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.