Dominion card question

@Seth: Thanks for the info. My game has 4 scenarios: different end-game objectives. They make game play different because of how you win:

-Tradewars: Collect 1,500 qS to win.
-Spacewars: Be the last player standing in an all out battle.
-Days of Glory: Build 5 cultural acheivements.
-The Derelict: Defeat an alien starship which is going to invade a homeworld.

If you take "Tradewars" as an example, you'll probably want to configure some defensive starships to prevent an opponent from attacking your homeworld (base)... But for the most part you will need to balance between defense and collecting qS (quickSilver - money).

In "Spacewars", this is the scenario in which players battle each other to survive. I think this scenario is the one that will last the longest (longest game play time). You need to knock out each one of your opponents (2-4 players).

"Days of Glory" requires you to *build* 5 cultural achievements:
-100 qS = Galactic Archives (One free upgrade)
-200 qS = United Credit Corporation (100 qS)
-300 qS = Trade Federation (Allows you to control 5 ships instead of 4)
-400 qS = Imperial Senate (Monarch role allows you to draw +3 cards)
-500 qS = Royal Palace (You win)

This again amounts to collecting 1,500 qS to build all the cultural achievements. First one to build the achievement earns the reward (in parenthesis).

Lastly "The Derelict" is a co-op or solitary game in which you must destroy an alien starship that is bent on colonizing one of the homeworlds. The ship will stay in space until it is provoked (attacked). From there on, it will attack the weakest player until it destroy that player's homeworld. If that happens, all players lose the game. This scenario can also be played with only 1 player (solitary game).

With ALL the cards in your deck, you have 120 cards. But I believe most games will only have about 60 cards when a player beats or achieves the objective... The only one that may take longer is "Spacewars" if there are 4 players playing.

My cards are 60 Military cards (for Starships) and 60 Resource cards (for earning qS - money). You start of with only 8 resource cards and build your deck from there...

@PaulG: 120 cards is the total amount of cards available to 1 player. Most games will probably resolve themselves when players have 60 cards in their deck (about half). But there is 1 scenario, "Spacewars" which is purely a battle to be the last player standing which could make a player's deck bigger; especially if there are 4 players.

There is a 1,500 qS (quickSilver - currency) goal for 2 games, which resolve the game earlier. The 4th scenario also get resolved earlier (win or loss)...

The other thing is, you want to have some "down time" from space battles which can allow players behind in the game catch up to their opponents. Like I said, you need to wait for certain cards to appear (in a bigger deck)... But not investing in military technology would end your game early even with a player who isn't a very aggressive player.

Ultimately YOU decide what you buy and how you build your deck. I think there will be 2 RUSH plays:

1-Get to 1,500 qS faster than other players by focusing mostly on currency generation
2-Build a small group of starships before an opponent can build any defense and crush them!

@kpres: The funny thing is that I don't really play a lot of games. I like seeing how they get put together and the mechanics they use, but rarely do I get the chance to play them. The most recent game I played was Metro (Circa 1997). I played it in Summer 2012. It was okay, but did not inspire me into making a game similar to it...

But a friend suggested I look into the Deck-Building genre because of a game I told him I wanted to design. He said the design would work perfectly with my game. And with some minor corrections he was correct. The game plays like a mix of MtG, Dominion and San Juan. The space battles resolve rather quickly (a few turns) and have a simple mechanic (slower than Yu-Gi-Oh! more like Magic). The Dominion part is the Deck-Building aspect has everything to do with configuring starships to defend and attack opposing players and lastly I used San Juan's role mechanic (partially) in offering players the chance to choose roles on each turn. So you can play your turn + select one of 5 roles, each role giving the player an ability in play.

My roles are:
-The Monarch = Allows you to draw +2 cards from your deck (7 cards in hand instead of 5)
-The Officer = Allows you to commandeer starships against your opponents
-The Soldier = Allows you to spy and sabotage an opponent's homeworld installations
-The Engineer = Allows you to swap to the next card in a stack without buying the topmost card
-The Trader = Allows you to buy Resource cards from the Trade Outpost (Opposite of selling resources)

These roles are available to ALL players, it's not like in San Juan where if someone selects a role, you cannot select it... That why I said "(partially)"...

For example, the Monarch rule is good if you want to traverse your Deck quicker. +2 Cards (7 instead of 5) is a good way of doing this. However you can't always choose this role, because you would probably be defeated by military force (of an opposing player). Similarly you don't always want to attack an opponent, so you would not always use the Officer role to use starships. Obviously most of the time players will choose the Monarch role until things heat up and use of the other roles becomes more pressing.

Some are very strategic roles like the Soldier and the Engineer. The Trader role can help balance a deck between military cards and resource cards (so it's a pretty important role). An unbalanced deck may make it hard to battle effectively while pursuing the scenario's objectives.

Maybe I'll try a game or two... Thanks for that link, it will probably be very helpful.

@mistre: Well I know that for certain, having the ability retaining cards is different. And that is because you are *building* starship to either defend your own homeworld or attack another player's starships/homeworld. Like in Magic: the Gathering, when there is no defending starships, it's your homeworld (home base) that takes the damage. When a homeworld drops to 0, that player loses the game.

Deck-building is unique because you are building starship configurations (multiple cards involved). There are over 2,500 unique combinations possible, some weaker, some stronger, some for missions, some for battles... And that is only with a deck of 60 military cards. I took the decision to duplicate some cards because of the deck-building aspect. Otherwise there would have been literally over 50,000 unique combinations!

Ryan (RGaffney) helped me in focusing the game around quickSilver (money). That allowed me to put together 2 scenarios built around generation of revenue. The other 2 scenarios are also unique and therefore there are 4 games bundled into one game. It also focused the vision of the game since I was undecided on how to handle trading and resource management.

The "code wheel" would be real cool for the final product... But I probably won't get that one done for the prototype... It's okay, the prototype won't be perfect. Nothing new here! :P

Note: Last night I sat down and worked on the "code wheel"... Maybe it may be part of the prototype after all... I'm still working on it... But it seems probable that I get it made for the prototype! Let's hope... I'll post an update regarding the "code wheel" soon...

UPDATE: Well the code wheel is coming along pretty nice. Here is the image link: http://www.bgdf.com/node/12533
I am thinking about not enforcing any rules as to how the wheels spin. For example if you turn the bottom wheel and it turns the top 2 wheel also ... that's okay. The idea was to have a market-like mechanic (so values going up and down). Plus there is a general trend that the market values follow. Again since there is no beginning or end, this makes for a *nice* way to determine trade values for the 3 resources in the game!

@Willi B:No that's a bit why I talked more about the game. I wanted to state how the game is different. Seth was the first one to state that if the built deck is 120 cards... AND IT WORKS. Well that is great!

So I know one of the things that needs to be properly playtested is the DURATION of games (so the deck does not get built too large).

And notice that I was initially talking about deck size (in a Deck-building game). Which was clearly clarified in that Dominion does not reach the 125 card size (even if that's the amount of cards available per player).

Note: I took a 2nd look at Eminent Domain. I think my game is sufficiently different: space battles are of greater importance, scenarios allow for different end-game scenarios, not civ-like (this is not a civilization building game - very important). That last point is very important: my game is more about resource trading and deck-building of starships for space battles.