That's always how creative ventures work. You start by throwing a lot of cool ideas at the wall, and then you have to clean up the mess to make it good.
What if buildings/structures came with worker slots, and the more creatures you place in the slots, it makes the buildings do different things? Some buildings don't have slots, some do. Some buildings do things if a creature of a specific type is in the slot, hence why the wizard replaced the corn man.
I’ll say that I personally am living the videos and the game, it may be my golden retriever energy but most of the updates you have added so far seem like good ideas to me.
Maybe the problems you mentioned about slow burn strategies and combat being too balanced can be fixed by tying it in with the land systems; each "land" and their respective "archetypes" have a general purpose, some are better at combat, some at slow strategies, some at the economy, etc. This also means that players know what each player "aims" to do, even if they are unfamiliar with the specific cards their oppononent uses, they will be able to understand their gameplan and plan accordingly. Even if you are a beginner this can help you ease you in! Yugioh has a problem where if you have never seen an archetype it can be real hard to tell what it aims to do, this avoids that! Also, reminder that you can use different types of lands, so you can miss and match different strategies together with them as well! Perhaps only some land types or archetypes are able to get money at all or are better at it than others. Also, perhaps a mode of playing the game has the decks and cards randomized and a different mode of playing it does involve deck building in some way. Just some thoughts and ideas, sorry for the wall 😅
Something like this is in one of my favorite card games Legends of Runeterra There's 10 or so regions and all cards in the game are part of at least 1. You can only have up to 2 regions in a single deck and each region has its own gameplay identity Generalizing a lot here but for example Shadow Isles (Coloured Dark Green) is the control region They have the most potent removal in cards like Vengeance (basically kills a creature for half your energy) and The Ruination (kills all creatures on the board for almost all your energy) But we also have Piltover and Zaun (or PnZ for short, coloured orange) which features a lot of removal but it's damage based as opposed to Vengeance which just kills the creature Meaning the opponent can counter most PnZ removal by healing their creatures or just giving them more base health. However because PnZ damaging cards can also (usually) target the player directly they can shift to a Burn strategy on the fly to close out the game. And the infamous Pink Region (Ionia) who very frequently spends a non in significant time in their games telling their opponents "No" by stopping their attacks, sending enemy creatures back to hand, or even just casting a spell literally called "Deny" lmao. Most regions can "replicate" the abilities of other regions but there will always be a region that does some things better than the others. So when you're deck building you often have thoughts like "I need Burn, do I go PnZ or Noxus as my second region?" it really streamlines the process.
That fragment of Jake making only one action per his move, made me thinking: what if your available amount of actions per move is bound to amount of active structures you have?
Why not make it so that in order to create money you have to flip a building that has a worker, so assign a creature as the worker for the building and flip it, at the beginning of your next turn the building flips back over and you get money equal to the creatures power, the working creature can’t attack or block, but destroying the building won’t destroy the creature inside it. That way there is some level of risk and reward, sure you could put a huge creature in the working slot and get a lot of money, but if your opponent destroys the building you don’t get any money. That way the work replacement actually has an effect on how you play the game and lines up with the replacing being between two creatures from the same side. At the same time you can also give creatures/buildings like the mage alternate abilities when they work, for example in the show the mage “studies” and learns a new spell, what if the mage card has an ability that says when it is a worker instead of producing money it can draft spells from a set list.
Love this idea but i think in the show it makes more sense that the building itself has the effect of giving the scholar a new spell because its a wizard tower/study hall or something (correct me if im wrong im going off of memory) I STILL THINK THIS COULD WORK THOUGH and actually makes sense with your idea because certain buildings could have certain buffs for certain cards when they work there which could be really good for synergy and deck building
I think workers still need work (pun intended). I was watching the original card wars from the first episode is was shown between Jake and Finn and here's my thoughts It seems like Finn's worker, ancient scholar, that entered the hut to study was an actual card that has a secondary or maybe primary action to enter a land card's worker slot (if empty) and learn Raise the Dead or a random spell after x turns. So I think land cards have an x amount of worker slots that can be used and if that land card has something like a "solitude" or a "scholarly" trait, then the Ancient Scholar can use it to research/learn spell So basically, what I think could work that is seemingly show accurate is this: Each land card has x worker slots Each land card's traits include traits that can trigger card secondary or tertiary abilities Cards can be activated to become a worker in an empty worker slot on their lane's land card (unless the card requires a specific trait, then the land card needs to accommodate it) Also, Jake hid some cards below other cards when he held them on the lane - There could be something there like a resting creature or a hidden/unactive creature. Could allow features like a land card ability needing x or more creatures active on the lane or x or more creatures hidden on the lane If any of this isn't show accurate and I missed out on something, please correct me
Yeah, I commented last video that the Ancient Scholar researching raise dead in the schoolhouse was an example of worker placement. Give creatures and structures work tags. The combination of the two tags determines the type of work done. Or maybe structures have work types and creatures have different work ranks. Ancient scholar is good at research and bad at farming. A zero in a rank means you can't work that type of structure. There are plenty of things that would match the show and be much more interesting than collecting money.
I know you are worried about the youtube algorithm preventing a break, but maybe you can make a video about something irrelevant, or another project idea you have, just somthing fun. I promise not only will the break be good for you, but stepping away from THIS project will give it some air and coming back with fresh eyes will make such a different you'll be like wow.
Idea: To balance around the "having only 1 bad card," you could add the ability to "cycle" cards by spending money, essentially doing the discard and draw phase again. It would be cheaper than getting cards normally, so there's always a reason to do it, and when down to one card it can accelerate play. Maybe only allow the player that ahead in the economy to do this if it's too overpowered.
Decks building should have a “point buy” system To start you could add the health and attack of a creature and that’s the cost but change it for nerfs or buffs You could have a minimum deck size too so that it isn’t guaranteed that you get the over powered cards
Good idea, but considering the existing chaos the game is meant to be, maybe you could instead require a certain amount of "bad" cards instead of restricting strong ones
@@ThePistonPlayhouse I think a point sistem might resolve this if it's the way that I am thinking, stronger cards would have more points so if you put them you would also have to put weaker cards that have less points.
The fields themselves having effect is kinda accurate because, in the clip when Jake summons the ghost monster it seems to just comes from the field itself after he, flooped, activated, or whatever he did to the field (or building idk) to summons the ghost so it would make sense to add effect to field card
Have you considered using a card tier system for deck building? IE a deck consists of X common cards, Y rares, Z legendaries or something? I like the proposed lands idea where you're free to pick based on the lands as well. I think income might fit more as a card archetype(such as aggro/control etc in a traditional card game) to avoid it slowing down every game by instead making it a certain deck type focused around it with inherent weakness/strengths.(Creatures synergistic with income can be weaker, so when deck building you have to choose between inherently synergistic cards, or stronger cards that don't directly interact with income)
the rarirty systems seems like a pretty good alternative. you can always just asign rarities colors a bit like in hearthstone to avoid extra text. maybe a combination of the two systems to avoid players not just always choosing 20 of the best common. to try and vary the game a bit
How would players IRL buy expansion card sets? i would like to imagine that every creature card comes with a mini. Structure cards could fit in a preset made tower or something
We are currently exploring the absolute most cost efficient routes for the base game and expansions, of which we have not found one we are happy with just yet. We would also like to imagine that every creature and structure gets a meeple/minifig, but it's really all up to how much it costs.
@@BigHoles Yo, BH, I'm actually publishing my first board game right now, and I can tell you that quality miniatures, and even acrylic standees/figures, are often the BIGGEST cost for these kinds of projects. Genuinely you could print 500 cards for the cost of 1 standee. If you're going for the cost-effective route, perhaps you could have cards that slot into holders to represent buildings, creatures, etc.? That way they could also have all the rules text on them as well for easy referencing.
Maybe go the route of the old Pirates CSG where each unit comes with a polystyrene punch out card that you assemble a standee with? That way they could pack flat in a booster pack sort of deal, and it could handle both creatures and buildings.
Rather than having the more powerful cards be over reliant on lands maybe have the amount of a land type determine which cards you can run? I.e. this card requires 3 corn fields to be in your starting deck. That way it balances versatility with strength inherently through the deckbuilding process
One thing you could potentially do for deck building is implementing a Deck Cost system like some Yu-Gi-Oh! video games do, but with a twist. Obviously cards with a high DC would be the best cards, so depending on the DC limit for a match you could make it so you have to use a bunch of fodder if you pick a particularly broken card. That way, you get to keep the hilariously broken cards, but limit them for people who find them unfun or uncompetitive. "Tournament play" could also have a standardized DC limit and you could even play with no DC for maximum chaos. But that doesn't have the chaos you're looking for. Now, I don't recall if deck size has been established yet, but here's a hypothetical. When you build your deck, it has to consist of 50 cards, with their DC totaling the DC limit or less, but then you shuffle that deck and remove 20 cards from the game. Having big decks that get culled for short, aggressive games as a system mechanic fits since you shouldn't need to go through that many cards since the game has such low draw, and there's still the chaos of "what if my ace 200 DC card ends up in the 20 I can't use?" or a situation where your deck is ridiculously overpowered because all the fodder got dropped before the game even started. With good deck building, that should average out, keeping the chaos, but encouraging good deck building. This doesn't even have to increase the amount of information on the cards. The DC for cards can be something done by "the official tournament league committee" or whatever and updated with each new set added. If you don't like or care about the DC system, you can just freely ignore it, but if you want a fair match, it means you can't just load your deck with 4-ofs of all the most broken cards (or however many you can include). Chaos that encourages strategy and strategy that encourages chaos.
Worker placement should be tied to the structures you have in play; if you want opponents to be able to utilize some buildings you control you can work that out on a structure by structure basis but I'd probably add a sub type to those structures to indicate that enemy workers can be placed within them. As far as workers go, the creatures/characters you summon should be the workers based on how they appear to work in the show. I would also have some structures require a specific type of creature in order to achieve its function. The functions your structures can be have once worked as well as the number of worker slots per structure could easily vary. some examples of effects could be: -card draw (I'd probably make this a slow effect where it won't go off every turn) -buffs/de-buffs for creatures this could be type specific or just creatures you control though for the later of the two you'd want to go with a weaker buff -status effects (burn, exhaust, etc) -recursion (getting creatures/cards back from grave again this should be a slow effect) -economy This allows you structures to protect the creatures working inside of them which makes logical sense and makes the relevant pieces on the board. The pieces that are acting as workers shouldn't be engaging in fights making the choice to use them as workers more meaningful; choices should come with pros and cons otherwise there isn't really a choice just the obvious play. Card games tend to have 3 pools of players each of which is strong against 1 of the 2 other types. Aggro, Control, and Mid Range; Each of those types should be able to be represented in this game so I wouldn't worry to much about pushing for faster games.
I know im a little late, but i had a few ideas. For the worker placement, i feel like it would be a limited amount of space for multiple workers with different jobs. Some workers could give you money, maybe some would heal an ally, give an ally extra damage, somethinf like that. I feel like it would implement an interesting stradegy, but im not sure how you would feel like that. Another very old thing for the pig that someone has probably already said, but what if the damage was cumulative like someone said, but limiting them to only doing their set amount of damage per turn. For example, the pig had 2 damage, did one, then it said 2. What if that was saying that it did two damage, and it could no longer attack after that? Just a thought.
Possible idea for the economy to limit the pieces in play, step one exhaust the creature, step two flip your top card and place it adjacent to the deck. Each card has a barter value of its total or maybe average stats (atk/def could also translate to buy/sell)with set values for other card types. Step three exhaust a creature. This time when you scry a card, if it has lesser value than your economy stack you can barter the entire stack in exchange for putting the skryed card in your hand. The green tile board can still be used to monitor the economy state giving a plus or minus to barter values when the chip is on the left or right side of the board with the top and bottom denoting which player is affected; the horizontal middle would apply to both players and the vertical middle would apply no effect. Each player could choose to move the token one tile whenever one of their units die(one less mouth to feed amiright?), this gives a ketchup mechanic, gives a good risk versus reward trade off, rewards riskier combat, gives actionable sacrificial use to worse cards, potentially punishes players who overly rely on the economy as it's a net loss on deck and field count, gives an easy to read sideboard state to derive additional card effects, helps you dig for the stronger cards you're waiting for to make a more effective push, and all of this can be ignored if the person is playing defensively or are already happy with their hand and/or board state. This could be easily tuned with the scale of economy modifiers, non creature exchange rate and how often you can do it during a turn. Sorry for the essay I've just been thinking about the money conundrum since you first posted that video. Thanks for all the time you've been putting into this project it's really amazing to see how much it's grown and shows the possibilities of collaborative game design.
A thought on worker placement, and workers in general. Each land card has a number that tells you how many workers it can have. Each land is assumed capable of having one building, unless it has text that says otherwise. Workers on lands can vary, you might be able to choose money...or something associated with the land. Buildings may place their own worker slot, but the buildings dictate what that worker slot does. This feels like an ok starting idea for how to make workers happen..and how to handle money or some other use. Also don't be afraid to have a slow strategy..most games with decent strategy element has at least one slow strategy...Magic has control (blue) as an example. You just need to make sure slow strategies can be countered somehow. You might also consider some units might take up more than 1 worker slot as part of balancing. And some units having a special worker effect also existing.
i feel like having some way to get card values from a combination of the stats and abilities of a card and then setting max total values for all the cards of that element could be a way to improve deckbuilding, so instead of forcing weak cards the player doesnt want, they can choose to have their deck be made of mostly average strength cards or have some really strong cards with simple weak ones
Idea: what if the swamp acts similar to a trap card or a plot. What I mean is that when you select the swamp, it seems almost useless, however, I wonder if it acts like a plot from magic the gathering where instead of activating the card immediately, you put it under a land, where you can activate it immediately, even on another players turn. This may be wrong or not “show accurate” but it may add a level of strategy to instead of playing a card immediately, to plan for future attacks.
I always imagined the work replacement scene as something to do with "classes". Maybe the corn dude has a work that translates into different buffs or effects depending on the cards you play or the fields you have. So maybe you are interested in your mage having the work of the corn guy in order to apply a specific buff to him rather than the one he currently has, so you use work replacement to change that cards work in exchange for the corn dude losing the job therefore not gaining any buffs. I think that would be a decent way to balance the action, gaining a buff you are interested in for a good unit but losing all possible buffs in another. It would also tie well with the terrain system.
Might need a way to keep people from just shuffling their creatures to different slots so as to preserve the sadness of that little corn guy falling over. Maybe you can only have a creature replace another that's to the left of them, or vice versa
A lot of the problem you face can be solved by focusing on card effects like having creatures that have bonuses as workers or structures that protect worker creatures
One way to make aggression more rewarding is to create Raiders. If you attack a structure that was flipped for a coin, you get the coin instead. And there could be a Raider tag that doubles this benefit. Additionally, worker placement could be related to these structures and lands. The workers could fill slots on a land/structure in order to generate additional economy effects or activate special abilities. Id suggest instead of meeples, workers are cards from the deck. You draw a card and set it to the side when you would spawn a worker. And there may be a way to conscript a worker and bring it onto the battlefield. This is because the 'worker' shown in the show is a card Finn plays.
Hello! I love your vids and what you have been doing trying to bring this game to life! And just wanted to come with some observations/ideas, I loved the idea with "random event" cards but it inheriently has some problems, its so much extra shuffling and not having these be "open" for both players (a player might not show that they drew one or keep if for later and try to trick). Also since if I understood an earlier video, there is ways to kinda reduce the randomnes anyway, why not either have these random effects on the normal cards, and have they activate when they are discarded instead of drawn, many cards (especially creatures) could have these "If discarded" effects, and it could include everything from gaining money, moving the tracker, having creatures react, drawing an extra card and so on, or the "random event" cards could have different backs så each player know when one is about to be drawn.
Random thematic idea: what if you need to place workers to generate money? You put them to work while your other creatures fight. The contested slots would then make this really valuable.
In most TCG, you divide deck/play strategies into 3 groups: Control, Mid-range & Aggro. It's a soft rock-paper-scissor system, where control is favoured vs mid-range, midrange is favoured vs aggro and aggro is favoured vs control. It sounds like Economy is the "control strategy", so that means there ain't enough aggro options in the game as it is rn. Control usually wins by long term card advantage and tries to stall the board with "1-for-1 trades", usually thru spell over creatures and the longer they go in they'll get net-positive card draws (draw 2 or more cards with one card). That said, aggro also needs -some- options for card advantage to keep up the tempo, usually that is in form for "rummaging mechanics" that requires to discard cards to draw cards for the aggro player cycles thru their deck to discard bad options and keep up the tempo, but never go positive in card draws, always trading one card in hand for another.
Maybe certain creatures introduce money to the game similar to “the monarch “ in magic the gathering. Specific creatures could have an added effect of giving money to players and they could be included or not during deck building
Its more likely that Fin/Jake just dont actually own 'meta' decks, and just own draft chaff or cards they got from a few packs and didnt actually make their collections competitive. Would be more like that than random deck creation imo.
You could have three creature pieces. One for strait attackers with an attacker mark on each sideof the piece. One for strait workers with a worker mark on each side of the piece. And a combination with one side of the piece having an attacker mark and the other having a worker mark. Since (I believe) you can only have one or two creatures on each lane this would mean you could have around 12 pieces for each side.
You could relate buildings to workers...? If the building protects the worker and gives an effect then there is a reason to fight for buildings. However if there is only one active worker per lane then you have even more reason to fight for workers, this could lead to a resource war over worker slots :o Anyway, nice vid its cool to see such thought out mechanics.
One solution to the weak card + deck building problem could be to add a tier system of sorts for cards, then require a deck to contain a certain amount of cards of each tier.
Just had a thought as I was watching this and haven't fully thought it through: in the show fin puts his wizard into a building to research, what if the worker slots are in all lanes without buildings and workers can perform some generic work (like generating coins) until you place a building in that lane then the worker slot becomes specialised and the worker works in the building instead
I wonder if to include deckbuilding, creatures would require a certain amount of a particular land to be added to a field, so the strongest cards of an element can only be included if certain conditions are met
A structure protecting a creature makes perfect sense for workers. Think of the wizard researching the raise the dead thing. That's basically worker placement if someone else can interrupt it by getting there and attacking, then replacing them.
The whole "token" thing in magic is the definition of a token being representative of a larger populous or idea. I've seen it used in other games like Stormbound for example.
One of my favorite interactions is summoning circle with the normal guy. Normal guy spawns in 3 dogs when he’s killed, so you can use the summoning circle to kill normal guy, then the 3 dogs to get enough health to spawn in MM. like 3 dogs aren’t enough to summon a demon, but if they all get into a trench coat they can
The awareness and desire to avoid, as you coined, "helicopter parent rules" is excellent. I've played plenty of conceptually good games that just become a drag to learn and teach because of dozens of arbitrary caveats
Hey, been watching the progress of you making this game for a minute now. I've got a suggestion that might help with the worker placement and deckbuukding. In the way of deckbuilding, you could figure out a set of elements you want, similar to mtg, and create lands that would fit the overall element, example being frozen tundra or snow covered plains that act as different lands for different lanes, but still play to the ice theme of a deck. As for how many cards, you could go with a standard "x amount makes a deck" or you could use something similar to warhammer's point system for building armies so decks could be beefed up or shrunken down based on how heavy of hitters players want to use in their decks. As for the worker system, you could give various creatures an effect that activates when it becomes a worker, and limit it to 3 worker stations per lane, one on either players' side of that lane and one where the two sides meet that gives a bigger passive boost than the ones closer to either player, making the worker spots a bit more coveted and get people to fight a little faster to try maintaining their control of the board state
I think it would be cool, like in your video you noticed the corn worker was blue, to have a deck designed to have a sabatage worker deck archetype; like in gwent. My idea like in gwent would be to have a card able to infultrate an enemy worker space and instead buff your own board, it will sabatage the enemy. Like a Dumb spy who thinks hes doing his job, but badly, and in the wrong space.
I have a few questions if you have a moment: If we do deck creation based on element what sort of cards would be in each element? Do you intend for each element to have a chunk of it's own weak cards and maybe each element having a single "boss monster?" (Perhaps this could be the only way to get a "boss monster" so it naturally limits how many boss monsters could be in a deck...) My last thought is a single suggestion: To add onto the chaotic nature of Card Wars have you considered more cards that activate on draw like for example: a neutral creature is spawned in that will attack everything in a chosen lane or something deemed: "Wildfire" or "Flood" that can change the element of that part of the field. In this example it being changed to: "Fire" and "Water" fields respectively.
For deck building looking at something like Magic: The Gathering Jumpstart. and for deck building you have to take on of these prebuild lists and can customize the remaining cards.
An interesting idea might be to let structures take damage instead of workers. Because worker placement often has some level of differing rewards for placing workers in different areas, you could add worker “spots” to some structures that have additional effects, like adding abilities onto creatures of a certain type. Which would then cover the scene in the game where fin puts his wizard “in” the tower and that he is able to resurrect the pig afterwards.
What if the stat in the bottom left corner of lands instead of health was points towards a point buy system (like Canadian highlander) this would allow for some level of deck customisability while adding a unique way to balance lands, more powerful lands less powerful creatures. But this would be cause issues with the idea of land destruction.
one thing that might help satisfy the deck builders is letting them have a "signature card", they get to pick one card they like and add it to their deck, the rest are random
Okay so your turn order is messy. Can I suggest: Standby Phase. Discard any number of cards you like. Each card earns one coin. Then draw. You may draw additional cards for 5 coins each. After battle phase for each mob "Working" at their "Structure" earn one to 9 coins based on the economy. The Econemy is based on how many mobs on both sides of the field are working so having a mob work at your structure benefits both players. (1 structure/lane/side) You must have a mob at your structure to avoid it being damaged. When you have no structure the opponent can attack the player directly winning the game. Your structures are your player health bar in that case With this function if you have a Mulligan and discard most of your hand first round you can possibly draw a power card but at the same time putting workers on each of your structures (Hit Points) could give your opponent an advantage.
I know it would be a pretty big change but to reward more aggressive play and avoid having to wait to draw better cards when you only have bad cards in hand, maybe you could change the discard and draw system to one similar to Slay the Spire where you draw a certain number of cards at the beginning of each round and then discard all cards in hand at the end of the turn. You then reshuffle your discard pile into the draw pile whenever there aren't enough cards to draw. This would mean cards could be played multiple times but to balance it out, more powerful cards (and maybe all structures) could have an "Exhaust" tag which means they would go into an exhaust pile when played and can't be drawn again this game. I think this would also make deck building easier since it would lead to easier implementation of card synergies.
This is super cool! I'd love to try it at some point! I do want to point out though: since you're insistent on making it show accurate, don't forget about how Finn's Wizard went to study and finished studying in his reaction phase. I don't know if you'd rule that as a card specific feature of say, Finn's Wizard was a worker that said something like, "If this card is in a worker slot in a library, Floop this card, during the next combat phase after this turn, you may resurrect a creature." Just wanted to highlight a detail I thought might have been missed, but depending on the interpretation, you're probably good. I guess what I'm worried about is the purpose of buildings and their interactions with workers and combat. Perhaps if a worker is in a building, that worker's HP is directly tied to the building as in: lose the cave with a pig inside = lose the cave and the pig (The cave was the only thing receiving damage.) Admittedly, I'm kinda struggling to follow the detailed rules, but I've always been the type of, "learn by experience." Good luck on the future endeavors!
What if the economy was a mechanic mostly tied to one element, like corn? Magic the gathering has counterspells which are frustrating and reward defensive play but they're tied to blue so they aren't in most decks and add variety to games
building take time to make money, require specific land types, get a bonus for land types. leave targeting to the attacker, leave defending with a creature a choice for the defender, exausted creatures can still make a defending attack but cant make an offensive attack.
If you get additional cards from your land there might be a way to hide them beneath lands (or beneath a land of a different type). Could explain the mazewalker in the show
I was just looking the game in the cardwars episode over again and it looks like you can play the game without playing many cards from your hand. Finn doesn't play any cards, and just uses the ones that are already in play at the beginning of the game. Perhapse a way of speeding up the game and making the games quicker is by including strategies that focus souly on working your current board state. Earlier I mentioned that lands and structures should be separate entities as they seem to be in the show. Perhapse some structures could have activated abilities based on not playing cards from your hand? In the episode lets take 2 examples, that being the shack and the wizard tower. Lets say if a creature enters the shack they're effectively blinked like in MTG, but intern if they are a scholar type creature they can raise the dead. This can also explain why in a board wipe Finn's shack survives as it doesn't exist really. For the wizard tower, lets say that Finn was playing a magic or scholar deck and a part of that is that wizard tower shares the same state as the scholar so it also blinked out with it having an ability like on your 3rd or 4th turn of not playing spells from your hand you can take control of an opponent's monster? Perhapse these suggestions could really help
hey! first off, stellar job so far, the game is certainly very unique and chaotic, and that energy is very appreciated in the board game and especially card game space! having never played your game (and therefore experienced the issues firsthand) but being a player that generally likes a more defensive slow burn playstyle, i feel like while it can be considered boring, it's a valid strategy that shouldn't be removed from the game. maybe just toned down? i also think randomized decks are a delightfully chaotic idea very in line with the vibe of the game, and it forces players to adapt and creates fun moments, though it would also probably create the problem of extremely one-sided games entirely dependent on RNG, which isn't fun taking both these observations into account, i propose that card types actually have preferred gameplans and effects, much like how in MTG Black and Red decks are aggressive while Blue and Green ones are more defensive and slow paced. there could be a neutral one, one that is focused on throwing out many low power cards, one that has many spells, one that is focused on economy, etc. you could keep the randomized cards, but players only receive random cards of the type of their choosing, still giving them some control over their general gameplan and an idea of their potential card pool. i hope this insight is of any help, and once again great job with the game and the videos :)
i am impressed by how good you are at managing projects, you don´t get stuck in thigs you should fix later and focus in the most inmediat and important things
Your gameplay made me realize just how important mana systems are to some games. Many card games do this but MTG is the most popular game to point to. Basically every card has a associated cost meaning how powerful said card is. However, mana will always start out small and ramp up via play. This makes winning early play very difficult, but easy as the mana builds up. At the same time this forces verity of cards, as more cards became playable as the game continues. Also this forces maximizing synergy with cards as players are trying to win as fast as possible with a limited resource.
For the structure combat I recommend taking a look at the location cards/mechanics from Lorcana. A location in Lorcana can passively generate value but is always vulnerable and can’t be defended. They also have an associated movement cost to move your characters to the location, some of the locations have some effect that applies to the characters who are there or care about having them there, similarly there are some characters who have effects that care about moving to locations. The movement interactions can create some effects similar to in the show, like when Finn moves his pig into the cave or when his scholar goes to the tower to learn a spell…
5:58 i mean when you want to go steal something from someone inside a protected building, you first have take down the building's defenses, such as cameras and stuff, and only then can you steal something from the person inside. It makes sense to me.
Exactly! I was genuinely caught off-guard when @BigHoles didn't put two and two together to realize - OH, They're INSIDE the structure! That's why it protects them!
What if instead of forced add ins based on your land, your forced add ins are dictated by your opponent. It adds more deck building options, while also adding chaos to your own deck.
You could do what aos did for the turn advantage, make each rounds roll to determine turn order. First has a head start second has a chance for a early double turn. (Go second then first)
I don’t know if it’s a fun fix, but I think maybe a way to make bigger creatures rely on lands more would be to have them only playable if you have a certain land composition. I’m basically just thinking of Magic’s lands and mana requirements. C’est la vie. I know it’s a bit of a helicopter parent rule, but I think it’s not so bad as it encourages some deck building aspects. Alternatively, maybe these big creatures could be playable even with only a one land dip, but the more lands of their type you have in play, the stronger they are in some way.
So I have a rules question that idk if you'd covered in your devlogs already or if the show talks about it explicitly (I'm assuming no on the later), how specifically is the "Discard and Draw" phase of this game being handled, as well as is this handling consistent with the rest of the game's rules? Because I can see 3 major ways that this could be handled, and honestly I am more looking out to make sure that the game's rules are consistent with itself so as to not cause confusion for some areas of the game not behaving like other areas. 1) If an effect or rule tells a player to "do" multiple things, that player should try to complete as many of those things that they can do. So if a player needs to discard a card and then draw a card while they have 0 cards in hand, they'll fail to discard a card but will draw a card at the end of the effect/rule. 2) If an effect or rule tells a player to "do" multiple things, if that player fails to complete one of those things, the rest of the effect or rule will be ignored or skipped. So if a player needs to discard a card and then draw a card while they have 0 cards in hand, they'll fail to discard a card and the rest of the effect/rule is skipped. 3) Separate from the above 2 game behaviors, this specific "Discard and Draw" phase is being treated as an effect with a cost that needs to be paid. And so if the player cannot pay the cost, in this case discarding a card, then they cannot "trigger" the associated effect, in this case drawing a card. Given your description of the game, both from past and this current devlog, the original idea/pitch of this system from you was that players would never gain a net positive on cards outside of external draw effects like the market and whatnot. However, the way you described the "Discard and Draw" phase of this game in this video made it sound like it behaved like the first option I listed above even though I know you described this phase not intending to work like this. (Idk, maybe I'm just MTG -pilled or somethin'?) I'm wondering if from the original source, b/c I haven't seen the show, if there is room for interpretation or not for the game allowing players with 0 cards in hand to still be able to draw a card during this phase, which I know with this implication would most probably throw a lot of the currently designed systems way out of whack b/c of the precedent(s) set before so I can understand not wanting to make this change this late now. If it is explicit that being able to discard at least 1 card is a requirement for drawing a card for this phase, or if it is decided that this something that should not be changed this late into development, then I'm wondering between options 2 and 3 which apply to this specific phase. Because if it is #2 then that sets a precedent that the rest of the game should follow this format. Otherwise, if it is #3, then it can be ambiguous if the rest of the game should follow either option 1 or 2, but not matter which is chosen it basically makes the "Discard and Draw" phase a bit of an abnormality b/c it is treated as a separate behavior. I hope this input was both understandable and helpful, and I'm looking forward to the future of this project!
8:32 I think the reason you see bad cards in decks is because it’s what the player has access to. Like in the original episode, they’re playing kitchen table with stuff they had around- so Jake uses a WBM and probably gives better generic cards to Finn. The clip you use where a guy summons exodia to acid blast Jake’s entire board reveals the existence of deck construction- you COULD get 5 pieces of a combo from a random assortment of cards, but it doesn’t seem likely
Potential way to solve the first player advantage problem On the first players first turn all their units and structures have half health and half attack until the end of their turn
To balance the player order, you could give second player a slight buff, for example in the game hearthstone the second player gets a coin (get 1 exstra mana for 1 turn) and 1 extra card to help the player counter what the enemy plays on their first turn. you could maybe give player 2 an extra card or extra money to balance the game ? Just an idea.
For deck building you could have a system similar to DandD’s point buy or; where when you build your deck you have have a pool of points, where each card is worth a different value of points and you need with in a certain range of cards eg. Between 20 and 30 cards
I think having too many useless cards would be balanced by adding cards/mechanics that allow you to recycle cards or use them in other ways. Maybe there can be a way to "feed" cards from your hand to something as a way of drawing an extra card later? Like playing it in a certain zone, and at the start of your next turn it could be converted to money or something. But it might be easier to add cards to do things like this rather than game mechanics. Like adding more cards to the decks that say things like "search your deck for a card and add it to your hand", I think they're referred to as "fetch cards".
maybe change discard and draw to discard if able then draw regardless of if you discarded. This would promote being aggressive with your last card instead of holding on to it though would probably need limitations
I know you've said drawing cards was too powerful an effect, but what about searching for another specific card? Like each of the corn knights allowing you to search for another copy. It'd be a way to refill your hand with less powerful cards, which then can act as raw card advantage the next time you discard/draw.
What if there was a tax element to the economy? For example what if at an unspecified point in the turn the player with the most amount of cash gets their cash cut in half by a game mechanic named "corrupt tax man". This would deincentiveze players from hording cash and allow for a bit of strategic planning around avoiding the tax man. Plus it would be super funny if just in the middle of the round there two players discussing how to avoid their taxes. Maybe even have the tax season be randomly decided by dice or coins to prevent abuse. I feel as if that would really add to the vibe of the game being an over complicated jumble of mechanics.
An idea for the Economy you could do is actually make a passive Economy stat! Both players start with 0 Economy and whenever they destroy a creature they gain +1 Eco and when destroying a Structure they gain +2 Eco, up to a limit. Then, once that player Resets their Cards they gain gold equal to their Economy stat. Losing a structure will lose you -2 economy, unless you have a worker occupying the land, in which you will keep your economy. Losing creatures would not harm economy since it would promote defensive playstyles. You could also make it to where whoever goes first cannot gain Economy on their first turn so they don't get a bigger snowball than they already do (although they wont actually gain gold until the start of their next turn)
One the things that could make the game less stale by using the economy and adding chaotic elements would be: when a card gets auctioned, the winner of the auction doesn't put the card in their hand, instead they gain acces to that card until the end of their opponents next turn. I belive this would make the auctioned card more unique, in the tounament gameplays i rarely saw the auctioned card being cast, just put in hand to be discarded in the next turn. It would become less of a late game tool and more of a incentive to cast the cards aquired
I would only argue that you shouldnt focus too much on what mechanics other games use. Like obviously that can be helpful but at the end of the day one of the things that made card wars so interesting is that most of its mechanics felt somewhat like ones weve seen before but also different. Like the lands dont act like most lands we see in other card games because they have various unusual ways of interacting with them. Honestly though I think the most important aspect is nailing the feel of the shows game, a game that encourages you to strategize and carefully build your deck and choose your moves but then is so massively, obnoxiously complex that even if youre obssesed with the game and study it, some weird pig card can completely throw you off your game
you could assign ranks to cards, and have quotas for how many of each card rank you can have in a deck, for example you might have to have 5 high rank cards, 10 mid and 20 low rank cards in a deck, it would still alow for control over a deck but will still infoce a variety of card streangths.
Maybe to mitigate tags cluttering the cards with text, each tag could have a little symbol instead? So like, Immobile tagged cards might just have a little ball and chain symbol instead.
I love your videos, I'm always looking forward to them. I've been occassionally chipping away at designing my own TTRPG in my spare time and your card wards videos have partly inspired me to start making my own devlog for it, earlier today I finished making the "animated" parts of it, now I have to edit it to add a few additional things. I say "animated" because the footage is mostly just storyboardish doodles of myself in different poses as I talk my ass off about spreadsheets lmao ~
maybe the defense mode could make them unable to do anything else since the creature needs to focus on defending so they cant use their ability or be used to gain money but in exchange they would take half damage or something
maybe you could add some kind of resource attached to structures and make it so all of the most overpowered cards can only be used with said resource, so you would be able to pick all of the cards you want but you will have to strategize and use weaker cards before you can use anything overpowered maybe some sort of sacrificing system where you play weaker cards and discard them to summon more powerful cards, or have cards that can only be summoned through the economy system
I personally really like the idea of mandatory cards for a deck type A lot of TCGs have this already, kinda sorta, we just don't call them that Try building a Pokemon TCG deck without Energy, Great Balls, or Professors I think if the mandatory cards give similar effects as the cards above, it would actually free up the player to make more choices about their deck You probably would have picked a basic "draw 2" card anyways, so if the game just gives it to you, you can spend your time thinking about what cool monsters you're going to play with
I always thought they were saying work REplacement, rather than workER placement, and that it meant Finn could switch around which unit was researching the spell to raise the dead
What if the mage kicking the corn off the worker spot is because some workers generate more but whoever is on the worker spot wants to keep there job so your own workers have to fight to take a worker spot from a worker
Another idea for deck building could be the gwent system. Each deck is given a set amount of provisions and each card is given a provision amount. You must then have a certain amount of cards in deck This way you can include any cards you want but the best creatures Cost a lot of provisions and as such force you to use more low end creatures to meet the deck limit. Each land can also come with bonus provisions based on how good they are. Not sure if I explained it well but if you know gwent you know what I'm talking about.
Idea for making the first player/second player thing less drastic (but also not show accurate): Have some kind of a draw action always happen on the ENEMIES turn. That way the first player has the first turn, but it’s not a „good turn“, as you don’t have everything you need yet. The second player then has the second turn, but the first „full“ turn. From there, since you always do this thing (be it drawing cards or smthg) in your enemies turn, nothing changes.
early episodes: ha ha ha fun tv show card game
newer episodes: balancing hell
“This is where the fun begins”
*opens fourth calculator tab*
this isn't even a joke this is literally a description of what's happening
yeah LMAO
That's always how creative ventures work. You start by throwing a lot of cool ideas at the wall, and then you have to clean up the mess to make it good.
big holes! please please take a break! we don't want you to get burnt out, that's the one thing that will kill this project..
That is true
I second this comment
Oh, if only RUclips would let me! (editor soon I swear)
@@BigHolesare you taking applications?
seconded!!!!!!!!
What if buildings/structures came with worker slots, and the more creatures you place in the slots, it makes the buildings do different things? Some buildings don't have slots, some do. Some buildings do things if a creature of a specific type is in the slot, hence why the wizard replaced the corn man.
I like this
I like this!
Definitely think having the slots attached to the buildings makes the most sense!
Put this in his discord too?
You could make it so you can man your opponent's buildings if they have no creatures in the relevant land?
I’ll say that I personally am living the videos and the game, it may be my golden retriever energy but most of the updates you have added so far seem like good ideas to me.
i love "Golden Retriever" energy lol
Maybe the problems you mentioned about slow burn strategies and combat being too balanced can be fixed by tying it in with the land systems; each "land" and their respective "archetypes" have a general purpose, some are better at combat, some at slow strategies, some at the economy, etc. This also means that players know what each player "aims" to do, even if they are unfamiliar with the specific cards their oppononent uses, they will be able to understand their gameplan and plan accordingly. Even if you are a beginner this can help you ease you in! Yugioh has a problem where if you have never seen an archetype it can be real hard to tell what it aims to do, this avoids that! Also, reminder that you can use different types of lands, so you can miss and match different strategies together with them as well! Perhaps only some land types or archetypes are able to get money at all or are better at it than others. Also, perhaps a mode of playing the game has the decks and cards randomized and a different mode of playing it does involve deck building in some way. Just some thoughts and ideas, sorry for the wall 😅
excellent points!
Great ideas. I’m replying to boost this up
Great idea
Nice one
Something like this is in one of my favorite card games Legends of Runeterra
There's 10 or so regions and all cards in the game are part of at least 1.
You can only have up to 2 regions in a single deck and each region has its own gameplay identity
Generalizing a lot here but for example
Shadow Isles (Coloured Dark Green) is the control region
They have the most potent removal in cards like Vengeance (basically kills a creature for half your energy) and The Ruination (kills all creatures on the board for almost all your energy)
But we also have Piltover and Zaun (or PnZ for short, coloured orange) which features a lot of removal but it's damage based as opposed to Vengeance which just kills the creature
Meaning the opponent can counter most PnZ removal by healing their creatures or just giving them more base health. However because PnZ damaging cards can also (usually) target the player directly they can shift to a Burn strategy on the fly to close out the game.
And the infamous Pink Region (Ionia) who very frequently spends a non in significant time in their games telling their opponents "No" by stopping their attacks, sending enemy creatures back to hand, or even just casting a spell literally called "Deny" lmao.
Most regions can "replicate" the abilities of other regions but there will always be a region that does some things better than the others.
So when you're deck building you often have thoughts like
"I need Burn, do I go PnZ or Noxus as my second region?" it really streamlines the process.
We've got an OUTRO BOYS!!!!!!
That fragment of Jake making only one action per his move, made me thinking: what if your available amount of actions per move is bound to amount of active structures you have?
Why not make it so that in order to create money you have to flip a building that has a worker, so assign a creature as the worker for the building and flip it, at the beginning of your next turn the building flips back over and you get money equal to the creatures power, the working creature can’t attack or block, but destroying the building won’t destroy the creature inside it. That way there is some level of risk and reward, sure you could put a huge creature in the working slot and get a lot of money, but if your opponent destroys the building you don’t get any money. That way the work replacement actually has an effect on how you play the game and lines up with the replacing being between two creatures from the same side. At the same time you can also give creatures/buildings like the mage alternate abilities when they work, for example in the show the mage “studies” and learns a new spell, what if the mage card has an ability that says when it is a worker instead of producing money it can draft spells from a set list.
love the idea of a flipped building being the worker slot
Love this idea but i think in the show it makes more sense that the building itself has the effect of giving the scholar a new spell because its a wizard tower/study hall or something (correct me if im wrong im going off of memory) I STILL THINK THIS COULD WORK THOUGH and actually makes sense with your idea because certain buildings could have certain buffs for certain cards when they work there which could be really good for synergy and deck building
I think workers still need work (pun intended). I was watching the original card wars from the first episode is was shown between Jake and Finn and here's my thoughts
It seems like Finn's worker, ancient scholar, that entered the hut to study was an actual card that has a secondary or maybe primary action to enter a land card's worker slot (if empty) and learn Raise the Dead or a random spell after x turns. So I think land cards have an x amount of worker slots that can be used and if that land card has something like a "solitude" or a "scholarly" trait, then the Ancient Scholar can use it to research/learn spell
So basically, what I think could work that is seemingly show accurate is this:
Each land card has x worker slots
Each land card's traits include traits that can trigger card secondary or tertiary abilities
Cards can be activated to become a worker in an empty worker slot on their lane's land card (unless the card requires a specific trait, then the land card needs to accommodate it)
Also, Jake hid some cards below other cards when he held them on the lane - There could be something there like a resting creature or a hidden/unactive creature. Could allow features like a land card ability needing x or more creatures active on the lane or x or more creatures hidden on the lane
If any of this isn't show accurate and I missed out on something, please correct me
+
Yeah, I commented last video that the Ancient Scholar researching raise dead in the schoolhouse was an example of worker placement. Give creatures and structures work tags. The combination of the two tags determines the type of work done. Or maybe structures have work types and creatures have different work ranks. Ancient scholar is good at research and bad at farming. A zero in a rank means you can't work that type of structure. There are plenty of things that would match the show and be much more interesting than collecting money.
didnt expect to see you here picksol
I know you are worried about the youtube algorithm preventing a break, but maybe you can make a video about something irrelevant, or another project idea you have, just somthing fun. I promise not only will the break be good for you, but stepping away from THIS project will give it some air and coming back with fresh eyes will make such a different you'll be like wow.
Idea: To balance around the "having only 1 bad card," you could add the ability to "cycle" cards by spending money, essentially doing the discard and draw phase again. It would be cheaper than getting cards normally, so there's always a reason to do it, and when down to one card it can accelerate play. Maybe only allow the player that ahead in the economy to do this if it's too overpowered.
Decks building should have a “point buy” system
To start you could add the health and attack of a creature and that’s the cost but change it for nerfs or buffs
You could have a minimum deck size too so that it isn’t guaranteed that you get the over powered cards
Good idea, but considering the existing chaos the game is meant to be, maybe you could instead require a certain amount of "bad" cards instead of restricting strong ones
@@ThePistonPlayhouse I think a point sistem might resolve this if it's the way that I am thinking, stronger cards would have more points so if you put them you would also have to put weaker cards that have less points.
The fields themselves having effect is kinda accurate because, in the clip when Jake summons the ghost monster it seems to just comes from the field itself after he, flooped, activated, or whatever he did to the field (or building idk) to summons the ghost so it would make sense to add effect to field card
Have you considered using a card tier system for deck building? IE a deck consists of X common cards, Y rares, Z legendaries or something? I like the proposed lands idea where you're free to pick based on the lands as well.
I think income might fit more as a card archetype(such as aggro/control etc in a traditional card game) to avoid it slowing down every game by instead making it a certain deck type focused around it with inherent weakness/strengths.(Creatures synergistic with income can be weaker, so when deck building you have to choose between inherently synergistic cards, or stronger cards that don't directly interact with income)
the rarirty systems seems like a pretty good alternative. you can always just asign rarities colors a bit like in hearthstone to avoid extra text.
maybe a combination of the two systems to avoid players not just always choosing 20 of the best common. to try and vary the game a bit
Reminds me of the Zatch Bell TCG.
How would players IRL buy expansion card sets? i would like to imagine that every creature card comes with a mini. Structure cards could fit in a preset made tower or something
We are currently exploring the absolute most cost efficient routes for the base game and expansions, of which we have not found one we are happy with just yet. We would also like to imagine that every creature and structure gets a meeple/minifig, but it's really all up to how much it costs.
@@BigHoles Yo, BH, I'm actually publishing my first board game right now, and I can tell you that quality miniatures, and even acrylic standees/figures, are often the BIGGEST cost for these kinds of projects. Genuinely you could print 500 cards for the cost of 1 standee. If you're going for the cost-effective route, perhaps you could have cards that slot into holders to represent buildings, creatures, etc.? That way they could also have all the rules text on them as well for easy referencing.
Maybe go the route of the old Pirates CSG where each unit comes with a polystyrene punch out card that you assemble a standee with? That way they could pack flat in a booster pack sort of deal, and it could handle both creatures and buildings.
tokens tokens tokens!
@@BigHoles Cool, and thanks for the reply.
Your work ethic is admirable.
Rather than having the more powerful cards be over reliant on lands maybe have the amount of a land type determine which cards you can run? I.e. this card requires 3 corn fields to be in your starting deck. That way it balances versatility with strength inherently through the deckbuilding process
THAT’S MY DAWG GLOBULIN
good job biggyholes. you came up some really good ideas here and i like them a lot and will definitely help with the issues ^^
One thing you could potentially do for deck building is implementing a Deck Cost system like some Yu-Gi-Oh! video games do, but with a twist. Obviously cards with a high DC would be the best cards, so depending on the DC limit for a match you could make it so you have to use a bunch of fodder if you pick a particularly broken card. That way, you get to keep the hilariously broken cards, but limit them for people who find them unfun or uncompetitive. "Tournament play" could also have a standardized DC limit and you could even play with no DC for maximum chaos. But that doesn't have the chaos you're looking for. Now, I don't recall if deck size has been established yet, but here's a hypothetical. When you build your deck, it has to consist of 50 cards, with their DC totaling the DC limit or less, but then you shuffle that deck and remove 20 cards from the game. Having big decks that get culled for short, aggressive games as a system mechanic fits since you shouldn't need to go through that many cards since the game has such low draw, and there's still the chaos of "what if my ace 200 DC card ends up in the 20 I can't use?" or a situation where your deck is ridiculously overpowered because all the fodder got dropped before the game even started. With good deck building, that should average out, keeping the chaos, but encouraging good deck building. This doesn't even have to increase the amount of information on the cards. The DC for cards can be something done by "the official tournament league committee" or whatever and updated with each new set added. If you don't like or care about the DC system, you can just freely ignore it, but if you want a fair match, it means you can't just load your deck with 4-ofs of all the most broken cards (or however many you can include). Chaos that encourages strategy and strategy that encourages chaos.
Worker placement should be tied to the structures you have in play; if you want opponents to be able to utilize some buildings you control you can work that out on a structure by structure basis but I'd probably add a sub type to those structures to indicate that enemy workers can be placed within them. As far as workers go, the creatures/characters you summon should be the workers based on how they appear to work in the show. I would also have some structures require a specific type of creature in order to achieve its function. The functions your structures can be have once worked as well as the number of worker slots per structure could easily vary. some examples of effects could be:
-card draw (I'd probably make this a slow effect where it won't go off every turn)
-buffs/de-buffs for creatures this could be type specific or just creatures you control though for the later of the two you'd want to go with a weaker buff
-status effects (burn, exhaust, etc)
-recursion (getting creatures/cards back from grave again this should be a slow effect)
-economy
This allows you structures to protect the creatures working inside of them which makes logical sense and makes the relevant pieces on the board. The pieces that are acting as workers shouldn't be engaging in fights making the choice to use them as workers more meaningful; choices should come with pros and cons otherwise there isn't really a choice just the obvious play.
Card games tend to have 3 pools of players each of which is strong against 1 of the 2 other types. Aggro, Control, and Mid Range; Each of those types should be able to be represented in this game so I wouldn't worry to much about pushing for faster games.
i’m really excited to see the elements, cards, lands, and structure effects you make! they’re the most exciting parts of games like this imo 👍
I know im a little late, but i had a few ideas. For the worker placement, i feel like it would be a limited amount of space for multiple workers with different jobs. Some workers could give you money, maybe some would heal an ally, give an ally extra damage, somethinf like that. I feel like it would implement an interesting stradegy, but im not sure how you would feel like that. Another very old thing for the pig that someone has probably already said, but what if the damage was cumulative like someone said, but limiting them to only doing their set amount of damage per turn. For example, the pig had 2 damage, did one, then it said 2. What if that was saying that it did two damage, and it could no longer attack after that? Just a thought.
Possible idea for the economy to limit the pieces in play, step one exhaust the creature, step two flip your top card and place it adjacent to the deck. Each card has a barter value of its total or maybe average stats (atk/def could also translate to buy/sell)with set values for other card types. Step three exhaust a creature. This time when you scry a card, if it has lesser value than your economy stack you can barter the entire stack in exchange for putting the skryed card in your hand. The green tile board can still be used to monitor the economy state giving a plus or minus to barter values when the chip is on the left or right side of the board with the top and bottom denoting which player is affected; the horizontal middle would apply to both players and the vertical middle would apply no effect. Each player could choose to move the token one tile whenever one of their units die(one less mouth to feed amiright?), this gives a ketchup mechanic, gives a good risk versus reward trade off, rewards riskier combat, gives actionable sacrificial use to worse cards, potentially punishes players who overly rely on the economy as it's a net loss on deck and field count, gives an easy to read sideboard state to derive additional card effects, helps you dig for the stronger cards you're waiting for to make a more effective push, and all of this can be ignored if the person is playing defensively or are already happy with their hand and/or board state. This could be easily tuned with the scale of economy modifiers, non creature exchange rate and how often you can do it during a turn. Sorry for the essay I've just been thinking about the money conundrum since you first posted that video. Thanks for all the time you've been putting into this project it's really amazing to see how much it's grown and shows the possibilities of collaborative game design.
A thought on worker placement, and workers in general.
Each land card has a number that tells you how many workers it can have. Each land is assumed capable of having one building, unless it has text that says otherwise.
Workers on lands can vary, you might be able to choose money...or something associated with the land.
Buildings may place their own worker slot, but the buildings dictate what that worker slot does.
This feels like an ok starting idea for how to make workers happen..and how to handle money or some other use.
Also don't be afraid to have a slow strategy..most games with decent strategy element has at least one slow strategy...Magic has control (blue) as an example. You just need to make sure slow strategies can be countered somehow.
You might also consider some units might take up more than 1 worker slot as part of balancing. And some units having a special worker effect also existing.
i feel like having some way to get card values from a combination of the stats and abilities of a card and then setting max total values for all the cards of that element could be a way to improve deckbuilding, so instead of forcing weak cards the player doesnt want, they can choose to have their deck be made of mostly average strength cards or have some really strong cards with simple weak ones
Idea: what if the swamp acts similar to a trap card or a plot. What I mean is that when you select the swamp, it seems almost useless, however, I wonder if it acts like a plot from magic the gathering where instead of activating the card immediately, you put it under a land, where you can activate it immediately, even on another players turn. This may be wrong or not “show accurate” but it may add a level of strategy to instead of playing a card immediately, to plan for future attacks.
I always imagined the work replacement scene as something to do with "classes". Maybe the corn dude has a work that translates into different buffs or effects depending on the cards you play or the fields you have. So maybe you are interested in your mage having the work of the corn guy in order to apply a specific buff to him rather than the one he currently has, so you use work replacement to change that cards work in exchange for the corn dude losing the job therefore not gaining any buffs. I think that would be a decent way to balance the action, gaining a buff you are interested in for a good unit but losing all possible buffs in another. It would also tie well with the terrain system.
Might need a way to keep people from just shuffling their creatures to different slots so as to preserve the sadness of that little corn guy falling over. Maybe you can only have a creature replace another that's to the left of them, or vice versa
in the original episode the scholar going to study, is a kind of worker placement too
A lot of the problem you face can be solved by focusing on card effects like having creatures that have bonuses as workers or structures that protect worker creatures
One way to make aggression more rewarding is to create Raiders.
If you attack a structure that was flipped for a coin, you get the coin instead. And there could be a Raider tag that doubles this benefit.
Additionally, worker placement could be related to these structures and lands. The workers could fill slots on a land/structure in order to generate additional economy effects or activate special abilities.
Id suggest instead of meeples, workers are cards from the deck. You draw a card and set it to the side when you would spawn a worker. And there may be a way to conscript a worker and bring it onto the battlefield. This is because the 'worker' shown in the show is a card Finn plays.
Hello! I love your vids and what you have been doing trying to bring this game to life! And just wanted to come with some observations/ideas, I loved the idea with "random event" cards but it inheriently has some problems, its so much extra shuffling and not having these be "open" for both players (a player might not show that they drew one or keep if for later and try to trick). Also since if I understood an earlier video, there is ways to kinda reduce the randomnes anyway, why not either have these random effects on the normal cards, and have they activate when they are discarded instead of drawn, many cards (especially creatures) could have these "If discarded" effects, and it could include everything from gaining money, moving the tracker, having creatures react, drawing an extra card and so on, or the "random event" cards could have different backs så each player know when one is about to be drawn.
Random thematic idea: what if you need to place workers to generate money? You put them to work while your other creatures fight. The contested slots would then make this really valuable.
In most TCG, you divide deck/play strategies into 3 groups: Control, Mid-range & Aggro.
It's a soft rock-paper-scissor system, where control is favoured vs mid-range, midrange is favoured vs aggro and aggro is favoured vs control.
It sounds like Economy is the "control strategy", so that means there ain't enough aggro options in the game as it is rn.
Control usually wins by long term card advantage and tries to stall the board with "1-for-1 trades", usually thru spell over creatures and the longer they go in they'll get net-positive card draws (draw 2 or more cards with one card).
That said, aggro also needs -some- options for card advantage to keep up the tempo, usually that is in form for "rummaging mechanics" that requires to discard cards to draw cards for the aggro player cycles thru their deck to discard bad options and keep up the tempo, but never go positive in card draws, always trading one card in hand for another.
Maybe certain creatures introduce money to the game similar to “the monarch “ in magic the gathering. Specific creatures could have an added effect of giving money to players and they could be included or not during deck building
Its more likely that Fin/Jake just dont actually own 'meta' decks, and just own draft chaff or cards they got from a few packs and didnt actually make their collections competitive. Would be more like that than random deck creation imo.
You could have three creature pieces.
One for strait attackers with an attacker mark on each sideof the piece.
One for strait workers with a worker mark on each side of the piece.
And a combination with one side of the piece having an attacker mark and the other having a worker mark.
Since (I believe) you can only have one or two creatures on each lane this would mean you could have around 12 pieces for each side.
You could relate buildings to workers...? If the building protects the worker and gives an effect then there is a reason to fight for buildings. However if there is only one active worker per lane then you have even more reason to fight for workers, this could lead to a resource war over worker slots :o Anyway, nice vid its cool to see such thought out mechanics.
Incredible work! Take all the time you need, don’t want this series to end too early!
One solution to the weak card + deck building problem could be to add a tier system of sorts for cards, then require a deck to contain a certain amount of cards of each tier.
Just had a thought as I was watching this and haven't fully thought it through: in the show fin puts his wizard into a building to research, what if the worker slots are in all lanes without buildings and workers can perform some generic work (like generating coins) until you place a building in that lane then the worker slot becomes specialised and the worker works in the building instead
Maybe there are two slots in each lane that do different things hence why the wizard replaces the corn man? Idk
I wonder if to include deckbuilding, creatures would require a certain amount of a particular land to be added to a field, so the strongest cards of an element can only be included if certain conditions are met
15 seconds? 2 views? Man's popping off
No but really in 6 minutes he 100xed it
@@user-fn8xi1jg4At this rate, in 24 minutes this video will have 150 billion views
A structure protecting a creature makes perfect sense for workers. Think of the wizard researching the raise the dead thing. That's basically worker placement if someone else can interrupt it by getting there and attacking, then replacing them.
The whole "token" thing in magic is the definition of a token being representative of a larger populous or idea. I've seen it used in other games like Stormbound for example.
One of my favorite interactions is summoning circle with the normal guy. Normal guy spawns in 3 dogs when he’s killed, so you can use the summoning circle to kill normal guy, then the 3 dogs to get enough health to spawn in MM. like 3 dogs aren’t enough to summon a demon, but if they all get into a trench coat they can
The awareness and desire to avoid, as you coined, "helicopter parent rules" is excellent. I've played plenty of conceptually good games that just become a drag to learn and teach because of dozens of arbitrary caveats
Hey, been watching the progress of you making this game for a minute now. I've got a suggestion that might help with the worker placement and deckbuukding.
In the way of deckbuilding, you could figure out a set of elements you want, similar to mtg, and create lands that would fit the overall element, example being frozen tundra or snow covered plains that act as different lands for different lanes, but still play to the ice theme of a deck. As for how many cards, you could go with a standard "x amount makes a deck" or you could use something similar to warhammer's point system for building armies so decks could be beefed up or shrunken down based on how heavy of hitters players want to use in their decks.
As for the worker system, you could give various creatures an effect that activates when it becomes a worker, and limit it to 3 worker stations per lane, one on either players' side of that lane and one where the two sides meet that gives a bigger passive boost than the ones closer to either player, making the worker spots a bit more coveted and get people to fight a little faster to try maintaining their control of the board state
I think it would be cool, like in your video you noticed the corn worker was blue, to have a deck designed to have a sabatage worker deck archetype; like in gwent. My idea like in gwent would be to have a card able to infultrate an enemy worker space and instead buff your own board, it will sabatage the enemy. Like a Dumb spy who thinks hes doing his job, but badly, and in the wrong space.
I have a few questions if you have a moment:
If we do deck creation based on element what sort of cards would be in each element?
Do you intend for each element to have a chunk of it's own weak cards and maybe each element having a single "boss monster?" (Perhaps this could be the only way to get a "boss monster" so it naturally limits how many boss monsters could be in a deck...)
My last thought is a single suggestion: To add onto the chaotic nature of Card Wars have you considered more cards that activate on draw like for example: a neutral creature is spawned in that will attack everything in a chosen lane or something deemed: "Wildfire" or "Flood" that can change the element of that part of the field. In this example it being changed to: "Fire" and "Water" fields respectively.
For deck building looking at something like Magic: The Gathering Jumpstart. and for deck building you have to take on of these prebuild lists and can customize the remaining cards.
An interesting idea might be to let structures take damage instead of workers. Because worker placement often has some level of differing rewards for placing workers in different areas, you could add worker “spots” to some structures that have additional effects, like adding abilities onto creatures of a certain type. Which would then cover the scene in the game where fin puts his wizard “in” the tower and that he is able to resurrect the pig afterwards.
What if the stat in the bottom left corner of lands instead of health was points towards a point buy system (like Canadian highlander) this would allow for some level of deck customisability while adding a unique way to balance lands, more powerful lands less powerful creatures. But this would be cause issues with the idea of land destruction.
one thing that might help satisfy the deck builders is letting them have a "signature card", they get to pick one card they like and add it to their deck, the rest are random
Okay so your turn order is messy. Can I suggest:
Standby Phase. Discard any number of cards you like. Each card earns one coin. Then draw. You may draw additional cards for 5 coins each.
After battle phase for each mob "Working" at their "Structure" earn one to 9 coins based on the economy. The Econemy is based on how many mobs on both sides of the field are working so having a mob work at your structure benefits both players. (1 structure/lane/side)
You must have a mob at your structure to avoid it being damaged. When you have no structure the opponent can attack the player directly winning the game. Your structures are your player health bar in that case
With this function if you have a Mulligan and discard most of your hand first round you can possibly draw a power card but at the same time putting workers on each of your structures (Hit Points) could give your opponent an advantage.
I know it would be a pretty big change but to reward more aggressive play and avoid having to wait to draw better cards when you only have bad cards in hand, maybe you could change the discard and draw system to one similar to Slay the Spire where you draw a certain number of cards at the beginning of each round and then discard all cards in hand at the end of the turn. You then reshuffle your discard pile into the draw pile whenever there aren't enough cards to draw. This would mean cards could be played multiple times but to balance it out, more powerful cards (and maybe all structures) could have an "Exhaust" tag which means they would go into an exhaust pile when played and can't be drawn again this game. I think this would also make deck building easier since it would lead to easier implementation of card synergies.
This is super cool! I'd love to try it at some point!
I do want to point out though: since you're insistent on making it show accurate, don't forget about how Finn's Wizard went to study and finished studying in his reaction phase. I don't know if you'd rule that as a card specific feature of say, Finn's Wizard was a worker that said something like, "If this card is in a worker slot in a library, Floop this card, during the next combat phase after this turn, you may resurrect a creature."
Just wanted to highlight a detail I thought might have been missed, but depending on the interpretation, you're probably good. I guess what I'm worried about is the purpose of buildings and their interactions with workers and combat.
Perhaps if a worker is in a building, that worker's HP is directly tied to the building as in: lose the cave with a pig inside = lose the cave and the pig (The cave was the only thing receiving damage.)
Admittedly, I'm kinda struggling to follow the detailed rules, but I've always been the type of, "learn by experience."
Good luck on the future endeavors!
What if the economy was a mechanic mostly tied to one element, like corn? Magic the gathering has counterspells which are frustrating and reward defensive play but they're tied to blue so they aren't in most decks and add variety to games
building take time to make money, require specific land types, get a bonus for land types. leave targeting to the attacker, leave defending with a creature a choice for the defender, exausted creatures can still make a defending attack but cant make an offensive attack.
If you get additional cards from your land there might be a way to hide them beneath lands (or beneath a land of a different type). Could explain the mazewalker in the show
I was just looking the game in the cardwars episode over again and it looks like you can play the game without playing many cards from your hand. Finn doesn't play any cards, and just uses the ones that are already in play at the beginning of the game. Perhapse a way of speeding up the game and making the games quicker is by including strategies that focus souly on working your current board state.
Earlier I mentioned that lands and structures should be separate entities as they seem to be in the show. Perhapse some structures could have activated abilities based on not playing cards from your hand? In the episode lets take 2 examples, that being the shack and the wizard tower. Lets say if a creature enters the shack they're effectively blinked like in MTG, but intern if they are a scholar type creature they can raise the dead. This can also explain why in a board wipe Finn's shack survives as it doesn't exist really. For the wizard tower, lets say that Finn was playing a magic or scholar deck and a part of that is that wizard tower shares the same state as the scholar so it also blinked out with it having an ability like on your 3rd or 4th turn of not playing spells from your hand you can take control of an opponent's monster?
Perhapse these suggestions could really help
For money balancing, you could add taxes. I think that might help and also the idea of it is pretty funny
I believe that is called upkeep
hey! first off, stellar job so far, the game is certainly very unique and chaotic, and that energy is very appreciated in the board game and especially card game space!
having never played your game (and therefore experienced the issues firsthand) but being a player that generally likes a more defensive slow burn playstyle, i feel like while it can be considered boring, it's a valid strategy that shouldn't be removed from the game. maybe just toned down?
i also think randomized decks are a delightfully chaotic idea very in line with the vibe of the game, and it forces players to adapt and creates fun moments, though it would also probably create the problem of extremely one-sided games entirely dependent on RNG, which isn't fun
taking both these observations into account, i propose that card types actually have preferred gameplans and effects, much like how in MTG Black and Red decks are aggressive while Blue and Green ones are more defensive and slow paced. there could be a neutral one, one that is focused on throwing out many low power cards, one that has many spells, one that is focused on economy, etc. you could keep the randomized cards, but players only receive random cards of the type of their choosing, still giving them some control over their general gameplan and an idea of their potential card pool.
i hope this insight is of any help, and once again great job with the game and the videos :)
i am impressed by how good you are at managing projects, you don´t get stuck in thigs you should fix later and focus in the most inmediat and important things
Your gameplay made me realize just how important mana systems are to some games. Many card games do this but MTG is the most popular game to point to. Basically every card has a associated cost meaning how powerful said card is. However, mana will always start out small and ramp up via play. This makes winning early play very difficult, but easy as the mana builds up. At the same time this forces verity of cards, as more cards became playable as the game continues. Also this forces maximizing synergy with cards as players are trying to win as fast as possible with a limited resource.
Card Wars is supposed to have one, but BigHoles keeps avoiding it for some reason.
For the structure combat I recommend taking a look at the location cards/mechanics from Lorcana. A location in Lorcana can passively generate value but is always vulnerable and can’t be defended. They also have an associated movement cost to move your characters to the location, some of the locations have some effect that applies to the characters who are there or care about having them there, similarly there are some characters who have effects that care about moving to locations.
The movement interactions can create some effects similar to in the show, like when Finn moves his pig into the cave or when his scholar goes to the tower to learn a spell…
i honestly cant tell if this whole project would be easier or harder if that single line from daddy daughter card wars was never uttered by jake
Daddy daughter card wars made me less interested in card wars. It turned it into a tabletop rather than an oddly holographic card game
5:58 i mean when you want to go steal something from someone inside a protected building, you first have take down the building's defenses, such as cameras and stuff, and only then can you steal something from the person inside.
It makes sense to me.
Exactly! I was genuinely caught off-guard when @BigHoles didn't put two and two together to realize - OH, They're INSIDE the structure! That's why it protects them!
What if instead of forced add ins based on your land, your forced add ins are dictated by your opponent. It adds more deck building options, while also adding chaos to your own deck.
You could do what aos did for the turn advantage, make each rounds roll to determine turn order.
First has a head start second has a chance for a early double turn. (Go second then first)
I don’t know if it’s a fun fix, but I think maybe a way to make bigger creatures rely on lands more would be to have them only playable if you have a certain land composition. I’m basically just thinking of Magic’s lands and mana requirements. C’est la vie. I know it’s a bit of a helicopter parent rule, but I think it’s not so bad as it encourages some deck building aspects. Alternatively, maybe these big creatures could be playable even with only a one land dip, but the more lands of their type you have in play, the stronger they are in some way.
Glad to see Globulin isn’t dead
So I have a rules question that idk if you'd covered in your devlogs already or if the show talks about it explicitly (I'm assuming no on the later), how specifically is the "Discard and Draw" phase of this game being handled, as well as is this handling consistent with the rest of the game's rules? Because I can see 3 major ways that this could be handled, and honestly I am more looking out to make sure that the game's rules are consistent with itself so as to not cause confusion for some areas of the game not behaving like other areas.
1) If an effect or rule tells a player to "do" multiple things, that player should try to complete as many of those things that they can do. So if a player needs to discard a card and then draw a card while they have 0 cards in hand, they'll fail to discard a card but will draw a card at the end of the effect/rule.
2) If an effect or rule tells a player to "do" multiple things, if that player fails to complete one of those things, the rest of the effect or rule will be ignored or skipped. So if a player needs to discard a card and then draw a card while they have 0 cards in hand, they'll fail to discard a card and the rest of the effect/rule is skipped.
3) Separate from the above 2 game behaviors, this specific "Discard and Draw" phase is being treated as an effect with a cost that needs to be paid. And so if the player cannot pay the cost, in this case discarding a card, then they cannot "trigger" the associated effect, in this case drawing a card.
Given your description of the game, both from past and this current devlog, the original idea/pitch of this system from you was that players would never gain a net positive on cards outside of external draw effects like the market and whatnot. However, the way you described the "Discard and Draw" phase of this game in this video made it sound like it behaved like the first option I listed above even though I know you described this phase not intending to work like this. (Idk, maybe I'm just MTG -pilled or somethin'?) I'm wondering if from the original source, b/c I haven't seen the show, if there is room for interpretation or not for the game allowing players with 0 cards in hand to still be able to draw a card during this phase, which I know with this implication would most probably throw a lot of the currently designed systems way out of whack b/c of the precedent(s) set before so I can understand not wanting to make this change this late now. If it is explicit that being able to discard at least 1 card is a requirement for drawing a card for this phase, or if it is decided that this something that should not be changed this late into development, then I'm wondering between options 2 and 3 which apply to this specific phase. Because if it is #2 then that sets a precedent that the rest of the game should follow this format. Otherwise, if it is #3, then it can be ambiguous if the rest of the game should follow either option 1 or 2, but not matter which is chosen it basically makes the "Discard and Draw" phase a bit of an abnormality b/c it is treated as a separate behavior.
I hope this input was both understandable and helpful, and I'm looking forward to the future of this project!
8:32 I think the reason you see bad cards in decks is because it’s what the player has access to. Like in the original episode, they’re playing kitchen table with stuff they had around- so Jake uses a WBM and probably gives better generic cards to Finn. The clip you use where a guy summons exodia to acid blast Jake’s entire board reveals the existence of deck construction- you COULD get 5 pieces of a combo from a random assortment of cards, but it doesn’t seem likely
Potential way to solve the first player advantage problem
On the first players first turn all their units and structures have half health and half attack until the end of their turn
To balance the player order, you could give second player a slight buff, for example in the game hearthstone the second player gets a coin (get 1 exstra mana for 1 turn) and 1 extra card to help the player counter what the enemy plays on their first turn.
you could maybe give player 2 an extra card or extra money to balance the game ?
Just an idea.
For deck building you could have a system similar to DandD’s point buy or; where when you build your deck you have have a pool of points, where each card is worth a different value of points and you need with in a certain range of cards eg. Between 20 and 30 cards
i hope these pieces are eventually more animated and similar to the show
I think having too many useless cards would be balanced by adding cards/mechanics that allow you to recycle cards or use them in other ways. Maybe there can be a way to "feed" cards from your hand to something as a way of drawing an extra card later? Like playing it in a certain zone, and at the start of your next turn it could be converted to money or something. But it might be easier to add cards to do things like this rather than game mechanics.
Like adding more cards to the decks that say things like "search your deck for a card and add it to your hand", I think they're referred to as "fetch cards".
maybe change discard and draw to discard if able then draw regardless of if you discarded. This would promote being aggressive with your last card instead of holding on to it though would probably need limitations
I know you've said drawing cards was too powerful an effect, but what about searching for another specific card? Like each of the corn knights allowing you to search for another copy. It'd be a way to refill your hand with less powerful cards, which then can act as raw card advantage the next time you discard/draw.
What if there was a tax element to the economy? For example what if at an unspecified point in the turn the player with the most amount of cash gets their cash cut in half by a game mechanic named "corrupt tax man". This would deincentiveze players from hording cash and allow for a bit of strategic planning around avoiding the tax man. Plus it would be super funny if just in the middle of the round there two players discussing how to avoid their taxes. Maybe even have the tax season be randomly decided by dice or coins to prevent abuse. I feel as if that would really add to the vibe of the game being an over complicated jumble of mechanics.
An idea for the Economy you could do is actually make a passive Economy stat! Both players start with 0 Economy and whenever they destroy a creature they gain +1 Eco and when destroying a Structure they gain +2 Eco, up to a limit. Then, once that player Resets their Cards they gain gold equal to their Economy stat. Losing a structure will lose you -2 economy, unless you have a worker occupying the land, in which you will keep your economy. Losing creatures would not harm economy since it would promote defensive playstyles. You could also make it to where whoever goes first cannot gain Economy on their first turn so they don't get a bigger snowball than they already do (although they wont actually gain gold until the start of their next turn)
One the things that could make the game less stale by using the economy and adding chaotic elements would be: when a card gets auctioned, the winner of the auction doesn't put the card in their hand, instead they gain acces to that card until the end of their opponents next turn. I belive this would make the auctioned card more unique, in the tounament gameplays i rarely saw the auctioned card being cast, just put in hand to be discarded in the next turn. It would become less of a late game tool and more of a incentive to cast the cards aquired
I would only argue that you shouldnt focus too much on what mechanics other games use. Like obviously that can be helpful but at the end of the day one of the things that made card wars so interesting is that most of its mechanics felt somewhat like ones weve seen before but also different. Like the lands dont act like most lands we see in other card games because they have various unusual ways of interacting with them. Honestly though I think the most important aspect is nailing the feel of the shows game, a game that encourages you to strategize and carefully build your deck and choose your moves but then is so massively, obnoxiously complex that even if youre obssesed with the game and study it, some weird pig card can completely throw you off your game
you could assign ranks to cards, and have quotas for how many of each card rank you can have in a deck, for example you might have to have 5 high rank cards, 10 mid and 20 low rank cards in a deck, it would still alow for control over a deck but will still infoce a variety of card streangths.
Maybe to mitigate tags cluttering the cards with text, each tag could have a little symbol instead? So like, Immobile tagged cards might just have a little ball and chain symbol instead.
What if you implement a rule where the player who goes first has one less card in hand then on the fist discard they draw two cards?
Honestly the original premise of the game is more an asthetic like Dungeons and Dragons if it had realtime world generation and effect placement.
I love your videos, I'm always looking forward to them. I've been occassionally chipping away at designing my own TTRPG in my spare time and your card wards videos have partly inspired me to start making my own devlog for it, earlier today I finished making the "animated" parts of it, now I have to edit it to add a few additional things.
I say "animated" because the footage is mostly just storyboardish doodles of myself in different poses as I talk my ass off about spreadsheets lmao ~
what it kind of starting to reminds of is Inscryption
maybe the defense mode could make them unable to do anything else since the creature needs to focus on defending so they cant use their ability or be used to gain money but in exchange they would take half damage or something
What an awesome idea have lands have mandatory creatures
maybe you could add some kind of resource attached to structures and make it so all of the most overpowered cards can only be used with said resource, so you would be able to pick all of the cards you want but you will have to strategize and use weaker cards before you can use anything overpowered
maybe some sort of sacrificing system where you play weaker cards and discard them to summon more powerful cards, or have cards that can only be summoned through the economy system
I personally really like the idea of mandatory cards for a deck type
A lot of TCGs have this already, kinda sorta, we just don't call them that
Try building a Pokemon TCG deck without Energy, Great Balls, or Professors
I think if the mandatory cards give similar effects as the cards above, it would actually free up the player to make more choices about their deck
You probably would have picked a basic "draw 2" card anyways, so if the game just gives it to you, you can spend your time thinking about what cool monsters you're going to play with
I always thought they were saying work REplacement, rather than workER placement, and that it meant Finn could switch around which unit was researching the spell to raise the dead
What if the mage kicking the corn off the worker spot is because some workers generate more but whoever is on the worker spot wants to keep there job so your own workers have to fight to take a worker spot from a worker
My thought works get a blue sheild so they can only be attacked by workers, could work to make it so workers can only attack or be attacked by workers
Another idea for deck building could be the gwent system.
Each deck is given a set amount of provisions and each card is given a provision amount.
You must then have a certain amount of cards in deck
This way you can include any cards you want but the best creatures Cost a lot of provisions and as such force you to use more low end creatures to meet the deck limit.
Each land can also come with bonus provisions based on how good they are.
Not sure if I explained it well but if you know gwent you know what I'm talking about.
Idea for making the first player/second player thing less drastic (but also not show accurate): Have some kind of a draw action always happen on the ENEMIES turn. That way the first player has the first turn, but it’s not a „good turn“, as you don’t have everything you need yet. The second player then has the second turn, but the first „full“ turn. From there, since you always do this thing (be it drawing cards or smthg) in your enemies turn, nothing changes.