Mana Spirits - Issues

Chill

Calgary26003 Posts

October 22 2015 05:47 GMT

Hello.

Testing
I heard my friend in Ontario might have played a game over the weekend, so I'm excited to hear how it went. Unfortunately, he's playing with cards from about 10 revisions ago. I have a spare deck I have to mail him this week along with the latest rule book.

I played 3 games with my wife over the last 2 weeks. Mana Spirits works as a 2-player game, but really shines with 4-6 players. That being said, these last 3 games with the latest cards and rules were very close and extremely dynamic. I'm not sure if it was just luck that the cards we drew happened to balance out with each other. As usual, it needs more testing to make a call.

The new rule about being dealt 10 cards and forming a starting hand from 7 of them is definitely here to stay. Too much of the game had been decided by poor starting hands, and this efficiently fixes that problem. I'd like to think that had a big impact on us having such close games.

The third game was really great. She played as Xal'Thoros - the Necromancer [left] and I played as Molaro - the Wizard [right].

These are the Ultimate sides of the cards. You have to level up to Level 4, 5 or 6 to get access to the Ultimate Abilities (text in a red outline).

In 1v1 games there is a lot of blood. Since Minions are dying constantly, her Passive kept her at 20 Life Points nearly the entire game. But my Ultimate being up so often (the text with the red outline) let me cycle Spells that kept me alive. After being at 2 Life Points for so many turns without being able to be killed, I decided to take this picture:

Current score: 12 - 2

Eventually I managed to come back and win. My wife had 6 draws on her last turn to top deck the one card that would let her win, but she missed. I took some random pictures throughout, but there's no real rhyme or reason...

Early Game - Both doin' fine.

Mid Game - I'm on the edge of losing.

Late Game - Comeback complete. Look at that board presence!

Design - Simplifying Card Text
The rules and cards are now something like 98% set in stone. All that is left is to tweak any cards that seem unnecessarily complex. I'll give you a couple examples that I've highlighted for myself.

Phantom was a Minion that seemed simple in concept. If someone attacks it, after you resolve the combat, they place the card under their control.

Goodbye my old friend.

Unfortunately, this caused a decent amount of confusion in testing. There was always unease about what happened when Phantom attacked, when it was killed, when it was targeted by Spells, etc. So he will be back with a completed different Passive in the next revision.

Similarly, I'm still reworking these two cards. I like the idea of Assimilation - two Minions are fighting, kill them both. The hard line of text explaining when to cast the Spell is just extremely jarring. I think there must be a better way to provide a similar effect without complicating it.

Psychosis is just a miss from a design perspective. The thought was to give a player two ways to use the card: punish your opponent by forcing them to lose a level, or sacrifice a level yourself so you can draw 3 cards. In practise, the 3 cards are way too valuable to ever use this card on another player. And losing a level isn't really that big of a hindrance anyway. Further, I don't really get any sense of satisfaction using this card against an opponent. Just a miss on all fronts.

Soon to be replaced...

I have a few others on my list, but nothing as pressing as these three. More testing will tell.

"How to Play" Video
Last Blog I talked about how making a "How to Play" video was my biggest priority. Well, it still is, but I haven't make any progress on that front.

I played a mock game against myself, taking 166 pictures. Next, I drafted a 110 page storyboard writing a script for each picture. Unfortunately, as I finished, I realized this kind of video wouldn't work. The pictures are too static and too zoomed in. No one would be able to follow the board state or understand where we are looking. So I kept the script, scrapped the pics, and started working to animate the script in Flash (since that's really the only program I know to animate anything). It's going to be slow and painful...

At least the text is still useful...

This is especially frustrating because this video is absolutely a prerequisite to approaching board game club members in Calgary and to posting Mana Spirits on BGG. I don't want to get this out there without some sort of video showing how a games played.

Project Management 101 - Issue Tracking
In my day job, I'm a Project Engineer for an oil and gas company. I coordinate the engineering, procurement, and construction of pipelines and simple facilities. Thankfully in this economy, I still have my job. In each blog, I'm going to try to highlight one aspect of designing Mana Spirits and how it was similar and/or different from running projects in my day job.

Disclaimer: I am not the foremost expert on project management principles. I'm speaking from experience, not from training. Some of the things I write may be fundamentally wrong!

Ok, so you've got a project. You start with a scope of work, and use that to build a organization, a budget, and a schedule. As things progress and change, you update the scope, organization, budget and schedule to reflect the changes. And, since you're such a go-getter, you document all these changes through a management of change system.

Eventually, a big change hits. You were going to build a road along a certain routing, but one major land owner wouldn't agree to the terms and blocked construction on his property. Now you have to recycle your design, increasing the schedule. The new routing is significantly further, and will massively increase the cost. Your boss is pissed. "Why didn't you see this coming??"

Well, the thing is, you did see it coming. But the problem is, with no formal way to capture what might be coming, all it did was keep you up at night without driving any other action. These are called risks. A risk has a probability of occurrence, and a consequence if it does occur. Large projects will typically have ways of weighing the consequence, but for smaller jobs estimating the cost, schedule, and organizational impacts with a 1-5 rating is enough. The probability x consequence is called the severity. Risks with high probability and high consequence end with "high high" severity, and should be your top priority. Conversely, "low low" risks are likely not worth acting on.

If you've ever run a project in a major company, you might know that they love tracking risks. They generate registers and registers of risks. That's great, it's the first step, but it's not the point. The point of the risk register is to track all the actions that are going to prevent the risk (reduce the probability) or mitigate the effects (less the consequence). The point of tracking the risk is to ensure people are actually taking action against them!

For interest's sake, the opposite of a risk is an opportunity. Opportunities can be tracked on the same register, but their consequence will be a positive one, such as cost savings, or better organizational reputation. In these cases, the actions will help increase the probability of the opportunity being realized, or to improve the positive outcome (consequence doesn't really fit here).

There's a third side to this also worth tracking, called Issues. Issues are events that have already happened. In other words, the probability of all issues is 1.

At my day job, I track risks and opportunities regularly. Besides tracking actions, they help shape how much risk there is in a project, which provides a basis for budget contingency rates, and schedule float. But I never, ever track issues. My projects are small and short enough that if a risk becomes an issue, I'll fight the fire and then move on. There isn't much value in tracking it, other than making sure I don't repeat the same thing again.

Throughout Mana Spirits, I've only tracked issues. So I set up a simple issue tracking spreadsheet. Here's a look at the original issue that kicked it off:

Let's run through the spreadsheet format before jumping into the issue itself:

We've got a revision number, which is total inaccurate, but good in theory. I only really update this when I email the form so I have some version control.
Update date. Why not? It's not that useful.
Colour key, since I couldn't remember what all the colours meant.

Okay, now on to issue #1:

We have the date it happened on. I record this so it can help jog my memory about the situation.
Who raised it. Mostly this is for memory jogging too, but also to contact them if I ever need to follow-up.
What's the issue? Since this list is only for me, I try to keep it simple.
What are the solutions? I often have a few potential solutions for each issue.
Then I try to list the pros and cons of each solution.
And the big point - What's the action / outcome? In this case, I hadn't seen enough from that one game to make a decision. And unfortunately, the situation hasn't come up again in the last year, so the issue is still open and low urgency.

Let's take a look at one that actually drove a decision and is closed:

The problem was that having a scoring board didn't fit the theme of the game and was frustrating to use. This was the issue raised by my friend that started the change to the tracking stands I'm now using. He actually also suggested the potential solution.

Here are two more that drove major decisions:

The second one was a no-brainer. The game requires bottle caps to be on theme.

I think Issue #8 summarizes the answer to the fair question of "Why do you do this?" There was a major issue with players hoarding Mana (the games "currency") and then unloading it to keep control over the board state. The best potential solution found was to implement a maximum Mana cap.

But it's not a stand-alone issue. If the maximum Mana was to be implemented, I had to check that it worked with the tracking stands we discussed in issue #4. That's the major reason I track all these:
1. I need to see how decisions to solve issues are going to impact past decisions.
2. I need to ensure all decisions are aligning. It doesn't have any benefit if 5 actions simplify the game, and 5 other ones add complexity.
3. I need a record of decisions I've made so the design doesn't spin in circles endlessly.

Anyway, that was way drier than I thought it would be when I started. Sorry about that haha. Congrats if you made it this far!

Next Steps & Future Blogs
- Tracking and resolving issues in projects
- Receiving latest card order
- Creating a 15-minute "How to Play" video.
- Setting up local testing for feedback through Calgary board game clubs.
- Navigating the quotation process with manufacturers
- Working in a team
- Contracting & purchasing

Thank you for reading!

Heyoka

Katowice25012 Posts

October 22 2015 08:07 GMT

Good read, love the updates. The project management part is great that's a smart way to go about it, I feel like I'd probably just have a big jumbled mess of notes somewhere that ended up never being useful.

Since your other blog I was thinking about how to play videos and asking around with my friends (who play a lot of board games) about them and mostly heard "they're all shit but it's all we have so we make do". It's an annoying problem that I'm not sure how to solve but your painstaking process seems like the way to create the most useful product, as horrible as it will be to male.

FiWiFaKi

Canada9859 Posts

October 22 2015 14:35 GMT

Hey Chill, you guys don't happen to be looking for an EIT for a May 2016 start date? Finishing my BSc in ME at UofC this year.

But besides that, I've been following your progress closely, and I'm quite surprised how well it's turning out, it truly does look just as good, if not better than most board games you can buy commercially, when initially the project itself looked fairly casual to me. Anyway, I'll be looking to purchase it, my girlfriend is a huge dork for board games... If you are willing to do any pre-release thing (but like, with most of things, I wouldn't like to print my cards or anything), that'd be super great, otherwise I'll be waiting for the kickstarter.

shz

Germany2687 Posts

October 23 2015 00:24 GMT

Didn't this start as a drinking game? Amazing!

Chill

Calgary26003 Posts

October 23 2015 03:09 GMT

On October 23 2015 09:24 shz wrote:
Didn't this start as a drinking game? Amazing!

It still is. It can be played both with or without drinking. Drinking isn't fundamental to the gameplay

Chill

Calgary26003 Posts

October 23 2015 03:10 GMT

On October 22 2015 23:35 FiWiFaKi wrote:
Hey Chill, you guys don't happen to be looking for an EIT for a May 2016 start date? Finishing my BSc in ME at UofC this year.

Umm, so I work for one of the majors and our graduate program is pretty tightly run. Times are pretty tough and I'm not aware of anyone looking now, but if I hear anything I'll let you know. Sorry about that.

MinscandBoo

252 Posts

October 23 2015 05:00 GMT

As someone who once played alot of Magic, Assimilation doesn't seem too complicated to me but I can see where other players might get a bit fuzzy especially under the influence.

Assimilation suggestions:
#1
"Sacrifice a Minion.

Kill target Minion."

#2
"Sacrifice a Minion.

Kill target attacking or defending Minion"

Depends on how you want to limit the card. Don't know how your game plays out but if there are passive minions that have say "tap" abilities that don't attack then #1 can now snipe them, which you might not want. Another thought would be:
#3
"Sacrifice a Minion.

Deal X damage to target Minion. [where x is equal to the sacrificed minions attack/mana cost/etc?]"

To prevent really cheap minions from sniping high cost ones out of hand... though the cheap minions cost must be added to the cost to cast this card as well I suppose.

Alternatively since Assimilation means to absorb as one of your own(roughly) then maybe:
#4
"Sacrifice a Minion.

Permanently take control of target Minion[with attack/mana cost/etc of X or less]"

You can add other condition text such as: "Target Minion's attack/mana cost/etc cannot be more than X levels higher than the sacrificed minions attack/mana cost/etc" Sorry, I don't know your exact terms for attack/defense.

MasterReY

Germany2708 Posts

October 23 2015 17:09 GMT

Hey Chill, nice job so far. I have one question tho:
The last sentence of your two hero(?) cards is: "Flip this card.".
By "Flip" do you mean tap?
Because flipping usually means turning the card face down. Is that what you are supposed to do?

Xyik

Canada728 Posts

October 23 2015 20:07 GMT

I've been following this and the cards look really awesome now, a lot better than what I remember seeing a few blogs back. Amazing how you've kept at this for years.

FiWiFaKi

Canada9859 Posts

October 23 2015 23:32 GMT

#10

On October 23 2015 12:10 Chill wrote:

Show nested quote +

I appreciate the reply. I've just recently started my search anyway, and yeah, not the best time to be graduating. Would have been neat to be able to start my career through contacts on TL haha.

Chill

Calgary26003 Posts

October 24 2015 04:05 GMT

#11

On October 24 2015 02:09 MasterReY wrote:
Hey Chill, nice job so far. I have one question tho:
The last sentence of your two hero(?) cards is: "Flip this card.".
By "Flip" do you mean tap?
Because flipping usually means turning the card face down. Is that what you are supposed to do?

Yep, flip. The Hero cards are doubled-sided. The Ultimate Abilities are only on the Ultimate side.

Chill

Calgary26003 Posts

October 25 2015 16:49 GMT

#12

Played a 3 player game last night with my wife and her friend. I've been playing mostly 2 player with my wife, so it was an interesting chance to play with 3 people and see how it went.

I decided to play as Drengaar - the Berserker, becase it's a Hero I haven't seen played since I made major balance changes.

When I started the game, I immediately felt he's too weak. The Passive has zero utility unless you are attacking. But once I had a little bit of board presence, I changed my mind. The Passive + the Ultimate Ability give you a massive turn. Plus the Ultimate could be used defensively to turn around a turn when it seems like you will lose combat. In short: I'm going to leave him for now but I'm not 100% sure he's at the right spot now.

The thing that makes me really happy to see, and it's happened the last 3 or 4 games I've played consistently, is how much ebb and flow there is to the game. By turn 2 or 3, it always seems like there is a clear winner. Then, somehow, there is usually a reversal in the mid game. It makes the game really fun and dynamic to play.

At the start of the game I was getting dominated, but eventually I managed to get a few defensive Minions up to protect these two beasts:

Every turn the Ninja took out a weak Minion, earning me XP, while the Kinslayer took out the strongest Minion on the board, maintaining my board presence. It seemed like I could control the board and eventually make a comeback, unless you saw I also had these two cards until my control

My opponents smartly just waited it out, and since I had no removal, I eventually died of poison and jagged rocks. What a sad life.

I'm getting really, really excited with this game. I feel like it's fun to play and very dynamic. Despite the rule book making the game look complicated, once new players start playing it they quickly realize it's not that hard to learn. Which is why making that "How to play" video is so important.

Here's two random pictures:

The beginning of the end for me.

I'm out Down to 1v1.

From this game, there are two balance issues I've highlighted that I'm looking at:

Reinforce: You randomly get a +X/+X added to a Minion on your turn. This is nice, but there are a lot of problems. First, 3 Mana is expensive for this. Secondly, since it applies "At the start of your turn", it doesn't come into effect until your next turn, leaving this Minion with a huge target on his face. Lastly, it goes away at the end of your turn, so it's only really useful for attacking. I'd like to see it apply when it comes into play and last until the start of your turn, when you reroll. But it's difficult to make this clear without a wall of text.

Mana Springs: Invest 3 Mana and then you can draw 2 cards for 2 Mana instead of the usual 1 card. Makes sense, but I think 3 Mana is too expensive for this since you still have to invest 2 Mana every turn to actually use the Ability, which doesn't leave too much to play the cards you are drawing. I'm not sure it's an issue, but it's something I'm keeping my eyes on.

Nyovne

Netherlands19141 Posts

October 29 2015 08:20 GMT

#13

This has been an excellent blog. One of your best so far on the topic. Art work still really gets me.

calgar

United States1277 Posts

October 31 2015 02:10 GMT

#14

Looks nice - keep up the good work!

On an unrelated note, how are your chess openings?

fabiano

Brazil4644 Posts

November 01 2015 16:17 GMT

#15

Hmm, I think you guys are way past this stage and have the card style already settled, but I want to throw in my opinion anyway:

I understand you used font borders to make the text clear because the description background is quite colorful, but I'm not very fond of large texts with fonts with borders (in this case, white font with black borders). It looks a little too "fat"/"heavy" to the eyes when the card description is large.

In my opinion (which is based on zero scientific facts!!), it is less tiring to the eyes to have thinner font and less colorful text description, kinda like this:

+ Show Spoiler +

I admit it kind loses the brightness and color explosion aspect of the art, though.

ps: "color explosion"? dude, I've no idea how to express what I meant, so just go with it :v

Coagulation

United States9633 Posts

November 01 2015 20:31 GMT

#16

On November 02 2015 01:17 fabiano wrote:
Hmm, I think you guys are way past this stage and have the card style already settled, but I want to throw in my opinion anyway:

I understand you used font borders to make the text clear because the description background is quite colorful, but I'm not very fond of large texts with fonts with borders (in this case, white font with black borders). It looks a little too "fat"/"heavy" to the eyes when the card description is large.

In my opinion (which is based on zero scientific facts!!), it is less tiring to the eyes to have thinner font and less colorful text description, kinda like this:

+ Show Spoiler +

I admit it kind loses the brightness and color explosion aspect of the art, though.

ps: "color explosion"? dude, I've no idea how to express what I meant, so just go with it :v

Trying to find the optimal amount of art/text ratio in the bottom has been about 90% of the project.. Im on team fabiano but chill is standing firm on team color explosion. I think we got a good happy medium going now tho.

+ Show Spoiler +

But dont worry I have been increasing the opacity of the text area backgrounds by 1px each revision. The change is far too gradual for chill to notice and by revision 200 team fabiano will be victorius with nice solid text backgrounds.

fabiano

Brazil4644 Posts

November 02 2015 01:10 GMT

#17

lol

Stand strong, team color explosion shall not prevail!

Chill

Calgary26003 Posts

November 02 2015 23:14 GMT

#18

You fools!! Color explosion has already won!!!

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