Summary

The game can be played with up to 6 heroes, with the total number of heroes being used divided evenly into teams. Each hero has HP, and the game ends when only one team has a hero with nonzero HP remaining, that team of course being the winner.

The game takes place on a hexagonal grid. Each round consists of two phases: a movement phase, where the heroes move across the map, and the ability phase, where the heroes cast spells etc..

My questions for you

The following is a very rough idea for a game that's been brewing in my mind for the past week or so, and ultimately I am wondering if the idea is interesting enough to others for it to be worth it to pursue further (e.g. by creating a prototype).

Note that almost all of the specific numbers I use are there for the sake of concreteness and would almost certainly need to be tweaked during play-testing. In addition, none of the specific mechanics are "set in stone", and so I would love to hear your opinions on anything you think could be improved. For example, the choice of direction and extra energy spent might be more conveniently implemented with a dial, or tokens, or something else altogether.

Objective

The game can be played with up to 6 heroes, with the total number of heroes being used divided evenly into teams. Each hero has HP, and the game ends when only one team has a hero with nonzero HP remaining, that team of course being the winner. (Of course, a "team" can consist of just a single player, and they can even control only one hero if they like, but I imagine the game would be more fun the more heroes were used. One player is allowed to control more than one hero, and so it's possible to have two players each controlling 3 different heroes. It's also possible to have more than 2 teams. For example, you could have 3 teams of 2 heroes, 6 teams of 1 hero, etc..)

Overview

The board

The game is played on a hexagonal board with hexes, with each hero starting at a vertex of the hexagon.

Heroes

Each hero will have a maximum/initial HP, a maximum/initial energy, and energy gained per round, energy being used to move and perform abilities. (The energy could basically be thought of as "mana", but "mana" suggests that all the abilities are magical in nature, which is not necessarily the case).

All of this information would be contained on a character sheet given to the player using that hero. Each side would contain a different hero, and one side of which would all contain the same hero. (This way, if player's want to play a symmetric game in which everything starts out exactly equal, they can---this is similar to how Eclipse works.) Each hero might have one passive trait, one unique ability that they can use during the ability phase (see below).

The game is played in rounds, with each round divided into two phases: a movement phase and an ability phase. The rounds continue until one team is victorious as described above (every hero on every other team has 0 HP).

(One important point that was key to the design is that these actions are performed simultaneously: each player secretly decides upon their choice, and then once everyone has decided, the choices are revealed and resolved accordingly (see below). This (i) means that the game has little to no downtime and (ii) resolved any unbalancing issues that might result from some player going first.)

Setup

Each hero will possess 3 types of cards: (i) 7 direction cards, indicating which direction the spell is to be cast (one card indicating a self-cast); (ii) 6 ability strength cards indicating the amount of extra energy they would like to spend on an ability (0 to 5 extra energy); and (iii) 10 ability cards themselves.

The direction and ability strength cards would be the same for all heroes.

For the ability cards, each hero would have (i) a move card, (ii) a rest card, and (iii) a special ability card. (The special ability card refers to the unique active ability on a heroes character sheet.) In addition to this, each hero would have 7 additional ability cards. How these are distributed among the heroes would be up to the players: the game would likely come with recommended choices for each hero, the players could choose some sort of draft, they could do it randomly, etc..

Once all heroes have their cards and the miniatures placed in a symmetric fashion on the vertices of the hexagon, the game would be ready to begin.

Movement phase

During the movement phase, each player picks a card corresponding to the direction they would like to move and places it face down in front of them. When all players have done so, the cards are revealed and the heroes are moved accordingly and one energy is deducted for each hero that moved a hex. This phase ends when every player reveals the "self-cast" direction card.

You may not move into a space already occupied by another player or the edge of the board---doing so would be counted as a "self-cast" direction card. This applies even if the player obstructing your movement leaves the space you wanted to occupy this round.

If two players wish to enter the same hex, if they like, they can 'bid' energy, the person with the highest bid losing that energy and moving into the space, with the other opponent losing no energy.

When everyone has finished moving (by revealing a "self-cast" card), the round ends.

Ability phase

During the ability phase, each player chooses (i) an ability card, (ii) a direction card, and (iii) a strength card. Once again, these cards are chosen privately, and once everyone has decided, they are all revealed simultaneously.

Every ability card will have (i) a type, (ii) an energy cost, and (iii) an initiative. Additionally, many ability cards will given the option of spending extra energy to use a more powerful version of that ability.

The possible types are healing, moving, melee, ranged, resting, and they are resolved in that order (from moving to resting). If, for example, two ranged attacks are played, the attack with the highest initiative is resolved first. In the rare case that two spells of the same type with the same initiative are cast simultaneously, the rules for resolving this will be specific to the spell.

Moving works the same as it does in the Moving phase, except now (i) it costs 2 energy to move the initial first hex and (ii) you may move one extra hex for every additional energy you spend. (Part of the motivation to allow moving in the ability phase is to allow for dodging.)

Resting costs no energy and recovers 1 HP.

All other abilities will be specific to the cards (or the special ability on each character sheet). Some possible example idea are listed below:

The ability phase ends when every hero decides to rest.

Example abilities

(For some context, I was thinking ~20ish HP and ~10 energy, with ~3 energy per round.)

(I have not listed initiative because there doesn't seem much point right now---this is just to give a vague idea of what I hand in mind.)

• Self-heal: Type-Healing. Cost-2 Energy. Heal 3 HP. +1 HP for each additional energy spent.
• Group-heal: Type-Healing. Cost-3 Energy. Every friendly unit heals 2 HP (including you) in every adjacent hex. Increase this radius by 1 hex for every additional energy spent.
• Shock: Type-Ranged. Cost-3 Energy. The first enemy unit with 2 hexes of the direction cast loses 4 energy. If this results in that player being unable to cast their spell because of a lack of energy, when resolving their spell, their energy is reduced to 0 and the spell they cast has no effect.
• Sword swipe: Type-Melee. Cost-3 Energy. All enemies in the 3 hexes including and adjacent the hex in the direction cast lose 3 HP.
• Fireball: Type-Ranged. Cost-3 Energy. The first enemy within 3 hexes of the direction cast loses 2 HP. Increase this damage by 1 for every additional 2 units of energy spent.
• Shield: Type-Healing. Cost-2 Energy. Ignore the next 3 damage dealt to self.
• Revive: Type-Healing. Cost-9 Energy. Target ally which died within 2 hexes of caster is placed in their starting location with 1/4th (rounded down) of their maximum HP. Furthermore, their maximum HP is permanently reduce by 1.
• Massive strike: Type-Melee. Cost-4 Energy. Enemy within in the hex of the direction cast loses 5 HP.
• Freeze: Type-Ranged. Cost-3 energy. First enemy within first two hexes must skip their next move phase.

Death

If a hero reaches 0 HP, that hero may no longer act, but their miniature still remains on the battlefield (it will affect line of sight, movement, and will mark the location they might be revived).

End of round

Every hero receives energy equal to their energy-per-round as indicated on their hero sheet.

Closing comments

Of course, these are just examples to give you an idea of what a potential spell card might look like. Almost certainly these would have to be tweaked, or even removed, after play-testing.

So, ultimately the question is: Does a game like this sound fun enough to be worth putting some effort into developing it? Furthermore, while I do play board games, I haven't played hundreds and hundreds, so I can't be sure if something like this is too similar to something already on the market.

If it does sound interesting enough to be worth pursuing, I would love to hear your ideas for improvement and expansion on the game.