Cardbased Miniature Skirmish Game

I haven't attended a convention, except to staff a booth, in ages. When I did go, I was rarely sober (added to which, back in the day when Games Workshop had compensated volunteers staffing Games Day, they actually bussed everyone out to a bar and got them pass-out drunk after every con). So . . . I'm not sure I have ever had a clear picture of what the con experience is here in the United States, unless it actually is getting drunk and mocking cosplayers. A convention where many of the games are handcrafted experiences instead of yet another opportunity to play games I already own sounds absolutely wonderful though. If gamers in your country have adopted deodorant as a mainstay then I may just have to relocate.

Games more on your scale (maybe 2 to 3 for each faction) that I can think of off-hand are Inquisitor from Games Workshop (the figures are generally affordable on eBay here in the States) and then a new one called Ruination by Terragnosis. I'm not sure how much support that latter game is going to receive as the company quickly turned its efforts toward a more traditional skirmish game shortly after release. Anyways, what I like about both is that they use very large figures. If you are doing this game for yourself then keep in mind that you can kitbash 1:32 scale figures, which will feel so much more satisfying than controlling a single 15mm figure. Larger figures also convey more personality, which is important in this kind of game. There are even larger scales, obviously, but with nowhere near the same model and terrain selection to work with. Also, if you can find a copy at a reasonable price, which is a rarity, Pressman Games' Siege of the Citadel was a phenomenal board game based on the Warzone setting in which four players each control two figures against a fifth player running the bad guys.

Yeah, I think your game could work though and be quite a lot of fun. Personally, if players are only controlling a single figure then I think it would be more engaging to make them each tiny gods, like the soldiers in Heinlein's Starship Troopers, wearing powered armor that lets them jump a mile while firing nukes. Something kind of like humanoid versions of the tank in Steve Jackson's Ogre. In terms of gameplay, it works out the same because super armor protects against super weapons (like Mega Damage in Rifts), but there is that assurance that were a normal guy present on that battlefield, wow, he'd be in trouble! I feel like it would be easier to comment on once the game is a little further along.

Also, don't forget that one cool thing you can do with a card-based game is layering. For example, a character's armor could start with "Reactive Ablation Carapace." Once it is penetrated, the player must decide whether to take the injury card or discard the armor to negate, revealing the card beneath, "Adaptive Biomass Insulation," which has its own characteristics distinct from the outer layer and is discarded once X criteria are met, and so on. Also, instead of race and class, a character could be made up of 3 to 9 cards to give greater variety with these doubling as hit locations. You could have something like "Ferocity," which is a beneficial trait, but an injury could force you to flip the card, revealing "Berserker," which is a negative. Another injury to that 'location' would force you to discard it, so your character is gradually killed by having its benefits subverted and then stripped away.