Beta

When Factions became playable, I made this blog. Since then there has been some Alpha testing with barely legible playtest cards. This phase ensured that the game could be played smoothly, that there weren't any big gameplay holes, and that it was fun. Our strategic understanding of the game took off during this phase and I was able to tweak costs and curves based on practical experience. There was also a lot of balancing to be done, though this was not a primary concern.

With some testing completed, I was able to cut down our enormous and complex card pool to a more palatable 189 cards. I called this setlist Beta and put together some much more attractive playtest cards. Some color on the cards really helps distinguish them, which is important given the number of cards in front of you at a given time. Beta testing has just begun and there have already been some minor rules modifications and power level changes.

One of my main concerns going into Beta was that game length might be problematic. During Alpha, we barely understood how the game worked and were inundated in complexity. In Beta, things are smoother. Turns go quicker, it's easier to size up the board, and this gives you more time to think about strategic plays. Beta testing has so far been great fun and I'm looking forward to an enjoyable process.

Updates

Factions is currently in playtesting mode. We've been playing some different style strategies and working out issues. One major problem has been game length. There's a lot to think about, so our turns have gotten faster since we've gotten comfortable with the cards and mechanics, but even considering we're just figuring things out it is clear that games take too long. I'm fine with the game reaching the 1 hour mark if it's a long and epic match, but we had one game last 3 hours. To deal with the pace issue, all of the starting cards have been buffed substantially, locations notwithstanding (they're awesome anyways).

The Faction has been changed to include a lumber camp and 2 workers from the start of the game which really speeds up the build order. A barracks first build is now possible since they cost 2 wood, and on the heels of a recent buff to light infantry it's a build that certainly needs testing. The Capital is the other big place pacing has been changed. All Capitals except Azji, which might be broken regardless, can produce 2 riches on the first turn. This means that you get a worker and man at arms with your barracks first opening. Hmmm. The Capital also ramps up faster now which makes it an alternative to getting two silver mines in the first 5 builds.

There have been all sorts of mechanical changes to the game as well. Fortifications were not restricted to your build order for a brief stint, and Technologies are no longer tied to the build. Fortifications are still separate from Buildings because they can be added to the build order more than every 5 turns. Fortifications may become a Building subtype in an effort to reduce the number of card types before Beta, but there are other options for that issue as well.

The three decks have been reduced to 20 cards each (maximum copies of a card overall: 3, per deck: 2). We are liking this size at the moment. There's just enough consistency and little enough size to make each unique. The options open to you for the three decks are very interesting. Early playtesting saw just early-, mid-, and late-game decks. Since then we have evolved substantially to see decks that are unique strategies or decks contingent on whether you are behind or ahead.

The whole goal of playtesting is to get the game polished enough for others to play it. I will be releasing the set files for a Factions CCG Beta when the game is ready and the card lists are sufficiently pruned. Pleasantly, the game is fun and things are coming along nicely. I'll conclude with a few cards that reflect the pacing changes:

Kingdom Faction
Kingdom Faction
You may use Kingdom cards.
Start with a manor, lumber camp, 2 workers, and builder in play.
All your nobles have +2 support and “T: Produce 1”
Starting Control: 20

Builder
Kingdom Builder
Each turn you may build the top building in your build order as long as it costs only riches and or wood.
Once each turn, you may research a technology.
You may research one technology on your turn.
3: This is level 2. It may build the top building in your build order regardless of the resources in its cost.
8: This is level 3. It may build twice. It must be level 2 before being level 3.

Galam
Kingdom Capital
Growth 1 (At the start of each of your turns, put one energy counter on this.)
1 energy counter: Produce 2
2 energy counters: Produce 3
4 energy counters: Produce 4
4: Draw a card.
Maximum energy counters: 4

Oh, and Reckless Illiteracy, the ignore words action, is the only banned card. It was far too broken and too wild for an easy fix. Such a pity. Maybe it will return someday.

Card Types

Cards in the Factions CCG belong either in a Build Order or a Discipline Deck. There are other cards, like Locations, Factions, Capitals, and the like, but those have been covered in the Starting Cards post. Here I will be talking about more mundane breeds of card. I'll just jump right in.

Cards that fit into your Build Order include Buildings, Fortifications, and Technologies. Buildings are the staple of your progression in a game. You start play with a Builder card that constructs a building on each of your turns.

Builder
Kingdom Builder
Each turn you may build the top building in your build order as long as it costs only riches and or wood.
3: This is level 2. It may build the top building in your build order regardless of the resources in its cost.

Buildings are permanent additions to your civilization. They have a variety of roles, including gathering resources, training military units, and advancing your technology more quickly than normal:

Lumber Camp
Economic Building
Cost: 0
You may move workers here.
At the start of each of your turns produce 1 wood for each worker on this.
Worker limit: 5

Mahout Lines
Military Building – Stable
Cost: 2 and 4 wood
-4 support
Requires: A noble
War Elephant: 5, T: 5/5/2, -3 support, after assigning lethal damage to a unit, further damage dealt by this may be reassigned to another unit in the same battle.

Blacksmith
Economic Building
Cost: 1, 1 stone and 1 wood
When this comes into play, search your deck for up to 2 technologies that require blacksmith and put them under this.
T: Pay for and put into play a technology under this.

A Building might also be a Fortification. These count as Buildings and still require you use your turn's build to construct them, but they work a little differently. Fortifications are discussed in the post on combat.

Buildings have costs and requirements that need to be met in order to build them. Every turn, you flip the top card of your Build Order over, and if it is a building, you may pay for it and put it into play. Buildings can make resources and units, and use any other abilities that they might have. They can do this right away, but if they make a unit, it cannot be used until the start of your next turn. When a Building is built, you put it in an area with your other buildings. You may arrange them by function, the order in which they were built, or any criterion you judge useful.

If when you flip the top card of your Build Order over, there is one other type of card it can be other than a Building. If you reveal a Technology before your Building, you may pay for it and put it into play. If the next card is another Technology, you are doing something wrong. You ordinarily get a maximum of one technology from your Build Order on each of your turns.

Technologies are cards that either upgrade existing cards or provide new abilities. The most notable Technologies are those with the subtype “unit,” meaning they allow you to train a new type of unit.

Crossbowman
Military Technology – Unit
Cost: 4 and 1 wood
Build at foot archery range
Requires: Blacksmith
Crossbowman: 3, T: 2/1/2, -1 support, range 3.4

Unit Technologies, while the most prolific, are hardly alone. Technologies might unlock an ability for a unit.

Puncture Bolt
Military Technology
Cost: 4 and 1 wood
Your crossbowmen may do a ranged attack at -0.1 that also deals 2 damage to another unit of the same type.

They might also help you economically.

In-Shaft Housing
Economic Technology
Cost: 3
The worker limit on each of your mines is 1 higher.

Buildings and Technologies are either Military or Economic. This has no inherent effect, but these attributes may be meaningful to other cards.

These card types are tied to your faction. Each of these example cards is part of the Kingdom Faction's technology tree. Sometimes Buildings, Technologies, and Fortifications are also tied to your Discipline. You still create them from your Build Order, but they require that you have access to the appropriate Discipline in order to use them. Other Discipline cards are not found in your Build Order, but your Discipline Decks. These include Characters, Actions, and Assets.

Characters are like special units or heroes. They sometimes have a unit type, which serves as a requirement for playing them. If a Character enters combat, it does so with a particular unit type. These rules relating to Characters are covered in the post on combat. In essence, Characters are units that are not tied to a specific Building. They have all of the attributes of a unit: Cost, Attack/Defense/Speed, and a support requirement. You may play them from your hand on your turn while you are not attacking and while no other card is yet to resolve. They cannot attack the turn you play them, but may use other abilities.

Ndaow, Lethal Sniper
Espionage Character
Cost: 5
Set 0 (You may play this card upside down for 0. You may flip it at any time by paying the card’s cost minus the 0. When you flip it, it is as though you just played the card.)
Range X.6 (Instead of fighting normally in combat, this may attack dealing X damage at 6 speed. It cannot hit locations.)
X is the D of the targeted unit.
When this uses its ranged attack, set it.

Actions are single-use cards that provide an effect. Actions can be played at any time and resolve before any card already in play, regardless of whether that card has resolved or not. They are put in your discard pile after use.

Tamale Break
Martial Action
Cost: 2
Any number of your units cannot attack this turn. They get +1A +1D on your next turn.
Use this only on your turn.

Assets are cards that stay in play after you play them. In fact, they behave largely like Buildings and Technologies in this respect, though you play them from your hand instead of your Build Order. Assets sometimes have lifespans, but often stay in play until removed by another card or ability.

Maphack
Cost: 11
Set 1 (You may play this card upside down for 1. You may flip it at any time by paying the card’s cost minus the 1. When you flip it, it is as though you just played the card.)
You may look at any hidden card: set cards, hands, even decks, just don’t reorder them.

There is another, little-used card type that has been created so far, and that is the Add-On. Add-Ons can be put onto a card type specified on their typeline, and are then treated as though they are part of that card. What I mean is that an Add-On's text is considered to be part of the text of the card it is attached to.

Reactor
Development Add-On – Building
Cost: 2
1, T: Ready this, use this only once per turn.

(Note: I sometimes erroneously use “ready” to represent “untapping.” Like I have mentioned, there are symbols that represent the actions of “tapping” and “untapping” in Factions.)

Combat

The goal in Factions is to capture all of your opponent's locations. To reduce their control and make them your own, you need to attack them with units and characters. I will be explaining combat using an example, and then will expand on some aspects of it.

First, we have the participants in combat. These are generally just units and characters. Units are created using buildings and technologies, while characters are played from your Discipline Decks. Characters count as units, but units are not necessarily characters. All units that can engage in combat, meaning units without the 'Noncombat' text, have three statistics used when fighting. Attack, Defense, and Speed, abbreviated with A, D, and S respectively. Attack is the amount of damage the unit deals in combat, Defense is the amount of damage the unit can withstand, and Speed determines the order in which units deal damage. Units, but not characters are made using military buildings, like this one:

Infantry Barracks
Military Building – Barracks
Cost: 2 wood
Man at Arms: 1, T: 1/1/2, -1 support

You can pay 1 and use this building to make a Man at Arms, by somehow indicating that it has been used (I think this is how Spoils got around the patent on tapping). When you do this, you put a counter on the building to represent your unit. Some technologies with the subtype “unit” enable buildings to make more than one unit. In these cases you use the building as normal and put the unit counter on the technology instead of the building that created it. An example of such a technology is Swordsman:

Swordsman
Military Technology – Unit
Cost: 2
Build at infantry barracks
Requires: Blacksmith
Swordsman: 1, T: 2/1/2, -1 support

Time for an example: You have three men at arms and a swordsman. I have two men at arms and a character. Lets make the character this guy:

Ginda, Lightwalker
Security Character
Cost: 3
This is invulnerable to, and untargetable by, all things with set.
3/4/2

You decide to attack one of my locations with all of your guys. First we go to the highest speed. Since all units in this example have a speed of 2, they act at the same time. We each choose which units our units will be hitting in combat. I will have my men at arms fight your men at arms and my character will fight your swordsman. These choices determine where the damage my units deal is going. You have two men at arms fight my men at arms and your third men at arms will fight my character. There is an important rule to make note of now. When a character is in combat, its controller choses a unit type that they control in the same battle. That character cannot be assigned damage until each unit of the chosen type is assigned damage. This means that your units cannot gang up to take down my character until the two men at arms are dealt with. So, having chosen to assign the damage from two of your men at arms to mine, you have a swordsman and a man at arms left. You choose to assign the man at arms' damage to Ginda, and the swordsman's damage to the location you are attacking. You cannot assign damage to a location until damage has been assigned to all defenders.

Now, after all units at S2 have chosen where their damage will go, the damage is finally assigned. My men at arms and two of your men at arms trade damage. They each deal 1 damage because they have 1A, which is just sufficient to kill their targets with 1D. Two of your men at arms have traded with mine. Your third man at arms deals 1 damage to Ginda, which is not enough to kill her. Because she has 4D, it would require 4 damage to destroy her. Ginda deals 3 damage to your swordsman, which is more than enough to kill it. Your swordsman deals 2 damage to my location. Finally, we remove the destroyed units from play. Both of my men at arms, two of yours, and your swordsman, have all been killed so we take the counters off of the appropriate buildings and technology to reflect this. I put 2 counters on one of my locations to represent the damage.

Both surviving units, Ginda, Lightwalker and your man at arms, cannot attack or defend until the start of their controller's next turn. Indicate this in whatever way you choose that is mutually understandable (You might move the counters off of the card they belong to, just next to them). Ordinarily, you can attack on three occasions during your turn, at any time. Units generally cannot participate in more than one offensive.

If in the battle you had been attacking with a unit with higher speed, a 2/2/3 for example, you would have been able to destroy one of my men at arms before it had the chance to act. After every unit at a given speed value has chosen where it is dealing its damage, damage is dealt and destroyed units are removed from play before the next speed value is considered.

There are a few more considerations related to combat that I will present before I conclude. There are characters that have a unit type, like this one:

Godra, Squadron Leader
Kingdom Martial Character – War Chariot
Cost: 3 and 1 wood
When you make a chariot, this gets +1A this turn.
2/2/4

These characters have a few special considerations. This cannot be played unless you can make War Chariots. Also, when it comes to characters with unit types, you do not have the liberty of choosing which type of unit must be assigned damage before the character can be. It must be the unit type that the character is.

Another type of card, in addition to unit-creating structures and characters, that can have an effect on combat is the fortification. A fortification is a special type of building that you put on a location when it is built. The fortification has A, D, and S, and is counted as always defending that location. It may defend any number of times. An example of a fortification is:

Guard Tower
Fortification – Tower
Cost 1 and 2 stone
Range 2.4 (Instead of fighting normally in combat, this may attack dealing 2 damage at 4 speed. It cannot hit locations.)
0/5/0

There are two more types of combat you can engage in, in addition to simply attacking locations. The first of these is reinforcing locations. You may, after you have captured a location and before it has been dealt any damage, attack that location to increase its control from 0 (where you got it in order to gain control of it. Locations cannot fall below 0 control) to its maximum control. Units increase the control of the location by an amount equal to their A.

The other type of combat is attacking the enemy city. Normally buildings other than fortifications are safe and do not see combat. That is, until a player has a citadel. If your opponent controls a citadel, you may attack it. Combat goes normally, but instead of a location behind the defenders, it is their citadel. If you would deal any damage to the citadel with any number of units, the defending player must destroy one of their own buildings after combat. Even if lots of units deal a lot of damage, only one building will be destroyed. This is per attack though, so one can attack a citadel in each of the three attacks on their turn.

Starting Cards

Each player in the Factions CCG starts the game with several cards in play. These are primarily their Faction, Discipline, and Capital. These cards may dictate other cards that start in play. I will go over each of these cards and then include some information on other cards that start the game in play. Before I start, I must mention that the cards I will be presenting carry with them the most rules and complexities. Factions CCG is somewhat complicated, and this post will reinforce that, but in most other areas the game is much more intuitive than here.

The Faction card is one of the most important cards in the game. It tells you what type of cards you can use in your Build Order. At this point there is only one faction that is playable, the Kingdom Faction.

Kingdom Faction
Kingdom Faction
You may use Kingdom cards.
Start with a manor and builder in play.
All your nobles have +2 support and “T: Produce 1”
Starting Control: 20

Lets walk through this information. The first line is the name of the card, Kingdom Faction. The second line is the typeline. It displays what type of card this is. In this case, it is the same as the name of the card. There can be other factions that use Kingdom cards, and all of them will have the Kingdom Faction as their type, though their names will differ. The next three lines are the abilities this card has. First, it tells you what type of cards you can use in your Build Order. There are also cards that belong to Disciplines that are tied to the Kingdom Faction specifically. This ability allows you to use those cards as well. Next, we have the cards that you start with: a Builder, to construct a building on each of your turns to further your Build Order, and a Manor. The Manor is your starting building, so it has several abilities and statistics. I will be dealing with buildings in a future post, but I will show you the Manor now to confuse you.

Manor
Economic Building – Manor
Cost: 2 and 5 wood
Support: +6
T: produce 2
Worker: 1, T: Noncombat, -1 support
Noble: 5, T: Noncombat, -2 support, when this is at a manor or castle, that building is a citadel
Noble limit: 3
Fortification limit: 2

Back to the Faction: the third ability is something that makes your nobles very useful. This ability exists as a base power level, creating the opportunity for other factions with different starting cards and control. Abilities on future Factions can be balanced by increasing or decreasing the power of their abilities relative to this one. Finally, the card displays your starting control. Control is a number that your locations have, which tells you how much damage they can withstand before being captured. If you have control over no locations, you lose the game. This control value means that you begin the game with locations in play with the sum of their control equal to twenty.

In addition to starting with a Faction that tells you what cards you can use in your Build Order, you also start with a Discipline that tells you what cards you can use in your Discipline Decks. Disciplines are more simple than Factions, in that they only state which Disciplines you can derive cards and have an ability.

Greed
Discipline
You may use Espionage and Development cards in your deck.
Growth 1 (At the start of each of your turns, put one energy counter on this.)
T: Remove 3 energy counters from this: Target player loses 1 of any resource. They cannot spend it in response. You get that resource now if it’s your turn, or at the start of your next turn. Remove all energy counters from this

Of the three main cards that you start with, the final one is the Capital. The Capital might have abilities like those found on the Faction and Discipline. Usually though, the Capital's abilities just provide an income and a way to draw cards.

Galam
Kingdom Capital
Growth 1 (At the start of each of your turns, put one energy counter on this.)
T: Produce X where X half the number of energy counters on this, rounded up.
4: Draw a card.
Maximum energy counters: 6

Before I wrap this up, I'd like to include a Location card as well.


Waddi
Location – Desert City
All: Your maximum hand size is increased by 1.
Day: This cannot be attacked by a number of units fewer than the number of cards in your hand.
Night: T: Each player draws a card.
Control: 10

Locations have both a day side and a night side. Text labeled “All” is on both sides. During the day, you may use abilities only on the day side, and at night only night abilities are active. The game starts as either day or night, the player who goes second chooses, and after every player has a turn with their Locations as either day or night, they switch. All locations in play are on the same side (day or night) at the same time. A location also has a control value, in this case 10. When you reduce an enemy Location to 0 control, you turn it around so it faces you instead of its previous owner. When you control all of the Locations, you win the game, so Locations are quite important.

(Note: I use the letter T in the cards I've been showing to indicate use of a card. This is because I create new cards using the awesome program, Magic Set Editor 2, and T means tap in magic. In Factions, there is no term for "tap" or "untap" like there is in Magic. Instead there are symbols representing these two actions. You will get to see the symbols when I have my act together enough to include images.)

Disciplines

The Build Order is the part of the Factions CCG that creates a board consisting of the buildings that each player controls, and the units that those buildings produce. If the game were played using just the Build Orders, it would be a skillful game of switching technology to counter your opponent's build. There is an element of luck in Factions, though. This is your Discipline deck. Discipline cards will be more familiar to those who have played other card games in the past. A discipline deck is shuffled, is constructed using cards from one or two of five different disciplines, and provides your hand.

The primary difference between your Discipline deck and your deck in another card game, like Spoils or Magic: the Gathering, is that in Factions its role is defined as part of a larger game. Your deck needs to compete with your Build Order for resources and needs to be relevant over the course of a long game that starts with just a few units and can end with large numbers of cards and resources in play. These factors are addressed by splitting the Discipline deck into three parts, each consisting of forty cards. At any time, you may switch from one of your decks to another, but you cannot return to a deck that you have already used. Whether each deck should have early, mid, and lategame considerations, or if it should be split into a deck for each of those periods is up to the player. One might want each deck to counter a particular strategy the opponent might try, or one might want each deck to have its own theme to keep the opponent guessing.

The Discipline deck cards are divided into five different Disciplines, each with certain characteristics and tendencies. These are Development, Espionage, Martial, Research, and Security. Development cards help you grow. They provide resources, additional builds, buffs to your units, and benefits for economic buildings and workers. Espionage assists your faction by interfering with the opponent. It uses a lot of set cards (Set is a mechanic that I will be addressing comprehensively in the near future. You can see how it works on the card at the bottom of this post) to be sneaky, provides removal that can target units and buildings, and can force players to discard. The Martial discipline is all about warfare. It contains cards that give combat-related buffs, has efficient and strong characters, and can deal damage outright. Research helps your faction accumulate knowledge. It draws cards, sets cards, has some strange tricks, and provides lots of utility. Security is concerned with defending you. Security cards can increase your control at locations, prevent damage, enhance defenders, and protect your cards against all manner of threats.

Discipline cards need to be equally attractive to players as using cards from the Build Order. Because a great deal of weight is placed on advancing technologically and producing units and resources from buildings, which are functions normally associated with the Build Order, various techniques are needed to make Discipline cards competitive. The three deck system is one of these techniques, designed to keep Discipline cards relevant at all times in a game. There are also some mechanics, which I will be presenting soon, that make Discipline cards easier to use while also worrying about carrying out the Build Order. Of course, the best way to make the cards attractive to players is to make them flashy and awesome. Here is a card that is easy to understand, to illustrate how Discipline cards are more exciting:

Reckless Illiteracy
Research Action
Cost: 7
Set 2 (You may play this card upside down for 2. You may flip it at any time by paying the card’s cost minus the 2. When you flip it, it is as though you just played the card.)
This turn, ignore whatever words you want on target card.

The Build Order

The first mechanic of the Factions CCG that I will visit is the Build Order. Build Order is a common term in Real Time Strategy (RTS) games like StarCraft or Age of Empires. It is present in Factions because my game is styled like a RTS in many respects, while still being turn based and played with cards instead of a PC. A Build Order in an RTS is like a road map for what you are going to make. Some units and buildings explicitly require another building, like in StarCraft, you need the Ultralisk Cavern to make Ultralisks. Other times, you don't explicitly require something, but that thing is strategically necessary. In the case of the Ultralisks, you don't want to be making them off of one or two gas, and often not even three. So the Build Order tells you that you need X and Y before you get Z, in order to maximize your strategy's effectiveness.

To represent the Build Order, Factions has a deck called, obviously, your Build Order (you have another deck too, which we will get to later). A randomized deck, like the deck in a more traditional card game, would not fit the function of the Build Order, so in Factions you stack your deck (well, this deck). You have a builder card that, every time it's your turn, allows you to pay for and put into play the top building in your Build Order.

Another important feature of Build Orders in RTS games is that they are fluid. If you see that your opponent is rushing you, you can put down an extra barracks early on to produce the units needed to defend. Your build order doesn't dictate your play, it is just your plan, and your play can deviate from that plan. To represent this facet of Build Orders, in Factions you get to stack your deck again every five turns. The five buildings you have selected to build in your next five turns (also up to 5 technologies, but we'll get to that later), are called your “Active Stack,” and are separated from your Build Order for convenience. Every time you stack your Build Order, you may add or remove any number of cards from it. This means both that you have the entire range of strategic options available to you in every game, and that you probably want to have most, if not all, of the cards.

Your Build Order is at the heart of the Factions CCG, and it presents a plethora of strategic decisions that need to be made. First and foremost, your Build Order must have a plan for how it will win the game. Of course it can deviate from that, but initially you must have a goal in sight. This is because, particularly at the start of the game, you want your Build Order to be a finely tuned machine, working at maximum effectiveness. If you are going for a midgame where you intend to build a lot of Knights, for example, it might slow you down unnecessarily if you go building an Archery Range in your first few builds.

Your Build Order is also hidden information, which adds another important strategic interaction. Your opponent can see every building that you have built, but not the buildings that you intend to build. They also are locked in to a set number of buildings, at most five, before they are able to respond to what decisions their opponent is making. This means that your choices of which information to reveal when can allow you to send signals and bluff. For example, I might get a barracks and a technology related to unit production at the end of my first Active Stack to scare you into putting lots of military buildings and technologies in your second Active Stack. I could follow this up with a couple of economic buildings, a fortification to defend against your response, and some more economic buildings, and come out of the whole exchange with an economic advantage.

Introduction

The Factions Customizable Card Game (CCG) is a homebrew card game. It uses cards unique to the game to create both a field of play and cards that affect that board. Unlike many other CCGs, Factions requires that you possess most of the cards to play the game. If I were marketing the game, this would be an obstacle. Not an insurmountable one, but a hurdle nonetheless. It's all moot though, because at this point I'm not marketing the game, and if you need a specific card for your game you should just make it. To play Factions, you also will need a bunch of counters, I use Risk pieces, and some patience as the game can take long and is strategically intricate. I intend to present the Factions CCG bit by bit. I will first talk about some game mechanics, then present the rules, and subsequently branch out to various topics.