noteworthy titles:

• Tournay (by Z-man games)
• Sunrise City (by Clever Mojo)

Out of all the duel games, I found it interesting how many of them were trying to fuse a board game with locations, and movement -- with the formula of a good card game. Most of these were not TCGs in the sense that you had to hunt for rares, but instead they were designed such that each set was a complete set of cards aka Living Card games. The fusion with a grid though demands a new term, for lack of a better term (suggestion?) I will refer to this genre as a "Tactical Card Game" or TacCG (not to be confused with TCG... sigh)

Tactical Card Games

P.O.W.E.R.

This game used modern warfare as its theme, and an interesting build-queue system. Cards can be used once, but are then exhausted until you can return them to your base. Combat involved a lot of rock-paper-scissor type interactions as well as careful use of ranges.

I liked the build queue concept, as well as the exhaustion until recovered and returned. I found the lack of dice appealing, and the game play quite chess-like. Like many of these games though I felt that the movement system with cards was clunky and the board-space constricted because of the need to accommodate wide-format cards. The level of detail on each card was semi-complex, though the lack of damage tracking was certainly appealing. Personally I'm not a huge fan of modern warfare photography, but someone else might love the subject.

I haven't been able to find a weblink to this game, sadly, so if anyone knows the link I'd be happy to include it. The creator of game swung past our booth, loved the art, and walked away with a pack of Shadow Era. If and when I do finally get the link to his game sorted, fans of modern warfare should at least check it out.

Summoner Wars

Summoner Wars, like P.O.W.E.R. uses a board to control the position of your cards, and some light-deck building options. Though in principle it is not a TCG since each deck comes complete and ready to play.

You use dice here and each card has only one special ability. The complexity was medium-low and certainly the simplest of all the games I tried in this genre (maybe too simple?). There were quite a lot of factions to play with, which I found quite nice (I think more than a dozen).

You can only recruit from wall cards, which also happen to be the only form of terrain in the game. I found the use of "walls" to represent your home base a bit weird (why not use a nice picture of a village instead?), and I also kinda wished there was more terrain than just walls used.

I'm not a huge fan of dice when a game already deals with cards, but the system was clean and straightforward. To me, dice in a game is a very serious decision, and it can become too easy to make a game-clone by just adding lots of dice effects. To a certain extent, adding dice to a game can be a simple short cut for your design process, but may or may not result in a better game from doing so. I did find gameplay somewhat linear, and a bit flat, but this might have just been the demo and first impressions are not always true.

The mechanics that appealed to me in this game was the large diversity of choices, the clear class-wide strengths of each faction (primarily due to the repetition of many similar-types of cards) and the use of "dot symbols" on each card to track damage.

Conquest Tactics

This game also has the same idea, you get a grid, you chose your cards, and put in some general buffs / spells into your card pool and battle your opponent. I should add that you can even download a full sample of the game and print - glue and cut your own do-it-yourself demo.

The game was quite a bit more complicated than Summoner Wars, with different numbers for retaliation than attack, activation costs, ranges printed in the center of the cards, health points to track, different costs for upgrades and so forth. The game has, in my mind, a lot of potential but currently still lacks clarity (numbers should always be in one place and use icons next to numbers to help rapid pattern-learning, for example) and suffers from excessive complexity (a common downfall of any game).

There were however quite a lot of things I really liked about this game, it had a nice initiative system that felt a bit like a tug of war. You can spend more points (aka resources) or save them up for later turns, and there was also a nice idea of allies with various "levels". You can put a high-level ally into play for a big price, or you can "upgrade" your lower level allies (of the same type) by paying a cheap upgrade fee.

Cards also had icons which related to which spells and abilities they were able to use. And it didn't employ any dice to resolve combats. If my bag wasn't already full of other games by the time I tried this one, I probably would have grabbed a copy -- I'll probably try out the above "do it yourself" link myself in the following weeks to give it a proper spin!

Mage Wars

Mage wars is yet another card-based duel where you move your hero and your allies, into different sector in the game. It has a different spin though with your deck as you actually play the game with a binder rather than a hand-size. So at any time you can take any card you want out of your binder, pay its cost, and generate its effect.

I thought that the idea of having total-recall was quite novel, though I did have concerns regarding how many different cards (options) a person can realistically retain in their head at one time -- and the resulting speed-crunch of the game.

Because you can cast any card from your "deck" you want on any turn, the game uses dice to determine its effect. Which got me thinking, what makes for better strategy, being able to access any card you want on any turn, but not knowing if it will work? Or knowing that what you do each turn will always work, but not being sure exactly of which card (option) you will get on each turn? Option-complexity aside, there are certainly arguments on both sides.

The only other small thing I noticed that was new and interesting was the idea of trigger-synergies, if one of your allies rolls over a certain number when attacking (in other words does over a certain amount of damage in one turn), then various other effects also trigger.

Guild Quest

The last card-based tactical game I tried was Guild Quest. It's a small game that is entirely card based and it had a rather interesting combat system. You align all of your allies into a grid of nine, and each card's ability was determined by which position in the grid it occupied.

I like the idea of abilities being influenced by a card's context/location and was intreeged enough to get a copy of the game. It helped that the box was small enough that I didn't need to worry about it fitting in my limited space suitcase.

One word of warning though, Mojumbo and I tried the game out over dinner one night; and we did have a very difficult time understanding the rule book. I will have to write to the game designer at some point to get some clarifications, so if anyone else picks up the game based on this review, make sure you realize that the rules themselves might need a quest to decipher.
;-)

Out of all of these hybrid card-tactical games, none really stood out as being "IT". What I mean by this is that I feel that there is indeed the potential for a genre of card game here, one where you not only duel, but your allies have a real "location" on the board. It could be that cards just don't lend themselves well to such a hybrid, or it could be that we have yet to see a game really nail the missing evolved genre. I find such attempts at creating the missing link very interesting, and I'll be curious to see if in the future a title will be able to sweep the missing link up into its domain.

Whatever game that will be, it needs to be simple, but not so simple that depth is lost. Adding board-location adds complexity, so it needs to be done in just the right way to be meaningful.

Deck Builders

Nightfall: Dark Rages and Ascension: Storm of Souls are two deck building games.

I tried the expansion: Nightfall: Dark Rages at the convention out, and I liked the idea of being able to chain abilities as well as getting synergy effects by matching various cards played to each other. I did find though that the color system was a bit hard to get my brain tuned into, but this might just be something initial that goes away after a game or two. Nightfall also has the idea of "damage cards" that mess up your deck when you are hurt, and force you to draw dead cards. An interesting way to track game victory. Allies that are in play track damage by rotating them (so a maximum of four sides means 4 life is the biggest ally you can have, or at least that i saw).

Other interesting ideas were that if you play a certain card, the opponent triggers cards of the same color out of turn. Cards seemed to have a different purpose when in your hand, chained or when in play as allies. Adding at least 3 different dimensions to the game. The complexity was definitely not subtle, like it is in a game like "Go", more like Chess where there are a lot of different rules to keep track of.

Ascension: Storm of Souls is a stand alone expansion. While some people I've talked to don't seem to like the art used, personally I think it is quite good. Out of all the deck building games I have played, this one is probably my favorite. If you play with the expansion and promo cards (which are available for the iPad iOS) then every game is very different and demands a lot of "on your toes" strategy to win. the game has four different factions with different synergies employed in each one. I feel that the different factions could be further synergized or emphasized more than they are, since often a "good deck" employs several different factions rather than just one or two -- but otherwise they really have a great title in their hand.

I like that some cards help you more during the game than at the end (cards have victory point values), the idea of deck crafting, "on the fly" deck building, blocking/choosing from a common continually changing card pool, and the idea of semi-permanent "event" cards that affect all the players.

Other Games

Finally, I did also try many non-card based games, I'll list a couple below, which were my favorites: Tournay and Sunrise City.

Tournay uses symbols on its cards instead of text to describe the effects, which at first play seemed like a terrible idea. I was warned that after the first game the symbols would all make sense, and I must say: they were right. If you can get past the initial hurdle of having to decrypt symbols like an Egyptian anthropologist you discover a wonderful gem of a game.

The game seems to be just as fun at 2 as it is at 4, which is a rare thing. Each time you play, you have a different win condition and different war-effects that drive the players into different avenues of strategy.

I really like the idea of being able to use your opponents assets if you pay them for it; opening up variety of tactics and counter measures to you.

Every player builds their own 3x3 grid of cards that co-influence each other based on position. Cards also provide you with mechanisms to deal with, obtain or change other aspects of the game. it's a very open meta, with countless variable winning scenarios that should offer anyone interested in the "building game genre" (think Catan and other German titles) immense replay value. Until now I would say that this was by far the best game I tried at the convention. My hat goes off to the designer!

Last but not least is Sunrise City. This is a game of city building, supposedly inspired by Sim City. The game has tiles that you build upwards. Elements of bidding, and domino-style matching are employed. Players have role cards, and have to make points in various quantities in order to move ahead of their opponents.

As it turns out, after I'd bought the game and talked to one of his developers for a bit about their projects, I ended up (randomly) sitting next to Clever Mojo's publisher/owner on the flight out of Columbus! He gave me some interesting insight into the future of their games (which I can't share, out of respect to him) and the process of development they used.

I watched this game played and I must say it is visually very appealing and has really good inter-player interactions. I like the various phases of the game and how your actions in one phase help/hinder your progress in subsequent ones. It was also interesting how you need to score exact numbers to hit double points, creating a sub-strategy, and how different mechanics were integrated (bidding, card play, domino matching and objective cards).

I haven't played the game enough to say if it could be even better than Tournay (which would be quite an accomplishment) but I do plan on testing it out here over the next few weeks at my local gaming group to see how it pleases the fans.

Conclusions

While I can't say specifics yet about future mechanics, playing all kinds of other games is great for inspiration and at least half a dozen new cool card ideas / mechanics have come from my exposure with these games.

As we get closer to the first expansion's release it will be great to go deeper into depth regarding the process and background information related to such choices.

From post-game discovery bliss, this is Raz signing out. I'll be back again with news, info and other tid bits from the Shadow Era game design and development process.

In the meantime, maybe you will check out some of the above games!

May the deck-gods shine upon you.
;-)

Raz / Sebastian