Hi all,
In an earlier post, I checked to see what you designers would say to having *mana costs printed on the reverse of cards* (hidden information) to avoid player's cheating when it comes to conjuring units (http://www.bgdf.com/node/8039).
This brought up the issue that player's could GUESS the card that is being conjured.
So I thought that I could mix things up - by costing 3 mana to summon a level 1 unit. That works well for level 1 units BUT... it makes it that 3 mana = level 1 unit. Player's can determine the level of the unit.
As such, I will have to mix mana costs ACROSS levels, such that it could take only 3 mana to summon a level 2 or 3 unit... There are a total of 5 levels for units (1-5). So it could be a level 1-3 unit... Or maybe 1-4 units (stronger unit with weak ability - as an offset for the lower cost to summon).
Anybody want to comment?
Does this sound like a reasonable solution?
Anybody have any other suggestions?
I currently have 8 mana groups comprised of 3 colors each.
Basically the mana cost to conjure a unit is 3 mana points comprised of 3 different/distinct colors.
Example: Green-Red-White (is one mana group). To conjure a unit in this group, you need one Green mana, one Red mana and one White mana (one of each of those colors).
There are 8 groups in total, so about 4 cards per group (since there are 30 unit cards).
I believe this will make it TOUGHER to figure out what cards a player has conjured before the initial strike (either on Attack or Defense). Those 3 color combinations are hard to remember and look very alike (Just looking at them in the Spreadsheet and I have difficulty distinguishing between them). Basically the cards at the TOP of your stacks will be the MOST visible. And adding to the strategy, a player can speculate which color is behind that card.
Since you roll 5 dice, different combinations could unfold. For example, you might be able to conjure a unit (because of the colors) but not have a unit for that group in your hand. Or the opposite can be true: you have the unit but don't have enough mana to conjure it.
Given these two (2) scenarios, I believe that on each turn you can conjure (at the minimum) one unit (if you choose to do so - Conjuring costs 1 Action Point (AP)). This is because the dice start at 1... not 0. So the worst case scenario is that you can only conjure one unit on your turn.