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.)