Card Ideas

The main problem I see with Stormcaller is that there is no Magic Wind attack type…

 

Competition of power equals competition of wealth.
We presents you the expansion that will turn Card Hunter into: Card Banker!
Sorry for the lack of logo. I haven't had the chance to learn the art of image editing.

Free Cards aside, I hope this finally make Forward Thinking and Mind Worm any good..
Card Banking
Assist, Attack Magic
Duration 2
Attach to target. Number of cards you draw at the start of round is equal to the number of cards you had after discarding.

Health Banking
Assist Magic
Duration 3
Attach to target. At the start of round, Heal 1 for each 4 points of health you have.

The single flashiest card I ever imagined. not sure how to balance it.
Bankruptcy
Boost, Handicap
When you would die, discard your hand, remove all Victory Points earned on your team and survive with max health.

Now go on and play the game, it's winner-takes-all!

 

How about some Shields?

Tower Shield
Block/Handicap
1. Block Any. If this blocks an enemy's Magic Attack, you may Keep. 4+.
2. Encumber 1, Saving Roll. 3+.

Demonic Shield
Block/Handicap
Block Any. Both you and the attacker take 5 Magic Unholy damage [can be prevented by Armor]. 3+.

Deflecting Shield
Block/Handicap
Block Magic. If there are any other characters [besides the attacker] that you can see, you MUST choose one of them; THEY are instead targeted by the blocked card. 3+.

 

Battery Charge
Move, 5
Move in a straight line. At the end of the move, if there is a character in the next square, do 2 Crushing Melee damage to that character for every square moved and create a random Melee Laser Attack card and put it in your hand. Unblockable.

 

I like the idea with the blocks. It's a fairly specific card type as far as the design standpoint goes; blocks are supposed to leave your hand but you don't have a lot of control over when they do so. This makes for a fairly interestig design space.

Reinforced Bracers
Armor/Block
Armor 1, 3+. Keep.
Block melee, 3+.
"Never underestimate a sturdy piece of steel. It may not protect you forever, but it'll buy you some time." - Captain Cedric Cleavehorn

Defensive Stance
Block/Boost
Block any, 3+.
Whenever you roll a die for a block card, add one to the result of that roll. Keep.
"You don't need to keep your guard up forever, just long enough that you survive until they inevitably present you with an opportunity." - Captain Cedric Cleavehorn

Battle Trance
Block/Boost
Block melee, 4+.
Frenzy 2. Attacks you play have Hard to Block 1.
"A state of intense concentration such as this can't be kept up for long. Make the most of it while you can." - Zar Deeproad

Unlucky Block
Block/Handicap
Block any, 4+.
Whenever you roll a die for a block card, subtract one from the result of that roll. Keep.
"I don't understand this. My shield looks like one that's fresh from the forge. My armor... does not." - Stanter Callman

Divine Favor
Block/Boost
Block any, 3+.
At the start of each turn, you Heal 1.
"Some gods, however, provide protection that's a little more tangible than that of others. Still brief though." - Mokad

Cursed Block
Block/Handicap
Block any, 3+.
At the start of each turn, you take 2 Unholy damage. Keep.
"It feels almost as though I'd prefer getting hit." - Snarri Goldsong

And if we're already there, attacks work somewhat similarly, although there are more examples of this, such as the Polearm Slash and the Warding Lance we all know. Could there be similar concepts?

Blazing Torch
Attack/Handicap, Melee Fire, Damage 8, Range 1
Burning 3. Duration 2.
At the start of each turn, you take 3 Fire damage. Keep.
His plan may not have been very thoroughly thought out in a conventional sense, but he felt that just the looks on their faces were worth the effort and the risk.

Feint
Attack/Boost, Melee Piercing, Damage 3, Range 1
Melee attacks you play have Hard to Block 1.
"Good job deflecting my right hand, but I'd have a look at my left shoulder if I were you." - Vek the Vile

A few more of these might come, I don't know yet. I had a lot of ideas ten minutes ago but they're busy eluding me right now; I might come back to edit this or just start a new post.

 

Unholy alternative to Nimbus that works slightly differently. Needing heal afterwards is the downside, but working with card triggers on damage taken is potentially powerful.
Unholy Possession
Assist, Magic Unholy
Duration 1
Attach to target. You do not die upon reaching 0 health.

In contrast to the long text, this is pretty self-explanatory. I just don't know why EttSC didn't include this.
Powered Suit
Armor
Triggers on damage. Roll a die. This card have half that much Armor, rounded up. If you roll 2 or less, draw a random laser malfunction card.

Originally supposed to be counter to Nimble Strike, but the card design ended up being something between Path of Knives and Cave In.
Tripwires
Attack Magic
Range 8 Duration 2
Affected squares become Tripwire Terrain (Whenever characters move through one or more of those terrain, they takes 6 points of Piercing damage). Burst 1.

 

I'm thinking the reason we don't have something like Powered Suit is the fact that Armor that can generate Battery Explosion or Meltdown fails to actually do what armor is meant to do: prevent damage. Especially since Battery Explosion/Meltdown can then trigger the Armor and then create another Battery Explosion, causing an unlikely but possible death loop.

 

It's a small enough risk, I'd probably take it, except rolling for 1–3 Armor ontop a potential Laser Malfunction is pretty weak and had better come with some other awesome cards or low token requirement (which would be more reason EttSC would not have had it: all high token requirements). I can see how rolling for 1–6 Armor, average 3.5, is a bit much, though. Roll-1 (0–5)? Eh. Roll/2+1 (2–4)? Yeah, maybe Armor 1, add Roll/2, Laser Malfunction on 1 or 2. Of course, a straight Roll or (Roll+1) (EDIT: 1–6 or 2–7 & Malfunction) could be the EttSC version of Enchanted Mail and be green quality. ~shrug~

Unholy Possession sounds potentially better than Lifechancing Block anyway. $;^ J

Tripwires sounds super powerful for what it does! Whoo...

 

First Step
Move, 1
At the end of this move, draw a card. Discard that card unless it is a Move card. Repeat until you have drawn a Move card or drawn six cards.
The first of many.

Hop, Skip and Jump
Assist
Create a Shuffle, Skip and Leap card in your hand.

Bouncy
Boost/Handicap
Trait. Attach this card to yourself. Whenever another card would inflict Bludgeoning damage, take half the amount of damage instead. Move randomly equal to the damage taken.
Wheeeee!!

 

The chaotic Ooze warrior should totally get Bouncy. $¦^ D

Would HSJ be green quality I wonder? or purple? Hmmm. Leap is definitely more powerful than people tend to give credit just because 1. Nimble Strike and 2. really not the best itemization. (I tried to fix that once in an AA via Elf Skill, but oh well.)

Made me think, though: "Leap, Soldier!" and "Leap, Team!" could be pretty rockin'—I'd say "Leap, Team!" much moreso, even with the expected gold quality.

Ha ha, that made me start thinking, I don't know whether this would fit better/best with Human Skill, Arcane Skill, Martial Skill, or what, but...

Boisterous (alternatively, Extra Loud, and instead have a line of skills with Boisterous in the names)
Boost, Bronze?
Trait. Attach this card to yourself. Duration 2.
Whenever you play a Sonic card with range, add 2 to its range.

The only real reason to see this on an Arcane Skill, let's face it, would be to make Ancient Grudge range 6, which seems like too much. Range 5 could be a neat Boost, but eek @ 6.
Naturally, I think, noooooo, don't give other races yet more edge over poor little Elves, and thus I'm eh about saying Human card, although it's such a nice match. (But then, aren't Dwarves loud? ha ha ha ha)
Calling it a Martial card, though, is fascinating! Suddenly, Helmets and Human Skills get int..er..esting ... oh, no, I just thought of this + Delegate $:^ ( nevermind, ugh, ugh, no. .... Anyway, was just gonna say, could be cool to give the ____, Soldier! and Training cards a Boost, not to mention give a cute little Johnny move to us Johnnys to send a Grudge via Training to someone who's currently Extra Loud, ha ha ha. But blech @ giving Delegate more range. Sounds better to keep it Human Skill, but then, it wouldn't get used because it wouldn't (shouldn't) come packaged with Delegate. $F^ J

Oh well. Back to the old drawing board.
(7 mins later)
Hm, idea. Shows how much I tend to think of Priests since I'm not skilled at building them...

Amplify
Assist, Silver?
Attach this card to target. Duration 2.
Whenever target plays a Sonic card with range, add 2 to that range.

(or 1 if considered too scary with Grudge .. blech, or Delegate, lol)

 

I have hated Ancient Grudge forever, yet never more than now.
It's not that AG is unfun to play; it's actually pretty fun. It's that from a card designer's perspective, as we've seen before, AG severely cripples design space for "search" type cards.

I had an idea for what Lateral Thinking should have been:

Spoiler: or the variant:

Target draw a card. If target's hand include card of its type, discard it. Repeat until a card of type that was not in hand before was drawn or target's deck is empty.

Spoiler: discussion

Here, I mainly intended to make movement/damage/defence balance easier to maintain.
The way this card make inconsistent things consistent can diminish future card design space too, but hopefully getting this to draw specific card you want is not too easy.
For one, you'd often end up drawing a Trait. Maybe those are best used for drawing powerful Boost, though there are other promising candidate such as AoA, Def. Block and Team moves.

I imagine using the targeted variant on an opponent to get them to draw a nasty Handicap would be pretty hilarious, though quite unlikely.

In any case, again, possibility of seeking to Pathfinding have probably ruined any chance of the targeted variant making it to the game.

But with AG in game, we'd also need this clause:

Which is bit much complication.

When I think about it, AG is basically more practical Doom. I wonder if it could be "fixed" in that line...

Yeah, boring. I think fixing this is out of my hand and I have to stick with an additional clause.

 

A great 'solution' to the discarding-lots-of-cards thing I've seen in other digital card games is just "draw [type]" e.g. "draw a Move" would just pull the top Move from your deck into your hand without messing with the rest of the deck. If that effect is too powerful without a limiter, you can put a limiter on top of it (e.g. "draw a Move if it's in the top six cards", but the basic functionality is cleaner and doesn't fill the discard pile too fast.

 

Also - fun bit of trivia -

Not with these exact numbers, but this actually was an early design concept for the card that eventually became Ancient Grudge. I ended up basing it off discard piles ultimately because Jon said that was easier to count than the number of rounds that had passed (supposedly we weren't tracking that anywhere?).

 

On the contrary, I'm quite fond of Powered Suit. I agree with the assessment that sometimes it would fail to prevent damage that armor is supposed to do; but do not all armor cards with a die roll do that every now and then? The infinite death loop is of course an option but the odds are fairly low unless your health is already pretty low. If anything, I think that it needs to be properly balanced taking these possibilities into account. It should have a higher average armor rate than most all other armor cards of the same quality; although I suppose you could also turn the malfunctions into an advantage every now and then with some skill and luck. (On that note, I also think that it would make sense to exclude Laser Spray from this card's pool, but I doubt that it would be a priority.)

I vaguely remember having an idea similar to Unholy Possession once. I like it, in fact; it is somewhat similar to Nimbus but feels inherently much fairer. (Yes, I don't like Nimbus at all.)

Tripwire doesn't check out for me, either regarding power level (seems way too high) and flavor (damage doesn't make too much sense to me, let alone as much damage as Stone Spikes deals; it would make more sense if they got tripped instead, no?). I think that checking whether a character is passing through a square is a little wonky; anyone with a closer knowledge of the game mechanics can correct me, but I don't know how this would work out when there are several paths you could take. Does the game even track this kind of thing?

Bouncy sounds a lot of fun with Pulverizing Bludgeon (dare I say Almighty?). Fun concept, anyway.

As for the draw effect looking for a specific type, how about...
Draw cards until you draw a Move card or draw six cards, then shuffle all non-Move cards drawn this way into your deck?

Speaking of which, ideas.

Blazing Halo
Armor/Boost
Armor 1, 4+
Whenever a card you control deals Fire damage, it deals one additional damage.
When Blazing Halo prevents damage, draw cards until you draw a Fire card or draw three cards, then shuffle all non-Fire cards drawn this way into your deck.
"A few singes are little price to pay for everlasting glory."
Note: For one, already using the proposed wording above. For two, I considered making it trigger on the armor getting discarded like Toughened Hide Strips, but that seems a little wonky if it gets discarded end of turn, so I went with this instead. And yes, it's fire, but feel free to substitute your favorite damage type. (Which, by the way, should be fire.)

Seething Fury
Boost
Trait. Attach this card to yourself. Whenever you take Fire damage, draw cards until you draw a Fire card or draw three cards, then shuffle all non-Fire cards drawn this way into your deck. Duration 2.
"Nothing holds back a burning will, nothing stops a soul ablaze."

Stoke the Flames
Assist
Attach this card to yourself. Whenever a card you control deals Fire damage, it deals one additional damage. Duration 1.
Draw cards until you draw a Fire card or draw three cards, then shuffle all non-Fire cards drawn this way into your deck.
"It's about to get real hot in here." - Adze the Lonely

Teamwork
Boost
Trait. Attach this card to yourself. Melee cards you play have Hard to Block 2 and deal two additional damage as long as their target has at least one of your allies adjacent to it. Duration 2.
"It might be stronger than both of us, but it's sure not smarter than both of us." - Captain Cedric Cleavehorn
Not much to say about this one, really. Feels obviously like a Human Skill card.

Compassion
Drawback, 4+
Trait. Attach this card to yourself. Whenever an ally you have line of sight to takes damage, you take that much Psychic damage. Saving Roll.
"Watch your step, you're killing me here!"

 

Procrastinate
Handicap
Do nothing. Shuffle back this card to your deck. When discarding this card at the end of round, shuffle it back to your deck instead.
Battles are exhausting. Let's just do it tomorrow.

The idea is that you can either keep the card in hand at the cost of losing hand size, or discard it at the cost of eventually drawing it again. You can also get around it by discarding it into Wild Run and others. It's probably too weak even for handicap though, unless it's itemized with some mega OP cards.


Semi-Automatic Suit
Armor, Boost
3+
Armor 2. Keep.
6+
Whenever you play a card, add Cantrip to that card. This dice roll is never affected by other cards. Keep.

Because I like RNG. Having to add text to specifically deny harness interaction is annoying, though. I wonder if there's potential for synergy.


Force Surfer
Boost
Duration 1
Trait. Attach this card to yourself. Armor equal to this card's duration. Keep. Whenever you are moved by an other character, Add 1 to this card's duration. Keep.

Control spells were never very interesting to play, mostly due to the lack of counterplay. All you can do is to have more moves, play Immovable, or play Quick Run plus All Out Attack. Force Surfer is intended to be more of a soft counter, with possibility of building around it. Hopefully it's not too broken...
Edit: Nevermind, it's totally broken with Vanguard. Vanguard itself could use a balance change though, so maybe revisit this one when that happens.

 

For the first time, my card idea is not intended for the players.
Acidic Body
Boost
Whenever you take damage from a Melee Attack, the attacker discards all armor cards and takes 3 Acid damage.

This one is for players, though. Should be pretty interesting to play.
Embiggen
Utility Magic Arcane
Range 6 Duration 2
Target a character with enough empty space nearby to replace target figure with two tile wide one. The target expands and shrinks in random direction. Attach to target.

 

I'm not happy about the new dwarf Boost/Block Honorable Block.

So, how about this instead?
Warrior's Honor (martial skills)
Boost
Trait. Attach to Self. Duration 2.
Add 1 to your Block rolls. Keep.
When you play an Attack, if the target is facing you, set the duration of this to 2, else discard this.

 

Warrior's Honor is certainly interesting. $:^ ]

 

I agree that Honorable Block looks strange as is. I like this version better!

 

Slider: Duplicate the current board 5 times, each level above the other.
Except for steps, Your wizards move diaganoly toward the back, priest toward the botten left,
and Fighter toward the bottm right. Reverse moves do the opposite. Dwarves step 1 space left
or right, Fighters 1 space forward or back, and Priest 1 space up or down. If two of your pieces
are opposite each other on the space diagonal of the board, randomly create a victory square,
an 85-pt dragon, or both at the center of the board. If you're holding any armor at the end of
the game, your piece will still be holding that/those same cards at the start of the next games,
regardless of their build. Shields get +1 to block on Tuesday, between 3:24am and 4:46am,
GTM. The "Slider" cards comes in 26 different rainbow colors - Collect them all! "Fly" moves
are unspported and may leave you off the board. But with a little luck, another flier may or
may not bump you back onto the board, and dead pieces can, in theory, be revived in this
fasion.