A demo deck in the works?! Kupo!

Well, I figure I've made you guys listen to my ramblings long enough without actually playing the game for yourselves.

I'm starting work on a demo deck, it will include every non-Cid card revealed so far.
(Cid is a little niche, so he wont do any good in a non-specialized deck.)

As you've been noticing lately, there is a lot of official art on the cards, when I mentioned the initial idea of fanartists doing the art.

Well, the official art is just a placeholder. I'm interested in seeing how the game plays, and grows, and sometimes I just want to stick a card out there without committing art theft. You wont see a non-official card up here that I haven't already asked for permission to use.

Anyway, lets talk about Kain and Cecil.

Dark Knight Cecil seems like a popular choice for most people, so I wanted to make him as accessible of a card as possible. He's a powerhouse for sure, he breaks the rule I said I would never break... a ranged character with an attack of over 1400, which means he can take out most front ranged fighters with his attack.
Giving him ranged represents the old Dark Wave attack he had that hits all enemies with his HP as a cost.

The thing I wanted to capture with Dark Knight Cecil was the futility of using the powers of evil to fight evil, the whole reason he became a Paladin in the first place. Sure, he breaks the game rules, but at great cost.

With every attack, Cecil dooms the top 4 cards of your character deck, which brings you a step closer to a TKO every time he attacks. Four cards is a pretty large amount, and if you aren't prepared for it, he could even be a liability. The ability to destroy full blown fighters from the back row is nothing to laugh at though, we'll see how it plays out.
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Kain is very similar in application as Cecil is, but less solid all around, he's your exterminator, a one-shot to take care of the problem character in those hard to reach spots. Sure, once he's out, he's sub-par, but with ways to return him to your reserves, Kain becomes a serious threat. His ability used to be triggered when he came into play, but that ended up breaking him, when he could phoenix down back into play and kill any character on the board. His new wording seems to balance him out some.

I also revealed these two cards to illustrate a new way to word character abilities. They are now structured like this: "Name: Cost: Effect"

Name is purely descriptive, Cost tells you when the ability can be used, and effect describes the ability.

Triggered abilities effects are pre-empted with "he may" or "she may" to show that you can choose not to trigger the ability, Kain is an example of this. Cecil is not, you have to discard the cards every time with him.
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Well, besides that, any other characters you guys are dying to see in the demo decks? I'll see what I can do for everyone that reads this blog.

Finally, pile name problem solved.

God damn mountain dew, I have work in 5 hours and here I am...

Anyway, here's the newest idea I had for the discard piles.

There are 3 piles, the character discard, item discard, and doom piles.

Doom pile is the new erase pile, same mechanics but with a more fitting name. If all of your characters end up in it, you lose right? Sounds like people will have less trouble with it. Doom is also a Final Fantasy spell, so it's slighty thematic. So you can discard a character, and you can doom a character, easy.

Other then that, there are the 2 discard piles. The new difference is that instead of having the doom equivilent of an item discard pile, at the end of every battle, the discarded item cards will go to the bottom of the item deck.

Thoughts on party limit

Though the last playtests we've done have been good, the current state of the game, where every battle starts with 6 characters on both sides, seems a bit stale to me, like you're just wading through bodies to win each battle. I also feel like initiative should be decided by something more tactical than just the amount of relics a player has.

Though I want the player with less relics to have some sort of "catch up" advantage, I think initiative should be determined by the following:

At the end of the party phase, the player with less characters goes first.

As I thought about this, initially I was put off by it, but really, it solves an important problem.

The game ends when all characters hit your erase/rfg/whatever pile (still not happy with the name), and in all the playtests I've had since I implemented this rule, this has been an issue. I think decks should be able to be built around the concept of running through your opponents character deck, but I don't think it should come into play every game.

The way I see it, is that if people play with less characters, to try for initiative at least a few times a game, always decking out of characters wont be an issue.

Also, for every character short of your maximum, I figured drawing an extra 2 cards would be a fitting added bonus. (This also makes Shadow 10 times as good as he was before.)

Clear Skies Ahead

So after todays playtest, I really like the current state of the game. It feels stable, each of the character types seem to balance each other, and the deck and discard/removal mechanics seem to work pretty well. The game also feels unique, and not complicated at the core. Now I feel like I can focus more on the cards than the core rules of the game itself, which is a great feeling.

In the meantime, I'll present to you guys a character that promises to shake things up a bit.

Edward always seems to get a bad rap, but how else could a character that automatically hid after being dealt a mighty blow be taken? Well, due to favoring the underdog, and maybe a bit of sadistic humor, the spoony bard will be the definitive control character of this game. While he can lock down a character pretty well, he can't do it completely, which will hopefully make you think. Fear a cure? Lock down Yuna's casting, Worried about runaway Irvine? Lock down his move ability. Not to mention have Auron or Esper Terra sit and twiddle their thumbs.

Whether it was Edward or not, some control cards are definitely needed. Man, can you imagine a deck template of Edward x3 and a bunch of thieves as your dedicated thief class... probably pretty miserable to deal with, but that's the way control players like it I'm sure...

(Random note: While perusing the interweb, I came across this interesting bit of info. In case you aren't aware, Edward's name in the japanese version is Gilbart, which is actually his family name. What I didn't know, is that according to the site, the game's primary currency, Gil, is derived from the Gilbart family. Bet you didn't think Edward was THAT important, did you? I can't verify the authenticity of the source info, but I refuse to believe it is false, because that's way too cool.)

CID!

So, I'd been toying around with the idea of a Cid mechanic, and I had some breakthroughs and thought I would share them with you guys.

The Cids will be the first subtheme of the game, a super-synergistic set of characters, they will all react off of each other, (kind of like Porom and Palom, but to a more extreme level) being decent by themselves, but pretty fearsome in tandem.

To give you an idea, here's the in-progress text for the Cid's I've worked on so far.

FFIV Cid "Scruffy Pilot Cid"

1500/1500 Fighter

Brawler: Cid gets +100 ATT and +100 DEF for each Cid character in play.

-He's a pretty hard hitter, so it seemed fitting to make him the tank of this group.
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FFVI Cid "Banana Suit Magitek Grandad Cid"

800/800 Mage

Black. White.

Magitek Fusion: All Cid characters in play gain the Black and White traits.

-As this Cid is our resident Magitek scientist, it seemed fitting for him to give his brethren magical abilities though magitek fusion. If you ever made a Cid deck, this would be the key card, though, he would need to be protected, or the others would lose their magic skills (and immunity)
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FFVII Cid "Sit your ass down and drink your goddamn tea Cid"

1600/1600

Highwind: Tap Cid, if you have X or less characters in reserve, draw a character and put it in your reserve. X is equal to the number of Cid characters in play.

-Probably the fan favorite, this Cid differs from the above listed, in that he's pretty decent by himself. This touches on the previous post, in that it helps you keep playing characters to the battle. I think he'll be a pretty common card to see with or without other Cids.
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FFVIII Cid "Headmaster Robin Williams Cid"

800/800

Balamb's Assistance: Tap Cid, draw a card for each Cid character in play.

-Another card good by himself. Drawing cards without passing is nice, because it denies your opponent the chance to ready their characters if you have the jump on them. Anyway, this Cid is more of a minor character than most, but you should still see him on the board a lot.
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and well... so far that's it... Oh wait... I forgot.


Remember when I said that IMO, Auron was the most powerful canon Final Fantasy character? Well, I lied...



Yeah, immediately after making him, he's on the watch list. I'm telling you, without tweaking the entire balance of the game, you will not see a statistically more powerful character than T.G. Cid.

I feel like he will balance out though... it's almost impossilble to make him the leader, because 3 Cid's must be present first. There ARE ways (cough... General Leo) to do this, but nothing worth building around.

I like him though, you can use him as a silver bullet card to deal with Cid decks, or run him in your own Cid deck for all sorts of mayhem. If you'll remember, in Final Fantasy Tactics, Cid is framed by the Church, and in the card game, it's only worth his time to come out when there are some imposters trying to sully his good name. There can be only one of course...

Don't worry though, you'll get a less specialized Orlandu at some point to use in your non-Cid decks. He'll still kick a ton of ass, I promise.

Be all that you can be!

So, in the last couple of playtests, we had a pretty annoying problem.

Some battles would last up to 30 minutes or so, and in a game of 6 battles, that makes the game way too long. Also, due to this, you would go through a third of your deck per battle, and if you happened to use all of your magic in one battle... oops, enjoy worthless mages.

Usually with card games, this is the nature of the beast, but because the game is based around battles, and the exchanges between melee, magic, and ranged, it needs to always be available.

The easiest fix is that the non-character deck will reshuffle when it is depleted, however to prevent constantly running through your deck, draw cards like Ether will be moved to the remove from game/erase/whatever pile.

The bigger change, and the reason for this post, is the addition of reserves.

Normally when you begin a round, depending on your leader, you'll either start with 4 or 6 characters in play. In addition to those characters, you'll also draw 3 "reserve characters" face down on the board. (the player that owns the characters is free to look at them)

You would play these reserves as an action, the way you play characters from your hand...
And that's it, after your reserves are gone, you can't add more characters to your battle, however you CAN add to your reserves via character abilities, or the new universal action: "Discard 3 cards, draw a character and add it to your reserves."

Of course, on the flip side, some more devious or politically-minded (redundant?) characters will be able to reduce your reserves as well.

Of course, this is all on paper, and only playtesting will tell...

Thanks for reading my blog BTW, you guys rock.

Some fundamental game changes.

Through some playtests with friends, and general rethinking of the rules, the current state of the game will have the following changes.

-No more counter-attack

As a core game mechanic, counter-attack will no longer be a universal ability. Instead, "counterattack" will be a trait, and only certain characters will get it. (I.e. Tifa, Sabin, Cyan, and similar types of characters) to offset the significant bonus that the first player recieves for this, at the beginning of each battle, the player with the least amount of relics will go first.

-Two separate decks

The game deck will be divided into two, with one character deck, and one deck with everything else. This is to ultimately trump the problem of getting character screwed, and for a game so dependant on characters, this needs to not be an issue. Though, there will no longer be a mulligan in the setup phase.

Instead a system of rationing characters will be implemented. I don't like the idea of income, because this creates fodder characters, and for a game powered on fanservice, I wouldn't want anyone's favorite character to end up as the meat shield.

-Universal relic deck

Having one common deck for relic cards will add an extra layer of strategy to the game without adding a new layer of complexity. Being able to see the general flow of the game a few turns before will interest a tactical player, and also allow you to counter-pick cards other players may pick. Whether this means the same cards will always be used, or each player will bring 4 to the table or something will be seen.

Ultimately, this is all I want to change for the time being, so we'll do some more playtests and see how it goes.

Another random brainstorm

I've been having a pretty annoying formatting problem with the cards lately. "Remove from game" isn't going to cut it anymore, it takes almost an entire line on the ability text to write that out, in an attempt to condense it, characters previously considered to be "removed from the game" will be considered to be "erased". (Hey, it's the best I could come up with, I spent like 15 minutes in front of thesarus.com looking for an easy term.)

Anyway, this is in reference to the first Final Fantasy for NES, that had an insta-death spell called "Rub", (and for obvious reasons, we're using what would most likely be the actual translation, not the actual name of the spell.)

This means the remove from game pile will now be the erase pile. (not the erasure pile, as to avoid 80's pop jokes, ugh.)

I don't think it's too bad, but if any of you have some better ideas, post them here.
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Oh, and also, I plan to streamline another part of the game.
The locations originally had individual troop limits, (ie. smaller areas like the auction house can hold fewer characters then say Narshe Battlefield.)
I feel this mechanic didn't add too much to the game, and now all locations will have a default 6 characters for the location's correct class, and 4 characters max for the other 2.

Beware the Twincast!

I thought it only right to show these two in the same post. Enter the Mysidia twins!

These two aren't terribly popular as far as Final Fantasy characters go, but they're easily two of the most heroic.

By themselves, they really aren't that great. Granted, nobody picks a mage for their stats, but even a summoner can beat these two in hand to hand combat (which is damn sad) , though considering they're probably not even in the double digits age-wise, it makes sense.

When they get together is when heads start to roll. Together, they get rid of all magic immunity, and Palom can hit an entire row with single target spells. This is pretty big, Thundaga for example, removes a 1600 def or lower character from the game... imagine taking out a whole front row like that, or better yet, the back row, where the mages who normally have protection get a taste of their own medicine.

Also, take a look at that art. I seriously couldn't imagine finding a piece this good for the twins. Luckily for us, Niko seems a pretty hardcore RPG fan, and has some awesome niche RPG art in his gallery. As you can probably see, the two cards are actually a larger mural type piece, you should do yourself a favor and check it out at http://www.chibiniko.deviantart.com you don't really get the full effect just looking at the cards.