Both of your concerns are justifiable.

I can see intentional or unintentional alterations to the position of objects on the board during attacks could cause a lot of conflict in a game where precise distances matter. You can circumvent this problem by standardizing the size and/or orientation of objects so that co-occupation is a binary identity. Blokus does this with its grid and introduces a very interesting element of conflict vis a vis the shape and possible orientations of the pieces.

You might consider, instead of using the cards as objects on the board, to use them as commands to place objects on the board. So, everyone is dealt a handful of cards with tetris/blokus like shapes on them. And, when you play a card, you take the type of piece written on the card from the common stock and place it where you want to adjacent to your own piece on the grid. This would avoid any contention about where things are located or inadvertant adjustments through the game. And, in additional, it would impose an additional limitation on what can be played by each player to help address concern number two.

However, your second concern is built into the rock-paper-scissors cycle you built. Although I am fascinated with the more technical puzzle of how to intuitively represent a 15 point cycle where each object beats 7 others and is beaten by 7 others. [the best I can come up with is using compass bearings and pictorially represent it as you beat everything in the opposite direction past perpendicular], logistically this makes it such that with a 5 card hand, you are almost always going to have a card that can attack a piece of another person's tree. The only defense that you have in this circumstance is by building two branches off one trunk so that there is no space to attack (which takes a lot of time/turns to do) or to count on the fact that their piece has to beat both yours and theirs.

This question of double conquest introduces a non-intuitive nature to the building of trunks. Basically, you have to alternate low and high cards. But it doesn't significantly overcome the fact that half of all cards can be beaten by half of all others... so on average, I only need 2 cards in my hand to be in a position to attack you no matter where you go.

This is a problem for two player games, and a nightmare for multiplayer games where gang up on the leader is possible and optimal. I foresee this game never ending because no one will be in a position where they can defend an attack from all other players at once. And, the other players have no reason not to attack.

I would suggest instead a more modest cycle... something like Stratego, where the Spy is beaten by everything except he can beat the marshal if he attacks him. But, I think that the idiosyncratic nature of objects that comes from a more Blokus style approach might be even better since it allows for a lot of strange orientations to be used for either attack or defense.

And, finally, why can't you play a piece of dead wood? Why must everything attach to your root?

I think you are really over complicating the card numbering. Why do you need 16? Why not make it 10, and make it so the higher card always wins, and then have specialty cards like "Flashfire" that trump any number and destroy all cards it touches when played (including your own). Maybe a card called "Rotwood" that is indestructible (or in some other way preventably hard to destroy). This makes a very distinct hierarchy of cards and allows players to build sort of "strong branches" by combining sections of high numbers and would allow you to be defensive as well as offensive. "Do i play this 10 by my base to protect my tree or try to capture another players section and spread out?" Choices like that are good. If all cards are effectively the same power (which is what you've been describing), their distinction is meaningless, you'll play whichever card you can play, there is basically no player choice.

Plus a mechanic I've used in a card game of my own to help the "same number" situation in games were higher card trumps lower is if you play a card with the same number on it you get a bonus play. So you could play for a combo of 3>3>3 to get a growth spurt so to speak. This could be very dynamic and allow for some very cool plays. And if you do this I would weight the deck inversely. This means most growth spurts would be of smaller, weaker numbers and be easier to kill by a player who is playing slow and steady building a branch of 6's.

Example deck breakdown:
12x 1 cards
11x 2 cards
...
4x 9 cards
3x 10 cards
2x each special card

With this set up the root card would be 0 value, meaning it can always be played on.

I think this is a much simpler base with which to build off of. Something to remember about games like this is that they don't have to be exact. This is a pretty casual game so worrying about "if it's exact" or not should be a minor concern. Most players will work a sort of house rule out about how exact they want the game to be, just the way some catan players have house rules about what can and can't be discussed when trading.

The beauty of omnidirectional movement is that every game is going to be so very diverse and if you keep the rest of the game as simple as possible the divergent game play possible is already there from the mechanics of movement. You don't have to try as hard to make interesting cards or complex scoring systems, the movement of the cards themselves will add a layer of strategy and interest to the game that you don't have in hex/grid games.

That said I hope you continue this brainstorm, the flavor of this game is amazing and even in those line drawing the board looks pretty, imagine it with color art. Lots of potential here, I'm glad my thread helped spark something.

I really think the fundamental flaw in this system is that each card is exactly as powerful as the next. There is nothing wrong with a card hierarchy. I think if you change from balanced cards to tiered cards the game will greatly benefit.

I think this is clearly explained in all of james' posts

This design is significantly more complex, intricate and strategic than the previous one. It is also much more sound. Though I think that it needs a number of significant changes, I can already begin to see it as a publishable game... perhaps even a collectible card game. It has the right element of physicality to appeal to a kid's market (a game mat, cards placed in a physical space, dexterity), so I think, with some modification, it could be quite easily transformed into a constructed deck type of game. It is, after all, a type of war game and thus well suited to the head-to-head environments of the genre.

But, there's still a lot of work to be done.

I don't know if you have playtested this game yet, but you may not need an inverse ratio between number and card count. If there is a strategic advantage to having a lot of one number in your hand, then players will naturally accumulate that number. By flooding the draw pile with low numbers, you actually take away a principle component of the game... hand management. So, give each number equal representation and let the players make their hands.

Also, your special cards are jokers. They have unlimited range and no down side. As a result, players who are dealt them get a windfall and those who don't get them will feel abused by chance. This may work in a game with lots of different powers, but variance on 5 cards is very high. These should not be 'I drew the best card, I win' cards... they need a counterbalance.

Which brings me to the main point, all of these special powers are exceptions to the rules of the game rather than integrated into the actual game mechanic itself. As I see it, every card should have a number and a power. The number is used to determine two different things: 1. whether the power 'activates' and 2. who wins in a conflict. These two things should be opposed. A higher number card beats a lower number card in a conflict. But, a special power only activates if its number is lower than the number of card it is played on. This eliminates a tremendous amount of fiat rules in your game and turns the game into a real strategic game of hand management and deck construction. If each card is either good for attack/defense or for its special powers, players will have to weigh the costs/benefits of each card when determining what to play (or put in their deck) and what to keep (or leave out of their deck).

This simple relationship of the cards liberates you from the need to make ANY rules about what card can be played on top of another. Instead, it makes the question of what card to play a question of strategy. This is exactly what all games want to do. Keep the rules simple, streamlined and unambiguous, but to open up a space where innumerable options exist and players are forced to decide for themselves what is a good play and what is not.

As a result, I would strip the 'fluff' out and boil the game down into two things... numbers and powers. Attacks succeed against lower numbers, powers activate on top of higher numbers. And, perhaps, if you want to use cards with 'special attacks', you need to have both. If you do this, then each card can be used many many different ways and it is up to the players to decide for themselves what to do.

And, finally, the persistent and intractable issue of branching and victory conditions. Here's my suggestion:

There are 5 nodes of power in the game. Four of them create a diamond around the fifth in the middle of the board. Each of the four surrounding nodes forms an isosceles triangle with two of the mid (starting) points of each zone so that they equal distant from those mid (starting) points but also pretty close to the center node. In order to win, your network must touch three of the five nodes.

Now (and I know we already discussed this but...) this game should not have one trunk but as many as the players wish to make. I agree that each player's network should be mutually exclusive. But, I think that the shape of the network should not be pre-determined by the rules of the game. It should instead be defined as all cards that connect to any part of the circumference on your zone of the board. So, you can have multiple tendrils going off at once. You can even build tendrils (and dead wood) floating around in other zones. But, as soon as it is connected to an arc edge of the game board in a player's zone, then it belongs to that player.

The end result of these rules will allow players to strategically play dead wood around the board and near the nodes at the beginning of the game. Some of it may be used to try to 'block' others, but its really more about posturing and positioning until you try to connect them to the edge of your zone. This will make the game infinitely more diverse and the patterns profoundly more unpredicable than requiring them to connect to a starting point.

And what is this? Chaos Orb come back, baby!

Like innuendo, I believe this game could go either way. The reason I suggested a CCG is because I think that it combines just the right elements that might make it work in that genre (unlike the thousands of "iwannabemagic"). But, it is also because in my mind, I see this only working as a kids game.

I believe that serious adult gamers would prefer a tile laying game over the amorphousness of the card placement. And, since it is hard for me to see a casual audience of adults adopting this game with something like a normal deck of playing cards unless it IS actually a normal deck of playing cards, I don't think this game is a causal game. It is either a kids game (collectible or not) or a serious hobby game (collectible or not).

But, as a serious hobby game, it would have to leave the cards behind. It is not really essential that you have them though. I think you could replace the cards with hexagonal tiles (with numbers on the edges) and you would get much the same directionality that you want while avoiding the ambiguity and dexterity problems of cards. In fact, hex tiles might even add an additional dimension to the game by allowing you to place different values (or properties) on different sides.

One side of a hex could have 'armor' which increases its defense against attack while a different side has 'weapons' which increase its attack against others. If you open up the possibility for different numbers on different sides of each hex tile, you could potentially create a large number of combinations of tiles very easily. Of course, you'd have to be careful not to make it more complicated than you want the game to be.

Love the idea, but I think if you want to get some commercial success, a hex game will just turn away too many casual gamers.. but alas, it all depends on your "style" and ideas. Personally, I dislike hex style games...

I see this game more as a sort of Family tree game, where each family is fighting for "power" to win the game. Cards would have a dial on it that displays the "ranks" of other cards it can overlap. Some can overlap just a few, but have a nice bonus (draw an extra card), others will be able to overlap a lot of cards, but have no power (or even a penalty). Like a range from 0-10, where card X will be able to beat numbers 4-8, while card Y only beats numbers 6-8, but draws you an extra card when played.

to make it even more interesting, why not let cards have 4 (different) numbers on it, one in each corner? That way, you can let go a bit of the "not touching, yes it is!" arguments and fights. Circle each number in each corner, and only cards that completely overlaps a circled number (including the circle itself) can be counted as a valid play. (Maybe cards with square corners work better in this game than rounded ones.)

sure, bumping the table and taking away cards underneath a line will always shift cards a bit. Just add a rule that cards may only touch each other if they overlap one whole circled number, and a re-arrange of "shifted a bit" cards is not a big deal. If there was a way to create cards that sort of click onto each other (on each corner), you could get away with it easily (magnets, or pin-in-hole), but add another whole level of costs to the game as well...

2 win conditions are always better than one, so the
• Touch 3 nodes to win
• Circle the center node
are good, so I would keep them.

Being able to play dead wood wherever I want will create a lot of mess early game, and might result in some players being "stuck" for a few turns, but it creates enough impact to be play tested, because it adds so much fun and depth to the game, especially if players start to slowly add those dead wood cards to their branches, expanding suddenly.

Maybe some extra rule that no player may "expand" dead wood, unless it connects to their branch might help.