Your move, Fag! an article on dueling Card Game for war3.

IF your offended by the title of this thread, please note that I don't give a rat's ***.
The reason for it
The problem today on battle.net is there is alot of Magic and Yugioh games out there, however NONE of these games play at all like thier card game counterpart. There might be a good reason for it, and there might be the fact that these people are lazy I'm not really sure.
Ofcourse it simply goes down to the fact, that it is Possible, and would be very cool to have a Dueling Card game on war3.
The History
A card game would be no easy matter to make. But lets choice the simplest dueling card game I can think of that is not just War and requires a bit of stradegy is Warlord. The game is very, very simple. You each get half the deck and draw 5 cards into your hand,you place your cards in the order you wish to play them face down, then go. Each battle is then done, Ace is the strongest, 2 is the weakest. Who ever wins gets the card and places them in a seperate pile (not in your deck). You continue this until you are left with 1 card (if your playing with jokers which you shouldn't you'll have 2). The last card is the final battle. And determines who gets the spoils. If you win you get your cards X whatever value you chose (for argument sake a dollar). So if you won every battle except the last you'll only be paying the guy 2 dollars, but if you lost every battle you'll be paying $52 (quite a sum).
However at the other end of the spectrum is Duel Monsters (YuGiOh), with the GBA version having over 800 different cards some being traps and monsters and fusions and magic cards and Tentacle rapes (okay so I threw in one of those middle ones) and having more rules then is really neccesary this is a coders nightmare.
So the obvious move is to well make your own card game! Take the middle ground between the obscenely too simple, Warlord, and the absurdly complex YGO.
The Mechanics
Ofcourse the question comes to how to do it. First the simpliest, most fair method is to make sure each person gets the same amount and same type of cards. Unfortuantly, this screams symetry and using the same stradegies. But there is a cure, use the same type of cards but allow different monsters/summons/magic cards to be thrown and allowing you too chose.

The method that I would use is Items to represent your cards. And heroes to represent your dueler. "your hand" would be your inventory. Clicking on a card would most likely bring up a dialog with options related to the card.

The next issue is drawing cards, we could force you to always draw 1 card like Pokemon, which is considered one of its worst rules. But it does have its uses, for isntance you pick up 6 extremely powerful monster and you already have a monster out (In Pokemon your only allowed one monster out on the field), the next turn your forced to draw another card and forced to forfiet one of your cards. Ofcourse this still leaves your enemy pressed as soon as he kills your monster, he still has to worry about 5 other ones.
My idea on the matter is to institue a point system, and set an arbitrary point cap that your hand can reach. So you only have to draw when you want to, and toss when you want to, but if you have a very powerful hand let say at 35/40 and you draw your sixth card which happens to be your most powerful card which requires 8, the card will be dropped from your hand.

Their is an issue with used cards, games like war and pokemon after you use a card it goes to the bottom of your deck and can be used again. A much better method i think is a used card is sent to the used card deck like in warlord, or the Graveyard for you DM idiots.
Winning the Game?
There are many ways to win the game, the 3 most common is the A) defeat a set amount of the enemies monster (like Pokemon), B) until the guy runs of cards or C) Use a Life system.


There are problems with all of them.
The Defeat a Set number of monsters is ussually the worst method, as most games require you to play a card every turn or atleast have a monster on the field, if your only given your weakest cards this spells disaster for you, as you will be forced to play one of these garbage cards, and pray that you get your better cards. Though yes its about luck and card games have a strong hindering towards it, a duel game is mostly all about stradegy.
The second method actually seems to be very good, but then you come to the problem what about magic cards, as most magic cards require a special action to occur, you can't very well use these cards when your deck is dry. So you'd have to slash all magic cards to use this method.
C) A life system ofcourse leads to the question of when can you attack an opponents hit points, and how effective a monster will be against your life points. Also a life system adds a whole level of complexity as you now need to have hitpoints and damage point for your monsters.
I think C is probably the best method but, adds alot of complexity to the game.

More on this next update, tell me what you think.

no comments?

Im actually working on a map very similar to what you describe, i started recently so i havent gotten very far in it yet, but if i can get the basic concept to work it should be unique and interesting... Ill post details in a little while if i can get it to work a bit.

very interesting. but whose got the time when theyre busy with a yugioh TD?

I didnt read the whole thing, but it would be neat to model a flat plane and skin it for cards, although quality might be too low. Items will work too. I just hope anything wont be too complicated for those noobs out there that dont read and will just quit the game.

Is there a way to change the items icon to that of a units or spell, you cant do it WE, but Im sure theres gotta be a way.

My most major concern is balancing out the spells... In mine, which for now is called "Summoner", revolves mainly around summoning units and attacking but there will also be offensive and defensive spells. Making sure there isnt one ultimate spell will be hard.