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Alternative to mana tapping card games

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jedite1000
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I have been messing around with my card game for awhile and i had a few suggestions on what to use instead of cards that are used for mana (energy)

So my last card game, to able to summon a strong creature i required these (gem) cards, if you have enough in your hands you can play these gem cards to summon a powerful monster. It was a decent mechanic for an old game i made but i wanted to do something different to play stronger monsters

So right now for my current card game, every single card that is in my hand can be used for energy (mana). so instead of having certain cards such as MTG, i use the cards themselves as mana resource, that way you do not have to waste any cards in your hand.

However recent suggestions told me i should use the mechanic i used in my old game, i dont really want to use a specific card for mana anymore.

So i ask you, what is a good alternative to have if i want to play stronger creatures

Evil ColSanders
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Cards which can be used for

Cards which can be used for mana is good.

Hearthstone automatically gives you +1 max mana every turn and caps at 10 mana.

Maybe have a neutral location where monsters can be played for free. Each turn they are there, they generate mana. If it's colored, they generate their color). At the end of a future turn, you can return them to your hand.

Lastly, have all your monsters in a separate deck. Your hand/deck consists of ingredients/incantations/mana which can summon anything from your monster deck.

questccg
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The only option I can think of is...

Doing like in HearthStone where each round you gain +1 Mana. You can start at a specific value (like 3 Mana) and grow until a certain limit (like 8 Mana). Something like this...

In my example it would take 5 rounds to go from lowest Mana to highest Mana.

That's all I can think of... For now.

jedite1000
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questccg wrote:Doing like in

questccg wrote:
Doing like in HearthStone where each round you gain +1 Mana. You can start at a specific value (like 3 Mana) and grow until a certain limit (like 8 Mana). Something like this...

In my example it would take 5 rounds to go from lowest Mana to highest Mana.

That's all I can think of... For now.

That is not bad, invisible mana might be doable, would they recharge after spending them or would you have to start getting mana again each turn

As well as spending mana to summon stronger creatures i am also want to use them to play item cards. Also spending mana to attack with strong monters, however weaker monsters require no mana

What do you think of discarding power, like i have 2 discard to cards to the discard pile to play my monster

X3M
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How about you give each card

How about you give each card a mana cost. Or mana gain by sacrifice?
It worked well for my Event Cards.
Players could choose to get several weak cards, or one strong card. Depending on the situation. However, I don't know how it would work with summoning monsters, my cards where Event Cards after all, strenghtening a situation sort to speak.

Please keep in mind that you play a card and sacrifice at least one. Thus removing at least 2 cards from your hand.
Maybe picking multiple cards per round would do.

What you also can do is sacrifice a cost 5 monster to summon a cost 4 monster that has an ability that you need. The decision at that moment could be important to pick the weaker monster.

***

eg. as in a MtG situation
A 1/1 monster costs 1, you have 4 in your hand.
A 3/3 monster costs 4, you have 1 in your hand.

Situation: almost done
Your opponent has 2 monsters on the table that are 1/2. He also has only 2 life points left. You sarifice the 3/3 monster and play 4 times the 1/1 monster. Now you can do a final attack. He can only block 2 monsters. The other 2 will kill him.

Situation: a big block
Your opponent has 4 monsters on the table that are 1/2. You need to break through. So you play your 3/3 monster and sacrifice the 4 1/1 monsters for it. Now you can pick his cards one by one and destroy them.

jedite1000
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Oh neat idea, im actually for

Oh neat idea, im actually for now anyway, going to try this hearthstone mechanic, i think it is from that, where you generate 1 "mana" each turn and it is capped at 8 cubes

You can check it out in my workshop for tabletop simulator, its still early testing phase however

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1328665761

larienna
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Instead of tapping, it could

Instead of tapping, it could be compared. If you have X mana cards, all cards played must have X or less mana.

If you restrict the phase (your turn only, specific phase) where you can spend this mana, it could be easy to keep count the total mana to spent as all cards will be played one after another.

Else, I like the Epic Card game methods, all cards cost 0 or 1 and players only have 1 point per turn. (On their turn, and their opponent's turn).

questccg
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You can maybe try this

jedite1000 wrote:
...What do you think of discarding power, like i have 2 discard to cards to the discard pile to play my monster

I had another thought. What if you do like in "Century: Spice Road":

A> You can have from 1 to 8 Energy Cubes

B> To earn Energy Cubes, you can PLAY from your hand onto the table cards. Each card has a fixed value of Mana it can produce.

C> Continue your turn as you would normally.

D> At the END of you turn, collect cards in play and place them BACK into your Hand.

Your opponent could have abilities like: "Choose an opponent's card to be discarded." So one of your cards in PLAY will go to the discard pile instead of back into your hand after your turn.

Or more powerful ones like: "Choose 2 opposing cards and send them to the discard pile" or "All opposing players cards in play must be discarded."

Just giving you some other inspiration from another game that does it a bit differently.

Cheers.

Note: What is COOL about this mechanic is that you are NOT always required to "discard" cards. Only if the opponent plays a card to trigger one or more "discards".

It also allows you to "conserve" for the most part your deck to being used for morphing your "creature" (a-Tron) and therefore there is a bit of risk playing cards for "Energy Cubes" – but at the same time there is a definite risk-reward synergy that is being utilized.

jedite1000
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I came up with another

I came up with another solution, there are 2 ways to go by this. Ok how about I return to using cards as mana. So 1 way once per turn after you draw choose 1 card any card in your hand and place it face down on the side of the field. You can keep doing this once per turn, you can then spend the mana and after you do you discard the mana cards to the discard pile instead of recharging per turn. And the discard pile has a chance to return to the deck or your hand through card effects or something. The other way is once per turn you can choose to draw a card and add it to your hand or choose to send the top card in your deck to the mana pile. You don't look at your card u just put it straight in the mana pile. I could even increase it by 2 so once per turn you can draw 1 card or send 2 cards from your deck to the mana pile

questccg
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Needs playtesting (I think)

jedite1000 wrote:
I came up with another solution, there are 2 ways to go by this. Ok how about I return to using cards as mana. So 1 way once per turn after you draw choose 1 card any card in your hand and place it face down on the side of the field. You can keep doing this once per turn, you can then spend the mana and after you do you discard the mana cards to the discard pile instead of recharging per turn. And the discard pile has a chance to return to the deck or your hand through card effects or something.

The problem is you are going to WASTE most of your cards into your "discard pile" when you will need to HAVE cards to "morph" and do "other" stuff... Remember your draw pile is not infinite... What you have like 60 cards per player... If you use like 2 or 3 cards per round, that's can be as little as 20 turns and you run out of cards for your deck...

jedite1000 wrote:
The other way is once per turn you can choose to draw a card and add it to your hand or choose to send the top card in your deck to the mana pile. You don't look at your card u just put it straight in the mana pile. I could even increase it by 2 so once per turn you can draw 1 card or send 2 cards from your deck to the mana pile

Why make it "random"? I'll give you an example. Let's say you have this Super Morph card that has like 5 or 6 mana. You want to PLAY it for Mana but... you risk losing the Morph capabilities – because the opponent discards it...

THEN I can understand you having some cards with the capability to "restore a card from your discard pile" or "search your discard pile for any card".

That makes perfect sense to me.

It's hard for me to keep track – but you can figure out your "burn rate" with regards to the cards in your Deck. If it makes sense "discarding" the card you use as Mana, well then you have proof that it works from a playtest perspective.

BUT if you find that the cards are mostly only going for the purpose of Mana and that you actually don't USE the cards for their PRIMARY purpose (instead only focusing on Mana), well then the PLAY and "reclaim" method I suggested might add some level of slowing the speed at which you use your cards.

You'll have to playtest it... I just gave you a suggestion that came to mind.

Cheers!

jedite1000
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oh yeah, i seecould also not

oh yeah, i see

could also not be a deck out mechanic.

if u run out of cards in your deck area, can shuffle them to form a new deck


What do you say about having mana random, if you been reading my evolution posts, im planning on changing the mechanics, but that is unrelated to this right now.

So i had a crazy thought, yes its crazy, i got the idea of a previous poster saying that each turn you only have 1 point to spend. I was thinking what about a dice that will determine the outcome of your mana this round

Lets say you have 4 monsters on the field and to evolve them all you need atleast 5 points, so you roll the die and you get 5, ok so i can evolve 2 of my heroic cards into epic cards which they require 1 point each and i have 3 left over and the epic card i just played requires 3 points to evolve into its final stage, oh i have that card in my hand. so ill spend it and evolve it again.

Next turn comes i need 3 points to evolve my other monster, i roll a 2..too bad.

i know people do not like much randomness in games especially using a dice, but it was just an idea....a crazy idea, i might end up forgetting about this mechanic all together just throwing some ideas out there

larienna
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Quote:if u run out of cards

Quote:
if u run out of cards in your deck area, can shuffle them to form a new

That is an idea I had for one of my game where the card cycling was higher because you could discard the remaining cards in hand to draw a new hand.

So what I did, is there was 5 shield card acting as HP (like in duel masters). If you end up reshuffling your discard pile, you have to destroy one of your shields. So on the long term, if you cycle your deck too fast, you will hurt yourself.

jedite1000
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Yeah I’m thinking of having

Yeah I’m thinking of having first 10 cards in your deck act as players life point ( will reduce it if the games take too long). At any point you can pick up a card from your life points to reshuffle your discard pile into the deck

questccg
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Can be a turn-off

jedite1000 wrote:
...I know people do not like much randomness in games especially using a dice, but it was just an idea... a crazy idea...

Just to follow-up with that thought, yes many people dislike randomness created by "dice rolls". I've had people NOT want to play "TradeWorlds" because they saw a couple of dice on the table...

So figure out what it is you would like to design first and try to see where that game can fit in the landscape.

But remember there are some "weird" people who don't like dice and will refuse to play a game with dice. Strange, I know?!

jedite1000
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questccg wrote:jedite1000

questccg wrote:
jedite1000 wrote:
...I know people do not like much randomness in games especially using a dice, but it was just an idea... a crazy idea...

Just to follow-up with that thought, yes many people dislike randomness created by "dice rolls". I've had people NOT want to play "TradeWorlds" because they saw a couple of dice on the table...

So figure out what it is you would like to design first and try to see where that game can fit in the landscape.

But remember there are some "weird" people who don't like dice and will refuse to play a game with dice. Strange, I know?!

Yeah that idea came and gone, wasnt even thinking too far ahead with it.

I have another idea which will replace the cube energy resources and the mana tap from cards.

So hope you been following my other post or else you might get confused what im about to say.

I might change my monsters ATK/DEF stats too pure power stat so only 1 stat such as 2000 power,if opponent has 2000 or more then that card is defeated. and to help with resources, the monster card will have another power stat maybe on the side of the card called evolution stat or something, so maybe a stat of 1000, on your turn, if you want to evolve a monster it may require maybe 3000 evo stat, so you just sacrifice these monsters in your hand to the discard pile and then evolve into the new monster. There might be no deck out option either so if you run out of cards in your deck then you discard your entire hand and reshuffle your discard pile into a new deck and the draw say 5 cards.

I was going to write this on my other post but this one seems to be more active so, so as for the players life, at the start of the game you draw 10 cards from your deck and add them face down at the side and when a monster defeats another monster on the field, the defeated monster's player draws a card from their life and add it to their hand.

Ill still update my other post for future changes but decide to write this as it was on topic for the most part.

right now i need to figure out what will happen to the defeated monster?, does the defeated monster lose an evolved form? so you need to evolve it to the next tier again or should the whole monster and its forms be removed from the field including the novice monster. Or should the monster only become a rested state for one turn or something

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