More on the Fight cards

Today Tim lets us in on more about the fight cards and offers and opportunity for the founding members to input their ideas.(begin quote)

"Fight Cards

A strategic component in Fight Klub is the use of Fight cards and the Fight card stack. Heroes and Villains battle one another through a series of Fights to determine the winner of the game.

In most cases, Fight cards have a set of 3 skirmish numbers across the top of the card. Those numbers are compared against the skirmish numbers on the opponent’s Fight card, and whoever wins the most skirmishes wins that fight and scores their Fight card. There are many ways to enhance these numbers and there are many deck building strategies in constructing your Fight stack depending on the Hero or Villain you have chosen for your deck. This is important because Fight cards cause damage to the opponent, reducing the opponent’s Life. When you reduce your opponent’s Life to zero, you win the game. (And we do have a way to count damage in the game without dice or keeping score on paper.)

So, while there are many ways to manipulate the skirmish numbers on your Fight card to give you better fighting ability, what I want to talk about today is two types of Fight cards. We call them “global” Fight cards and “Signature” Fight cards. There’s a big difference between the two types. Global Fight cards can be used by any character (although only Heroes can use Hero Fight cards and only Villains can use Villain Fight cards). Which cards you choose to use will depend on which Hero or Villain you select and your deck strategy. Fight cards have a variety of choices in the mix of skirmish numbers, in which of the three slots the different skirmish types are located, and what type of bonuses they can provide. All of these come into play when selecting the Fight cards for your Fight stack. Obviously, with a large pool of Heroes and Villains there are many options in terms of how individual Heroes or Villains fight.

For example, a Hero strong in Spirit Energy might want to use different kinds of Fight cards than, say, a Hero strong in Physical Energy. Specific Heroes and Villains tend to fight with characteristics that match their identity. Thus, for them to fight effectively, the player has to build a deck that maximizes the characters unique “character.” As such, there are natural strategies for building decks around a character’s skill and the type(s) of Energy they generate in the game.

Signature Fight cards, however, are limited to one specific character. Only the Hero or Villain whose icon appears on the Fight card can use it. Each character gets a Signature Fight card. You don’t “have” to use your Hero’s or Villain’s signature card, but you will probably want to. Signature Fight cards give extra bonuses and usually provide twice the damage of a global Fight card. And in keeping with the player-friendly goals in Fight Klub, these strong Fight cards are not rare, they are uncommon, which means you can use up to 3 of them in your Fight stack (and you should get three copies for each of your Heroes and Villains with the purchase of a playset).

The cards in your Fight stack are a central mechanism for the game, and will really drive the card choices for the rest of your deck. (Oh yeah… there’s one other variation of Fight cards to talk about, but that’s the subject of another post.)

Okay, so now you know some Fight card basics. Here’s some “behind the curtain” information about Fight Klub, and a chance to participate in the game’s development :-)

Signature Fight cards will have an image of the Hero or Villain they represent, and a card title that fits that character (or some special ability for that character). But what about the global Fight cards? What kind of names should they get?

Well, before we go to press (hint: which won’t be too long), we thought it would be a good idea to see if FMs had suggestions on how these “global” Fight cards should be titled. It’s an opportunity for you to participate in the game development and see your naming system and suggestions incorporated on the very first cards of the game.

Think of most fights as having three types of characteristics for a Hero or Villain, which covers their mental ability, physical ability and spiritual ability. Fight cards contain an elegant and expansive matrix of skirmish numbers, reward tabs, damage markers and game text. But the global cards will be “available” to be used by many characters (albeit, in a manner where you want to build your deck to take advantage of a character’s unique personality). We want the titles of these global cards to emphasize their flexibility and the difference between the heavily character-oriented signature cards which carry titles from the films. We have placeholder titles on the global cards for development purposes, but we want a cool naming convention for these cards, and we’d like your input.

With several such cards in the universe from day one, and more coming in future expansions, we want a naming convention that won’t get repetitive (or boring) for the global fight cards. Titles are an important part of immersing players in the universe of Fight Klub. Since we don’t want global Fight cards to be linked to any particular character per se, we need a system that has a broad range but still captures the essence of Fight Klub and its large cast of potential combatants. Something that has the ability to expand as the game grows and we add more and more Fight cards to the playing universe.

Got any ideas? Here’s your chance to have some influence in a design element that will be with the game forever. Let us know what you’re thinking.

Tim

(end quote from Tim Ellington)

I wonder what ideas will come forth.