Game #43: Blitz Cards! (WW2 CCG)

I only read it through briefly, but I don't see anything really new. It feels quite a bit like the rest of the CCG's on the market. Oddly enough it seems very much like Harry Potter CCG.

Suggestions: First the CCG concept doesn't seem very good for this type of thing, but I'll leave that for the moment.

1)Expand on the Locations idea. Much of the interesting parts of the war is the battles for terrain. I imagine perhaps Battles as well. If each Battle had a number of points, winning them would be one path to victory. Battles could have terrain (Air, Land, Naval?) or other modifier sthat make some units better than others during them. If you had a specific set of locations, winning battles could be used to 'move' about a board of locations.
Committing units to a battle on either attack or defense would prevent you from using them elsewhere, thus strategy.

2) What do the supply cards actually represent? Are they generic, or things like Factories and Oil Fields? Perhaps they can tie to locations. Are the resources they produce generic? So all cards produce "supplies".

3) Drop the Tap and Graveyard terms. First, that is likely to anger WotC quite quickly whether they have a legal right to that anger is a very seperate discussion. Secondly, tey don't fit your theme. Thirdly, I'm sure there is a better mechanic, and maybe needing to show a unit used isn't even necessary.

4) Winning: Decide whether you are modeling the entire war, or just a single battle or campaign. This will affect the your winning and mechanical ideas. At the battle level, you are generally worried about survival and inches of ground gained. The war level is more strategic of which campaigns to invovle in and what direction they have. I would suggest perhaps the campaign level. A defined goal, larger unit sizes, but with a progression toward that goal. Battles are a bit abstracted.

This certainly seems like it has a somewhat interesting theme, but I don't really see the meat behind it yet. I can see it being an expandable Card Game, but Collectable doesn't really fit in my mind.

Andy

It's always very difficult to comment on a card game (especially one designed as a collectable game) without actually seeing a cardlist as well to get some idea of what information comes with the cards.

My first reaction was that this was very similar to a game called Battlecards, although that doesn't have the whole "supply chain" business which strikes me as having a lot of potential - if it doesn't overcomplicate the whole game. (Incidentally, that game is not a collectable one but is "expandable" in the sense that you can customise your decks through fixed expansion sets.)

The whole "leaders" thing makes no sense to me at all. You start with a level 1 leader. You can upgrade a leader by paying supplies but you can only upgrade if you have a higher value leader, which you can't get because you only have a level 1 leader! I must confess that the first time I read this I assumed that you had one leader who was steadily upgraded during the game - you paid five supplies and replaced them with the next level leader. But apparently you could have all seven leaders in play at the same time?
It seems more plausible to have one leader who gets better (ps I second the suggestion that the power of the leader should indicate what they can provide in support rather than having that complicated table: i.e. a level 3 leader could supply 1 to three units, or maybe 2 to one and 1 to another etc. That's much easier to deal with.)

And what's with the "if you have a good memory you can remember all the damage to your units"?! There's a reason why most CCGs have an amazing "clear all damage at end of turn" feature :-) You have to have counters to mark damage (especially if you have a healing/repair mechanic.)

One minor comment is that although your rulebook does contain pretty much everything, you have some repeated stuff (how to start the game etc.) that doesn't need to be where it is, and so on. There are a lot of spelling/grammar issues as well but they're not actually that big a problem. (And I notice that you called the "dead card zone" the "graveyard" in one place :-)

Fundamentally, I don't think you're bringing anything spectacularly new to the CCG concept here - the theme has been done before, the mechanics are either too complex or too simple (which is always a dilemma) and it's unclear what the ultimate winning condition actually is - capture locations or eliminate the opponent's deck?
That's not to say that the game wouldn't be fun, just that I don't think it would stand out amongst the competition. My advice would be to make it a much more generic game (rather than a specific WWII one) and see if that frees up the design space a little more.

What if the Leader card was actually "you", and the level of the card indicated your rank. So everyone starts as a Private.

By winning battles and maybeplaying certain combinations of cards you can increase your rank... liutenant, colonel, corporal, etc (I don't know the correct order) up to General (or whatever's the highest). One victory condition could be achieving General status. Another could be depleting your opponent's deck (cutting off thier supply lines), and a third could be taking control of all opposing bases (where each player starts with a base, and can play cards to start additional bases)

Seems like a good fit for the game.

Yeah, download Mozilla Firefox and don't use IE anymore.

I agree, but I might do it differently than what's been suggested. Rather than having several locations each and deciding to defend certain ones, I'd say just assume the ones you have ARE the important ones, and that the other, less important locations are outside the scope of the game.

So start with either a set number of locations (maybe 1, maybe more). Maybe play cards to create new key locations during the game, if you lose all your key locations then you lose the game.

I agree with the sentiment that locations should be defended seperately. Perhaps they should be supplied seperately as well... thus if you "knock out athe supply line" to a specific location, then it can somehow weaken the defenses at that location (maybe you need to pay upkeep for forces at a location or lose them, and if your 'supply' is reduced then your unit capacity is reduced and you might lose some units).

here's an off-the-cuff example of how it could be structured- there are probably many problems with this:

Place cards off the top of the Library facedown behind locations - this is the locations Supply Line. These facedown cards act as resources- the more units you have at a location the more you can do there. Your units cannot exceed the number of cards in your Supply Line. Some cards add a card to a Supply Line but do not count as a Unit. Some cards count as a Unit and do not add cards to the Supply Line. And of course some do neither and some do both.

When attacking another player's location, the Supply Line can be damaged. At the beginning of each player's turn that player must make sure his units do not exceed the Supply Line in any location, or discard units until that's true.

Note that the Library is also your 'life total', so by putting a lot of units into play, you are reducing your deck and getting closer to losing the game that way.

I think this could be a good system of supporting units and also paying for actions- the Supply Line cards could be like Land in Magic- you 'tap' them to play other cards, then they 'untap' each turn. "Tap" and "Untap" are owned by Wizard's I think, so maybe calling it "use" and "restore" or "replenish" would be better.

- Seth

Blitzkrieg was indeed from WW2. It was a term used to describe a type of warfare; of moving fast to overwhelm.

Terrain is a good idea. I wonder about the idea of 'keep'ing the location. Maybe occupying is a better term. Also in this implies that the location remains out and can be refought over.

I think the idea of having a finite set of locations that are being fought over is interesting. If you have a hierachy of locations, the supplies granted them could be reduces as you get further from your 'command center'. This means your army get's strung out. If an oponent can use an 'air battle' type card, they coudl cut off a location from the rest of the supply line. The idea is to simulate the reach/overreach idea of armies.

Andy

a private doesn't sound very leadership to me. Maybe your leader can have a different name.

The Private won't lead an army, start at least with Lieutenant.

Just my impression.

As I said before, I like the idea of you being the leader. I don't like there being a leader at each location, but I like a stack of 'leader' cards which shows your rank, and as you win battles you increase in rank until you finally become general and win. Of course the game might end another way before that.

So each of these leader cards would state your rank and whatever information is necessary- some special ability that you gain once you acheive that rank for example.

And if it's a CCG, then there could be different versions of each rank for you to choose from ahead of time so YOUR colonel might be different from HIS colonel. They could be tailored to the deck.

- Seth

I personally think this is a great idea for a card game. I have played a fair amount of Magic, but none of the others, but I think this game has the potential to attract a completely different set of players than any of the other CCGs. My dad for example hates that we waste time playing games, but has about a dozen extremely intense and strategic WWII games up in his closet (granted he never plays them because they take 6-10 hours). That could actually be the beauty of a CCG for this theme. It would let whole different group of people enjoy a short tactical/strategic game based on WWII. I think it would take a while for anyone to realize it wasn't another game meant for "geeks" (of which I proudly am one)(Magic the Gathering) and little kids (Pokemon).

I was confused by the Leader thing as well, but I think that has been covered and covered well. I really like the idea of you being the leader, and increasing your rank, through experience.

I think that the "Sequence of Play" section in your rules could be made into a small table, to be used as a quick reference. I've found this very useful when first playing a game, in which turns are split into phases.

I had questions about the way battles were conducted. does it go

1) Attacker assigns attackers to location
2) Defender assigns blockers to specific attackers (I think these blockers
should only be able to come from the garrison at that location)
3) Attacker plays Action cards (interupt cards)
4) Defender plays Action cards (interupt cards)
5) Damage is assigned based on attacking and defending units stats.

This is 1 complete attack phase (of which there can be any number during one players turn).

This is where my question comes in. If the attacker decides not to retreat, the above steps are repeated. Does that mean the defender gets to reassign blockers to specific attackers? If so then, I think that both sides should be able to send in reinforcements of some kind. Maybe allow movement from HQ to Second Line, and from Second Line to First Line, and from First Line to any of the locations. This could happen between each attack phase. So, if a battle takes a really long time, it would be advantageous to move units from HQ forward in case they are needed. This might complicate it too much, or change the direction you were going with battles.

Lastly, I seemed to miss what exactly happened to a player's Supply (deck) when it got attacked. Do they lose cards from the top to their dead pile? I think that would be appropriate, but how many?, and should the number change with the number of units attacking?

Keep working on this I would love to see it in publication. I really think there are a lot of History buffs who would not scoff at a well created strategy game. If that is the crowd your going for, I suggest trying to make the card names, graphics and strategy for use as realistic as possible. As soon as it starts to become fantasyesque your probably going to lose that group of people.