Hello BGDF Community,
I am a boardgame designer located in germany - maybe some of you remember me from the old BGDF forums. Back in the days I designed an abstract conflict simulation, rules and units have been reworked and playtested over a long period of time. To make a long story short: Almost 2 years ago, my project disappeared, mainly because I was not able to gather enough players. Back in the days I could not decide the game to be a miniature or a card game - I used tokens to playtest wich where not easy to share with other players.
Now - almost 2 years later - my game is back. The name of the old game changed (it was called 'Godsend') to ARCHON. And I changed the way the game is meant to be played to a "Virtual CCG". This means that I changed my oppinion about how to create, release and maintain such a project from ground up:
a.) The game is completely virtual, it only exists in the internet.
b.) It uses cards wich are pretty, easily recognized and accepted by a wide range of players.
c.) It will be expanded on a regular basis, wich means it is more or less collectible.
d.) It uses the LackeyCCG engine wich is available for Windows, Mac and Linux (for free).
e.) Best of all - Its free - forever
Some excerpts from the rulebook (more or less badly written), followed by an introduction into the game - this should help to understand the concept a little bit more:
"We are the gods - A family of immortal beings. The destiny of the mortal world is unending conflict. Our ultimate ambition is to rule over all living things. Our eternal livelihood is far away from the mundane world of man and beast. We use our minions to execute Gods war, to fight and conquer places of power, all over the universe. The god whose worshippers conquer the most of these sacred places, seals the downfall of all others. They are our connection to your world - The only way to bring our influence to bear, And thus we spawn our children into the realms. They are Godsends, to wage the war to end all wars - For one of us, to reign, eternal!"
Summary of Play
In the ARCHON game - players take the roles of gods - competing to ascertain the king among them, through a divine game. Using customized warbands (called covens) of cards, a hex-tile gameboard and several tokens they let their minions fight a power struggle to become the rulers of a fictitous world called Ascendallion. From turn to turn the players perform actions like spawning powerful minions, discovering strange domains, moving their minions around the board and let them battle. Players gain faith by expelling some of their cards into the aether and win the game through gathering six victory points. Those points are scored by controlling the most places of power on the gameboard, or by banishing enemy minions.
Finally the website for the game:
Until now - there is not much on the website besides some nicely done card teasers and an introduction to the game. This post was made to announce that the project is not dead - and maybe there are some die-hard geeks out there who are interested in joining/playtesting the project.
-Fhizban (The Creator of ARCHON)
Hey Jonathan,
I remember you from the old BGDF board. Thank you for the information - I already know that, AND I know that I am breaking the law here. What should I say? At the moment I am more concerned about the card images I am using. But what should I do? I love the old Archon Theme and Style AND I love to use painted miniatures as card pictures.
Maybe, if someone really forces me (like Wizards of the Coast do VERY OFTEN) then I change everything. Until then - I think I leave it as it is. This is my year long pet project, its in the niche of a niche of a niche - and its free. Again, I know that its not legal *sigh*.