Jon. Is there something you're not telling us? Or to be more helpful, I wonder if the word "stab" could be put into this card's title somehow. Stabbing is a long and honorable tradition, you know. Many people would like to see it well-represented.
Yeah, that one could be changed to Basic Stab or something, leaving Simple Thrust to be used as a slightly more powerful attack perhaps.
Plus, I mean... we all really know what image "simple thrust" conjures up... ifyagetwhatimsayin' I'd like to see a "rudimentary riposte" if we are just throwing out ideas here. Or really any kind of alliterative attack. Simple stab, basic bash, typical thrust, puny punch... Something about the alliteration combined with the woefulness of the attacks rings with me.
We other cards that are Stabs. They have a different theme than these ones. The reason this art isn't quite right is that the card changed function after we drew the picture. It's a problem I address in this week's diary.
Sounds like you should get profroche to design the art on the stabbing-based cards. Otherwise you'll end up with all your nits picked.
I may have figured out what the star icon on Maze of Mind means - speculatively speaking, of course. I came to this hypothesis by spending my afternoon catching up on what's new since I visited the site early last month, reading the dev diaries and these lovely forum posts all in one go. So I'm going to recap a little bit; my idea is based partly on what we know Maze of Mind is not. Known: Cards have colored backgrounds related to their function. Red cards are attacks. Blue cards are movements. Purple cards are magic spells, and all the examples so far as I know deal damage on use. Green cards are defense. Jon tried to throw us off by saying the picture uses an old render, but it would be hard to imagine an CCG/RPG without some sort of defensive moves and unless they decided to switch colors this still holds. Mind you, instructions such as Step can include nonconforming actions on other color cards, but those are by definition special and not the card's primary function. Moving Toward Specualtion (especially since the rules might not be final): Black cards are "Must Play First" cards. The popular thing is to call them Backfires or Drawbacks based on what we've seen, but I noticed in a couple of places that Jon made a point of saying that not all black cards are negative. So I conclude that this color denotes those cards to which the Must Play First rule applies, i.e. you can't play a card of any other color while holding a Black card in your hand. Rules about whether you can pass entirely, discard them from the hand (probably not), or use your Default Move Card while holding one are currently uncertain -- though it does appear that if you draw more than one, you can choose which of the Blacks you want to play. Wholly Speculative: That leaves us with the Defiant Armor in Yellow and the famous Maze of Mind in Orange yet to be accounted. Defiant Armor is an interesting and puzzling card because the title and picture make it appear to be a piece of equipment when all the rest of the cards are actions of some sort. Furthermore, we know that equipping items gives us suites of cards, and not the other way 'round where cards give us equipment. I would propose that this is actually an item ability: your (hypothetical) Enchanted Dwarf Plate Mail when equipped will add, amongst others, the Defiant Armor card to your deck that will increase your defense temporarily. This is essentially passive and maybe lasts more than one round, which is why it is different from the Green Parry that "actively" uses your weapon to block incoming attacks. Edit: Or maybe it's a defense against magic rather than a weapon defense. Magic defense would be good (perhaps better) explanation for a new color. (And assuming it still exists at all; this is an older picture, after all.) What about Maze of Mind? Well, it would seem to be another activated item ability of the Puppeteer's Band to use on friends and enemies -- essentially, a spell card that produces a status effect rather than dealing damage like Purples. (I totally discount the idea that it is another Backfire of some sort. It may be that not all Blacks are Backfires, but all Backfires are surely Black or you would ignore them.) The item ability hypothesis, of course, begs the question of why we have a different background color. A) Defiant Armor is obviously an older generation render and the color has been tweaked since, orB) Defiant Armor affects the character wearing the armor, but Maze of Mind affects a target other than the wearer. And at last, I can offer the long-ago promised speculation about the star icon: just from the title and the associated item, it would make sense if Maze of Mind is the equivalent of a Confusion or even a Charm spell, taking an enemy out of battle for a period of time. So you need to know how long the spell lasts! Wouldn't it be handy if magical effect durations were noted right on the card, perhaps with a star-shaped icon to mark the number of rounds they last? Whew! Sorry, I tend to get wordy when speculating! To top it off, my speculator is sizzling from overuse. I hope I didn't miss any colors.
Welcome to the discussion, Mushroom! A couple quick responses before I hop a train home. I'm going to cite this for everyone else, in case they missed the blog comments. If you combine that with the confirmation that "Whenever a Drawback card is played, you draw a card" is close to the "one other special rule" he was referring to, then I think you're probably right that black cards are just "non-cards" that force some kind of effect on you, rather than specifically always being "Drawbacks". If I had to guess, I'd say that maybe it actually works that when a black card is drawn, you immediately draw an additional card, and then your black cards go off in an order of your choosing. That way, if you have Fumble forced on you, and then draw Simple Thrust as your "replacement" card, you have to discard it, too. Oops. Wow, good catch. I'm a little ashamed that never occurred to me before. I think this is on the right track, but Defiant Armor sounds awfully specific to be a "generic" armor/defense ability. I think it'd make more sense if you either equipped the Defiant Armor to get access to a suite of Defiant Armor defense cards, or that you equipped the Defiant Armor to get access to a suite of Generic Platemail and other cards, and that the Defiant Armor card we're seeing there is outdated.
I like this punchline. We had not, in fact, heard anything about duration of effects yet. Though of course the speculation could be wrong, I hope there are things that linger for a round or more. Pretty basic for a lot of spells, not to mention poison. And who wants to play an RPG with no poison effects?? No, you just missed the word "the" in "Maze of the Mind." Pretty good job for a first fire on the ol' speculation afterburner. Where did this happen? It strikes me as odd. Also, let me add yet another exciting avenue for speculation: I was hoping we'd see something like this. "Thrust" does imply a sort of lunge, so it would be more intuitive to a person skimming over the cards. And with this statement, we can see that they are trying to get linguistics itself to help them theme the cards. "Predictable Stab," seen in the previous dev diary, is probably the weakest (least complex, whatever) in a series of "stabs": . . . "Simple Thrust" could likely be the same in "Thrusts." Maybe we can expect that the devoid-of-adjectives "Chop" from the oldest renders has been adjectified by now, and there's a bunch more like it: Dividing things up like this could also allow the audience to understand, even without seeing those smaller keywords like "Slashing," which cards will have which keywords.
Nice to be here . Also thanks for citing Jon's comments for me, I'm still getting the hang of these forum controls. All so similar when you know what to do, but all so different when you don't see what you've been used to... That's actually a better idea than I had in mind, which was that you just play Black cards regularly when your turn comes around. My plan would be a more severe penalty, essentially forcing the player to have a (more often than not?) negative effect and taking up a regular turn slot. Yours keeps the negative effect, but by resolving "instantly" would not impact the order of play quite so much. I rather hope that's how it goes although Jon said here that they are still playing with this mechanic. For myself, I think it would make sense just to resolve it in the Draw Phase as Roshirai suggests ... provided of course, the UI gives good feedback so you don't wonder where your cards went. I, too, very much believe the Defiant Armor, as shown, is outdated. That section is the most speculative part of my post for this very reason! Even so, I believe some conclusions can be inferred. All of the other cards in the same render, and therefore of a contemporaneous iteration, are pretty obviously actions; I'm reasonably confident that the Defiant Armor was an ability based on your equipped armor. Indeed, it would be wise to say that every card, from a design point of view, is an activated ability of whatever equipment/skill/trait put the card into your deck. That's my summary of the whole philosophy behind the game, and the age of the picture does not discourage me. I never meant to imply that it is a "generic" ability. In fact, by choosing "Enchanted Dwarf Plate Mail" as my example, I had hoped to set it apart fom, say, "Rusty Secondhand Chain." I would presume that Defiant Armor, if it still exists, is a high-level ability of only a few specific armor pieces, much as we know Pinning Spear is a gold-level card associated with Unwieldy Harpoon alongside five less stellar cards. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea that the unusual background color is associated with defending against magic. Defiant Armor cards might then be associated with armor that protects against -- or "defies" -- fireballs and lightning bolts. Of course, all that reasoning is based on the card having a background color which may no longer exist! You are more than entitled to your own conclusions! Well, the only official comments about the star I can remember are: My theory does at least have the virtue of being something novel they haven't told us yet. But that "opaque" line worries me; as the good Sir Knight says, duration effects are quite common in the genre and seem to me quite obvious... Plus why a star instead of, say, an hourglass? Oooh, now the devs are playing mind games with me...
Ha, not playing any mind games! I want to introduce the whole discussion about what that star means and the various other symbols like it by talking about the system it replaced. I think that's a great follow on from this week's diary where we talked about iteration. I also want to get Skaff Elias and Richard Garfield to weigh in on their part in that process. Might not be next week for that reason (they are both very busy people, as you can imagine).
With regard to Sir Knight's post - which is too long to quote here - we do use the base word ("Chop", "Stab", "Thrust") to identify suites of cards that behave similarly. So every Thrust card has a Step in it, for example. It helps get your head around what the card does before you read any specific numbers of rules it might have.
With a keyword like "Thrust" can we assume that possibly there will be melee cards that have a reach of more then one square? I assumed maybe a harpoon would have a longer reach than 1 so maybe there will be like flails or spears that can reach beyond your initial melee square?
The Pinning Spear Toss card has a reach of 5. That sounds about right for a harpoon to me, but you don't necessarily get to throw it on every attack - especially since it's Unwieldy . Which brings to mind another question: we've been told that you can shoot past blocking characters to hit any target in a card's range. But are there any restrictions on playing range attacks? Many games have mechanics to prevent or seriously hinder someone in a melee battle from shooting distant targets. Personally, I hope not: ideally the mix of cards a weapon gives you will create a sufficient balance. The harpoon above can double as a stabbing spear in close quarters; a rouged rogue using a bow with little effective melee should rely on her quick feet to keep away from the thick of battle (so the bow includes an extra movement card or two which you end up drawing rather than more attacks). BTW, when I think of harpoons, I always go back to Moby Dick -- 'harpoon' is not just a synonym for 'spear' but conveys the idea of being specialized for throwing and retrieving. With that in mind, it should not be very effective in melee; I wonder if there is something lower in the ranks of "Stab" than "Predictable" that wouldn't do the same damage as the harpoon's special ability. From the examples shown, five seems to be in the high-moderate range of damage. Just sayin'. (Edit: SurgeonFish could be right and other spears will have longer reach than our harpoon, so Predictable Stab is not as good as looks now. And of course, if you drop them when you Fumble, then I guess the damge count didn't matter so much, right?)
I wasn't stating that you would have to throw melee weapons, every time. I even assumed that once you used the harpoon throw you would lose the equipment altogether. I was thinking of how in some tactical rpgs "Spear Warriors" usually had some skill or natural ability to hit 2 squares ahead of them. They were usually my favorite backup melee support, still hearty enough to take a few hits, but strong enough to deal massive damage and stay behind the lines.
Judging by the card art, I'd be willing to bet that Predictable Stab gives a bonus to cards used to Block or Armor against it, whereas Pinning Spear Toss might be as powerful as preventing Block/Armor cards from being played against it at all.
I apologize for misstating your position. I have to admit, my first thought was something like, "That's ridiculous! Melee means fighting the opponent next to you; you're either in a melee or not." This is from my experience with RPGs that had strict limits on melee vs. ranged built into the system: it's just what I learned for a default rule. But with a little hindsight I now realize that most of those balance the weapon types with damage vs. speed, e.g. a dagger is faster than an axe but the axe does more damage. Weapon speed as such is not part of CH (as per way back here). I just can't shake the mental image of a spear stab that bypasses a big hulking ogre to hit a skinny goblin hiding behind it. That ogre doesn't fill up its assigned space very well! But I do understand the corollary proposition -- that your own guy on the second line could be blocked by the party tank in front -- ought to be avoided.
My first introduction to units that could hit past or beyond melee range was in final fantasy tatics, then i played disgaia and there were units like that in there, then front mission, shining force and they all had a unit like that! So ive kinda gotten used to the fact there might be some unit with an ability like that, but they were usually "Specalized" units and were very well balanced for their respective game types. If you get some time try some of those games out see how they feel. Though it might work differently in Card Hunter i feel they would be well balanced whether through less damage or lower mobility. They just provide a fun option.
If we wanted to be quite silly, we could add the following image to our analysis: Yes, the teeny tiny teaser graphic on the front page! Just look at all we can deduce from it! We can do some consideration, actually, by comparing it to this bigger graphic: . . . And to the background: In the tiny graphic, we see the purple-robed mage, plus one person holding a sword vertically and one waving a weapon and shield around. Since neither is the right color to be the yellowish human warrior, nor in the right pose to be the dwarf or the plate-mail-warrior, it is clear that there are a number of functional character graphics already complete. In fact, more than one graphic per race/class/gender combination. Yay! The cards in the tiny graphic, though, are clearly placeholders. Just look at how many of them have the same gold blob image. There also appears to be a "stacking" design that is not present in any newer image: observe how some cards have more silver bars sticking out below them, probably due to others being present beneath. . . . On a different topic, I just looked back and forth between the electronic and the physical versions of the graphics. I see that the dragon's electronic "cutout" has simple gradients on its white edges. The physical versions have natural tatters that make them look, well, real. Jon, is there any chance that the game art can have a scattering of scuffs and dents in the "white gradient fill" to add a sense of reality?
