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Can Someone Break My Card Game?

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Wesinator24
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Joined: 08/01/2018

I would like someone to find an exploit in my game that makes it completely unfair/one-sided for someone

The title of the game is: Toy Wars

Here's how to play and the rulings -

How To Play:
Start off by flipping a coin. One player calls what it lands on. If they call right, they decide who goes first, if not, the other player decides. Whoever goes first flips a card off the top of the toy deck, and position that card on the play mat. Once you place a card on the field, you cannot move it’s position until a card says otherwise. Keep doing this until you have 8 Toys on your side of the field (4 in the front row, and 4 in the back row), then you stop flipping cards, and the other player does this. After both players have positioned their toys, they each draw 3 cards from the top of their assistance decks. This is called the Set-Up phase.

After the Set-Up phase, the player who went second goes first here. First, the player will look to see if there are any open spaces on their side of the field to play assist cards. If there are, they can choose to play cards there. If not, then they conclude this step, the Preparatory phase.

After this phase, they will continue on to the Battle phase. In this phase, they will choose one of their toys in the front row to attack one of the other players front row cards. These cards will battle it out. Once the battle is over, only one toy comes out, and after they do, they are flipped so that the other player can read the card like a book. This is called the Exhausted position. A toy cannot attack when in the Exhausted position. The only way to change this is to have your whole front row in the Exhausted position, then all of the cards get switched back to the Ready position. After this, the player ends his turn, unless a toy or assist card’s effect would activate here. After all effects have been resolved, it is the other players turn. The Preparatory and Battle phase repeat until one player has no more toys remaining on the field.

Rulings:

When in the Exhausted position, a card cannot be attacked, but it also cannot attack.

When a toy is destroyed, it goes to the toy box pile, and whatever card was positioned behind the toy in the back row, gets moved to the front row.

The only way to destroy a constant assist card is to have one of your toys attack it. The assist card will be destroyed, no matter what effect kicks in. But, if a toy attacks an assist card, that toy is destroyed as well.

There are 2 kinds of assist cards, Quick and Constant. Quick assist cards can be played usually during the Preparatory phase, although some can’t be used until the Battle phase. Constant assist cards are cards that cannot be played unless there is a free spot on the field that it can be played at.

How does battling work?

Every toy has an Attack stat, a Health stat, and an Agility stat. Attack determines how much damage is done to a toy’s health. Health determines how much health a toy has left before it is destroyed. And Agility determines which toy will attack first.

Here’s an example.

Brick Man VS Tinker Toy Pianist

First off, look at each toy’s agility. Whichever toy has the higher agility stat will attack first. In this example, Tinker Toy Pianist has a higher agility, meaning that he will attack first. If there is a tie in agility, look at the cards Health stat. Whichever one of those stats are higher determines which toy attacks first. If the toys have the same Health and Agility stats, whoever has the higher Attack stat will attack first. If the 2 toys have the same Attack, Health, and Agility stats, then both toys are destroyed.

Brick Man - 10 Agility VS Tinker Toy Pianist - 50 Agility

Next, Tinker Toy Pianist will attack Brick Man. Tinker Toy Pianist’s attack is 75, and Brick Man’s Health is 100, so that will leave Brick Man’s health at 25.

Brick Man’s Health - 25 VS Tinker Toy Pianist’s Health - 100

Now it’s time for Brick Man to attack. Brick Man has an attack stat of 50, and Tinker Toy Pianist has a Health stat of 100, so that will leave Tinker Toy Pianist with a Health stat of 50.

Brick Man - 25 VS Tinker Toy Pianist - 50

After both toys attack, what happens then? NO MERCY, THAT’S WHAT! Tinker Toy Pianist then attacks Brick Man again. Tinker Toy Pianist has enough attack to take out the rest of Brick Man’s health.

Brick Man - 0 VS Tinker Toy Pianist - 50 (Winner)

After the battle, Brick Man goes to the toy box, and Tinker Toy Pianist goes to the Exhausted position with 50 health still in tact. And that is how a battle is played out!

More Rulings:

You can only have one copy of each card in your toy and assistance deck.

You must have 15 cards in your toy deck and 5 cards in your assistance deck in order to start playing.

What if a toy can only be played by a card effect, and I draw that card in the Set-Up phase?

Then you put that card on the bottom of your deck.

Let me know what you guys think

let-off studios
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Unit Details

Thanks for sharing your game and its basic draft of rules with us.

Unless the player can construct their own deck of toys (and although this was hinted at, it wasn't exactly clear), I'm not certain there will be a way to deliberately and knowingly win battles every single time. However, I do wonder about the assists. You didn't share any details about those. I suspect the Assists, their persistence (Constant vs. Quick), and their frequency in somone's deck will all need extensive playtesting.

Additionally, based on what you showed here, I don't see a reason to have ability scores so high. Your example would work just as well, I think, if you had ability scores ranging from 1 to 10. This is likely a personal preference though, as I'm aware of games that have ability scores, health, damage, etc. in the 1000's.

Best of success to you with this project! :)

Jay103
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"any open spaces on their

"any open spaces on their side of the field"

No idea what that means.. how many spaces were there to start with? There's a front row, I see.. two rows total? Need more info.

" Once the battle is over, only one toy comes out, and after they do, they are flipped so that the other player can read the card like a book"

Comes out of what? Is "Exhausted Position" just "tapped", except turned more so it doesn't look like MTG?

Anyway, your rules need more clarity, but there's nothing obviously exploitable here. You get toys at random, choose what to attack, and then next turn choose something different I guess and repeat.

If there's going to be a problem, it'll be in the Assist cards.. so be careful about what you put in the Constant cards in particular.

Also, if you're tracking permanent health, you're going to have a problem in general, and moreso with big numbers, unless these are laminated cards where people have dry-erase markers to write on them. I'd think you should divide those values by 25 and use little tokens, if that's what you're doing.

Jay103
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let-off studios

let-off studios wrote:
Additionally, based on what you showed here, I don't see a reason to have ability scores so high. Your example would work just as well, I think, if you had ability scores ranging from 1 to 10. This is likely a personal preference though, as I'm aware of games that have ability scores, health, damage, etc. in the 1000's.

The Tinker Toy Pianist has a power level over 9000!

let-off studios
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Clarity in this Early Stage

Jay103 wrote:
Anyway, your rules need more clarity, but there's nothing obviously exploitable here. You get toys at random, choose what to attack, and then next turn choose something different I guess and repeat.
Yep, I agree with this. These rules aren't ready for blind playtesting, but they're enough to deliver the general idea. I think I was able to gather enough to understand the basic concepts and could mash together an image in my head about how things might go.

Wesinator24
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Joined: 08/01/2018
Wow, thanks for responding so

Wow, thanks for responding so quickly!

@let-off studios

Players can construct their own decks, but what their field becomes is random.

I am planning on doing what Jay suggested and divide all of the stats by 25 to make things simpler.

@Jay103

There are two rows total, the front row and the back row, with 4 toys in each at the start.
Once a card in the front row is destroyed, the card that was behind it takes it's place, leaving an empty space behind it. A space like this is where you could put a Constant assist card.

Yes, the exhausted position is basically tapped, except you only become untapped when every card in your front row is tapped.

As I said above, i'll be dividing the stats by 25 to make things easier to understand/calculate.

Thank you guys for the feedback, it's the first time i've shared the idea. I have almost 50 cards so far, where would I get feedback on those? Thanks again!

Jay103
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Wesinator24 wrote: I have

Wesinator24 wrote:
I have almost 50 cards so far, where would I get feedback on those? Thanks again!

From play-testers. You'll need to actually play the thing to know how the cards interact with each other, though sometimes you can spot a problem card just by inspection.

Wesinator24
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Joined: 08/01/2018
That is something i've done a

That is something i've done a few times (One card had to receive 2 nerfs and is still too good) ((Basically the card had 25/100/50, healed other cards in it's archtype, required that you destroyed other cards in it's archtype before you could destroy it, and it gained 20 health to it's base health stat every players turn. It no longer gains health, but I don't know what else to do to it without making it useless))

Wesinator24
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Jay103 wrote:Wesinator24

Jay103 wrote:
Wesinator24 wrote:
I have almost 50 cards so far, where would I get feedback on those? Thanks again!

From play-testers. You'll need to actually play the thing to know how the cards interact with each other, though sometimes you can spot a problem card just by inspection.

Also what would be a good way to have people playtest? I don't really have physical prototypes (unless pencil and paper cutouts count)

Jay103
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Wesinator24 wrote:Jay103

Wesinator24 wrote:
Jay103 wrote:
Wesinator24 wrote:
I have almost 50 cards so far, where would I get feedback on those? Thanks again!

From play-testers. You'll need to actually play the thing to know how the cards interact with each other, though sometimes you can spot a problem card just by inspection.

Also what would be a good way to have people playtest? I don't really have physical prototypes (unless pencil and paper cutouts count)


.. you make physical prototypes!

It's just a deck of cards, right? Get some card sleeves (like for MTG cards) if you don't already have some, and print card-shaped pieces of paper to go in them.

I did this post a few months ago:

https://www.bgdf.com/blog/prototyping

which might be of some help, though I didn't need playable cards.

NANDeck should be perfect for you, because your cards fit neatly into a simple spreadsheet.. set up what a card looks like and BAM you've got
your decks.

https://www.bgdf.com/forum/game-creation/prototyping/quickly-generate-ca...

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