Crystal Heroes — Worthy of attention!

I've been re-examining the game based on a review that I had done AFTER Joe (@The Professor) had taken a look at the game. And I removed the giant "reference" cards (Jumbo cards) they were mean to be player aids to remind players about what they CAN DO on a turn and how many Action Points (APs) would be required.

So you are going to ask: "Why did you remove the Reference Cards if they made the game easier to play???"

Simply put: I streamlined the Actions to 1 AP = 1 Action. No matter which action you take. So there is no NEED to "document" the cost to perform an action since they are all the same.

There were and still are some restrictions in terms of the Actions themselves... But that remains to be seen. They don't need to be in place because the method of play takes care of too many of the same action on a turn is less favorable to the player making the action.

That sounds complicated. Well it's not...

So once you WIN a battle, there is a dropping of LOOT (Treasure). Now while this is GREAT, if you choose to MOVE and BATTLE AGAIN... You leave loot for the opponent... And that is BAD for the player. Sure they can't collect ALL the loot... Meaning the opponent will have time to move and collect some of what is remaining... That's great too. And it's a form of NATURAL BALANCE in terms of the Actions.

***

Getting back to the topic at hand: WARPING!

I saw it fit to allow a player for 1 AP to warp to wherever they placed their Warp Token on the board. But I get the impression ... It's better to SWITCH position between your Pawn and Token.

So instead of just GOING to the location of a player's Warp Token, the two (2) SWAP positions and this allows more flexible way of getting around the area of play.

***

3D10s... As I mentioned BUYING dice from Chessex is NOW "cost prohibitive". At $1.75 USD per dice that is way too much. Sure the dice look nice... But the question is ... Since the game will be made in the USA... Some parts can come from elsewhere. Like the baggies are from ULine Canada and the dice are from China and the Box, Cards and Tokens are from the USA. So the majority of the product is sourced in the USA.

That's great for Tariffs since I don't want to have to PAY 30%+ in terms of Tariffs for games going to the USA.

The games will be assembled in Canada and I'm exploring options ATM to see HOW(?) I can get everything done and ready and the method I use for shipping.

We shall see... TBD.

I wanted to see if this was an anomaly... But Awesome Dice is selling 10 D10 (0 to 9) for around $20 USD... That's $2.00 USD a dice PLUS shipping. The world has gone F-cking mad...

My Dual Dice (DD) cost me $2.00 USD to make at low MOQ. And those are custom Acrylic Dice not Resin.

So ONE (1) D10 from Awesome Dice would cost the SAME price (for me) than a pair of Dual Dice! OMG... That's insane. My custom dice cost less to make than a measly D10.

It's has to be because of Tariffs on Chinese goods. There is no other explanation for this. I don't know... anymore. It's hard to SOURCE good products and places like Chessex were my GO-TO supplier for like $0.25 a loose dice. No more... Woah what a dramatic change in pricing!

4D10s (0 to 9) would cost me $7.00 USD from the USA. Insane and not viable for the cost of the game...

Note #1: Why this is shocking is the DD cost me $2.00 USD to make for a PAIR of dice. But I need to price in the retailer which takes 40% so $6 USD and the distributor takes 20% so $3 USD less my $2 USD means I make $4 USD for the dice. Reasonable when you price in all the players involved in the sale of those dice.

But ONE (1) D10 for $2 USD ... I can't sell that for any profit. It's a simple polyhedral dice. There is no customization, no uniqueness and is probably a resin dice too (which are cheaper than Acrylic dice).

However the retail of Dual Dice in the USA is difficult due to tariffs. $6 USD - 20% = $4.80 USD less $2 USD (Cost) means that I make $2.80 USD for the 2DDs. IDK I will have to think about it. We'll see down the road. Right now my focus will be to have them available to buy ONLINE. That's in the works...

Note #2: I need to ensure that I DON'T underprice myself so that it would be impossible to sell to stores ... Obviously the good part is that from a store you save $15 USD in shipping fees. That's great for the consumer ... But does nothing to improve my outcome (except maybe sell some more dice). As you can see the prospects of selling dice in the USA are not very "favorable". ONLINE is good because I take 100% and pay 10% fees for each transaction. Even though I need to pay 20% Tariffs, it's still better than the selling to US stores because I take 90% of the earnings.

So ONLINE is attractive and we'll see how that goes. Again I don't want to price myself out of the market (so-to-speak) and have to be aware of the pricing to ensure that I can support the distribution market.

So the AI said it's easier in this context to compute the amount of Failures and then subtract "1" (or 100%) to get the correct answer.

It goes like this:

There is a 9/10 chance that the 4th dice does not equal the 1st dice.

There is a 9/10 chance that the 4th dice does not equal the 2nd dice.

There is a 9/10 chance that the 4th dice does not equal the 3rd dice.

And therefore the odds that the 4th dice DOES NOT MATCH =

= (9/10) x (9/10) x (9/10) = (9/10)^3

= 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 = 0.729 = 72.9% that it DOES NOT MATCH.

Next we do the complement and say SUCCESS = 1 - FAILURES

= 1 - 0.729 = 0.271 = 27.1%

***

And voila. Not too bad, at 27% it is slightly HIGHER than 25% (or 1 in 4). But for my purposes that amount is GREAT! I can state that the odds are ~1 in 4.

Thanks if I bothered anyone. I'm not a Math genius. These kind of problems are usually hard for me as I don't know HOW(?) to approach them.

But the AI (Gemini 3) did a perfect example with explanations making it EASY to understand the result.

Cheers all and thanks a bunch.