Filed under: Arenas, Doc Boffin, Game Design, New Cards, Robots
Things have been a little quiet on the blog, however we’ve been busy in our slow but inexorable way. The newest blip on the horizon is the Robot Demo Deck, currently being tested at Europa. You can do a little testing yourself if you’ve a mind to: left click Doc’s testing arena (the one with the warnings) to get the Demos from the menu. The Robot Demo works only on that arena, as it’s all been recoded, but you can fight there anytime using Robot and any other deck. Saturdays at 3pm is our current testing event time. Have thoughts, gamepla ideas, possible bugs to squash? Write it on a notecard and drop it on us – an IM to get our attention is great!
Robot gameplay is a bit different, and balances hard second tier attacks with the need to release heat build-up by drawing or playing a small attack. While predictabilty leads to some vulnerability, the split defense serves well against discard attacks in particular. The first cards are HERE. The battery is the good resource, while heat, shown as a thermometer icon, is something you don’t want. 
The first card on the way to a big attack, with a split mid/low defense. Note that it creates 1 battery resource, but can only be played with less than 1 heat resource.
A big low attack with high/mid defence creates 1 heat resource.
Player can draw or use a small attack (shown here) while heat dissipates.
Filed under: Arenas, Doc Boffin, Events, Game Design, New Cards, Spaceport, Tiny
RELEASE EVENT:
1PM slt 27 Dec @ Spaceport
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport/219/88/20/
Combat Cards 2.1 disturbs the fabric of the universe with its far-reaching changes.
Demo decks, empty decks, arenas, and beta cards are free – just touch any arena or check out XSTSL.
Fight free in Demo, or construct a killer deck using any of the cards sold individually or by the series.
http:www.combatcards.co.uk
Arenas and vendors in Europa and Spaceport.
Filed under: Balancing, Code, Doc Boffin, Game Design, Printable Card Game, Update
A couple of weeks ago, Joh pointed out that the Second Life version of Combat Cards didn’t allow cards requiring a single point of energy to be played when you have 2 points of energy available. I hadn’t thought about this – the switch from groups to resources was supposed to just make the real life game easier to play, not change the game in any way.
The reason the Second Life version didn’t allow the play was that behind the scenes it runs the same group conditions code that it did in 1.5, but sure enough, the way the real life rules are written, what Joh was describing should be legal.
I quickly hacked in some code to make it possible in the Second Life version and Mich and I tried it out: with disasterous results. If you can play a card requiring one resource when you have 2 available, you can sit 1 turn away from finishing a 3 turn combo indefinitely, which makes it impossible for your opponent to anticipate when the combo will end and makes 3 turn attacks much more powerful, unbalancing the game.
So, instead of adjusting the Second Life game to match the real life rules, I’ve instead tweaked the real life instructions to match the old behaviour: if a card has a consume resources condition you must have exactly that number of resources available, no more no less. A nice side effect is that we can add a version of consume resources as Joh imagined it working to new cards in the future.
The updated rules can be freely downloaded in the print and play version of combat cards here.
Filed under: Doc Boffin, Game Design, Printable Card Game, Real Life
Here’s the (hopefully final) version of the PDF instructions that will ship with the real life cards in the very near future. Let me know if there are any final changes that need to be made.
combatcardsinstructions2008-11-20
Filed under: Doc Boffin, Game Design, Osprey Therian, Real Life | Tags: instructions draft
For the last couple of months Osprey and I have been working on bringing Combat Cards to real life and we’re getting close: here are the latest draft of the instructions for playing Combat Cards in real life. Please print out some cards, play some games in meatspace and let us know what you think!
Combat Cards Instructions by Doc Boffin and Osprey Therian is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at combatcards.co.uk
[UPDATE 2008-09-28: Added resource and no discard images]
Filed under: Balancing, Doc Boffin, Game Design, New Cards
Built up to a 3 turn combo, but worried that your opponent will block, dodge or copy it? Play Skeleton Crew to get 25 health with no way for you opponent to stop it.
Filed under: Balancing, Doc Boffin, Game Design, New Cards
Built up to a 3 turn combo, but worried that your opponent will block, dodge or copy it? Play refresh to get 3 new cards with no way for you opponent to stop it.
Filed under: Balancing, Doc Boffin, Game Design, New Cards
Draw a bad opening hand? Realise your opponent’s hand is better than yours? What you need is a Renaissance.
Filed under: Balancing, Doc Boffin, Game Design, New Cards
Here’s a second and hopefully more balanced attempt at Arachnophobia. In this version, the card does 24 damage, which is still does a lot of damage for a 2 turn attack. It’s much more of a gamble though: when played against a card that blocks the mid or high location the only negative effect is that the card discards itself. When played against a low block the heal self effect is reduced and so no longer cancels out the damage self 20 uncontested effect. When played against a card that blocks low and attacks the high or mid location the new Expose modifier adds 14 damage to the damage inflicted. Expose adds 14 damage whether the attacking card deals 1 or 30 damage, making single turn attacks particularly effective for turning the tables on this gamble.
Filed under: Balancing, Doc Boffin, Game Design
Mich gave me some great feedback about the new horror beta cards recently. He thinks that the cards are far too powerful, because they will only be used when players know that their heal effect won’t be blocked and so will cancel out their large unconditional sacrifice effect.
The cards are supposed to be a gamble: if the heal is blocked, the sacrifice causes the player to lose a lot of health when they play the cards. In reality, Mich think’s there’s little gamble involved: good players will just learn their opponent’s hand and only play the beta cards when they know it’s safe.
This cuts to the core of how the current Combat Cards have been balanced. The cards are mostly balanced if players play cards randomly. When played in this way attacks will be unblocks 2/3rds of the time, while blocks will block attacks 1/3rd of the time. This explains why horror cards are often considered weaker than fantasy cards: they have slighty stronger attacks and so have considerably reduced blocks to compensate: each 1 point of attack is worth 2 points of blocking using the current balancing system.
If Mich is right then this balancing approach doesn’t work as good players don’t play randomly, they play cards at exactly the right moment having learned their opponent’s hand and guessed correctly what’s coming next. Good players also look for cards that are as flexible as possible, so will pick fantasy cards that can be used as blocks and attacks over horror cards that are attack biased. When a good player knows where the next attack will target, they want to be able to use that information by having a strong block to put in its way.
Of course when playing a good opponent it then pays to not be too predictable. Playing completely randomly should always be punished, but appearing to be predictable and then deviating just when your opponent thinks they know what you’re up to creates a lot of the interest and tension in the game. Cards should reward you correctly predicting your opponent’s move, risky cards should require you to predict exactly what you opponent will play and punish you heavily when you get it wrong.
The current horror beta cards like don’t do that, they just require that a single location will not be heavily blocked: chances are that it won’t be. To make it a real risk, a real gamble, they should require that you guess exactly what your opponents card will be and punish you heavily if you get it even slightly wrong.
Combat Cards 