EPTWhat is a deck builder? If you've played games like Dominion, Ascension, or anything else that uses deck-building mechanics, skip this part. A deck builder is a type of game, generally played with physical cards, where you start off with a relatively small and weak deck. You have some objective (often getting victory points) that you're working toward and in order to do that you buy various cards and add them to your deck. Once you buy a card it goes into your discard pile and will be shuffled the next time your deck runs out of cards. There are 2 main types of deck builders. There are trade row deck builders which generally feature a larger stack of cards with ~6-10 cards revealed at any given time from which to choose from. There are few duplicates in this type. There are also supply based deck builders which are most popularized by the game Dominion. In this type of game, some number of cards are chosen randomly from a larger pool and added to the base cards. Then the game is played with this set of cards. For example, a typical set of Dominion has 25 cards to choose from. Each game of Dominion will use exactly 10 of those cards. In addition, 6 generic cards money and victory point cards are added. There are a limited number of each card in the random set and some of the cards in the base set are limited and some are not. When the game ends, whoever has the most victory points (as given by cards) in their deck, wins. Discord follows a model much more similar to Dominion in that a set of cards are added to each game with a limited supply of each.
The main features that make Discord so unique and combative are the addition of negative cards that you can purchase for your opponent as well as a change from victory points to life totals. The first player to reach 0 life loses. In virtually all other deck builders I've played, you purchase cards almost exclusively for yourself and have relatively little interaction with your opponents. A typical game of Dominion is more like bowling or golf rather than basketball as a sports analogy. Dominion often feels like people playing the same game side by side while racing toward the goal line given similar starting constraints. By allowing more influence over the cards that enter your opponent's deck Discord forces more player interaction.
The life totals also create another dimension of interactivity. Discord has a card type currently called Cannon. Cannons are played in front of you and can be fired at the start of each turn.. There's a number of other cards that interact with cannons in various ways which allows for some degree of counter play as well.
I'm going to describe a few of my favorite cards below to give a better idea of some of the interactions in the game. All names are just currently placeholders.
Contract is one of my favorite cards. You buy it for your opponent and then in order for them to play it they must either trash (remove from deck permanently) one copper (smallest/weakest/starting money card) or take some damage and trash the contract. This card is really interesting because in virtually all cases player want to remove the starting money from their deck as quickly as possible to increase the overall density of strength. The weakest money isn't a bad card as much as it is a weak card and so by removing them quickly, players can reach an overall much stronger deck. In sets that allow players to trash their money for other effects, contract becomes much more potent as it makes it much harder for players to use those other cards effectively. This card creates an interesting decision for players as they determine how much copper they can afford to lose and how many contracts to buy to maximize the effect. If you buy too few, then your opponent's deck will be strengthened by the trashing without being forced to take the damage, but if you buy too many you may end up hurting yourself too much by not investing in your own economy.
Scorpion Shot is one of the most expensive cannons we've made so far. Like most cannons, it deals a bit of damage, but the defining feature of this card is that it also places a wound in your opponent's deck. Wounds can be played at the cost of 1 life and so basically mean that your opponent is taking 1 damage every time they shuffle unless they have a way to discard or trash the wound without playing it. Scorpion Shot excels early on as it thickens your opponent's deck and makes it harder for them to get to their good cards while also putting some persistent damage that will add up as the game goes longer. Due to its relatively low initial damage, it is not suitable for bursting a low health opponent to death however.
Woah There is another cannon, but it allows for a significantly different strategy. Every time your opponent shuffles, they take 2 damage. This cannon can also be fired to force all players to put their decks into their discard pile, which triggers a shuffle as soon as another card needs to be drawn. Woah There works well with itself in that it can prompt additional damage more quickly than usual. In addition, Woah There has some interesting utility in that you can 'skip' parts of your deck or your opponent's deck. If you've noticed that they haven't drawn any of their strongest cards and are already a few hands into the current shuffle, you can use Woah There's fire to force them to shuffle on their next draw, thus giving them a chance to draw those weak cards again before reaching their stronger cards.
Currently, I've got a spreadsheet of about 130 cards with names, effects and costs, but only about 70 have been playtested. I'm currently narrowing that number down to roughly 30 as a stand-alone first set. We've compared the number of cards to other games of its type and 30 total cards (9 chosen per game) seems about right for an actual release. Of the 30 that remain, we've play tested every card several times with an estimated total playtesting time of 90 hours over the last month. For my next blog, I'll be talking about the scope of a project and why it's just as important to say no to an idea than it is to say yes.
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