This version feels like more of a major update in a lot of ways as some of the fundamental rules have changed to mix the game up. As part of play testing I noticed a few things that I thought were key to the game, just didn’t really matter in the long term and were actually limiting the game and making it less fun.
One of the core problems I’ve been looking at is, when should you draw a basic card? After playtesting a large number of times, the answer seems to be: almost never. That is how all the playtesters have been playing it, and to be honest, so have I. The basic cards have a core functionality in the deck in rounding out your hand, giving you play options and filling out that 1 power you need in mining or production to get your game plan out. They are really good and I think they have a place in the game. The key issue is when it’s your turn to draw a card, there are better cards in your deck. This issue of having basic cards be weaker than your normal cards means it’s never a good idea to draw a basic card, unless you have all the perfect cards in hand already. It was also limiting the design space in that I was trying to accomodate for this by introducing abilities that let you draw basic cards for a higher value than abilities that draw a faction card. To shake things up, and try a different way of playing, this version no longer makes you draw basic cards, and you just play them from your basic deck at any time. To help balance this, you may notice the faction cards are a lot stronger, and break some of the 2 crystals = 1 power rules as well. I will be monitoring and see what plays out to hopefully adjust things to work under the new system.
Another goal of this patch is around building more focused decks. The deck size is now down to 20, which feels small, but actually still gives you plenty of time and cards before you run out so actually just allows you to focus on the cards you want to play. This also opens up deck-building if you like which would let you mix and match faction cards together, but keeping with the pick up and play mentality, I still have core pre-made decks to play.
A common request when it comes to card interaction is why can’t I have something that triggers when I do something else. For example, why can’t I gain a crystal whenever I Shit a card. The main reason interaction is hard is because all cards only matter on the turn they are deployed, so if you want to have combos, you need to build up enough to play mutiple cards in a deploy phase. This felt too restrictive for some of the mechanics, especially Long-Term Contract, which had a powerful effect, but couldn’t be consistently played alongside other mercenaries to get the bonus.
Permanents get around this by having an effect that is able to trigger across multiple turns. The permananet type on a card means you no longer play it in lane, but to the side of your lanes for a passive, or once per round effect.
There are too many changes to write out right now, I may come back and write the full thing later. Summary below is the new decks and their focused mechnic.
Due to the huge amount of changes, I’m only using the first 3 decks right now. If things work well, I’ll apply the changes to the rest as well.
As always, a lot of testing needs to happen around these changes to make sure they all work. Looking forward to trying it out with everyone!