And I ordered a bunch of laser etched dice labeled 4, 5, and 6, twice each from Chessex:

I went with black borders, ’cause they’re going in black-backed card sleeves. That also allowed be to achieve a pseudo full-bleed effect with the art. I mocked some up, but decided not to go with crazy beveled borders partitioning everything off (like a magic card) and just used a plain white box for the text. The typeface is Adobe Caslon (because it came with Photoshop CS and has all the ligatures and shit). I did the titles in italics so I could use the sexy swash-caps. Notice how utility/laziness drives my design?

The other big change was to duplicate all the essential information at both ends so that you can hold the card either way to facilitate faster play (once you know the spells and maneuvers well enough that you don’t have to read them).

I’ve also assigned new combat values to each of the spells, sometimes based on feedback, sometimes based on whim. Some of the numbers are intentionally experimental (Justice is 11, and Blank is 0) so that we’ll just have to play them and see what happens.

Here are a few sample cards so you don’t have to go digging for them:

Poor Void Pocket, one of the few spells that got stuck with 8 point text. I’ll have to get some help from somebody to tighten up the wording.

And while you’re helping me with the wording, here’s another mouthful. Maybe it just needs to do somethnig else that’s simpler. So many options when you’ve got dragons getting zapped by lightning.

• PlayingCardsIndia.com: Custom Printed Card Games
• Colortone: Game Cards
• Chessex: Custom Dice
• Smith Wood Products Ltd.
• Cartamundi Playing Cards
• Yaquinto
• De Lano Services

I’ve solicited feedback from a few players and compiled the results in the list below. Next step is to track down the odd men out on the few where there were large discrepancies between the suggested values (in bold). I actually find it re-assuring that we are disagreeing about the values of the spells, if it was easy to evaluate the value of cards (magic bullet +2 vs. fire breath +3) then the game would be pretty boring.

Oh, and I’m also re-adjusting the maneuvers (excluding Flight) to have combat values that more closely reflect their worth. It breaks the Page, Knight, Queen, King order of the original tarot cards, but I’ll live.

• Dive (4)
• Counter (10)
• Inferno (8)
• Wingover (6)
• Wander Cure (8,8,6)
• Inspiration (7,7,7)
• Void Pocket (5,5,5)
• Healing (9,9,5)
• Halt (3,8,5)
• Foresee (6,5,5)
• Unite (4,3,4)
• Teleport (2,3,?)
• Strength (8,7,6)
• Escape (7,3,?)
• Wheel of Life (4,9,1-3)
• Justice (10,9,8+)
• Psychic Whip (6,7,7)
• Drain (6,8,7)
• Temperance (5,7,4)
• Pact (7,5,5)
• Charged Lightning (6,3,1-3)
• Scrying (7,5,8+)
• Illusion (5,8,6)
• Fire Storm (6,9,5)
• Reckoning (6,3,4)
• Renewal (1,3,1-3)
• Blank (0,3,5)

Healing

…

Halt

The thought here was that this spell is extremely circumstantial, therefore less powerful. Were it a higher value the tendency would be to wait as long as possible to cast it, holding out for a great spell to counter, but knowing that you could always fall back on using for defense. Then again, maybe that would be better than the current “Halt anything that moves” strategy, since you don’t want to get screwed by having to defend yourself with a 3.

Teleport

…

Escape

…

Wheel of Life

…

Temperance

…

Pact

In a game where a common tactic is to flush low cards out of your hand on attack (where you aren’t as likely to get hurt) and save the better cards for defense, being able to consolidate a lot of power into one concentrated attack is often what it takes to do significant damage. But it was also pointed out that Pact, presuming that you succeed in doing damage, only gives you a 1 or 2 point life advantage. And that’s in 2 player, with more players it’s worse. It also totally sucks on defense. Compare this to Strength, which gives you +3 for free, in any situation, and the value of this card drops more.

Charged Lightning

This spell is still in the works, and requires further playtesting. There are certain setups in multi-player where the latest version could allow you to attack each of your opponents a couple times. But, given the rarity of these situations the value should probably be on of the lower suggested values. Its cousin Fire Storm can more often be used in a directly offensive manner.

Scrying

…

Illusion

…

Fire Storm

…

Reckoning

Here’s another one that’s significantly more powerful in multi-player. In single player it’s justa weak Unite/Teleport, in multi-player it’s a free pot-shot at everyone else without having to get close to them. So, which case do we use for evaluating it? Clearly the lack of 2 player utility, and the no-flying penalty were considered heavy enough penalties to bring down the value by the majority of those interviewed.

Blank

This one’s tough because nobody really agreed, except that it ought to be low. I guess it just depends on who has a permanent effect in play.

1. Masters should be protected from their minions.
2. Minions should be weakened.
3. Masters should have some level of control over and/or interaction with their minions.
4. Other dragons should be able to capture a minion and become its master.
5. Minions need their own goal, if not re-gaining autonomy and potentially winning, then something else.

Here goes an attempt at some rules…

Instead of being eliminated, dragons with zero or fewer life remaining become the minion of the dragon who defeated them, known hereafter as the dragon’s master. If a player loses his/her last life on his/her own turn, that turn ends immediately.

• Upon losing their last life stone, defeated players give their new master the last life card to be placed sideways under the master’s life card(s) as a token of fealty.
• The new master gives the minion a card from his/her hand to be the minion’s new life card. The master places life stones on the card equal to its value.
• When that life is lost, the dragon who damaged the minion last becomes the minion’s new master, granting the new minion a new life card. A minion dragon who takes its own last life becomes its own master using a life card from the player’s own hand.
• A minion cannot initiate an attack against his/her master (though a Counter maneuver is allowed in defense).
• Masters can cast cauldron spells at the begin/end of their minion’s turn.
• When a minion draws a new hand, before looking at it he/she first gives it to his/her master who may exchange one card in his/her hand for one card in the minion’s hand.

Let’s see if these rules accomplish what I set out to do (although only playtesting will really tell).

Masters are protected from their minions, except from spells and from minions who get sick of their masters dumping low combat cards on them and decide to counter attack. I think that’s fair play, getting rid of low cards is an important part of the game, half-heartedly roughing up one’s minion is a legitimate strategy, as is turning around and smacking one’s master with a Counter.

Minions are weakened by their masters cherry picking from their hands. The old -1 penalty on attacks was too hard to remember to apply, I think this will be even more of a hindrance (masters will likely dump their 3s, 4s and 5s onto their minions in exchange for high cards or spells, although a more diplomatic player than I might be more clever). This also makes the above mentioned Counter maneuver far less likely.

Masters have a lot of control of their minions, in both seeing and stealing from their minion’s hands. Combine that with the ability to cast spells during their minion’s turn and having a minion is going to be pretty cool, you’ll never forget who your minion is, and players will be fighting over them.

Giving a minion a life card from what’s left-over after a presumably high card was used to defeat them means it’s likely to be a smaller card. This reduced life, the added power granted by having a minion, and the minion’s typically reduced will to live, means that minions are likely to exchange hands. That, and the only current way to regain control of one’s self is to commit hara-kiri via a spell, so teetering on the brink is the ideal state, if you’re a minion.

As I just mentioned, the goal of a minion at this point is to cast a Charged Lightning or Pact* and defeat yourself to become your own master. A dubious goal, and not easily achieved, but some of the feedback I received was that it’d suck if a dragon that you already defeated came back and won the game. So it shouldn’t happen very often at all, that way it’ll be cool when it does, so players might forgive the unfairness. Besides, can you think of a more twisted game mechanism than regaining autonomy by casting a Pact (with the Devil), The Devil being the original tarot card behind that spell?

* I think only these two spells could be used to defeat yourself, but I may need to either clarify the wording or put in some rules about “targeting” to make it clear whether you can Drain yourself, or other things like that. Targeting rules might be a good thing anyway, “target dragon” takes up much less room on a card than “a dragon of your choice”.

Thoughts?

I’ll have to balance out these rules by playtesting, but if any body’s following along here and thinks of anything I’ve forgotten to include from the last time we played the comments are open.

Dive

Use in combat when attacking before playing your combat card, but only if you have at least 2 remaining movement. Forfeit 2 movement to gain a +2 bonus on your attack. Aerial combat is a 3-dimensional affair, the dragon with the greatest altitude has the advantage. view old wording of Dive

Timing and conditions of play come first, then the cost and benifit, and last a bit of flavor text. I had it pretty much backwards.

Justice

Cast during combat when defending. Combat ends. Your attacker takes damage equal to 1/2 (rounded up) the card they played against you, not including any bonuses. You take no damage. view old wording of Justice

I believe it was Jeff who Halted Josh’s Justice. The question then was, does combat continue? Since the Justice card was being played instead of a combat card, not during the appropriate phase prior to the defender playing a combat card (see latest rules) the answer wasn’t obvious. I hope it’s more clear now, that if Justice were discarded as if it had never been played, the defender would be forced to play a card in defense.

Escape

Cast during combat when defending. Combat ends. Neither dragon takes any damage. Pick up your dragon and place it on any unoccupied dot. view old wording of Escape

Same deal as Justice.

Counter

Play during combat when defending, before your defense card. At the end of combat if your defense is higher than the attack, your attacker takes damage as if you had attacked them. You still take damage if the attack is higher. view old wording of Counter

Again, as with Dive, the appropriate time to play the maneuver comes first, followed by the effect. Any abstract description or flavor text comes last, if at all. I’m still not 100% sure about the wording of this one, explaining the whole “as if you’re attacking eachother” concept. Drop your suggestions in the comments if you’ve got any.

Renewal

Return all dragons back to their starting positions, facing directions of your choice. Shuffle the discard into the draw pile. Take all player’s hands face down, shuffle them together, and deal them out clockwise, starting with yourself.

Wanting to do something more potent with the card based on Wheel of Fortune (see below) I decided to turn this card into the ultimate reset by combining the old Upheaval spell (shuffle all players hands together and deal them out) with this spell’s original text. Since we generally play through the deck a few times each game anyway, it doesn’t make sense to have more than one “reset” style card.

Wheel of Life (formerly known as Upheaval)

All players pass one life card left or right, your choice. Players replace their old life card with the new one, face up or down, whichever the old one was. No life stones are exchanged.

I found the original spell for this card and saw that it was once much more powerful, directly influencing the Life cards themselves, so I decided to give it a shot and see how something like the old spell worked in this new multi-player environment.

Reckoning

Cast only at the beginning of your turn. Forfeit all movement. Attack each of your opponents as if you had landed on their dot. Follow normal combat sequence.

The 2.1 version of this spell was pretty mediocre when compared to Teleport, which was a far more versatile card that could be used offensively, defensively, and even put you into the position to attack multiple dragons and fly away to safety, whereas Reckoning just gave you a single attack and left you a sitting duck. The new spell has clearer wording, “Forfeit all movement” and “follow normal combat sequence” and is far more potent in multi-player games.

Foresee

Keep this card face up in front of you until it is removed by another spell. At any time you may use it to look at the top card of the draw pile, except when a player is in the process of drawing a new hand.

When hands were only 4 cards, being able to access the next 6 cards let you manipulate the next 1 1/2 hands. When hands became 5 cards this spell lost a lot. The new spell in early playtesting has a delightful “constantly cheating” feel to it.

Temperance (formerly known as Cache)

Gain 1 life. Do 1 damage to a dragon of your choice. Select one the following: discard a card or draw a card.

Cache was a confusing little card or moderate power. It did let you snag the best 2 of the next 3 cards, but in a game where all you have to do to get a new hand is play all your cards, I’m finding the hard manipulation cards to be less interesting. The damage and healing aspects of the new spell are fairly obvious, the remaining hand manipulation options are more interesting. The ability to discard in this game can be is extremely useful for flushing those 3s and 4s out of your hand, and the ability to draw a card as a Bolt can pull you that vital combat spell to use in defense, or when attacking.

Psychic Whip, Cauldron spell (formerly known as Paralyze, a Bolt spell)

Force a dragon to move 1 or 2 dots closer to you (flying forwards or backwards) and do 1 damage to that dragon. Or, if a dragon was on your dot at the start of your turn do 3 damage to that dragon.

Being the victim of a Paralyze spell just plain sucked in multi-player. Individual turns are longer, with more dragons to encounter, and there are more turns to wait through until your next. Given the distinct unpleasantness of this card, and my desire to make the spells more violent, I came up with this “whip” concept, that both moves and damages an opponent. Details are still being playtested and worked out (I just added the on-your-dot condition).

Lightning Tower

Place face up inside one of the 7 circles on the board (you may move the draw or discard pile). When cast, any dragon on a dot bordering that circle takes 1 damage. Place 1 life stone on the dot of each damaged dragon. Any dragon moving onto a dot with 1 or more life stones is turn around 180°. This spell and the life stones remain until removed by the Blank spell.

Update 2: Charged Lightning was looking too much like an annoying little brother of Firestorm, so I’m removing this line: Any dragon ending their turn on one of those dots takes 1 damage. and replacing it with, big surprise, the “whirlwind” inspired text above (see previous update).

Update: Here’s one idea that I had, but I’m still accepting suggestions. My thought was to get the board itself involved in a spell. There used to be ghost ships, whirlwinds, and other fun spells that engaged the movement system, which I think is one of the strengths of the game. Oh man, I just remembered how cool the Whirlwind spell used to be, maybe it should make an appearance. It basically created two permanent Wingovers placed on two dots. It was over-powered in that you could surround your opponent with them and fly in to attack them like 5 times, but the concept was cool.

Original Post: I haven’t decided exactly what this will do yet, only that it will change. The existing card is difficult to understand, often forgotten, and rarely actually “goes off” before somebody casts Blank.

I’m open to suggestions on this one. The spell should be inspired by the artwork, which is based on traditional artwork for the Tower card in the Tarot deck. Here are some keywords that might get you started: destruction, lightning, storm, tearing down.