Yeah, the only reason I'm getting away with keeping track of minerals is because the player doesn't have life points to calculate, thus freeing up a spot

Anyways, I'm curretly looking for my MTG rule book for tips on how they explain their game from scratch.

sounds nice.

Type faster yagmoth, I want to read what your working on(probably gas related) before I leave for school

Whatever. Do you have a rule book of MTG? So you were (maybe are, dunno) a magic player? If so, it is rare that you don't want to keep track of gas for "simplicity's sake". We use to calculate and keep track of lives even without write the lives total down every time we get 1 damage point.

I'm starting to think that you are making a dumber's game, as somebody said several posts ago. Of course I expect to be absolutely wrong. MTG is really complicated to learn form zero to mastery. I'm still learning.


I'm commencing to get tired of persuade you to make use of gas...... give more updates and I'll work harder.

If you watch above, you'll notice that I didn't put a gas cost on the Vessel (or any cost in fact), or any other specific thing I mentioned.

I like the idea of keeping gas merely cards, not a factor.

1.- Gas makes the game feel like SC.....
2.- Multiple resources diminished luck.....
3.- and improves deck's diversity. Makes also players to think and develop intrincated strategies....
4.- Every good TCG do this, and get countered by the player's skills....
5.- That's relative. If you don't have talent or aptitudes to do something, it's really hard to learn.
6.- If there are only minerals, the accomplishment of this point will be decreased.
7.- Multiple resource types, by example.

As ever, I'm just suggesting...... I've played several card games with awful experiences, and all times I returned to MTG..... what a good game....

Currently looking at this to help me structure the rules.

I don't know if you can 'master' MTG, more or less, create bomb ass strategies that always work.. Maybe you could call that 'mastery', I'd call it unbelievable knowledge of strategy...

MTG rulez.

I also agree with what Yagmoth just posted with his list, comparing what you said to his ideas.. I agree.

Of course it's almost impossible to make an unbeatable deck. That' simply because there are factors that you can't control, as ClanAreForGays said, the luck. Luck can be the gratest of the allies (of course, with little strategy from the player....), but it's invincible as an enemy. Also, it depends (sometimes and not so much) to the power of the cards you use.

On topic, CAFG is not updating his advances. Update them, please, so I can work more about the game (and gas..... lol).

I've been thinking a bit.... but I don't know your advances and maybe I'm overloading myself vainly with brainstorming.

That's not true. I played someone with an unbeatable Black Deck. Also, the guy that taught me how to play MTG, had an unbeatable water deck. Whenever he did get 'beat' it was because he couldn't get his Horseshoe Crab out with Diplomatic Immunity out.. There was also one more card he had attached to it. But basically, he could attack you 20 times in one turn if he had the mana.

The black deck that whooped my ass did it in four turns.

Let me give a quick and dirty summary.

You start with your HQ, 4 workers, and 50 minerals. There are 3 phases(Reloading,Structure Step, Skirmish Step), the first being the upkeep which is called the Reloading phase. In the upkeep you refreshreload(untap) your units, and add Time Counters on appropriate units, reset damage(mtg's end of turn regeneration), and after all of that you draw your card. Only Triggered Events can be played during the upkeep(like something that automatically happens when you have 7 or more cards in your hand)<this was an example yagmoth.Talents(activated abilites) and Micro cards can not be used.

The next phase is the Structure Step. In the very beginning of this step you or your opponent may use Talents or Micro cards. In this case the priority would start with your opponent. After this, the player whose turn it places his unit from back to front rows or vice versa(this is all done at once without interruption). After this, the player(whose turn it is) can use Construction and play cards from their hands. Construction is like a type of talent that buildings and workers have. Construction can only be done during the Structure step. Research (a tech building ability) is also done during this phase. Research will either search your deck for a specific Global(permanent and applying to all your units) Micro card, or it will be a global effect already printed on the tech building. Another important thing done during this phase is the setting of cards face down. Now these cards can easily be any kind of card in the game(Unit/Building/Micro), but mostly micro(more on this later much later). T/M cards can also be played in response to any research or construction. The last thing performed during the Structure Step is formation. When a player starts re-arranging their units from back to front lines it tells the other player they are ending their Structure Step. Units that were Constructed or played from the hand this turn can not be sent to the front line. (or maybe I should just make the formation part only on the beginning before any construction, so that this wouldn't even have to be a rule.)

Skirmish Step, this is the last phase of your turn(no 'second main' deal). In the beginning of this phase Talents and Micro cards may be played (priority to the attacker). After this the player sending announces which front line units he is attacking with. After this T/M(Talets/Micro) can be played(defenders priority). Then, of those units attacking, the defender matches the units with his own in anyway. The only illegal match is a single defender unit matching with more than 1 attacking unit. After this T/M can be played. Note: no damage has been calculated yet. Then the attacker matches his unmatched attacking units with any unit or building regardless of which line they are on. This means if a player with 3 zerglings attacks a player with 1 zealot, the zealot will most likely block 1 ling, leaving the remaining 2 lings to either gang up on the zealot, or target the workers/buildings. Then T/M's may be played again with priority to the attacker. NOW battle damage is assigned and calculated. T/M's may be played after this with priority to the attacker, after this the player's turn is over.(I'm still a little conflicted with how I want defensive buildings to play through this.)

It should be also noted that this game also has the Golden Rule - that regardless of what the game rules are, a card's instructions will always be the exception(if the rules say you can, but the card says you can, the card wins).

Things I left out that I hope I can get to MONDAY:
expanding
fill in priority gaps
retreating
finish skirmish step
face-down mechanics

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 23 2009, 4:31 am by ClansAreForGays.

The Yawgmoth's Will deck? Maybe the Chains of Mephistopheles deck? Of course those deck are impossible to defeat or even hit them with many types of decks...... The Horshoe Crab with Diplomatic immunity? Well, its hard to beat without some cards, but there's plenty of techs you can do. The other card you are referring is Hermetic Study, right? Yes, that a big nasty bastard crab.... but really easy to wipe out with many decks.

On topic:

Refresh phase, good. Like it sounds, it's a refresh phase. Time counters? Strange stuff...
Triggered events, for example, what? What's that "something that you can put in there?
Talent is like unit's abilities? Maybe this is the regeneration phase also? Good to know that "sorcery like" abilities that can't be played anytime.

Too much mineral, I think. There will be many things to count, so you should not start with "50 minerals away" in a card game. I guess a free mineral card like I suggested will do. Maybe you could start with HQ, the four workers and a few mineral cards (four, five, dunno) in play, with some mineral counters on each. I calculate that ten mineral counters per card will do. You can reduce every SC cost by five, or even ten, rounded down, to make the calculations easier.


Goood. Giving the advantage of first hit to the opponent in the other player's turn is very strategic. Opponent may think that he will be tricked an does nothing in many of the cases....That''s funny. It's like fear.


Building's Construction is to make addons or evolve, right? Nice.


Explain how that works with a gameplay example. I think those cards should be only "micro" cards (and support card like the terrain I explained in earlier posts). Explain how this would work with a unit or building, please.


good "summoning sickness" copy. Keep it but reformat it a little....

No objections.... This is well planned but a little basic.

I'm expecting for more changes, maybe you could upload a txt with the complete info......


Certainly. This wouldn't be a card game without this.

(add gas......lol)

Updated things, but I put the things changed in red so it is not required to re-read the whole thing. Right now I'm just pondering on where to input cards like sunkens and photon cannons into the battle step.

This won't work..... As I said, how are you going to kill a big unit (building)?

If you use similar SC HP scaling, that zealot won't even go run out of shields if the three zerglings attack it...... and then he will also regenerate full energy.... Use counters for remaining HP/Sields/energy and reduce them to a fifth or tenth of the SC total, so you won't use 10+ counters per unit (or a twenty-sided dice).

For the defensive structures, maybe you can make use of the SC2 feature that lets spore/sunken colonies to walk. You can add that mechanic to the turret and the photon cannon, at the cost of lower HP. With this, the player will be able to choose if the building is going to be defensive or aggressive, and if it will stay in front or back line.

It's just an idea.


In SC you have access to all the tech tree. I think there are two options: print a card to represent each tech of the tech tree (really expensive, no...) or make fewer techs excluding some lesser (and useless...) techs like ocular implants, or even all the techs that gives abilities to the units, and energy to spellcasters. I'm a little busy right now but that's what I can suggest you for now....

See, the only thing that I don't like that you are doing is limiting yourself. You can only do Starcraft and Starcraft 2 units, unless you want to start throwing stuff off of the wall. Also, I would use alot more that relates to Starcraft, but as you said K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) like, Tap a probe to mine minerals, mine gas, or build a building (or attack). Also, For your recycle idea, instead of your cards going to a 'graveyard', put it back in the deck. Have say a 50 card limit, and minimum. So, 10 probes, 2 nexus, 5 zealots, etc. That way you have your limit.

Also, when you go to attack someone, have a pre-set 'travel' distance. It takes that many turns to move to your opponents base before you are able to attack them unless you meet them halfway, and you can have battles there, Its not like your bases are RIGHT next to each other.

Once again, K.I.S.S. You don't need much, have all things reduced by 5 (I think it works for most of them), that way zealots have less hp, and less shields, less dmg, etc. Attacking taps, moving taps, kiting taps, pretty much everything taps. Everything will just have one action per turn?

I do like a lot of your concepts, I may have to steal them and improve on them and make a lot more money (remember, you are limiting yourself.)

The real question is: Are you in it for the money, or because you want it and no one else has thought of it?

It's a SC card game dude. I have to limit myself to sc themed cards, which actually isn't saying a lot. I can easily do something like discard cards from an opponent's and just call it "Psyonic Storm"
Actually I'm really considering just scrapping the recycle idea. Also, I actually want cards to be piling up in the graveyard. Card games gain so much diversity when they play around with the graveyard. To put it bluntly, my idea for expanding bases is it shuffles your discard back into your deck.

Now this is where you start to lose coherence:
Right after you get done talking about KISS, you add this... I would need a large game mat to work this out.

You probably don't mean what you actually typed. Reducing everything by 5 across the board would not make things simpler, and it wouldn't even balance out (35hp rine /w 1 atk lol wut?). I'd put in damage counters waaaay before kiting&shields. (anyways kiting would be a micro card, have you read everything?)

This where I lose all respect for you:
Go ahead, I'm flattered you think they're worth copying. Still, you're delusional if you think you have a chance in hell at selling it. When I was active in the indie computer game scene I ran across a lot of delusional entrepreneurs like yourself. You can save yourself a lot of trouble if you just trust me when I say having an open source attitude is the only chance you have at getting anywhere. I've seen the most brilliant game designs simply laughed off by publishers and company sponsors.
Also, anything I will ever push myself to come up with in this thread could be done in a day by a professional Blizzard think tank.

That's not the real question. But to answer it, NO. If your eyes are primarily on the money, you will never even get to the creative point where your in the position to actually make some. I would be supremely content with just having a couple dozen kids printing up my finalized game, and playing it occasionally. I'd like to dream if I succeed I might even have a forum where players could offer feedback and card/balance suggestions.



People with your kind of mind set are the worst of the worst in my eyes. My issue is with him being obsessed with money, not that I would try and steal my ideas, which I'm sure I'm not the first to think of

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 25 2009, 4:54 am by ClansAreForGays. Reason: calmed down

"I do like a lot of your concepts, I may have to steal them and improve on them and make a lot more money (remember, you are limiting yourself.)"

You are a douchebag.

Also, just read the thread. How heavily is it based on MTG, CAFG?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 25 2009, 4:53 am by Richard Nixons Head.

A little too heavily, but I'm working on it. Right now nothing too obvious except for the power/toughness thing, because honestly can't think of a way to assign lasting damage/hp attributes without making it overly complicated. I feel comfortable with everything else I've taken/modified from another card game, but this power/toughness thing I know definitely has to go in the long run.

"Why not just use damage counters?"
Damage counters work in a game like pokemon where you only have 5 pokemon to split them up amongst, but there will be too many separate cards requiring a ridiculous amount of counters, and on top of that a player could no longer stack their like-cards on top of eachother to save play space.

"Why not use a 20 sided die?"
I don't even own 1 of these. I can't expect each player to have as many of these as they have units.


I'm sure there's a solution to my problem, and I might stumble across it while making another rule, but for now I'd rather just keep the mtg thing and worry about other stuff.(speaking of which, I really need to update that first page)

Power/Toughness??? This won't be Starcraft-like in any form. What kind of values are you going to use? Also, you are obsessed with the MTG regen method. That mechanics, in any form, are 80-90% of MTG playing experience.
Another method? There's plenty. Counters, dices, even a roller disk in each card with hp (difficult...but nobody said that make a card game from zero was easy....).


Pokemon is a basic game. If you didn't notice, you have at most 20 counters on a card. That's just a twenty-sided dice. Also, the minimun amount of damage is 10, so all the damage/hp parameters in those cards can be divided by ten. That doesn't occur in SC.
But maybe in SC it would be chaotic that mass amount of counters....I'm gonna elaborate something good and tell you when done...


I've got something like 6-7 of them. Are you sure you played MTG? Three of them were tournament gifts.
Well, never mind, you are right in this topic. There is something to be invented. I'm gonna think about it.


Yep, it's getting rusty....
Maybe you could post what are you worrying to give you some ideas or workarounds....

So why do you need so many units?

You've given me some great ideas for an SC card game with this thread, I think they're pretty incompatible with how you're playing, but I'll post it up if I write out a long one. I can also make cards for you, if you'd like some.