I just discovered this forum today, and this is my first post, so I'd like to being by extending my greeting to everyone on here.
Anyway, earlier I came up with the basic idea and rules for a non-customizable card game, loosly based on the crusades (the historical background mostly serving as fluff). The players would not directly fight each other, but rather play as Christian kings competing against one another to score points by a) sending units to the Holy Land and b) return with Holy Relics. No actual combat would take place, so a point would be scored simply by sending a unit to the Holy Land, where they'd wait until the chance to return home came up.
The way I invision the rules as working now, both players would either a) share a single deck comprised of three card types: units, actions, and resources, or b) share three decks, one for each type of card. At the start of the game, both players would either draw six cards, or draw two cards from each deck. Each turn a player can take two actions from the following list (repeats allowed): draw a card (assuming the player has less than six cards currently in their hand), discard a card, or play a card.
In order to successfully send a unit to the Holy Land, a player would have to first place a unit from their hand into the area in front of them. Each unit has an associated resource cost (which resources depending on the type of unit). Once this cost has been met (I'm thinking some where in the area of two resources per unit; there will probably be no more than four types of resources total) by way of resource cards played from the hand onto the unit, the unit is ready to head out (by way of an event card). Event cards would have additional effects, such as providing Relics for the crusaders to bring home, but would primarily deal with getting units to and from Europe and the Holy Land.
Anyway, please let me know what you think, and more importantly, if a game exists already with a similiar mechanic to this. Thank you, any help is very appriciated.
Hello and welcome to the Forge!
The Forge is a site dedicated to developing author-owned role-playing games, so we're probably not the best folks to help you on a card game. Have you tried visiting BoardGame Geek (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/)?
Probably, the single best advice one can give regardless of medium is that the key is in testing, testing, testing.
From your description, I can hardly say anything about the balance of the resource system, the choices between sending out crusaders and getting them back, etc. I mean, it sounds interesting alright, but that's all I can tell. (Anyway, I have very little experience in developing card and boardgames.)
So I'd just go ahead and print me some cards, get a few friends together and try to play. That way, it becomes really obvious where the rules need fixing.