The old thread was starting to get huge and unwieldy, so here's a fresh new one! I'd like to take a moment and try to quickly summarize some of the outstanding card mysteries we have yet to solve, complete with relevant links! What is the function of the black boxes at the bottom of Maze of the Mind? What card colors are missing from Jon's summary? What do they do? Related to the above... What is the full untold story of Black cards? Did I miss any that we've previously had some hints about? I realize that there's actually a lot we don't know about the cards and deck-building, but I decided it might be worthwhile to try and limit the list to stuff we might be able to puzzle through without wild, pure, unadulterated speculation. I'm gonna quote Jon's card color post here for reference, since it relates to two of those points... Something that jumps out at me immediately is the lack of Green/Yellow and Parry/Armor cards in Jon's summary. I guess the real question is whether those count as Assists, are one big category of Defense cards, or are still two separate categories. I'm not sure which way I lean at this point.
Hah, the habit of silly thread subtitles continues. It is a long and honorable tradition. I'll just say that I think all the blabbing about Black cards comes down to this: they must be played. We've been tantalized a few times about Black cards not necessarily being "drawbacks," and it's easy enough to think of other "must play" effects that might be fun. For instance, something like Inspirational Thinking that isn't an Orange card, but instead a "Eureka!" Black card. It represents unexpected inspiration, so you cannot choose when to play it. If that's not really in the game, I might recommend it. Could be fun.
perhaps some aspect of speed is still relevant, kinda like how casting spells in Magic the Gathering doesnt take effect untill all other effects are resolved, and during that time you can play counter spells to defeat the current card before it resolves negating it or something similar. Could just be something as simple as that stating that maze of mind may just be a counter card.
Twitter reveals they are delving into the glory of the loot system: Over here. Silver Horn makes me consider Narnia-style functionality. Cap of Shyness makes me guess that the Kobolds aren't the only ones who get Cowardly.
Sounds like we may get multiple cards per drop? or perhaps silver horn was an equipment loot and the cap just happens to come in its suite
Take a look at this: Since Jon is using the card previews and as examples in the dev diary and pretty consistently refers to how things work in the present tense (with the explicit exception of the old speed system), it seems Block and Armor cards are indeed part of your deck in the current version. He may have omitted them from the list to tease us mercilessly to save them for another diary (hopefully the next one) I say hopefully the next diary because the function of Block/Armor would have changed dramatically when the speed system changed. Previously, you could see someone playing an attack and play your defense, then you both "boosted" the cards to see who would win the exchange. That's no longer an option, so they must have some other mechanic to block an attack. Until the next dev diary I wouldn't want to speculate too widely, but I hope it clears up the mystery of how cards can "respond" to other cards -- a perfect time to re-introduce Blocks and Armors.
Oh all right, I'll speculate. I think the new speed system involves some sort of algorithm to determine whose turn it is to play, e.g. Human Warrior Spider Swarm Dwarf Priest Elf Wizard Kobold Miner #1 Kobold Miner #2 Repeat as necessary. Since characters don't have movement as a stat they carry, the list is randomized each round, possibly with bonuses/penalties applying to certain races/classes or maybe based how many cards you hold in your hand. Now, if I were designing the game, Attacks/Spells/Movements would resolve at the moment they are played. Defense cards would be able to be played "out-of-turn" as a direct response to Attacks, e.g. "Spider Swarm plays Venom Bite to Dwarf Priest for 4 Damage. Do you want to Block?" In order to do so, you give up your chance to play a more "proactive" card on your proper turn because your character is busy "reacting" to an event -- this rule keeps things somewhat even in the number of cards everyone gets to play. Of course, there are also rules for passing your turn and different characters may not have the same number of cards held over from the last round, but you get the idea. That's what I would do: the basis of the system is simple and easy for players to pick up. The actual algorithm needs many more testing iterations to refine all the details but most of those (I think) can be handled by the program behind the scenes. The players will see an indicator of whose turns are coming up and plan accordingly. Notice that the big difference I see between this and the old, discarded boosting system (and a reason this may not be correctly speculated) is that my plan has turns rotating within a "round" of card drawing, playing, discarding, repeat. P.S. The first potential pitfall I can see is that it almost demands a built-in delay before an Attack resolves. If it goes off instantly you would know the opponent has no counter cards; at least in PvP I would prefer not to reveal whether a characters don't respond due to lack of cards or whether they are holding back.
He did say they can be apart of your deck, but i believe pirate cat said that he had a deck with no drawback cards so perhaps there is a way to make decks without drawbacks or black cards.
That's a nice game design mightmushroom, but it's totally different from what we have . I will be talking about Blocks and Armor cards very soon. Silver Horn and Cap of Shyness are both equipment items. I got them when playing around with our new loot system. Silver Horn rocks - Cap of Shyness is totally freaking useless. Actually, worse than useless, for my current party anyway. Grrr!
It was too much to hope my rules would be the same as Card Hunter's. But it was fun to speculate. Hah! I knew they were still in there!
New card day! New and new-ish stuff we can infer... It appears to be Attack Red, meaning that forcing Discard is considered an Attack. As the blog entry states, there will be cards and other mechanics which expose one's hand. Most excitingly for me, the card's Source is Mentalism, which doesn't sound like a piece of Equipment at all, but suspiciously like a character Trait. How crazy am I now? Maybe characters have/earn four slots for Traits?
Yep, Mentalism probably goes in the same general line of thought as Superb Tactics. I find myself approximately as excited for these "mental" card suites as I was for the idea of equipment card suites in the first place. I'm trying to guess how many equipment/mental/trait/whatever pieces would be a good number to have in the game world, in relation to the number of actual cards themselves. As in, say there are 100 cards; would you like to play around with 100 card suites that reorganize those 100 cards in different ways? Would it be better to have way more than 100 card suites? Oh, and don't ask questions about how crazy you are. Just don't ask questions like that.
Can it be that if an attack is blocked the attack card will return to your hand? So that, the attack card is revealed. But it would be logic that the block card will return to the hand too, but that would stagnate the game. So the block card will be discarded after use? I don't know. Just speculating..
I don't know exactly how many items there will be in the game but it will be a lot more than the number of cards. Combinations and all that. n!/(k!(n-k)!) Well, maybe not that many, but you get the idea.
This week's card is... ...a reaction, Shield Block! Shield Block actually answers a few of our outstanding questions... while raising a couple new ones. Let's go over what we've learned. Green cards are Block cards. Cards with grey text boxes are Reactions. This means that Maze of the Mind is a Reaction! Further analysis of that will be below. The grey boxes at the bottom of the card appear to indicate the type of Reaction the card is, as well as its chance of success. Also, a couple new questions have been raised... What other Reaction icons could possibly exist, and how do they work? The only other one we know of at this point is the star on Maze of the Mind. Drawbacks are black, but don't have grey text boxes, and thus are not Reactions. While it can probably be assumed that there is a "Drawback" phase at the beginning of the turn or something similar in which these cards are forcibly played, this order of operations is still not entirely clear. Are Armor cards considered a separate type of Reaction from Block cards? Do they have their own color? Phew. So, on to Maze of the Mind. First, since this card was posted on the 24th of August and one week before Inspirational Thinking, let's assume that its color is accurate according to the updated color rules, and that it is a Special card that manipulates one's deck or has other special effects. As mentioned earlier, this is a Reaction. I'm going to assume that because it doesn't have a die next to its star icon in the bottom left that it will successfully trigger 100% of the time. That leaves the star as the card's biggest mystery... still. We now know, at least, that this card is not a Block, otherwise it would be green and have a shield icon on it. My best three guesses as to what the star indicates here are... The card is a Counter and will prevent an opponent's card from being played at all. The card will inflict a status effect, probably Stun, when an opponent plays a triggering card. The card will manipulate the opponent's deck when triggered, probably through discard. As far as its trigger, it would make sense to me given the card art and the fact that it is included in the Puppeteer's Headband card suite that the trigger is the opponent attempting to cast a spell. I suppose it could also trigger off of the opponent attempting to play any card at all, but that seems harsh. Ah, good, old-fashioned speculation. I missed that. EDIT: Forgot to mention the question about Drawbacks.
