61 replies to this topic

[Mechteric]

This may or may not have been done before, but if someone were to try making a Mechwarrior based one where instead of your base or player having X hit points (like in Magic), but rather every time you are hit you have to take that damage in discarding cards directly from your deck. Whoever runs out of cards first loses It would be like direct collateral damage from attacks made against your base!

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 08 January 2015 - 10:43 AM.

[Brody319]

CapperDeluxe, on 08 January 2015 - 10:42 AM, said:

This may or may not have been done before, but if someone were to try making a Mechwarrior based one where instead of your base or player having X hit points (like in Magic), but rather every time you are hit you have to take that damage in discarding cards directly from your deck. Whoever runs out of cards first loses It would be like direct collateral damage from attacks made against your base!

uh...

[Mechteric]

Brody319, on 08 January 2015 - 10:47 AM, said:

uh...

I know, awesome idea right! So awesome you're speechless and unable to comment further because I have won the thread. It's ok, you're not the first

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 08 January 2015 - 10:52 AM.

[Brody319]

I don't think my idea is that complex. just a more hands on kind of game. Like Yu-gi-oh, you tell them the rules and they have a headache, you let them play it a bit and they learn quick and its easy.

[Mechteric]

Brody319, on 08 January 2015 - 10:56 AM, said:

I don't think my idea is that complex. just a more hands on kind of game. Like Yu-gi-oh, you tell them the rules and they have a headache, you let them play it a bit and they learn quick and its easy.

Right.. on the bright side you wouldn't need a piece of paper (or some other form to keep track) of the player hitpoints, when the deck is dry, game over man!

[Roadkill]

CapperDeluxe, on 08 January 2015 - 10:42 AM, said:

This may or may not have been done before, but if someone were to try making a Mechwarrior based one where instead of your base or player having X hit points (like in Magic), but rather every time you are hit you have to take that damage in discarding cards directly from your deck. Whoever runs out of cards first loses It would be like direct collateral damage from attacks made against your base!

You mean like the BattleTech TCG?

[BourbonFaucet]

Brody319, on 08 January 2015 - 10:56 AM, said:

I don't think my idea is that complex. just a more hands on kind of game. Like Yu-gi-oh, you tell them the rules and they have a headache, you let them play it a bit and they learn quick and its easy.

Have you ever read threads comparing and contrasting card games before? Typically Yu-gi-oh gets the short end of the stick, and it's not for how learnable it is.

[Mercules]

CapperDeluxe, on 08 January 2015 - 10:58 AM, said:

Right.. on the bright side you wouldn't need a piece of paper (or some other form to keep track) of the player hitpoints, when the deck is dry, game over man!

Unfortunately it removes alternative win options and so removes viable tactics from the game. The more alternate win options you have the more likely someone will be able to create a deck that does something you are not prepared to counter making one trick ponies a bad idea.

Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) has multiple ways to achieve a victory and that makes for some very interesting game play.

[Brody319]

Techorse, on 08 January 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

Have you ever read threads comparing and contrasting card games before? Typically Yu-gi-oh gets the short end of the stick, and it's not for how learnable it is.

Make it a digital game and it becomes a lot less complex when the fine mechanics are handled for you. like YGOpro or devpro.

[BourbonFaucet]

Brody319, on 08 January 2015 - 11:02 AM, said:

Make it a digital game and it becomes a lot less complex when the fine mechanics are handled for you. like YGOpro or devpro.

Not what I was referring to. The threads almost always state, truthfully, that new sets obsolete the old sets, and that stunlocking or doing some other cheesy tactic replaced the old sacrifice ladder system of the original game. So yes, you can make Yu-gi-oh fun, by imposing a huge set of house rules on it, or using the older cards only, etc.

I mean don't get me wrong, power creep in sets is always something that happens in collectible games, but Yu-gi-oh had the absolute worst creep. It was fun in the beginning, but it's not really that great anymore.

Edited by Techorse, 08 January 2015 - 11:06 AM.

[Asyres]

I'd play the **** out of a Battletech or Mechwarrior LCG with a good rules set.

[Brody319]

Techorse, on 08 January 2015 - 11:04 AM, said:

Not what I was referring to. The threads almost always state, truthfully, that new sets obsolete the old sets, and that stunlocking or doing some other cheesy tactic replaced the old sacrifice ladder system of the original game. So yes, you can make Yu-gi-oh fun, by imposing a huge set of house rules on it, or using the older cards only, etc.

I mean don't get me wrong, power creep in sets is always something that happens in collectible games, but Yu-gi-oh had the absolute worst creep. It was fun in the beginning, but it's not really that great anymore.

it usually controls power creeps with ban lists. Yes when it comes to yu-gi-oh deck construction is fairly limited. only some decks can work really well. but when it comes to playing yugioh is more unique in my opinion. you can have 2 players with the same skill and deck and both be going for different strategies. while MTG has a unique deck building but the game mostly plays itself when you get started.



slap mana down. tap. slap monster/spell. attack if you can. rinse repeat. plus yugioh has a lot of win conditions. deck out, life point kill, lock down, burn, deck burn, instant win conditions (exodia). ect. so you have a lot of ways to win and different decks can be fun. but for me MTG is just build a deck and watch it play itself.


I think my rule set can help limit power creep. since you are limited by tonnage each turn, and can upgrade older chassis with newer stuff. such as putting a heavy PPC on a Catapult K2 to upgrade its damage.

Edited by Brody319, 08 January 2015 - 11:15 AM.

[BourbonFaucet]

Brody319, on 08 January 2015 - 11:13 AM, said:

slap mana down. tap. slap monster/spell. attack if you can. rinse repeat. plus yugioh has a lot of win conditions. deck out, life point kill, lock down, burn, deck burn, instant win conditions (exodia). ect. so you have a lot of ways to win and different decks can be fun. but for me MTG is just build a deck and watch it play itself.


I think my rule set can help limit power creep. since you are limited by tonnage each turn, and can upgrade older chassis with newer stuff. such as putting a heavy PPC on a Catapult K2 to upgrade its damage.

It tends to come down to preference I guess, and perhaps a little bit of grognard behavior on my part. Also, did you have a look at my earlier post? I can show you a rework that emphasizes the 'mechs and still allows for good upgrades if you want. I was just trying to streamline the game.

[Brody319]

Techorse, on 08 January 2015 - 11:18 AM, said:

It tends to come down to preference I guess, and perhaps a little bit of grognard behavior on my part. Also, did you have a look at my earlier post? I can show you a rework that emphasizes the 'mechs and still allows for good upgrades if you want. I was just trying to streamline the game.

I read it. I thought some things could work. but this was really just a basic concept suggestion. I think the whole thing could use some tweaks. I used the Smurfy stock loadouts for that atlas for example. I don't really account for XLs, heat, or tonnage restrictions on weapons. but that is rather hard to add to a card game.

[BourbonFaucet]

Brody319, on 08 January 2015 - 11:20 AM, said:

I read it. I thought some things could work. but this was really just a basic concept suggestion. I think the whole thing could use some tweaks. I used the Smurfy stock loadouts for that atlas for example. I don't really account for XLs, heat, or tonnage restrictions on weapons. but that is rather hard to add to a card game.

It's actually not so much the tonnage restrictions or other things that got me, but the hardpoint system. How many cards would a deck have on average in your game? If I was going to use every hardpoint on that atlas, that's 8 equipped cards! And then go for FF and Endo for more HP? That's a total of 11 cards for one Atlas. If the average deck size is 60, that's quite a lot. I would remove most of the equipping, trade power points out for heat, priority who gets to go first based on speed, in order to make the game go faster, and allow for the card makeup of each deck to provide better first hands for each player. I could imagine getting 1 'mech and 4 upgrades, and that'd probably not be too fun.

[Roadkill]

Brody319, on 08 January 2015 - 11:02 AM, said:

Make it a digital game and it becomes a lot less complex when the fine mechanics are handled for you. like YGOpro or devpro.

Once you've made it a digital game it's no longer really a card game, it's a computer game. At that point, why bother with the "card" format at all?

The point of a TCG is that it's portable and easy to play. That's one of the aspects of the BT TCG that could have been better - there was just too much record keeping (primarily damage and construction counters) required.

[Brody319]

Roadkill, on 08 January 2015 - 11:30 AM, said:

Once you've made it a digital game it's no longer really a card game, it's a computer game. At that point, why bother with the "card" format at all?

The point of a TCG is that it's portable and easy to play. That's one of the aspects of the BT TCG that could have been better - there was just too much record keeping (primarily damage and construction counters) required.

MTG, pokemon, and yugioh all have digital ways to play the game.

I mean they could make it both digital and physical. plenty of games do it. plus it could be put on a phone device and make it a mobile game for the phone.

Techorse, on 08 January 2015 - 11:27 AM, said:

It's actually not so much the tonnage restrictions or other things that got me, but the hardpoint system. How many cards would a deck have on average in your game? If I was going to use every hardpoint on that atlas, that's 8 equipped cards! And then go for FF and Endo for more HP? That's a total of 11 cards for one Atlas. If the average deck size is 60, that's quite a lot. I would remove most of the equipping, trade power points out for heat, priority who gets to go first based on speed, in order to make the game go faster, and allow for the card makeup of each deck to provide better first hands for each player. I could imagine getting 1 'mech and 4 upgrades, and that'd probably not be too fun.

I imagine it would be up to the player and add a layer of strategy. do you wanna run a few units a lot of attack points and upgrades or do you want a lot of units and power points. do you want to run a balanced number of all cards? though I think it would balance such as 40% units, 40% power points, and 20% upgrades. since upgrades rely on both units and power points.

I am going to guess a good number of cards is 50 minimum with no maxiumum. since you can recycle your discard pile the advantage of a larger deck balances with the statistical chance to draw the cards you want.

Edited by Brody319, 08 January 2015 - 11:37 AM.

[Roadkill]

The point is that if you're making game design decisions based on the fact that you can computerize it to make it work, then you're not designing a card game you're designing a computer game.

MTG, BT, Pokémon, and all the others are card games first, and all play great as card games. After the fact they were made into computer games, in some cases with considerable effort due to the complexity of gameplay.

[Brody319]

Roadkill, on 08 January 2015 - 11:36 AM, said:

The point is that if you're making game design decisions based on the fact that you can computerize it to make it work, then you're not designing a card game you're designing a computer game.

MTG, BT, Pokémon, and all the others are card games first, and all play great as card games. After the fact they were made into computer games, in some cases with considerable effort due to the complexity of gameplay.

I don't see how this couldn't work as a real physical card game.

[Roadkill]

I didn't say it couldn't, just that it appears you have an awful lot of record keeping going on during gameplay. And while yes, that record keeping could be easily simplified by a computer, the game needs to be easy (and fun) to play as a card game before making concessions to computerization.

Just trying to help you avoid a common pitfall in TCG design. The KISS principle applies in spades to a TCG.