Tracking health, ideas?

Ya I forgot about damage counters... Maybe like numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4... If I had like 1 counter per card that would not be too bad.

The thing is that I have card STACKS (one card atop another). But maybe a 1 counter maximum would work... I am thinking about limiting the card count to 25 cards per side (not that this happens very often... but still possible).

Right now I am using d6s for the combat system. I think I might consider changing to d12s... The reason is that there is more room to add bonuses (like +2 or +1) in addition to respecting the rules for colors (>3 for bonus, >6 none and >9 penalty). Anyhow I have bought the d12s and will play test with those...

Since the game is still in design, I don't have much play testing data to see what strategies the player's use to try to dominate the game. So I don't know what kind of card counts to expect...

But thanks for the *damage counters* idea... Maybe it might be possible to track with counters (My Power ratings go from 1 to 5, so counters need to go from 1 to 4).

Well the battleground is divided into 5 stacks. At the bottom of the stack is the card which is in control of that stack. Each player wants one of their cards to be in that position. However, only 1 player can be in that position.

Next players can STACK cards on top of "the bottom-most" card as defending cards (must be beaten 1st before battling the card on the bottom).

Each card in play is a unit which is conjured onto the battlefield. A card must be conjured into play and does so by starting in the middle stack, at the very TOP. Next a player uses his Action Points (APs) to move his cards around. Moving left, right or deeper into a stack all cost 1 AP. Moving left or right AUTOMATICALLY places your card at the TOP of that stack. This means that it is quick to move between the stacks, but it takes time to go deeper into any given stack...

I think plain damage counters with value 1 to 4 (Life of a unit goes from 1 to 5) will do the trick. It is easy to move a card and its counter. With up to 25 cards in play, that still is not too bad... There are only 30 unit cards ... so 25 in the game is nearly all cards...

Like I said I'm not certain about how the games will unfold: will players stack cards and then attack afterwards or will there be skirmishes right from the gecko.

I wanted to avoid a *rotating* card system. I think it would be *messy* with having some cards turned one way and others another...

I checked with The Game Crafter (TGC) and they have *Shards*. 70 shards to a sheet for $3.39. I am thinking about using the *circular shards* which are 0.75 inch in diameter. This is for a prototype of the game since TGC does not have enough polyhedral dice colors... I need 5 colors of d6s and d12s: Green, Blue, Red, White and Black.

The nice thing about the shards are they can be printed in full color on BOTH sides. So I may use a damage icon on one side and a value on the other!

Note: The two sides of the damage tokens is cool since after a unit battles, players can re-hide both the card and it's damage counter... Basically it means when cards get re-arranged, you need a real sharp memory. This is cool, the game could appeal to people trying to exercise their memories.

That is also a novel concept. However I am favoring the Damage Counters because you can re-hide them after combat... So it makes it that cards will have a counter but the value will be hidden until a battle ensues.