I've always enjoyed the metagame in competitive card games, however recently I'm drawn to shorter games with less time investment both inside and outside the game.
I've been interested in developing a 'micro' card game with the feel of a ccg (NOT an actual ccg mind you). I think of it as micro, really I just mean that in game deck sizes will be very small.
I recently had the idea to incorporate a sort of metagame within the game itself and wanted to post here to get some feedback and ideas flowing.
In a typical game, players would play best of 5 to determine an overall winner for the match.
Decks would be small, maybe 12 cards each. In between rounds players would be able to side in and out cards from a decent sized sideboard, maybe 6-12, but enough so that a substantial change can be made to the main deck.
The in game would be relatively simple.
For starters I'm thinking a turn would be:
play or discard a card, then draw a card.
You would count the turn number that you're on and can only play cards whose 'level' is equal or less than the turn count.
For win conditions:
At the start of your turn, if you have the greatest total 'strength' of cards on the board, you gain a 'strength' victory point. First to some number wins.
I'd also have alternate ways to win, such as cards that give 'enlightenment' victory points. You would need more of these than you would need 'strength' to win the game, but the way to obtain these would vary.
Lastly, there may be card combos that allow you to outright win the game given some conditions, such as controlling cards x, y, and z at the start of your turn.
This would hopefully allow for a diverse gamut of archetypes while also giving players some interesting decisions during each round, as well as the double-guessing component during between-round side decking.
Does this initial start sound like something you'd want play?
What would you like to see in a game like this?
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Thank you both for your feedback!
Juzek, tides of time has been on my to-buy list for a while. I too enjoyed drafting back when I played MTG.
I think you're spot on about balancing. Balancing will likely be the more difficult part of this design, however I plan on creating some mathematical formulas for balancing numbers, then for more qualitative special abilities, I plan on using the RPS nature of many CCG archetypes to hopefully create a self balancing system.
You're also right about replayability and card pool.If I ever get this game to the point where people are playing it enough that lack of repayability is a concern, I'd consider that a great problem to have, however, I'm envisioning small LCG style modules where each would have a significant impact on deck designs due to small deck sizes.
Wob, You hit one of my hopes. With small deck sizes I'm hoping this leads to greater potential deck themes as even switching a single card is a high percentage of change.
I also like the idea that people would be able to quickly try new strategies because of only having to choose 18-24 cards.
How deep do you think in-round gameplay has to be on top of the in between round side decking to keep a game like this interesting?