The Supers CCG - Duelist 1st!

[mangaocid]

I can say this much fast at the moment. In your example of the game, yes, it will happen - but how often do you find in a magic game, that you're facing an opponent in which your cards benefit them(elvish champion) or flake out? It's all a matter of what gets drawn in what order...that's always what it's about.

You can build what you think is the perfect deck and it can still fizzle into wimp when you draw bad. I don't take this example as a reason to change anything, it just goes to show why it's important to plan your deck. It can happen, yes, but not always.

As for the rules, I still feel no major change will be made, even as far as cartouches are concerned. We do have a few ideas on some minor things, and some card re-wording, but the rules themself are alright.

[Veritas Games]

As for the rules, I still feel no major change will be made, even as far as cartouches are concerned. We do have a few ideas on some minor things, and some card re-wording, but the rules themself are alright.

Your rules didn't handle copying at all, and that represents a full 20% of the Resource cards in each sample deck.

And your rules (at least with the cards provided as samples) produced a massive luck factor with no tactics.  Rather than taking my word for it, let me talk you through some of the probabilities to let you know that I mean the "there are no choices" in a very real statistical sense, not just a personal preference sense.

I can say this much fast at the moment. In your example of the game, yes, it will happen - but how often do you find in a magic game, that you're facing an opponent in which your cards benefit them(elvish champion) or flake out? It's all a matter of what gets drawn in what order...that's always what it's about.

Different animal altogether.  Often, in Magic, you've got some mediocre cards that are only great in combination.  And density of card combinations can frequently be controlled by stacking multiples.

In your example, Elves aren't great without an Elvish Champion, but they do something.  Compare, in contrast, Super Strength.  Without the City, Seismic Wave, or Crushing Blow it does one thing -- produce a resource point.  It's a dead card.  So whenever you play it, if you draw it first, it does nothing.  And if you draw it late, it's generally inferior to what you have out.  It's only great when it is followed or immediately preceded by Crushing Blow in the first two turns.  Meaning that the play of the card is entirely unreliable and subject to somewhere close to 90% luck and 10% auto-pilot play (where it is incredibly obvious to attack with Crushing Blow amped by Super Strength).

Elvish Champion, by comparison, takes something mediocre and makes it quite good.  Crushing Blow takes a card like Super Strength and takes it from completely unplayable to make it merely mediocre (considering that other cards like Energy Bolt can reliably do 1 damage early in the game and 3 damage later in the game with any cards in tow to use as resources).

The City, similarly is a non-card with your proposed modification (listed in Actual Play).  Without another card it's useless.  Without the modification it dominated the game through random chance.

In a game which each player generally only takes 5 turns, there is an 80% chance with the default Alien deck that it draws a useless card if the Alien plays first against the Mutant.  The ONLY card that produces a useful effect is Crushing blow.

The probability is only slightly lower that the Alien, if she goes first, draws de facto dead for the first two turns.

It's still highly probable that she draws de facto dead on the first 3 turns in a row.

That's like playing 60% of a Magic game and doing NOTHING, not a scratch.

There is, however, a 1 in 10 chance of getting the perfect "Super Strength" and "Crushing Blow" combo on the first two turns, in which case the Alien does runaway damage until Bind Device pops up, with the Alien then having a high probability of winning.

In short, there's close to a 90% chance that the Alien's game is decided pretty much entirely by luck of the draw if she goes first against the Mutant, and the odds aren't that good in her favor, at least not based on her own cards.

Consider the Shapeshift card -- it's useless to copy Radiation Manipulation (since it can't damage the Mutant), and without my rule modification you will either Reveal the card at Random or cause it to copy nothing a full nothing.  In every game I've seen played where you have to flip that card up against your will (Nate's rules) then that card either immediately starts winning the game or it is completely useless, with it being completely useless in the sample deck match more often than not if it's drawn in the first few cards and if the Alien goes first.

Consider further cards like Bind Device.  That card is 100% situational, and against a typical Mutant or against some Techies the card is dead on arrival.  You'll rarely find a card like that played by Magic the Gathering players except in sideboards.

In Magic tournaments situational cards are sideboarded so they don't tend to go dead.  In your game situational cards sit front and center like an albatross around your neck.

Your game Supers (at least with the sample decks) has almost no tactical options at all that aren't inherently obvious.  Doug complained about it, and I and the two people I playtested with agreed that we were all practically on auto-pilot while playing.  Fewer options still by your original rules.

Your game has cards that are downright unusable without other cards.  They are WAY to situationally dependent.  They often do nothing without other cards.  You need to make each and every card usable or something that you can cycle out and draw another card if you get it at the wrong time in the game.

If you aren't going to change any of the rules, I'll delete your graphics in the next few days, and the couple of lines of original text and game phrases remaining from your original game (not many).  I'll keep the rules in my back pocket for my own future development.  I think there's a good, extensible, quick game in there somewhere, with a modicum of tactics.

I wish you luck, DJ.  But if statistics on the randomness of the game aren't sufficient to persuade you, then I'm just out of steam.

[Veritas Games]

Nate, DJ:

You guys seem happy with your cards and your system.  I'm just wasting your time posting new revisions.

Sorry for my persistence -- the idea sounded fun.

At this point, my rules have almost nothing in common with Supers except those things that are similar to the Vs. system or other card games that we're both familiar with and were influenced by.

Nate wanted cards to feed off face up in random order.  Mine allows you to control things.  Nate's had 5 cards maximum in your deck.  My rules are designed to vary from game to game, and to start with some cards in play for some games.

The one concept that's similar, but slightly more varied in my game is the concept of something to reduce damage.  In mine, the types of damage reduction don't stack, among other things, and are more varied than just Airborne and non-Airborne.

Even my terminology is different -- Nate wanted to call things "Supply Cards" I call them the character's Resources.  I have "Deflection" instead of "Airborne".

Your rules were about 2 pages.  Mine are 7-8 pages and include tons of stuff your rules don't and probably will not (since DJ seems largely happy with your rules).

I deleted the other stuff (since DJ seemed not too interested) and uploaded this:

http://www.veritasgames.net/downloads/quick_fight_rules.pdf

Feel free to borrow from the text if you want to.  Give me a line of credit and call it a day if you borrow anything substantial verbatim from the text.

I did like the idea of a small deck duel game, but I just wouldn't implement it almost at all the way you guys would.  This is the simplest game I've ever put to paper, as I prefer very complex designs.  Anyhow, I wish you the best of luck on product sales.  Over and out.

See you on the net.

[mangaocid]

Supers was a minor success at GenCon 2005. Those that tested it, enjoyed it. I want to thank Greg from BTRC for some feedback that will see light with "The Bad" release this fall, and also believe it or not, Lee from Veritas Games, for giving us feedback during creation. Once again lee, your feedback was great and we can honestly say that a small, quick game was something people wanted.

i'm very curious to see what comes of your game as well , lee, so keep me posted on that!

Later, DJ

[Veritas Games]

Congrats on your success. 

How many copies did you sell?

How many playtesters did you get?

Did Greg stop by and play?  He's a great designer, so he's probably a useful guy to get feedback from.

One GenCon attendee told me that the cartouche style system that I use in Dungeon Fight is what was just unveiled for City of Heroes.  I think they use cartouches to determine what is playable and what isn't.  I think Jyhad was the first game I saw that did something like that.

[mangaocid]

Well, I sold 5 - 2 deck starter sets and 2 - 36 card box sets. Not bad, cuz I went home with only 1 starter and 1 box left. So I sold pretty good...all of those sales came from sunday also...so had I gotten the opportunity to push more...it could've been even better!

I do have a few people who are going to order it from us because they wanted a couple sets to play with.

Greg did check it out, because Nate and I boothed with the guys here at the Forge. It was great, because he voiced his opinion about certain things that I'll look at and probably revamp a bit.

As far as COH - the cartouche thing works really good for the game because it's based on an MMORPG that has tons of options and ICONS from the game....so it NEEDED it....supers is too simple for that. I do however like it for element...just working on card designs to see HOW far I'll take it.

DJ