First off greetings everyone, first post here (I need to throw this idea out to people to get feedback and possible help) and hope I've made a good choice coming here.
Altar of War (Title under revision..) will be a game inspired from multiple CCGs I've played over the years, mainly including WarCry, Warlords, Magic, and WarHammer 40k CCG. This will be a total war style game where players will wage a battle against their opponent using a variety of troops, items, spells, and most importantly commands.
Basic Ideal: I've always wanted a thinking man's war game. A game where strategy is key as moves will be limited (unlike massive moves one could make in games like Magic), and each move will be delicate and risky. Thus I want to create a game which emerses the player in the ideal of war, the feeling of actually controlling an army men. I also want to create a game of flexibility, just like how people make their own Magic cards I want to allow players to legally create their own General cards (see below) that more fit their style of gameplay. In tournements I would like to create rulesets of experiance and pilaging a dead enemy after battle, adding to the effect of a war campaign.
Basic Deck Construction:
+General: Each player's deck will be accompanied by a General card which does not count towards the maximum cards allowed. This card is a representation of the player itself and the key to the deck itself. This card will denote the amount of Gold and amount of Command points a player has. This card, however, is a card itself and can be used in combat normally, which means it can die normally. Each army will have several Generals (to start 3) each with their own fighting style. Some are powerful warriors and fight in the Front Line along their men, others are powerful mages, where as others are charasmatic leaders with a horde of Command points who sit in the back lines. There will also be a set of rules for creating your own General card if none of the presets do not suit (obviously user created will be lesser pwoerful than set ones).
+Hero: These cards are placed in the Unit deck and behave just like a normal unit. However, these characters are usually representing only one man on the field making them more powerful than normal units, but able to perish easier. Ranging from Medics to Musicans to even Army Standard Bearers, these characters have a ranking which allow them to take over the army just in case the General falls (giving the player a chance to salvage and possibly win)
+Units: Basic run of the mill Unit Cards, small squads of men who obvously are the grunts of your deck. Although a leader can turn the tide, he is nothing without his men. These are the main cards which make up your Unit Deck.
+Items: These cards, placed in the Unit deck, are able to equip themselves to units, heros, or even Generals to aid the card they are attached to (much like Enchantment cards from Magic). These items will range from Armor, Special Weapons, Magical enhancments, or even stranger items (For instance a stone which will mutate a Hero into a clone of the General, allowing them to fight with greater experiance while keeping your General safe).
+Command Cards: the essence of the gameplay. These cards represent orders given by your General to his men. These are extensions of the given commands of your General and aid the combat of your men. For instance you could pay your Command Points for a card which would march your men forward the to front line without exhausting them (which would leave them vulnerable to the enemy), alternativly a card which would improve a unit's Skill, allowing them to deal extra damage in combat. These cards would also include special spells that could be used by a Genral who was a Mage. Spells could only be used if a General or a Hero with the "Mage" keyword was present on the battlefield.
Your deck would be comprised of two seperate halves (just like in WarCry). The First half of 30 cards would be built with units, heros, and items. The Second Half would be your Command deck consisting of 30 command cards and spells.
Basic Gameplay: After each player reveals their Generals who are placed on the Back Line. Players draw a small hand from their Unit Deck and take turn placing cards on the battlefield and drawing additional cards using an amount of Gold specified by the General (For instance a King would have vast wealth while a Veteran Crusader would rely more on his command than gold.). Units are placed on three Lines of Battle, including the Front Line, the Reinforcement Line, and the Back Line. Emphasis is on the managment of these lines, as if a player destroys the Front Line, the Reinforcement becomes the new Front Line which could throw off a player if that line was filled only with Archers weak in close combat. After the Intial Deployment Phase, players discard the remaining cards and draw A hand of Command cards. Starting with the player whose General has the most Command Points, Players take turns attacking, defending, and redeploying (Players draw two cards, deploy one, and discard the other.). Turns will be governed by the Player's ability to manage his Command Points wisely, as he will not regain them until both he has attacked AND the other player has attacked, creating a balence between the Attack and Defense Phase. In addition to the Command cards Generals also have a list of simple commands they can perform for only one command point, this includes simple actions like moving a Unit amongst the Lines or Equiping an Item to a seperate unit.
Combat will rely mainly on the Combat Lines and Battle formation. In addition to creating a Line that seperates and protects certian units, Formation will be important. For instance a Priest could be put into Staggered Formation behind two units of Swordsmen. This would allow the Priest to use his abilities on either of the Units without having to Move back and forth between them but unfortunatly makes him vulnerable to Missle Fire (they're treated as if in the Front Line).
Victory Conditions are concluded after a still-to-be-decided amount if Turns involving certian conditions such as how many Units killed. However the main Victory condition is Routing the enemy. This includes Killing the enemy's General (stressing the importance of being carefull with your General), after this is completed the player must work his way down the Rank ladder, killing Heros who gain command of the army below the General. After all members of Authority are killed the Enemy's army routs and the player has won. Alternativly If a player sucessfully kills all the Units on the Feild the General is forced to Rout to fight another day.
So that is the Basic overveiw of the CCG. Understandbly this is NOT a children's game and will probabbly be as or even more confusing than games like Magic or WarHammer 40K CCG. Cards will feature of a variety of races and groups within those races rich with background story. Story is an important part of this game so it helps with emmersing the player into the war. The only steps remaining is fine detailing the rules and creating the actual cards themselves. Comments Appreicated.
First off yes this is a WarHammer hybrid of magic execpt I'd like to keep the story seperate, it would be dastardly for me to impose on my favorite game by attempting to mimic it so tightly, instead I'm writing my own backgrounds for the races and the groups within them.
As for the Dual-deck system I stole that idea from WarCry which has the exact same. The WarHammer fantasy card game made a large improvment off of the WarHammer 40k (Sci-Fi) CCG, as thus:
WarHammer 40k CCG: Each card has dual meanings, during the deployment phase the card was use rightside up which had it's stats, during the combat phase your hand was turned upside down that had an ability you could play as well as a Dice roll for combat and abilities.
WarCry: There was a seperate Unit card and a Seperate Battle Action card. The Battle Action card was also used as the dice roll which was a staple to WarHammer gameplay. This seperation of the two decks, making two 30 card decks, allowed the player to use both powerful units and brilliant command cards allowing for more flavorful gameplay, whereas 40k CCG had a balence between the unit and the ability that ended up making decks too bland to balence and making you hand pointless is certian situations.
I'm currently in the card design itself, here is my current pre-alpha brainstorm, the Alpha mock-up I shall post later but here are the basic elements of the General/Hero card:
Name: Self Explanatory,
Picture: To make it pretty
Cost: Not applicale for General, but how much it costs to deploy the Hero
Faction: Much like magic, these words create restrictions on certian ablities and in the case of the General, restrictions of deck construction. For instance if the General has the keyword "Imperial"(Royal Division) then your deck may not have units bearing the faction of "Azeo" (the Preist faction).
Keywords: Also just like Magic, these words grant and restrict the card from certian abilities, such as "Mage" would grant them the effects of certian cards, where as "Solitare" would mean the card could not benifit an ability from an allied card.
Command: Only found on the general, this number denotes how many Command points the General may spend in a turn
Ranking: Heros only, should the General fall in battle, the card on the feild with the highest rank becomes the new General and this number becomes his Command number (note the command points will be SIGNIFIGANTLY less than that of a hardened General. However Certian cards may be experianced and have higher rankings which would help you out more.)
Skill: Denotes The ability of the card to wage combat, a higher skill for an attaker would deal more damage, whereas higher skill on a defending card would take less damage. (Not unlike Magic and more like 40k CCG the defending unit does not strike back unless said otherwise, making the need to save points for defense critical)
Strentgh: Representative of the card's strength, in a combat situation the str. of the attacker goes against the strentgh of the defender, the difference between the two (assuming the attaker's str. + extra damage due to higher skill is more than defending Str.) is damage taken against that unit.
Health: On Generals and Heros this represents how much damage they can take before perishing, on Units this represents the number of men within the squads and if this number reaches 0 then the unit Perishes.
Abilities: Self explanitory
Storyline: Come on, every card in any card game like this has flavor text.
Unit cards are the exact same except they do not have Ranking and you may Feild multiple units at the same time (whereas Heros there may only be one of it's kind on the feild at once, Generals there can only be one period.)
Item cards only have the basic design like name, pic, story, unlike other cards however, in addition it only has a Cost and Ability (to tell what it does to the equipped unit).
Command cards are still under brainstorming, I have not fully decided if a dice roll element would be needed however as seen in WarCry and WarHammer 40k it adds a fun element to the game as well as forcing players to at least somewhat balence their decks. Note that when I mean dice roll I mean a die is printed on the card, the usual situation is that a common command card has a high die roll whereas rare powerful command cards have a weak roll. Rolling the die is merely taking the top card off the top of the deck, revealing it, and discarding it (adding another element to managing your deck).
I realise this is a complex game, although not too much of a change from WarCry it does add a lot more elements such as Generals and a Chain of Command. I do not intend this game for a young audience, in fact I don't intend for it to be published at all, rather I'm designing a game that will be distributed freely online. the most complex situation would be a forum where players receive Virtual Booster paks in exchange for points. But for the most part this is being built for a small group of friends who have way too much imagination about war. By posting the idea here it forces me to work on it and fine tune it, meaning this game has a good chane of bieng completed