Zeppelin Insanity posted:

I'm designing a card game!

I'm starting off with Fulda 1986. Now it's true that Gorby was probably the least likely of Soviet leaders to actually go to war, the USSR was heading into rapid decline, and also an earlier time period would be way more interesting... Americans want to see an Abrams and an Apache and if I ever publish and sell it I gotta take that into account. I definitely love shitboxes though so the majority of armour is still M60s and T-64s, with some T-62s knocking about too.



The aim is to create a pretty flexible system that could apply to different theatres, time periods, or settings with fairly minor adjustments to the core rules, by keeping a lot of the theming to the card decks themselves. The decks represent different divisions\regiments, and are sealed, set decks - it's emphatically not a CCG.



Being Fulda, NATO defends and Pact attacks. We're starting off with two infantry divisions as the default, but I'm also pretty far along with designing armoured decks and support decks. Support decks will probably suck in 1v1, but I want the game to also be interesting in a 2v2 and 3v3 format. Currently, it's just Soviets and US, but of course there's plenty of potential for Germans, NORTHAG, Poles, Czechs, Yugos, Italy, etc.



There are unit cards and action cards. Units go on the field, occupy positions, move and fight. Action cards (except if they're fortifications or stated otherwise) return to your hand at the end of the turn. Thus, your artillery battery can shell the enemy every turn, unless it gets blown up by a counter-card. Actions and counter-cards an important part of the game flow.



Keeping the theming within the decks means there aren't many core rules to memorize, and also means that different decks move in very different ways. Units move and fight only when an order card is played. You might imagine the Germans might get some kind of Todesfahrt.



Cards have suits, which means you have a limited understanding of what the enemy has on the field, what is in their hand, and what is the next card to draw. This also applies to you. Are you desperate to draw a unit, and you have one space in your hand? Look over to your deck and see if the top card is one, and make an informed choice about whether to discard something from your current hand or not. Don't know whether to hang on to that fighter card? Look at the number of planes and helicopters in your enemy's hand. But beware: discards are permanent. Unlike most CCGs, you never rummage through your discard pile. If you don't use an asset, it's reassigned to another commander - it's a war, after all!



Recon is important, and so is countering it! You don't want to send an A-10 against an enemy position, only for the Pact player to reveal an Osa.


Being on the defensive, the NATO player has a number of fortifications.

The game is meant to be quite approachable and quick to play, so rules are fairly simple. I don't model different weapon systems, or attack and defence values: units are rated by a simple combat effectiveness. I also resisted modelling a bunch of variants. To a field commander, a T-64 platoon is a T-64 platoon, despite the differences in capabilities of different variants. The grogs can look at the art and feel smart figuring out whether it's an A, B or a BV. Since this is an early prototype, the card art is completely placeholder and unlicensed as of now.

My aim is for people with a basic interest in military matters but without a lot of knowledge of the theatre or weapons systems to be able to pick up the game, play and have fun. However, I'm trying to use core game interactions to gently nudge players into following doctrine. Even if a player doesn't know the doctrine, they will soon discover that using air assets to attack the Pact back line and stall their advance is a good play.

And speaking of NATO doctrine...



Escalation cards are powerful, but cost you victory points to use, as well as lowering the maximum number of VPs you can earn. Because the escalation deck is small, your opponent also knows that with each card you draw, their chance of drawing The Big One is higher.

If anyone is up for it, I'd love some goon playtest feedback. Currently, the game takes about an hour for a first-time player, and 25-30 minutes for someone who has played a few games. The current design issues are that 1. The board might be a bit big, although if I narrow it it might be too small. That said, narrowing it could help cut another couple minutes off of play time. 2. It's hard to fine tune balance without a lot more testers who have gotten a little bit of experience with the game. 3. Currently it's a no brainer to put terrain cards as next to your own deployment zone and score easy VPs. It makes sense of NATO, but not so much for Pact. I might simply make it so that you can't put down terrain cards next to Pact deployment zone. 4. Currently, NATO escalates a bit too willy-nilly. Now that is realistic, but for gameplay reasons I'd rather make escalation a more weighty decision.

Frosted Flake posted:

You're right, of course.

As TERF Island sinks into the sea

Slavvy posted:

When DID the soviets stop using tactical inner tubes?

Frosted Flake posted:

Slavvy posted:

Lmfao

I'm guessing since the 80's they decided everyone will just cross the river in the bmp/btr instead

KomradeX posted:

I think its a set up for engineers or people doing covert river crossing

Cuttlefush posted:

also annoying cool thing google does. if you search for soviet naval infantry it prioritizes results for russian naval infantry with russia bolded as a keyword. loving useless

Frosted Flake posted:

Did search get much, much worse? It takes me 30 minutes or more to find things I know I've looked up before. Even finding photos of things that I know there are photos of and have seen before is an exercise in frustration.

KomradeX posted:

Google has been maki g search worse for some reason everybyear for at least 10 years

Frosted Flake posted:

Did search get much, much worse? It takes me 30 minutes or more to find things I know I've looked up before. Even finding photos of things that I know there are photos of and have seen before is an exercise in frustration.

Frosted Flake posted:

Did search get much, much worse? It takes me 30 minutes or more to find things I know I've looked up before. Even finding photos of things that I know there are photos of and have seen before is an exercise in frustration.

Orange Devil posted:

From the rules:

Both players draw 6 Terrain cards and discard 2.
The NATO player places one Terrain card on any spot on the battlefield, replacing the Plain. Then,
the Pact player places one, and the players alternate until all 10 cards have been placed. Some cards
may be placed on top of others, replacing or modifying them. No terrain card may be played next to
the Pact deployment zone.

Draw 6, discard 2, times 2 = 8. So is it 8 or 10 terrain cards which get placed?

Megamissen posted:

you need tabletop simulator to playtest right?

Frosted Flake posted:

4CMBG should be the equivalent of a holographic charizard or blue eyes white dragon

gradenko_2000 posted:

The Black Cleopatra DLC is gonna be lit

Frosted Flake posted:

lol if they time skip from 1177 BC to 30 BC just to do that, you gotta hand it to them.

Frosted Flake posted:

ee: Game development heads can better explain but you can also see from the stuff on https://pharaoh.totalwar.com which content they had worked on in Troy, just like how Attila and Thrones of Britannia were interconnected. Related to my above example, they uncartooned the armour and weapons they had clearly researched during the process of making Troy. The last Troy DLC had a bunch of Egyptian content and I can see how this reduces workflow. Am I getting that about right?

Danann posted:

Feels like somehow one of the UI mods I've installed for Victoria 3 is crashing my session because it seems to reliably happen when the landowners throw a fit and try to do a counter revolution against any form of republicanism.

FirstnameLastname posted:

i remember ppl got mad over how much they reused between Napoleon and Empire TW

Frosted Flake posted:

New Historical Total War trailer dropped

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxpwPBhbGoo

Pharaonic Egypt was not on my list.

"Watch the announcement trailer for Total War: Pharaoh, the next game in the strategy franchise coming in October 2023. Get ready to dive into the turbulent events of the Egyptian New Kingdom period where you will determine the fate of three great cultures as they fight for survival amid the cataclysmic Bronze-Age Collapse.

In Total War: Pharaoh, the Pharaoh is dead, and the people of Egypt, Canaan, and the Hittite empire cry out for a new leader. Many desire the power of the throne, but the path to becoming Pharaoh is a perilous one. As the leader of these great nations, you must overcome societal collapse, face natural disasters and fight to protect your people against invaders from far off lands. 

Total War: Pharaoh features a choice of eight faction leaders from three rich cultural hubs, with unique playstyles and diverse unit rosters. Whether you’re charming the courts as a peerless diplomat, charging into battle as an unwavering commander or causing chaos as a fearless warlord, become a leader that history will remember."

It's an extremely cool period of history, and historically the setting for the Iliad, but there are intense debates about the nature of warfare in the era as well. I'm very curious to see how chariots are implemented, for example.

e: For better or worse, even if they ignore them, Creative Assembly does hire some of the best working historians and historical art people as advisors. You can tell the amount of research that went into Troy, and where they cartooned things up. Just based on the trailer, someone is familiar with the Egyptian armies of that period - there have been several good books in the past 20 years - and that's really cool.

ee: Game development heads can better explain but you can also see from the stuff on https://pharaoh.totalwar.com which content they had worked on in Troy, just like how Attila and Thrones of Britannia were interconnected. Related to my above example, they uncartooned the armour and weapons they had clearly researched during the process of making Troy. The last Troy DLC had a bunch of Egyptian content and I can see how this reduces workflow. Am I getting that about right?

Typo posted:

is Victoria 3 worth playing yet

Typo posted:

is Victoria 3 worth playing yet

Regarde Aduck posted:

well that was a weird point but not for reusing perfectly good assets, it's just that Empire was basically Napoleon but done properly

still had a load of bugs that were never fixed like the AI being really bad at doing invasions from the sea to the point it barely tried