Card Melee combat - both duel and minion slaughter

Hi friend

The holy grail? Well actually, that's rather nearly a perfect term for it! This happens to be a design concept that consumed me for well over two years. Let's take a look at what your trying to accomplish and what tactics can be used to ensure the process creates a professional product.

So my suggestion to you is that you do the unthinkable. I am well aware of how this is going to sound but I assure you the wisdom of this choice will reveal itself as you begin design. You need to NOT think about combat. Yep, ignore combat and instead consider what will quickly become your MOST important question....MOVEMENT!

Now I am well aware of how silly this may sound, however, I believe you have the opportunity to attack your problem uniquely and save yourself a TON of work. I spent the first year ignoring movement and I assure you much of the following year was invested into that concept alone. A mistake that resulted in sweeping changes to the remainder of my design including portions of work I had already considered "complete".

The kinds of questions you would want to answer about movement? In most miniatures games movement takes place only when approaching targets. In the case of even the most popular miniatures skirmish, movement is an afterthought, it's simply never addressed with the correct level of importance. As an example, in Mordhiem movement is used to either gain LOS to a target, engage a target, or evade a target. This kind of obvious ignorance when designing only serves to punctuate a fact players have been trying to escape since their first miniature; models are static and unmoving.

Why movement?

When we see two actors in a movie dueling, do they stand rigidly in one place? We want players to enjoy the clear theme here, combat. In response to this theme we should design for immersion. You, like all other war-game designers, no doubt wish your players to become hopelessly lost in game play. This will never happen so long as games perpetuate "candyland" style pawn movement. It is an archaic design method that should have been phased out of miniatures products long ago yet still remains and remains for good reason. Alternatives that are immersive, FAST, and of course tactically relevant are what you called a "holy grail".

Try to imagine things like...
Equilibrium: Gun Kata
The Matrix: Lobby Scene
The Last Samuri: End Battle

Here we see three very different takes on combat but in each instance they are strikingly similar when emphasizing the importance of movement and position in battle. In SUN-TZU tactical positioning is referred to as "Hsing". I assure you that a direct correlation between game play and Hsing will offer you a clear path to your "holy grail".

It certainly worked for me ..............:)

E

Just thought of this idea. Figure out a way to use the game mechanic of Final Fantasy: Tactics Ogre and bring it to the table top. But you will need to change the name to your card combat duel and minion slaughter. Not sure if this like Warhammer: 40k