Designing Necromancy Part 4: 10-4

I've talked about the Queens and the Jacks, now it's time to talk about the 10s that I mentioned iterating upon in my last blog. All the number cards are essentially meant to be fodder when compared to face cards. They can have effects on the game and when combined with Possessors they can become powerful, but their primary goal is to act as a face-down casting resource, or a low-cost face up card to PacMan in preparation for your face card to Overtake it. (If you missed the meaning there, go back to the first blog.)

10s, however, are meant to be above and beyond the Fodder, with unique attack methods when compared to their brethren. Rather than just a single standard attack for their battle phase, they may attack in various augmented ways.

So without further ado, let's talk about the 10 of Skeletons: The Skelettin.

(I'm actually surprised I found a picture so easily for this.)

The Skelettin is a two-headed Skeleton Giant. And because two heads are better than one, Skelettin has the ability to declare two attacks during a battle phase. Those two attacks do not have to target the same creature, so it can act as a fodder clearer or declare its two attacks against the same target to chip away at BigBads. In fact, there are only 4 creatures currently in the game that Skelettin can't destroy in one turn if they are using their base stats. (Possessors or certain card effects can change this.)

It's a very simple creature design, but it allows for some extra impactful decision-making for the Skelettin. Additionally, depending on how I ultimately end up handling battle phase, his double attack may equally be a curse, since it also may mean he receives damage twice during his own battle phase. I haven't quite sorted out how I'm going to handle combat just yet. Presently, a creature can either move OR attack, and attacking allows the defending creature to attack back with its own attack stat. I'm probably going to be testing a change to where you can Move+Attack in the same turn, which proves a counterattack from the opponent, or you can simply attack with no counterattack if you are already adjacent to the opponent. (This will greatly buff Bone Dragon, the Skeleton Queen, who can declare attacks on any card in the Graveyard, as well.)

Now, on to the 10 of Ghosts: The Will-o-the-Wisp.

Will-o-the-Wisp is one of my favorite crossovers between a real life phenomenon and folklore. It's present in Super Mario RPG, Pokemon, Paradise Lost, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Dracula, Harry Potter, and multiple other famous works or franchises.

So I had to include it in Necromancy, especially since it's such a staple of Ghost Pokémon. It's effectively Ghost Fire in those games.

You may expect, “Oh, that means it's going to be a Possessor that deals damage every turn it's attached, right?”

I'm sorry to disappoint you, that's the unique gimmick of the Banshee, the Queen of Ghosts! The Will-o-the-Wisp is a fire that just won't die.

Its effect is:

The possessed creature gains +2 Damage and Reanimates.

Will-o-the-Wisp Reanimates with the creature it possesses.

Reanimates is a Keyword, an ability that is represented in the game's official rules. On the player's next upkeep phase, they may choose to revive this creature. If they choose to, Will-o-the-Wisp Reanimates with it, remaining in control of the creature. Typically, Reanimates is a feature of the Zombies – they are meant to be persistent threats on the field (or, at least, annoying pests that you can't keep down).

However, with the Will-o-the-Wisp, any creature can become a reviving threat you must find a way to deal with, whether the possessed creature was yours or your opponent's from the beginning.

Up next, the 10 of Zombies: The Plague Beast.

The Plague Beast is essentially a pestilent zombified animal. And so it was pretty easy to decide what its effect would be: Its attacks are Venomous.

Venomous is another Keyword. After the Plague Beast attacks a creature, that creature is marked as Poisoned, and during each of its Controller's upkeep phases, the creature takes damage equal to Plague Beast's attack value. (Plague Beast's basic attack still deals damage, it just deals additional damage on each ensuing turn.)

I'm not entirely certain the ability is strong enough to match up against that of the other 10s. So I'm exploring the idea of having the Venomous effect also reduce a Poisoned creature's attack by the Attack value of the creature with Venomous. (In Plague Beast's case, this would be 2. This may be different for future expansion set creatures or creatures that may gain Venomous from Crypt Effects.)

And finally, we come to the 10 of Ghouls: The Gourmand.

I had a bit of difficulty coming up with an effect that truly fit a Consumer, but in the end, I created yet another Keyword to make the Gourmand truly unique in its method of attack: Swallow.

The Gourmand has a relatively low attack stat (3), but thanks to its Swallow ability, it can still cause a lot of pain to the enemy. If Gourmand attacks and does not destroy the enemy, it consumes Souls from the target's Soul Stack equal to Gourmand's attack stat. (Gourmand's attack may be reduced to 2 after testing.)

This has two effects: 1) Gourmand gains additional souls in its Soul Stack, so if it had been summoned on a Queen, King, or Ace, it might be Overtaken on the player's next turn. 2) Gourmand consumes souls from another Soul Stack. Consumed Souls cannot be used as Overtakers. They are effectively removed from play until the creature on top of them is Destroyed. Effectively, Gourmand becomes a creature who shifts the balance of power toward its Controller by reducing the control the opponent has on whether or not his Soul Stacks can be used for Overtaking.

Currently, Gourmand is the only creature with Swallow in the game.

That covers all the 10s in my current set for Necromancy. I'm not sure when I'll blog again, but I do believe the next blog should cover the Kings, which I've only touched on in passing. Kings are all very strong creatures, though I don't think they are currently balanced very well. So after my next iterative pass on them, I'll be sure to explain the design process behind them and their new effects on the game.

Thanks for reading!

Designing Necromancy Part 3: Jacked Up.

So it's been a while since I've talked about my Necromancy card game (mostly because I've been busy with other things, mostly Halo related pursuits). But I've finally gotten back into the swing of working on polishing the design, and giving a more consistent, intentional purpose to each level of card in the game.

Today, I'm going to be talking about the Jacks of each suit, and my design goals I set forth after editing the first draft of cards, which were mostly just thrown together for the sake of getting the game's core mechanics to a state they could be tested.

To start, let's talk about the Jacks of the Undead.

As I said in my last blog, my goal for the Queens was to be a temporary power spike on the field that could drastically alter the field but would lose power and influence after a few turns. The Queens fit the themes of their respective suits, and for a short time, are the strongest of their type.

The Jacks, however, don't like to play by the rules. They like to be different. And so with Jacks, my goal was to avoid the standard classes (Destroyer/Consumer/Possessor) of the suit, or to have play patterns significantly different than their fellow suited undead brethren.

The Jack of Skeletons

Much like the King and Queen of Ghouls, I realized my 10 and Jack of Skeletons were swapped from my goals for them. And while I'll go more into the 10 of Skeletons in my next blog, for now I'll just mention that the Skelettin and Bone Prison's card number were swapped to fit the patterns I desired.

Most Skeletons are destroyers. Skelettin was a Destroyer. Bone Prison, however, is a Possessor. So it was pretty obvious to me when I established my new design goals for 10s and Jacks that these two needed to be swapped.

Bone Prison's effect makes it a very powerful Possessor for countering massive threats on the field.

The possessed creature cannot move, attack, or be attacked.

It has a fairly high threshold (possession strength) for a Possessor, making it able to possess almost any card in the game. And essentially, Bone Prison removes that card from play. While most Skeletons are focused on just being strong threats that can turn a creature back into a stack of Souls, the Bone Prison's job is to put a creature into effective stasis for the remainder of the match. Your opponent's only reaction is to say to himself, “Welp, I'm boned.”

The Jack of Ghosts

Ghosts are a suit comprised almost entirely of Possessors, so it's only fitting the Jack of Ghosts to be a more combat-oriented class. Thus was born, the Eidolon: a Destroyer.

The Eidolon is a very weak card statistically, a meager 2/2 with a casting cost of 4. But that's where his effect comes in:

If Eidolon is possessed, its Damage and Health are increased by the Threshold value of its Possessor.

As a reminder...or just in case I haven't mentioned it previously: players may use Possessors on their own creatures. Possessors can double as a “I want to use this card of my opponent's” or as equipment cards, to power up their own creatures. So Eidolon effectively becomes a combo-focused card, meant to be summoned in a safe zone far from your opponents and possessed by one of your own creatures, where he may then wreak havoc across the board as a high damage, high health undead warrior. He's potentially the strongest creature in the game, especially when combined with the King of Ghosts...which I'll talk about another day.

The Jack of Zombies

Zombies are a suit dedicated to being persistent threats on the field. Many of them reanimate at the end of the turn in which they were destroyed. So of course when I set out to design the Zombies' Jack, I had to call up the old Zombie game trope of an exploding corpse.

Volatile Cadaver is just that. A Destroyer (just like the rest of the suit), that makes sure to take someone down with it.

When Volatile Cadaver is destroyed, its Owner may destroy up to 2 adjacent creatures.

If creature targeted by this card's effect has more than 10 Health, deal 10 Damage instead.

Volatile Cadaver's made to be sacrificed for the greater good – the reverse Hydra method. Where one Cadaver falls, two enemies shall go with it. As much as I loved Diablo 2, I couldn't possibly make a Necromancy game without Corpse Explosion, now could I?

And, just in case people decided to try to avoid attacking the Cadaver... if you happen to have it in the Crypt (assuming I keep the Crypt mechanic), Volatile Cadaver gains Taunt, forcing it to be targeted by adjacent opponents.

The Jack of Ghouls

Ghouls are a suit of Consumers, so I didn't want to give them another combatant as their Jack. Thus the Defiler, a Possessor, was born. Unlike most Possessors, which focus on flat buffs to the cards they possess and tend to be more beneficial for already strong cards, the Defiler can be used in two ways, thanks to the wording of its effect.

The possessed creature becomes a Consumer, with a Damage value equal to the number of Souls in its Soul Stack.

If the Defiler possesses a creature with a high attack but only a few Souls in its Soul Stack, it actually debuffs them, making them more able to be destroyed. However, the Defiler can also be used to possess a weak creature to make it able to become a larger threat as long as it remains on the field. Thanks to the conversion into a Consumer, the Defiler's possessed creature grows stronger with each combat victory.

While the Jack of Ghosts is most definitely intended to work within its own suit, the Jack of Ghouls is best when working with Skeletons or Zombies, which are generally not already Consumers.

That's it for the talk about Jacks! Expect another blog on Friday to talk about the overhauls to the highest of numbered cards, the 10s.

On Fading Torchlight, Thought Bubbles, and Brainstorms

For a long time, I've wrestled with myself over a difficulty completing tasks. When the light bulb of an idea pops up for me, it's not really a light bulb. More like a torch. It illuminates my path, but the illumination is temporary. The problem with a torch is that it burns out. And then I'm back in the darkness with no more understanding of how to move forward with the original idea. My progress stops.

I wish that were the only difficulty involved, but those ideas aren't just a temporary illumination. They're outright thought bubbles. They entrap me. That one thought captures me. I am inside the bubble.

If I try to escape the bubble – to think about other ideas or try to keep pressing on in another direction – the bubble will stretch, but snap back to its original form, keeping me within it until I pursue that thought. My brain won't move on from that one task, until the bubble has gone its path, until the torch burns out.

It's a simultaneous burning desire for creation and exploration and a race against time. My balloon of hot air is in a trek to get around the world in eighty days, or eighty hours, or eighty minutes... however long I have before my bubble is floating on the winds of change again, naught but a candle in the wind.

Because of this I have many projects in the works that I've been working on for years, in bursts – or until bursts, in bubble-speak. Necromancy card game, Tensai pet battler, Astral Gate tabletop, Astral Gate novels, Defend the Stream, this blog, my video content...a massive number of projects that my brain simply won't complete in one attempt...but it will not abandon them. They're all revisited plenty.

Sometimes I'm lucky and projects can be completed in a short enough time that my results can be made visible – such as some of my stat projects in League of Legends or my duelist card game modified from Suikoden 2's duel system (which I showed to a whopping one person).

But for the others...it's a collective brainstorm – a supercell of thought processes and whims -- that has been brewing for over a decade at this point, waiting before unleashing its fury. I don't know how to guide the storm, to keep a bubble from popping, or to keep the torches alive. Sometimes it is pitch dark. I am likely to be eaten by a grue.