Talk:Chronogeddon CCG card set

This deck is currently under construction. The basic mechanics are still liable to change, but we're creating cards to flesh the game out. Feel free to add cards that fit the existing mechanics, or add minor new mechanics, but don't add any major mechanics or change any existing ones without discussing them first on the talk page.

Old talk on this subject has been archived.

Joker's thoughts are at Talk:New CCG/joker.

Project status?

So what's happening with this? Do people think we've got enough material to put some coherent first-draft rules up on the main article page, and make enough cards for an alpha-test set? --Kevan 16:52, 26 March 2007 (BST)

I think so. --Depressi

Me too. --James 19:34, 6 April 2007 (BST)

So... who does it? Zaratustra 01:10, 10 April 2007 (BST)

I'd be happy to, but I'd say James got first refusal, as he started the project. --Kevan 12:22, 10 April 2007 (BST)

Sorry - I've been staying away from this for a while, so that it doesn't become 'my game'. --James 12:14, 1 May 2007 (BST)

No problem. I'll try to summarise what we've got, then. Any votes for a title? I think my money's still on Chronowar or Chronogeddon. --Kevan 13:09, 1 May 2007 (BST)

I've added a rough draft of rules and a few example cards that fit them. They're probably a bit biased towards how I was seeing the game progressing, so take me to task on anything I've misinterpreted. --Kevan 14:05, 1 May 2007 (BST)

Game needs a name

Okay, we really should get a name sorted out for this. Fire out some suggestions and we'll take a vote. --Kevan 00:57, 9 May 2007 (BST)

Uchronia. Zaratustra 03:27, 9 May 2007 (BST)

Anachronic, Anachronix. Zaratustra 03:27, 9 May 2007 (BST)

Aetas (from latin translation of Era) Joeyeti 07:29, 9 May 2007 (BST)

Chronowar, Chronogeddon. Kevan 11:34, 9 May 2007 (BST)

Chronocide --BM 15:56, 9 May 2007 (BST)

Temporal Chaos! (Any similarity to names of recently released Magic: the Gathering sets is purely coincidental, I'm sure.) Jtwe 17:48, 9 May 2007 (BST)

Bellum Aetarum, an expanded version of Joeyeti's suggestion-Bucky 03:10, 10 May 2007 (BST)

which stands for? Zaratustra 08:18, 10 May 2007 (BST)

OSCAR - Open-Source Cards and Rules. --James 18:42, 19 May 2007 (BST)

Game Mechanics

v1.0

Two things I didn't cover when writing up the rules, but which have been discussed a bit - Resources and the Rock-Paper-Scissor trinity.

Resources would mean that certain units required access to particular resources to function, which would put them at a disadvantage if they were travelling to an unfamiliar Era where they couldn't refuel. One way to implement this would be to agree on a fixed set of resources, and write them on Era cards (with room for having Terrains or Units which could create that resource in alien time periods), and then say things like "If in an Era without a Nuclear resource, Mech Destroyer takes 3 wounds whenever it attacks."

Off the top of my head, resources could be: Coal, Electricity, Nuclear. And if we're going with magical powers, some hazy "Magic" or "Psychic" resource, which tends to be only available in ancient history and/or the far future.

Which might be a way to create a rock-paper-scissor trinity at the same time:-

• Present-Day units have the edge over Historical units because they have better weapons that don't always need particular fuel.
• Far-Future units have an edge over Present-Day units because the present day has raidable Electricity and Nuclear power sources.
• Historical units have an edge over Far-Future units, because Mechs don't run very well in the 4th century (and possibly because ancient shamans can use powerful magical attacks against neo-psychics).

I'm not sure that's entirely balanced or coherent, but it seems like it might be a useful direction. --Kevan 16:07, 1 May 2007 (BST)

Some more suggestions:

• Pre-historic: Pros - Strongest resourceless creatures, terrain destruction. Cons - Can't close portals on their own, operate vehicles or get useful tools
• Ancient Ages: Pros - Fast creature placement, units gain strength in numbers. Cons - Individually weak creatures.
• Medieval Ages: Pros - Creature summoning and banishing, ???. Cons - Dependent on mana for fancy stuff
• Renaissance: Pros - Vehicle/Terrain summoning, ???. Cons - ???
• Victorian Age: Pros - Versatile, good with Animal manipulating?. Cons - Scattered, cards don't support each other well
• Industrial Age: Pros - Strong vehicles, defensive terrain, blitz tactics. Cons - ???
• Modern Age: Pros - Strong vehicles, good terrains. Cons - Very dependent on resources and terrains to do any real damage
• Apocalyptic: Pros - Good at recovering stuff from discard pile or otherwise benefiting from unit deaths. Cons - Overall frail
• Space Age: Pros - Strongest creatures and vehicles. Cons - Very dependent on Energy.

Zaratustra 06:37, 2 May 2007 (BST)

Sounds good, particularly if the Far-Future is more reliant on terrain cards, so more vulnerable to blundering dinosaurs (and maybe mediaeval siege weapons?).

And the Fuel and Battery system looks good; a nice way to allow "power cards" that don't become fully useful until you play other cards. Not sure if they'd benefit from entering play unfuelled by default, perhaps with the power-station Terrains saying that "X-powered Units enter play with full X." --Kevan 16:02, 2 May 2007 (BST)

Flight?

I'm thinking that "Flying" might be a useful keyword, so that there's a clear mechanic saying that a ground-based unit can't do much damage to a flying one, that a Tyrannosaurus isn't going to do very well against a B-12 Bomber. We could change "damage" stats into "Ranged damage" and "Close-combat damage" (or something), allow units to pick which type they use when they attack, and define "Flying" as meaning "Prevent all close-combat damage, unless it comes from another Flying Unit."

What do people think? --Kevan 18:40, 7 May 2007 (BST)

This could also be tied in to the idea of the Future Eras requiring Terrain support, if Flying Units required an Airstrip or Launchpad to be in play, before they could be played themselves (which would also allow Flying Units to be powerful against ground troops, without being unbalanced). --Kevan 15:25, 8 May 2007 (BST)

Hm. To avoid numberitis, I'd suggest just adding (melée), (range) or (melée/range) to the Damage tag of cards. Flying could mean 'can only attack at range and be attacked by range attacks'. This would allow for units that are only damaged by close-range, too. - Zaratustra 20:25, 20 May 2007 (BST)

That works. --Kevan 16:22, 21 May 2007 (BST)

Alternative flight mechanic: "Flying" means "Can only be attacked by other Flying Units", and all Flying Vehicles would say things like "At the start of your turn, if there isn't an Airstrip in the same Era as this Unit, it loses 1 Fuel." (with whatever other wordings; a Launchpad for futuristic fliers, nothing for flying Animals, and tweaked variations). --Kevan 17:15, 10 May 2007 (BST)

Fuel already goes down quite fast (one per Unit Action). Maybe something like 'cannot refuel without an Airstrip terrain'? - Zaratustra 20:25, 20 May 2007 (BST)

Aha, perfect. And futuristic airstrips would just recharge batteries, so would be useless for present-day aeroplanes. --Kevan 16:22, 21 May 2007 (BST)

Ongoing effects

This came up in the Infinite Dvorak deck as well, and I don't know if it's just my preference, but I think we should be avoiding cards which create invisible permanent effects. Mechanics like "Target Animal in the same era is now a Soldier" and "If a Marine is attacked for the first time" require the players to remember a change in the gamestate, and preventing the entire gamestate from being read by looking at the table.

The Island is quite a specialty card, though. It's not going to see much play, in my opinion. Zaratustra 20:55, 10 May 2007 (BST)

In all cases, I think they can be reworded so as not to require invisible tracking (or at least flipped to make the tracking very short term - "If this Unit came into play during your most recent turn, it has -2 Damage and -2 Stamina, and counts as a Soldier instead of an Animal." for Werewolf). What do other people think? --Kevan 11:53, 10 May 2007 (BST)

Sound oppinion... On my behalf (If marine is attacked for the first time...) I would say that some sort of markers or coins could be used to track the Stamina count of a Unit. --Joeyeti 14:14, 10 May 2007 (BST)

I think we've already established that we're using "wound counters" to keep track of damage, although it's a bit patchily worded, throughout the cards. If we've already got one type of token being use a lot on each card, we should probably avoid using too many more. (Marine could be changed to "If Marine is attacked while unwounded..." without losing too much of the mechanic, and Reaper-Jack could become "Damage: 1, Stamina: 3. Reaper-Jack enters play with two wounds. If Reaper-Jack kills another Unit, he may heal one wound.") --Kevan 14:49, 10 May 2007 (BST)

Timeline

Hm. Should there be a post-apocalyptic period? Should it be before or after space exploration? Or beside it? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zaratustra (talk • contribs) 22:26, 1 May 2007.

We could just add a load of post-apocalypse cards to the tail end of the Information Age (perhaps jotting out a detailed timeline somewhere, to clarify that an apocalypse occurs in 2086); I'm not sure we'd necessarily gain very much by adding more and more and thinner and thinner Eras to the timeline.

Having said that, a post-apocalypse probably should be distinct from the Era that immediately precedes it, so that 21st century mobile phones and pet foods and chat shows can't be played straight into it. Feel free to give it a go and see how it pans out. --Kevan 00:07, 2 May 2007 (BST)

Last Days of Earth is pretty empty and even I can't think of stuff to put in. Shall it be returned to ashes? Zaratustra 07:45, 18 May 2007 (BST)

Card feedback

Cards by James

I did a fair few cards, none of which seem to be on the front page?

--James 18:45, 19 May 2007 (BST)

They don't show up on the edit log either.Bucky

Maybe they got lost in a edit collision and you didn't notice? Zaratustra 20:52, 19 May 2007 (BST)

If you mean the ones you suggested in the talk thread back in February, they weren't all converted and copied across when the main CCG page was created; I didn't want to be too presumptuous about rewording cards (like Time Machine) to the finalised system, so only took a couple of examples. Feel free to tweak and copy them across. --Kevan 10:44, 20 May 2007 (BST)

I took the liberty of copying the more obvious cards. I like the ideas of Spell Actions that can be played on any Era a Wizard is in, but your examples are both strictly worse than Time Warp. Leonardo's Contraption awaits the inclusion of a Renaissance era. - Zaratustra 00:24, 21 May 2007 (BST)

Cards by Zaratustra

Red Giant Sun would make more sense as a Terrain with a Unit Action ability, wouldn't it? (And maybe an area-effect one, at that.) --Kevan 22:52, 1 May 2007 (BST)

Hm, true. Zaratustra 23:09, 1 May 2007 (BST)

Should the Eras overlap at their endpoints? I haven't looked too carefully, but it seems like a card from 1969 could be played onto either the Industrial Age or the Atomic age. MagiMaster 04:18, 2 May 2007 (BST)

We can jigger the era ends better once we have enough cards for each one, I guess. Zaratustra 20:56, 2 May 2007 (BST)

So how can Star Fighters and Stellar Explorers fight fairly against mediaeval peasants and dinosaurs, or even present-day units? I'm beginning to think that "flying" might be a useful keyword to have (so that some units just can't do any damage at all to flying units), but things actually whooshing around in space is maybe pushing that a bit too far, particularly when we have cards like Blitzkreig being able to damage spaceships. Maybe we should keep everything within the lower atmosphere, and explain thematically that all time portals open on the ground? --Kevan 18:33, 7 May 2007 (BST)

Hm, OK. Zaratustra 20:02, 7 May 2007 (BST)

Moonshot Cannon: This card is way too powerful. Is it supposed to be able to fire at Units in other Eras?-Bucky 00:06, 11 May 2007 (BST)

I don't know what the intention was (it does need Fuel), but I think we definitely need to sort out a big, clear assumption somewhere that cards can only affect other cards in the same era, and that Action cards have to be played into a single, specific era. --Kevan 00:49, 11 May 2007 (BST)

My mistake. There. Zaratustra 02:20, 11 May 2007 (BST)

Timeline Shift has been massively depowered, as it makes a very bad combo with Chronofold Hounds that can bone the game from the first turn. Zaratustra 03:34, 13 May 2007 (BST)

Cards by BM

Your 'Genetical Altering' card is misspelled and apparently you do not want it to be corrected. Zaratustra 08:28, 5 May 2007 (BST)

I fixed it, but now I don't think it sounds right. --BM 15:26, 5 May 2007 (BST)

Card names in CCGs tend to be nouns or present-simple-tense verbs, rather than continuous-tense verbs - "Genetic Alteration" or "Alter Genes", rather than "Genetically Altering". And the possessive "its" doesn't have an apostrophe. --Kevan 15:42, 5 May 2007 (BST)

Why did "Genetic Alteration" get put in the timeless cards pile? It says 2000+ and all the other n+ cards got put in their starting era. --BM 14:42, 8 May 2007 (BST)

Sorry, it just got lost in all the yearless cards when I was rearranging the page. I've moved it. --Kevan 15:09, 8 May 2007 (BST)

Cards by JoeYeti

Is there a specific reason why Timeless Luck and The Great Unknown are picking random cards from the deck, rather than just drawing from the top? --Kevan 12:23, 7 May 2007 (BST)

Nope, just to make it somewhat interesting... ;) But if the majority disagrees and you feel it is tedious to dive through the whole deck... It can be changed. --Joeyeti 16:02, 7 May 2007 (BST)

Not tedious, but if this were being played in something like Links#Apprentice, there'd be no command for "remove a random card from the deck".

But CCG cards generally interact more effectively if they're kept as simple as possible - if there were other cards that let you put cards on top of your deck, or shuffle it, then Timeless Luck might be an interesting card to play in conjunction with them. As it is, avoiding the top cards and picking random ones just seems to make it less interesting. (And The Great Unknown is actually a slightly weaker version of the legendarily weak "Draw one card" action card, which just replaces the card you're playing with a card you could have drawn instead, and uses up your action for that turn.) --Kevan 18:13, 7 May 2007 (BST)

Ok, changing the Timeless Luck and erasing The Great Unknown.... --Joeyeti 08:00, 8 May 2007 (BST)

Your mechanic of "If heads, (this card) is hit" would be clearer as "If tails, the damage is prevented", assuming that's what you meant. --Kevan 18:13, 7 May 2007 (BST)

As you mention it, is clearer ;) Changed... --Joeyeti 08:00, 8 May 2007 (BST)

Cards by Bucky

"Unique" would certainly be a useful keyword, but you've got it as both "You can only have one of these in each Era." and "You can only have one of these in play at a time." - I think the former's probably more fun, for a time-travel game. --Kevan 17:44, 9 May 2007 (BST)

Given the nature of these cards (i.e. affects all later eras), having two in different eras would make them far too powerful. Two Biotech Labs could use the same prerequisite labs yet give your troops in the later era 9x the Stamina, which is too much. -Bucky 20:11, 9 May 2007 (BST)

Make it two keywords, then. I didn't even notice they had different rulings. Zaratustra 21:08, 9 May 2007 (BST)

You could rephrase the cards so that the modifier only applies once, although it'd take a lot of rephrasing. Perhaps some sort of "required" keyword would be useful (meaning "must have these other things in play in current or earlier eras, before you can play this"), so that you could just say something like "Biotechnology Lab. Unique. Requires Secret Research Lab, Chemistry Lab and Nanotechnology Lab. A Soldier that has any Biotechnology Labs in its current or earlier Eras has its stamina tripled." --Kevan 00:59, 10 May 2007 (BST)

Are the more advanced Lab cards too powerful? Or are the earlier ones not powerful enough? Or are they all too strong?-Bucky 21:35, 9 May 2007 (BST)

Time to make a deck and test! Zaratustra 22:42, 9 May 2007 (BST)

One problem I can see is that labs effecting later Eras have little use in the farther end of the timeline. Zaratustra 23:03, 9 May 2007 (BST)

That's one of the balancing factors. In order to take full advantage of them, you need to move them back through time. Not only is this ether dangerous and time consuming(i.e. shipping buildings through enemy territory) or reliant on luck (i.e. using Time Warp), but early in the timeline it is more vulnerable to a blundering Dinosaur. -Bucky 03:09, 10 May 2007 (BST)

Won't Time Fly die as soon as it's played? -- Zaratustra 07:44, 24 May 2007 (BST)

To quote the rules, "If a card ever sustains a number of wound counters that exceed its Stamina, it is destroyed." (emphasis added) The Time Fly will not die until it receives a wound.-Bucky 16:20, 24 May 2007 (BST)

Oh, tut, I think that was just me wording things carelessly - I don't think it makes any intuitive sense for a Stamina 3 unit to require four wounds before it dies. Any objections to the rule being reworded to the originally-intended "equal or exceed"? --Kevan 16:32, 24 May 2007 (BST)

Everyone will understand it that way anyway, so might as well. -- Zaratustra 19:03, 24 May 2007 (BST)

Now this throws the game balance off, since it greatly increases the one-hit kill opportunities. That one extra wound made a rather large difference, especially for weaker units, but everyone just lost at least a quarter of their stamina.-Bucky 20:56, 24 May 2007 (BST)

Anyone who was designing their cards under the same system as you can just bump the numbers up by one. Personally, all my cards were designed for the "equal or exceed" wording. --Kevan 22:24, 24 May 2007 (BST)

Cards by Cait

You shouldn't be allowed to play Timeline Shatter into an opponent's Era, which the current wording and rules seem to allow.-Bucky 03:54, 13 May 2007 (BST)

Card limit

we need a limit on card copies in the deck. I was destroyed by a deck with 20 Timeline Shifts and 20 Chronofold Hounds. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zaratustra (talk • contribs) 02:27, 13 May 2007.

I suppose this is fixed now that the cards have been changed. I'm not sure if the fact that a deck with massively-multiple cards is a sign of a broken deck-construction rule, or a broken card design - it does seem to come up for every CCG we try to make, though, so maybe it should just be a fixed default rule for all CCG sets, even if it does mean we're copying Magic the Gathering. (Do many other CCGs have copies-per-deck limit?) --Kevan 12:47, 14 May 2007 (BST)

From a cursory glance, Yugioh and Naruto have a 3-card limit. Mostly, it's a way to prevent a single overpowered card creating an entire degenerate deck. I suppose we could try a few games without a card limit? Zaratustra 20:20, 14 May 2007 (BST)

Massively-multiple card decks tend to be brittle, especially if there are global rules cards. Or, they are the result of carefully balanced card combos that are easily upset, just like other powerful decks. If you look closely at my obsolete Alchemy deck, it worked not only because of the critical mass of Tea and Gargle Blaster but also on account of several other combos folded neatly into the victory conditions. If certain cards are too powerful in large numbers, we can restrict them on a case-by-case basis (like the Lab cards) or reword them to avoid the complication (e.g. "You may only play one Action Splitter per turn"). On the other hand, if we restrict all decks this way, we cut out other valid, nonbroken strategies (like a zombie horde deck). I think we should recommend it for new CCGs until the kinks get worked out, but not mandate it.

However, there is another type of deck which we should ban, one with exactly six Actions and fewer than 10 or so Things. This type of deck is inherently broken because once all your things are played you know exactly what you're drawing next turn.-Bucky 06:43, 16 May 2007 (BST)

You'll notice there's already a minimum of 40 cards in the deck. Zaratustra 08:07, 16 May 2007 (BST)

Playtesting

I played a round against a friend today. He played the Spartan Labs one (mostly using Antique cards as he wasn't very sure how the game worked) and I played a Werewolves with Guns Victorian/World War game.

Some thoughts:

• Vehicles don't warp with their drivers. Generals don't follow their armies, though that's probably for the best else things get mighty fast.
• Reinforced Bunker is tough.
• The best strategy against a massive army seems to wait for the enemy to Maelstrom into your Era and then warp off to kill their portal.

Zaratustra 04:03, 17 May 2007 (BST)