[Supers CCG] Beatdown! Playtest matches galore

[daMoose_Neo]

Ahkay, just got done running several matches with my co-designer on the project and here are the results! (See this thread for background)

Mutant vs. Techie: 2 to 2
Mutant vs. Alien : 2 to 0
Alien vs. Techie : 1 to 1

Standard Rules (abbreviated):
- Each player has a Super which determines starting powers and life (8 to 10 HP)
- Each player has 5 Supply Cards, mixed up and piled, face down.
- Start of each turn, the player flips over their top card, which becomes available to use as a Power/Attack or as a resource.
- Player may make one attack and then move on to the next player.

And, heres what happened:
We played standard rules as written by us for the first two games, Mutant vs. Techie. The end result was:
- First game over on turn 10 (Round 5), went to the Techie who ended around 4 points up due to the presence of Shield.
- Second game went to the Mutant in turn 10 as well, only a couple points up on the Techie. A last turn flip of Solar Radiation & a Seismic Wave that had a couple turns under its belt are what won the game. Without the Solar Radiation to boost it over the top, Mutant would have lost.

Next two were Mutant vs. Techie, this time more directly comparing our ruleset vs. some suggestions made by Lee Valentine of Veritas Games (See Supers thread in publishing).
- First game went to the Mutant ala our Rules in turn 9, with a Seismic Wave on the first turn and a City on the last turn.
- Second turn went to the Techie ala Lee's rules, with options on Peeking, Revealing, and playing face down. Alas, Psi-Blast, the card which would have been impacted the most (Deals 1 Damage for each face up card the opposing player controls) didn't make an appearance: game went to the Techie on turn 9, final result of 5 to 0. Lee's arrangement allowed DJ to get Shield (-1 to Damage dealt to the player) sooner, thereby negating a number of my early attacks.

At that point, DJ really decided against the alternate rules and we went back to our arrangement.

Next couple matches were Mutant vs. Alien, each player playing with a City. Lee, you were right here: Two City's and a Shapeshift-cloned Seismic Wave made for an INTERESTING match- 11 Rubble pieces when all was said and done, ended on turn 6 due to some lucky draws. Alien won, 4 to 0.
Next match was the exact same in terms of card mix, but for one change: City was altered ever so slightly- each time YOU deal damage, place a Rubble piece in play. Even with two City cards in play, that tamed the beast enough for the game to run to turn 9, ending once more in an Alien victory.

Last pair we ran included Techie vs. Alien, and ended up split along the same lines. Techie took the first match with a first turn Shield effectively reducing any damage dealt to me while DJ took a decent pounding from some ranged Gadgets.
Second match, it was neck and neck, running into the 11th turn! DJ pulled that one out, even after I was Airborne and protected with a Shield, and knocked him out of the sky with Bind: Super Strength allowed him to chuck a rubble piece skyward for 2 damage, enough to kill me even through the Shield.

All in all, the games played out as we suspected they would, even trying to kill each other and break the system. The characters have enough of a balance so none are strictly speaking better, but at the same time offering some neat options. Out of it, we did agree The City needed a line of editing, which it will see before print, but the rest of the set and even the rest of the rules play out.
Lee - might I ask, how were you defining "turn"? I realized mid-playing that we may have had a miscommunication there when I said it'd end around the 5th turn, at that point I was thinking "Both players go = 1 turn", but in taking notes I realized "I go, 1st turn, he goes, 2nd turn...", in which case the game plays out to 9-10 turns, rarely earlier.

[Veritas Games]

Lee's arrangement allowed DJ to get Shield (-1 to Damage dealt to the player) sooner, thereby negating a number of my early attacks.

My arrangement doesn't allow you to get cards any sooner than your arrangement (except for my second suggestion to play everything straight from hand).  My initial recommendation let you ONCE per turn choose NOT to take a card at all (I did that for no reason other than an opportunity to create design space -- to create cards which count the total number of resources in play, be they face up or face down).  With your current card set, nobody would use that option -- they would always take a card.  They just might not reveal it.

So, technically, my options do NOTHING to speed the entry of a card into play compared to yours.  Things enter play in my version, if anything at a much delayed rate (people may choose never to reveal certain things).

If anything, all my method does is DELAY the revelation of things.

[Veritas Games]

Lee - might I ask, how were you defining "turn"? I realized mid-playing that we may have had a miscommunication there when I said it'd end around the 5th turn, at that point I was thinking "Both players go = 1 turn", but in taking notes I realized "I go, 1st turn, he goes, 2nd turn...", in which case the game plays out to 9-10 turns, rarely earlier.

In the rulebook I note that "I take a turn then you take a turn".  One go around is two turns.  I understood what you meant by 5 turns (actually 10).

But my usage (in the rulebook at least) was I get a turn and then you get a turn.

You should probably download the newest version of the rules and take a look to make sure it's consistent.  I'm visually impaired, so editing without mondo big fonts is impossible.  The only reason I could edit your cards is that the text was really short and well-spaced.

http://www.veritasgames.net/downloads/supers_rules.doc

you can also replace "doc" with "pdf" if you want the PDF version instead.

[daMoose_Neo]

We did make a goof on the drawing- notice that now. We peeked, if we didn't like we placed on the bottom, then we went ahead and 'drew' the next card, so we were cycling through the cards at the same rate, just with more choice as to what saw play.

[Veritas Games]

We did make a goof on the drawing- notice that now. We peeked, if we didn't like we placed on the bottom, then we went ahead and 'drew' the next card, so we were cycling through the cards at the same rate, just with more choice as to what saw play.

Right.  My original "put on the bottom" method was simply to create design space for cards that interacted with the total number of resources in play.  Let's say you had a card that said:

"X: Do X-2 damage at Range to your opponent where X can be no more than the number of total Resource cards your opponent has in play."

Against such a card, you might want to altogether forego drawing certain resources that you didn't need immediately.

I agree that if you could just keep cycling cards in the draw pile, then that's a clumsy mechanic.  At that point, you should do away with the draw pile and put all 5 cards in your hand and choose which one you play.  That's another option, but neither the "all in your hand" or the "cycle until you are happy" are what I put in the rulebook, so I invite you to re-evaluate my proposal, skipping the "put on the bottom" at this point, since there are no cards that usefully interact with that mechanic yet.

Honestly, I think you should always playtest your game cards by having no draw pile and with all 5 cards in hand, played in an optimal order.  That's gonna be the best way to assure that the cards are balanced, and that people won't automatically win if the cards come in the magic right order.  Then, if that works, then the method I put in the rulebook will certainly be balanced.

[Veritas Games]

I played with another friend tonight.  He thought the game suffered from:

a) too little tactics (vote 4 for the too little tactics guys); and

b) he thought that cards were too easily either turned to duds or could outright be subverted too easily (like the City vs. Seismic Wave)

Definitely you need to be able to NOT reveal some cards that are normally good but might hose you in a given game.  More than that, however, you should try to design more cards that aren't so easily turned into duds.