Hello All,
I started out working on a system that has gone through many setting changes, but one thing that keeps creeping back to my mind is making a miniatures game with a similar aesthetic and customization as card games.
One of the things I love most about CCGs is the ability to create the unique feel of a deck and what type of army it might represent. Is it from some dark catacombs? The forests? Perhaps your characters come from a volcanic landscape.
The point is, I want to capture this customization that many card games readily allow for and bring it to a minis game form.
The story behind the game (so far) is that the land is traveled by powerful summoners that don't engage in close quarter combat, but are capable of summoning potent armies to battle for them. When playing the game, you take on the role of such a summoner and control an army of powerful creatures and an arsenal of spells.
Here's what I've done so far...
I wanted there to be multiple elements players can choose from to construct their army, but still have to have some sort of cohesiveness. There are 12 elements as follows
Earth
Air
Water
Fire
Light
Dark
Magic
Warrior
Natural
Construct
Order
Chaos
Each model in the game is aligned to 3 of these elements. When you construct your army, you must choose 1 element of which all models in your army must share.
The combat System I'm using is very simple...
Roll 2d6, add attacker's Combat value. If this equals or exceeds the target's defense, deal the attack's damage +d3.
In addition to the miniatures, you also have points to select spell cards. Each spell card can only be played once per game, so they must be used wisely.
ACTIVATION
The activation system is still in the works, but seems to mesh with the creature miniature/spell card combination. You have a certain amount of energy each turn that can be spent to pay the activation costs of creature actions as well as paying the energy costs for spells. So you're limited on how much you can do each turn, and the resource used for both models and cards is one in the same.
All thoughts are greatly appreciated!
-NomadArtisan
Warmachine & Hordes are actually my favorite miniatures games. I started each when they were first released. Much of the inspiration for my activation system was derived from Warmachine's Focus system.
As for your questions.
For now the summoner is the player, not a mini. This may change after developing the game, however no-mini fits the CCG aesthetic I'm aiming for.
Your army is built before hand, Creatures will have their stat cards for reference sake, and Spells will have their cards as well.
Your reference is mostly accurate, however you don't draw cards during the game. You have access to all of the spell cards you purchase from the get-go just like you would have access to your miniatures. Think of the Spell's cards as their stat-cards, spells just don't have physical miniatures to represent them on the field. As well, I'm thinking a player would only have around 10-15 spells, each spell being 1 use only (some special rules may change this).
So over the course of your turn, you'll balance spending energy on actions for your miniatures to perform and potentially on casting spells to augment their actions, abilities, and battlefield interactions.