By area of effect, I mean the possible effect that can be applied to the game. Which gives the potential list of special abilities applicable to a card. As for example, magic the gathering has a huge area of effect as they designed thousands of cards and did not run out of possibilities.
I want to design a kind of 2 player microgame similar to microcosm where each player has 18 cards + 9 cards shared by both players.
I am looking for guidelines to keep my area of effect large and allow various abilities. I know a few ways to enlarge the area of effect which has been used so far, but I am looking for new ideas.
- Increase the amount of components: Games with a lot of components has a larger area of effect. But in my case that cannot be used since I want it to be a semi-microgame.
- Multiple uses: Giving cards multiple uses or allowing them to be played in different areas can make some abilities triger those specific areas. Ex: "destroy a card in the battle or mana zone". The same card can be played in any of those zones, but the effect target one of them.
- Categories or Types: Giving various categories and sub categories allow the design of special abilities that target those categories specifically. Ex: "Destroy a building" (a card of category building)
- Various status: Allow various game status, like for example "tapping" is a form of status a card can receive. If there are multiple status like "stun", "weak", etc then the area of effect is larger.
The idea of discard reminds me of Olte Mare where the last card played influence the next card played. I like the idea, but there is not necessary a card that gets discarded every turn.
Else Like in microcosm and epic card game, you can show cards in hand to activate an ability.