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"Spores" The skirmish game by Wonky Goblin Miniatures and Games
Card Activation system
My game uses a card system, I haven’t seen anything like this and in play testing it has worked very well.
From this point on I refer to a single character miniature or a pair of miniatures on the same base as a unit.
Each player will deal a hand of cards equal to the number units they have in play at the start of the round. This is from a personal deck for each player.
Players take turn playing cards. The player must decide to either take the “Action” effect of the card and activate one of their units, or take the “Reaction” effect on the card were the opponent gets to active a unit first.
Once the player who got the “Action” effect has activated their unit, the other player takes the “Reaction” effect and actives their unit.
Then it’s the turn of the second player to chose and play a card.
Each miniature/Character you take on your team has four cards that have different Special effects. The first example card above has Shot Action special effect and a extra movement action effect. The second has two more powerful actions.
The Game has this structure.
Prematch setup (Both players)
- Select what units you wish to use, take their cards and add them to your deck.
- deploy units and objects based on scenario.
- Deal a hand of cards equal to the number of units you have in play.
Game phase
- First player decided by scenario selects a card to play
- Decides on either “Action” or “Reaction”,
- Player who gets “Action” resolves the action then actives one of their units.
- Player who gets “Reaction” resolves the reaction then actives one of their units.
- Then the other player plays a card
This repeats until nether player has a card in their hand.
- Based on the scenario, any points would be scored
- Then Each player would deals a new hand of cards equal to the number of units they have in play and repeats the game phase. If there are not enough cards in the deck to deal a full hand to either player the game moves to final scoring.
(1) remove the background, or at least don’t put it behind the text
The outlined text does help, but it can be very distracting.
Some of the character/theming will be lost, but I prefer clarity over theme for things like this.
(2) the text for actions/reactions need to be as short as possible. Avoid ‘if’ clauses.
First example could probably be shortened to :
Action : extra move (for one unit)
Reaction : extra shoot action (for one unit)
Maybe find a way to introduce easy to read icons for actions ?
Although that can probably wait until you’ve worked out what kind of action/reaction combos you’ve got.
If everything always applies to a single unit then there’s no need to waste extra words on explaining such things.
Thanks for the reply and feedback.
It’s a good point about the background, These are just something I put together for testing, but when I do the final cards I will keep that in mind.I will introduce Icons and short text on the final cards. I didn’t want to get bogged down designing them at this point.at the moment I have put a lot of detail on the cards, so me and my play testers can avoid looking at my notes and the rule book as it is.
Like you say for clarity I will have as few words as possible and icons on the cards.
I was Interest to see if the card idea sounds fun? In the play tests the cards make it quite strategic, Its a question of when to play the more powerful cards and when to let your opponent go first etc.
I think it will depend on the variety of actions as well as the ratio of regular vs more powerful unique actions available to a player.
Maybe a joker card that can do anything basic or a method of discarding cards so you can at least do something at any given turn?
Relic knights, mythic battles and blood&plunder all have variants of such actions that help mitigate really bad options.
Are spores part of the mechanics? Do players collect them? Could they be used as part of the cards actions to improve odds or get extra cards or something to that effect?
The way I have been play testing it is that no matter what card you play you still perform a standard activation after the action on the card, so move, shot, shot and move or double move etc. I do like the idea of wild cards to free you up a bit. I will deferentially be adding some cards that let you manipulate the deck.
The Spores will be a big part of the game. They are collected for scoring but can also be used to boost some actions at the expense of points. I have lots of ideas for scenarios where they are used differently. One plays like a kind of dungeon bowl carry the spore to a scoring area. (Capture the flag).
The 3rd faction use the spores to create weak zombie grots, so destroying spore patches will stop them spawning.
Factions that I’m actively working on are
Military faction (the ones I’ve shown)Feral Faction (Much more hand to hand and they have an orc heavy)Mycomancers (Faction (undead zombie gobos with one evil scientist leader)tech-enhanced (goblins with slightly wacky abilities and weaknesses)
I have been heavily play testing the cards and done a lot of tweaks and removed some completely.
The weak point at the moment is the dice combat system which is what I’m experimenting with today.
The way you described the action cards makes me think its worth testing the first cards I did, it works more like that, with all actions on the cards. I will use just icons for that.