moranmagic

[moranmagic]

Rome: the Conquering Format Rules

This format can be played as an additional modification of any limited or constructed format. Use those deck rules and starting life totals. This is recommended for Two-Headed Giant play or 1v1.

Play Magic as normal except as follows:

Alt win objective: Obtain 10 victory points by controlling theaters of war (read on for this to make sense).

Set Up

Prepare a shared Battle deck (this is further explained in the Theater Battles section below). Draw a card from the shared Battle deck for each theater and place it face-up in the middle of that theater.

The battlefield is divided into three separate zones called theaters. In a nod to ancient Rome after which this format is named, the theaters are named Spain, Italy, and North Africa (specifically we're referencing the period and main theaters of the Second Punic War).

Before the game starts, each player secretly chooses a theater to act as their home base, then reveal their choices simultaneously. Opponents can have the same theater as their home base. In Two-Headed Giant each team chooses a single theater as their home base. Players can only be attacked directly by creatures that are in their home base.

Theater Mechanics

Whenever a player plays a permanent they must choose a theater to play it into. Creatures can only attack and block in the theater they are played to. If a player fails to clearly specify which theater a permanent is played to then it's assumed to be played to their home base.

Targeted abilities of permanents (triggered or activated) must share a theater with their target.

Targeted spells you cast can be used on a target in any theater but if a single spells has multiple targets, all those targets have to share a theater. If the spell can target a player then any other targets must be in the home base of that player.

“Global” abilities from permanents apply only within the theater that permanent is in (Lord of Atlantis in North Africa provides no benefit to Merfolk in Italy or Spain).

Global effects from spells effect the entire battlefield as normal (so Wrath of God will destroy every creature in all three theaters).

Non-targeted abilities and the mana pool are “global”—that is they aren't tied to a specific theater even if they came from a permanent in a specific theater. For example you could tap lands you've played in Italy and Spain in order to play a spell in North Africa or to pay for an ability in North Africa.

Players can battle to control these theaters. Each theater has a track with 13 spaces and a marker in the middle space. Dealing damage to the theater moves the marker that many spaces closer to the player doing the damage. If the marker is in any of the three spaces closest to a player, that player is in control of that theater. Permanents can still be played as normal to a theater even if you don't control it.

A player deals damage to a theater either by targeting it with spells that could damage a player or a planeswalker, or by attacking it with creatures. Your opponent can block such attacks by creatures if they have legal blockers in the same theater.

Finally, during a player's main phase that player may move untapped creatures without summoning sickness to any other theater. A creature that moves this way is considered to have summoning sickness.

Each creature moved can “carry” one other permanent from the theater it started in to the theater it goes to. A creature can't move more than once this way per turn.

Theater Alt Win Con

If at any point a player has 10 victory points they win the game.

At the beginning of your upkeep you get one victory point for each theater you control. Otherwise controlling a theater has no built-in impact on the game. (Other alt wins are still possible and it's also possible to make a player lose the game by attacking their life total directly in their home base).

Theater Battles

To construct a shared Battle deck, take 30 battle cards and shuffle them together (either have one player prepare it beforehand or have a selection of battle cards and let each player choose 15 to include).

One of these is placed in each theater before the game begins and offers another objective players can fight over. (Consider changing the win con to being the first player to win some number (10?) of these battles)

Follow battle card rules with the exception that both players can always attack these shared theater battles with the player who removes the final counter getting any bonus from it. Additionally that player moves the theater track marker one space closer to them.

When a theater battle is removed, replace it immediately. If there is an additional combat phase in that turn then the new theater battle is available to be attacked.

With sieges this means nobody gets any initial enters the battlefield effects or static effects, but the player to remove the final counter from it gets to exile it and cast it.

I've also designed 30 ancient Rome-inspired battles for use with this format (or rather I will).

[moranmagic]

Looking back at some old posts and it just struck me that you can fix the formatting to something like “Creatures blocked or blocking any number of creatures with unsettle get -1/-0″ so they don’t stack if you block a big guy with a bunch of little unsettling guys. Maybe you should specify “until end of turn” as well but I think the implication here is that the debuff only occurs for as long as they are blocked or blocking. It goes away as soon as combat is done.

Dimir Creature Keyword

This is where I’d start for a word. It’s simple (static, does one thing, short reminder text), directly effects how creatures interact with each other in combat, and is solidly blue/black. I’m not sure that it’s robust enough and mostly doesn’t combo so much with other keyword mechanics but that’s ok.

Without further ado…

Unsettle (Creatures blocked or blocking this creature get -1/-0.)

When calculating combat math this enables less efficient creatures a chance to stick around through what would otherwise be a detrimental block. It shaves an extra point off the damage of a trampler or helps negate some of what a lifelinker would get. A one power creature with deathtouch is suddenly a safe block. A double striker effectively loses two power for the turn.

Actually my biggest concern with this mechanic is that with it working on defense it means multiple unsettling creatures could block one big guy and reduce the power to zero. Maybe that’s ok, but I’d be on the lookout for that. You may have to watch the number of creatures with this available in a given environment.

Making it static is a bit cheaty but I think mirroring anthem effects works just fine here though it’s a little unusual.

[moranmagic]

sexhaver

the one issue that immediately jumps out at me is they probably wouldnt want a supertype named "prehistoric" when there's already a class (but not supertype) of cards called "historic". maybe call it "implacable" and flavor it as the creature being frozen in time somehow?

I’m doubtful that would be an issue but it certainly could be. I think you’d want to do some testing on that front and see how players treat it. Maybe purposefully present them like a prehistoric deck and a historic deck (or even mix the two in one deck) and see if it causes confusion.

Making Vanilla Matter

Mark Rosewater as done a whole podcast about why doing vanilla matters as a set theme is a problem. It’s #444 and you can find it here (just search for the word vanilla). But what if I told you all your prehistoric dreams could come true?

Mark goes over a number of issues this has as a theme, but I think it boils down to two overarching obstacles. The first is ASFAN–making sure enough cards show up in packs that the theme can work, especially in limited. The second is that vanilla creatures just aren’t much fun, to be perfectly honest.

Now before we get to my solution, Mark offered the following solutions:

Make the threshold for caring about it one. That is, you only need to control one vanilla creature for any cards looking to care about you controlling vanilla creatures.

More token making since tokens are often vanilla creatures as long as you don’t give them abilities.

Work with templating and maybe find a word that defines what vanilla means mechanically so instead of spelling it out you could just reference that word.

Make caring about all creatures a theme, not just vanilla creatures, since it overlaps and lets you put non-vanilla creatures in your deck.

Look at playing up tribal elements if possible but that likely fights the space you have to design cards that care about vanilla matters.

So how do you make a enough vanilla creatures to fill out a set’s theme while not making it the most boring, board-stalling set ever?

Keep reading

[moranmagic]

Making Vanilla Matter

Mark Rosewater as done a whole podcast about why doing vanilla matters as a set theme is a problem. It’s #444 and you can find it here (just search for the word vanilla). But what if I told you all your prehistoric dreams could come true?

Mark goes over a number of issues this has as a theme, but I think it boils down to two overarching obstacles. The first is ASFAN--making sure enough cards show up in packs that the theme can work, especially in limited. The second is that vanilla creatures just aren’t much fun, to be perfectly honest.

Now before we get to my solution, Mark offered the following solutions:

Make the threshold for caring about it one. That is, you only need to control one vanilla creature for any cards looking to care about you controlling vanilla creatures.

More token making since tokens are often vanilla creatures as long as you don’t give them abilities.

Work with templating and maybe find a word that defines what vanilla means mechanically so instead of spelling it out you could just reference that word.

Make caring about all creatures a theme, not just vanilla creatures, since it overlaps and lets you put non-vanilla creatures in your deck.

Look at playing up tribal elements if possible but that likely fights the space you have to design cards that care about vanilla matters.

So how do you make a enough vanilla creatures to fill out a set’s theme while not making it the most boring, board-stalling set ever?

Prehistoric is a supertype specifically for creatures (though it could presumably work on other permanents) with the rules that prehistoric creatures lose all abilities and can’t have or gain abilities shortly after entering the battlefield. In effect, it makes them vanilla creatures after they ETB.

In addition to just making normal vanilla creatures prehistoric, we can now make any creature with a cast or ETB trigger a prehistoric creature. I did a count for Theros Beyond Death and found 17 creatures that would function normally with their ETB triggers but could be made prehistoric. I count 16 in Throne of Eldraine. Additionally, there are a fair number of creatures where this change would almost work except that the creature has an evergreen keyword like flying. So prehistoric will seriously warp how you need to design the set, but it allows you to significantly ramp up the number of virtual vanillas in the set and makes them function as vanillas with regard to the vanilla matters theme.

And since they’ve got ETBs to play with, that lessens some of the board stalling issues and makes them a lot more interesting to play. Now while this addresses a lot of the issues and I think would make the theme possible, there are still significant obstacles to it. First and foremost is the part where they can’t gain abilities. The big issue here is with stuff like auras or even just a common spell like Fervent Strike. You could still accomplish this stuff but at the cost of it being more complicated and spelling out the how it modifies the rules of creatures blocking/dealing damage rather than granting abilities. This is what I mean:

This effectively gives the enchanted creature flying, but it doesn’t say it gives the creature flying. So our Muragandan Crocodile could fly into battle this way. But Arcane Flight on the same croc would only grant it the P/T boost and not give it flying because prehistoric prevents it from having or gaining abilities. This is I think the most significant barrier to this idea now. It would warp how you want to design all the sets surrounding it, makes the thing fairly parasitic in the regard that no ability-granting effects work with prehistoric creatures, and the abilities you can do are things that were mostly errata’d away when these things became evergreen keywords.

I think the other issue here is that this creates a marker to care about more easily with fewer words. Instead of saying creature/s “with no abilities” you can just say prehistoric creature... EXCEPT then that makes it even more parasitic and doesn’t work with vanilla creatures in general. I think you could still do some caring about prehistoric specifically, but players are going to be disappointed if most of the stuff here doesn’t specify “prehistoric creature or creature with no abilities.” Oh, yeah, I’ve actually created a new problem with regard to wordiness here. For all the good the prehistoric does, a card like Muragandan Crocodile does have an ability except for just after it enters the battlefield. So if you want to tutor or filter for vanilla creatures and include all prehistoric creatures in that (since that’s the point of prehistoric) now you have to specify both to make sure you hit everything.

Really all this is to say that the barriers to the vanilla matters as a theme are pretty much insurmountable. I could see a few more “creatures with no abilities” relevant cards being printed here and there, but there are not many good slots for even those. Like you’d almost certainly rather print a devotion pay off or energy enabler or tribal matters card in that space in relevant sets. So I’m also not surprised that we haven’t seen any more designs in that space.

But if we really wanted to play in this space, I’d look at the prehistoric supertype. I’d also want to consider if it could be adjusted in some manner to be put on more card types, particularly instants and sorceries. But that’s beyond the scope of what I’m doing today.

[moranmagic]

Planeswalkers Breaking Rules

@markrosewater has been answering asks lately about unlikely planeswalkers and if we might ever see them. The three I see most requested are a sliver, an eldrazi, and some sort of non-sapient beast, typically a bear. Cool as these might seem at first blush, what would it take to make any of them a reality? (if anyone at Wizards is seeing this, I’ve avoided unsolicited designs here so it should be safe reading)

Planeswalker Rules

You gotta know the rules before you can break them. And given that you can break them with good reason, it might be more appropriate to call these guidelines. But the point is, barring some convincing narrative reason and a cool result from embracing that, these are the rules you go to as the base line for each planeswalker.

It’s a sapient being, which basically means it’s aware of itself as separate from the rest of the world. It has a conception of the self. There’s a whole bunch of philosophy to fall into here, but I feel that’s a succinct and useful way of thinking about it. This is the big rule we don’t yet have an exception to.

It’s born with a spark that’s ignited under extreme circumstances, usually great duress. Obviously we’ve seen that sparks can in some ways be moved from one being to another, even if that second being couldn’t have been born with a spark.

Planeswalkers can only bring themselves from one plane to another. Of course we’ve seen exceptions to this and while it’s been multiple exceptions recently, these are still quite limited.

A spark is unique to the person that carries it. That is, one being has one spark. The Kenrith twins share a spark. Bolas was trying to eat up a bunch of them. But nearly all planeswalkers in black border follow this rule otherwise.

The above four rules are the main narrative conceits used to define planeswalkers. The three oft-requested ‘walkers would all break some of those rules in important ways. Is it narratively satisfying and cool enough to be worth that? Does breaking the rules pay off?

Let’s examine them one by one.

Bear Planeswalker

I say bear, but you could take this to mean any non-sapient being. A house cat. Some other wild animal. An ooze or bug. Take your pick. The barrier to it is whether or not it pays off both mechanically and narratively.

For the narrative, for story telling, non-sapient beings present unique obstacles. What drives it? Well, for your typical bear, hunger and finding a safe place to sleep. Arguably some of the best story telling you can get here is a mother bear protecting her cubs, but that presents a direct obstacle to telling a story about a planeswalking bear that can move from one plane to another when her cubs cannot. Opportunities for good story telling are quite limited.

Mechanically, what do you do with a bear? These creatures (all I named above and most other non-sapient beings) are not spell casters and there’s a disconnect between what a planeswalker card does and the agency we would attribute to your typical bear. That is to say, it doesn’t make sense for most bears to be much more than a 2/2 for 2 and the game play of loyalty abilities just doesn’t fit well with most of what a bear would do.

These are major obstacles that make a bear planeswalker highly unlikely. I wouldn’t say totally impossible, but a major if.

Eldrazi Planeswalker

We’re really breaking rules here. Eldrazi titans were not born in any way that would make sense to us as far as we are aware. Even if they were, what sort of events would ignite the spark of such inscrutable beings? There’s no convincing story here and it’s a monumental task to try to convey this.

The bear breaks the sapient being rule. I’m honestly not sure if Eldrazi titans are sapient, but what we know of them is so alien from any other creature that I’m inclined to think that same disconnect comes through here.

But the biggest issue is rule number three, or what’s implied by it and what we know of the Eldrazi titans. A planeswalker walks through the Blind Eternities from one plane to another. The titans exist IN the Blind Eternities and only stretch their tendrils into planes. Not only do they not need to planeswalk, but arguably they wouldn’t be able to do it in a way that makes sense based on what we’ve seen so far. Eldrazi titans are like radio signals being broadcast all through the Blind Eternities and you’re saying “let’s write that down and ship it snail mail” when you ask for them as planeswalkers, while still expecting it to sound like a radio signal when the letter gets there.

Loyalty manipulation makes even less sense here. But the major issue is what you do for the loyalty abilities. The space you’d be working in is incredibly narrow and especially so when you consider it needs to be a colorless planeswalker that effectively conveys that it’s an Eldrazi titan, which have historically cost 10 or more. It’s such small design space and I’m not even sure you have enough there to make a good card that’s worth the trouble. Let alone the narrative problems this would create.

For this one, I’d say virtually impossible.

Sliver Planeswalker

Your typical sliver is a non-sapient member of a hive mind. It doesn’t think for itself and it exists as part of a greater group in much the same way that your finger exists as part of your body. A single one of these being a planeswalker makes pretty much no sense. It planeswalks to some place where it’s all alone and now it’s the weakest a sliver can be. So if we circumvent that by having multiple slivers share a spark, the issue becomes one of how many make sense for that.

So now you’ve broken both the non-sapient rule and the unique individuals have sparks rule, only to have a gaggle of slivers that’s still going to be limited when they planeswalk away from the rest of the hive. Luckily, there is at least one being that can follow all the rules we have for planeswalkers.

A sliver queen. We know from old stories that the queen seems to be a sapient being. This is also a unique and singular sliver, so no shared spark. But the sliver queen depicted on a card so far makes slivers. So there’s good reason that she could go from one plane to another and create a new brood there. Which brings us to the two main hangups with a sliver queen planeswalker.

One, story-wise, what happens when the queen leaves a plane and all the slivers she created there? Like, what happens to that hive when there’s no mind to lead them? I think we’ve seen this in story before, but I’m not sure it makes sense for a sliver queen to move from plane to plane making broods just to leave them to wreak mindless havoc on the plane. I’m doubtful that’s a fulfilling story and it occupies a similar story space to Eldrazi in some ways. There are enough narrative solutions to this that I won’t go into it, but I do feel you can create something meaningful with this.

Two, game play-wise, how do you make her feel like a sliver still? Slivers as a tribe are defined by granting other members of their ilk their abilities. A card that’s flavorfully a sliver but mechanically doesn’t play in this space is a big disconnect and I think would be a disappointment. I think Gideon cards are the way too look for guidance here. Maybe even such an ability that’s always on, making it a Sliver creature as well as it being a planeswalker. I’m skeptical of just about any other execution.

While still unlikely, I think this idea has a whole lot going for it and that the obstacles to it are more approachable. Add to it that it seems to be a fan favorite request, plus I think it’s a bonus that this is a card that would make the utmost sense as a WUBRG planeswalker in black border, another popular player request. I ‘m going to call this one doubtful, and yet it wouldn’t surprise me to see it one day.

[moranmagic]

Both instances are intentional.

Mark has ruled that a creature with first strike and last strike deals both first strike and last strike damage. So gaining last strike when you have other strike abilities is typically a plus, except when you already have triple strike, in which case it’s redundant.

The one hiccup I see in this is that an otherwise vanilla creature in this scenario would deal normal combat damage and since it gained last strike at the right time, would also get to deal that, essentially getting double strike. Presumably granting last strike to a vanilla creature should be a debuff to it. This may simply be a thing where designers should be aware of it and avoid abilities that grant last strike as an instant. You can write in rules about how to handle double strike and first strike (and creatures without those two abilities) gaining last strike, but that’s exactly the sort of long winded nonsense any such rules change needs to avoid to be worthwhile. And I’m not convinced it’s necessary. You just establish a precedent and go from there. In this case it would be the pseudo-double strike from gaining last strike after step A of combat damage.

I considered including an additional rule in step C that would include any attackers or blockers that hadn’t yet dealt combat damage. As far as rules go its simple enough, but I’m not sure how well it translates to actual game play and memory issues or whatever.

Thanks for the feedback.

Magic Rules: Last Strike and Triple Strike

So Unstable gave us these glorious bastards.

[Image is of two Magic: the Gathering cards. “Extremely Slow Zombie” with the ability last strike, and “Three-Headed Goblin” with the ability triple strike.]

And of course we all want this in black border Magic, but as Mark Rosewater has said a whole lot, the rules rework isn’t worth the headache. There are various concerns, not the least of which is how you handle creatures gaining and losing a whole slew of new strike abilities as within a big ole combat damage step. We’ve now got to resolve first strike damage, double strike damage, triple strike damage, last strike damage, and normal combat damage. And that’s not to mention combinations like first strike and last strike, or what if a creature loses last strike before last strike damage would be dealt, or what if a creature gains triple strike after you’ve already done first strike damage?

But what if it actually was kind of simple, really? What if the answer wasn’t adding paragraphs upon paragraphs to the comprehensive rules? What if it only roughly doubled section 510.5 of the combat damage step rules from 121 words to 249 words and accounted for everything above?

Here’s my answer to those quandaries.

Let’s establish three clear combat damage steps and label them. Here we have steps A, B, and C. If any creatures with the relevant abilities are attacking or blocking as that combat step begins, then you do that step and resolve the combat damage before moving onto the next step.

If there are no attackers or blockers with the relevant ability as the combat damage step for that would begin, then you just skip it. Normal combat damage is always done during Step B. If there were no attackers or blockers with first strike, double strike, or triple strike as the combat damage step begins, then you go straight to step B and do normal combat damage. Then if there are no attackers or blockers with triple strike or last strike, you move on to the end of combat step.

This means a creature in combat that has double strike only ever deals combat damage during steps A and B. If it only gains double strike after step A combat damage has already been assigned, then it assigns combat damage in step B but it will not assign combat damage in step C (assuming there is a step C) unless it somehow gains triple strike or last strike before step C begins.

That’s pretty easy, right? Literally all you need is that little six cell chart above showing in which steps everything deals combat damage. And if you want a more nuanced approach, below the read more cut I have the current rules for 510.5, followed by my proposed rewrite of those rules.

But all of this leads me to say…

TEAR THIS TO PIECES

Find corner cases. Break it open. Show me flaws. Did I fail to account for something? Is my rewrite not as simple and intuitive as I think? Ask me questions. Bring up examples. Is my proposal going to grant as three wishes (as in, the wishes are to deal damage once, then twice, then a third time), or have I struck out?

Keep reading

[moranmagic]

Magic Rules: Last Strike and Triple Strike

So Unstable gave us these glorious bastards.

[Image is of two Magic: the Gathering cards. “Extremely Slow Zombie” with the ability last strike, and “Three-Headed Goblin” with the ability triple strike.]

And of course we all want this in black border Magic, but as Mark Rosewater has said a whole lot, the rules rework isn’t worth the headache. There are various concerns, not the least of which is how you handle creatures gaining and losing a whole slew of new strike abilities as within a big ole combat damage step. We’ve now got to resolve first strike damage, double strike damage, triple strike damage, last strike damage, and normal combat damage. And that’s not to mention combinations like first strike and last strike, or what if a creature loses last strike before last strike damage would be dealt, or what if a creature gains triple strike after you’ve already done first strike damage?

But what if it actually was kind of simple, really? What if the answer wasn’t adding paragraphs upon paragraphs to the comprehensive rules? What if it only roughly doubled section 510.5 of the combat damage step rules from 121 words to 249 words and accounted for everything above?

Here’s my answer to those quandaries.

Let’s establish three clear combat damage steps and label them. Here we have steps A, B, and C. If any creatures with the relevant abilities are attacking or blocking as that combat step begins, then you do that step and resolve the combat damage before moving onto the next step.

If there are no attackers or blockers with the relevant ability as the combat damage step for that would begin, then you just skip it. Normal combat damage is always done during Step B. If there were no attackers or blockers with first strike, double strike, or triple strike as the combat damage step begins, then you go straight to step B and do normal combat damage. Then if there are no attackers or blockers with triple strike or last strike, you move on to the end of combat step.

This means a creature in combat that has double strike only ever deals combat damage during steps A and B. If it only gains double strike after step A combat damage has already been assigned, then it assigns combat damage in step B but it will not assign combat damage in step C (assuming there is a step C) unless it somehow gains triple strike or last strike before step C begins.

That’s pretty easy, right? Literally all you need is that little six cell chart above showing in which steps everything deals combat damage. And if you want a more nuanced approach, below the read more cut I have the current rules for 510.5, followed by my proposed rewrite of those rules.

But all of this leads me to say...

TEAR THIS TO PIECES

Find corner cases. Break it open. Show me flaws. Did I fail to account for something? Is my rewrite not as simple and intuitive as I think? Ask me questions. Bring up examples. Is my proposal going to grant as three wishes (as in, the wishes are to deal damage once, then twice, then a third time), or have I struck out?

510.5. If at least one attacking or blocking creature has first strike (see rule 702.7) or double strike (see rule 702.4) as the combat damage step begins, the only creatures that assign combat damage in that step are those with first strike or double strike. After that step, instead of proceeding to the end of combat step, the phase gets a second combat damage step. The only creatures that assign combat damage in that step are the remaining attackers and blockers that had neither first strike nor double strike as the first combat damage step began, as well as the remaining attackers and blockers that currently have double strike. After that step, the phase proceeds to the end of combat step. (121 words, 702 characters)

510.5 If at least one attacking or blocking creature has first strike (see rule 702.7), double strike (see rule 702.4), last strike (see rule 702.?), or triple strike (see rule 702.?) as the combat damage step begins, then combat damage is resolved in up to three steps, identified as step A, step B, and step C. Step A occurs if there are attacking or blocking creatures with first strike, double strike, or triple strike. All such creatures assign combat damage in step A. After that, instead of proceeding to the end of combat damage step, proceed to step B of combat damage. The only creatures that assign combat damage in step B are the remaining attackers and blockers that did not have first strike, double strike, triple strike, or last strike as step A began, as well as the remaining attackers and blockers that currently have double strike or triple strike. After step B, instead of proceeding to the end of combat damage step, proceed to step C of combat damage. The only creatures that assign combat damage in step C are the attackers and blockers with last strike, as well as the remaining attackers and blockers that currently have triple strike. After that step, the phase proceeds to the end of combat step. Complete only those combat damage steps necessary for the creatures present in combat. For example, skip step C of combat damage if there are no attackers or blockers with either last strike or triple strike. (249 words, 1433 characters)

Lastly, I do believe this is all the rules rewriting you need. And then of course adding the relevant sections in 702 for the new abilities.

[moranmagic]

Catan: Risky Business

This is a modification of the rules of RISK and Catan to combine them into one game a la Riskopoly. Having played Riskopoly, I enjoyed the idea of an economic system to moderate how armies are raised. But Monopoly is a fundamentally broken and unenjoyable economic system. Catan is the superior option.

Rules for Catan and RISK are each the same as before except where noted below.

Set up and Winning

Set up the Catan and RISK boards next to each other on the table so that all players can easily see them.

A player wins by controlling a predetermined number of territories on the RISK board (on a typical RISK board a short game would be 21 territories--50%--32 territories for a longer game--75%--or of course total domination at 100%) at the end of their turn.

Begin the game by placing starting towns and roads as you normally would for a game of Catan. Then shuffle and deal all RISK territory cards equally to each player. Players start with one army in each territory they were dealt. Then reshuffle the territory cards and set in a central location on the table.

Turns

On each player’s turn that player has a normal Catan turn. They start by rolling the dice and everyone gets resources or the robber moves. They can then do trades or purchase upgrades as normal. As in Catan, the turn ends when they pass the dice as normal.

During a player’s Catan turn that player can also purchase and place armies and take a RISK turn. Normal RISK rules apply to moving armies and combat. The player can take their RISK turn at any point during their Catan turn. If they engage in and complete a trade (some combination of cards are traded) in the midst of a RISK turn then that RISK turn ends immediately and they return to their Catan turn. Any armies in an opponent’s territory must immediately be retreated to an adjacent friendly territory or else removed from the board if that for some reason isn’t possible.

The game is different with regard to how you acquire armies, what the robber does, what territory cards do, what kind of trades can be made, and what development cards do (nothing as they aren’t used in Catan: Risky Business).

Development, Armies, and Territories

During a player’s turn they may purchase armies or territory cards by spending resources to buy what would be Development Cards in normal Catan. Development Cards are not used here. As you spend a sheep, wheat, and ore to make a purchase, you decide if you want to draw a territory card from the territory deck or if you’d like to place three armies onto any number of territories you already control.

If you only have, for example, two armies left in your reserves and you decide to purchase armies, obviously you can’t purchase three. You pay the normal price and place the two remaining armies. The third army doesn’t exist, can’t be placed, and you aren’t compensated in any way for that.

If you purchase territory cards, those remain secret and go in your hand. At any point on your Catan turn BEFORE you start your RISK turn you may reveal and discard any number of territory cards. You immediately place two armies from your reserves on the territories revealed this way. If there are opposing forces in those territories you immediately resolve combat until only one player’s forces remain (either play may choose to retreat their armies to an adjacent friendly territory if possible after the first round of combat). The player who played the territory card is considered the attacking force. Resolving combat from a territory card does not count as a RISK turn.

The Robber

On a Catan turn, if the robber is rolled you do the normal robber stuff (move it to a hex, steal from an adjacent player) but in addition to that, you can remove a single army from the RISK board of any player who has a settlement on that hex. You may choose not to remove an army.

Trades

In normal Catan you must trade cards for cards. You can’t just hand cards over to another player. In Catan: Risky Business this is not the case. Trades can take any form, including promises of peace, extortion under threat of invasion, or anything else. Trades can still only occur during a player’s Catan turn and must take place between the player whose turn it is and any other player in the game.

Promises made for deals are in no way enforceable and it’s entirely up to the player in question if they honor their word or not.

Questions? Comments? Share your experiences playing this!?

A lot of these ideas will necessarily not come with testing. I’m just sort of flying by the seat of my pants. If I missed something or stuff just isn’t clear, reblog with questions or shoot me an ask. Have you tried this and want to tell me how things were? That’s so cool! Please do! I wanna hear all about it! Even take pics?!

[moranmagic]

Mechanic: Trading Pips for Dice

Thinking about this post at work today and about how this could just go all in on politics. This mechanic idea come from it and I’m going to outline it generally below then provide how I think it would fit into some sort of game inspired roughly by the post I linked.

For this mechanic you would have certain dice that are mostly set (either predetermined or rolled and then stuck with from there) and which are mostly manipulated as a way of tracking resources. So when you gain resources, instead of collecting cards or tokens or something, you’d change the number showing on the appropriate dice.

Then you would have a bag building aspect of some sort, where you want to get certain dice into bags, which would then later be drawn from (and rolled) to determine other aspects of the game. The way you would get dice into those bags is by reducing the value of one of the resource tracking dice at certain points. Typically a reduction of one pip on a resource dice would allow you to put one dice into a bag.

The post in question wants to incorporate politics somehow but that’s often difficult to implement satisfyingly in a game with only three to five players. My thought here is that the bag building would represent campaigning, building up support leading up to the polls. You expend resources (exactly what those resources are and how they are obtained, I’m not sure, a note on that and why I want the same dice to be used for that in a moment) in order to have a chance at the polls. Then when it comes around you draw a certain number of dice from a bag (likely not even all the dice in the bag) and roll them. This represents voter turnout and while you can improve your chances in any given election/vote, you never have full control over it. Likely there would be other aspects of the game that could help manipulate this (like a card called Voter Suppression that lets you reduce a rolled election dice by 1 or 2 or something like that). But the bulk of it rests on putting in work leading up to the election.

The intent with using the same dice is to reduce the number of components in the game and also as a way of decreasing the number of available dice, so they’re a real resource you have to use carefully. I imagine the resource tracking would be by placing dice on a game board that has a map, showing you building strength in various districts by increasing the numbers on them. The more districts you commit to, the fewer dice you have available to actually put into election bags. That part really comes down to game balance and play testing to see if it works the way I am hoping or if it just creates undesirable situations that don’t feel like running a campaign.

[moranmagic]

Reworking resources for a few reasons (maintaining color pie, increasing variability/excitement being the major two) and I realized Space Wizards individually count as type II civilizations on the Kardashev scale. The most powerful ones could be type III or higher.

Space Wizards

I’ve made some progress on this recently and really need to start a mock up for play testing. Here’s the gist:

4 card types:

Aliens, Magic, Relics, and Wizards

Aliens cards are monsters you summon to fight for you. They have an attack and a defense. I’m also toying with the idea of every creature (every card?) having a third stat called mana or something like that. Not one hundred percent on that.

Magic cards are one-use spells. They do something and then the card’s gone.

Relics are magical items and “ideas.” So everything from a big sword to a magic mirror to a space ship to more abstract things like the feeling of anger or a curse. These things stick around.

Wizards are powerful cards and the namesake of the game. I’m really enjoying how they function so let me lay it out in more detail.

Wizards enter play with a six-sided dice set to a specific number. Each turn the player controlling the Wizard can do one of two things to that dice. Increase or decrease it by one, or roll it. Then for whatever number it’s showing, you do the corresponding effect. Most Wizards would have three effects and two numbers corresponding to each effect by default though that could change.

Additionally, Aliens can attack Wizards and whenever a Wizard would take any amount of damage from a source, you reduce the D6 for that Wizard by one. If it would be reduced below one, the Wizard dies. I’m trying to figure out if this means lower numbers should have more powerful effects since staying down there makes the Wizard more susceptible to removal, or if the higher numbers should have more powerful effects since your enemy can damage the Wizard to try to prevent you from getting there.

Resources:

Space Wizards has four resources, all represented by their own six-sided dice. Each player starts with their own set of four different colored dice each set to one. On each turn they can increase one resource dice by one.

Each card has a cost to cast. So a card may require three green mana (or whatever I end up calling these resources) so you need the green resource dice to be at three or higher to cast that spell. Players can cast one spell each turn if they have the resources for it. Casting a spell by default doesn’t reduce your resources at all.

To cast additional spells on a turn you need to do something and I’m currently debating what that thing is. My two main ideas are that you need to discard a card as an additional cost to cast extra spells OR that you have to reduce a resource dice by one and then can cast another spell you can afford with that new resource total showing.

Both have design issues to keep in mind. The first adds powerful to card draw, already typically a very powerful mechanic. The second strengthens any resource acceleration I might include in design. And confining any of those to a particular color would thus seemingly advantage that color over the others.

This also means the highest possible cost for a mono color spell is six of a color. The most expensive possible cost under this design is a total of 24, a card that costs six of each color. Which also presumably means a 24-turn game barring acceleration mechanics.

Creative:

Literally I’m just imagining airbrushed wizard murals on the sides of vans. I want that as a game. That’s the vibe. It’s light-hearted and silly and I would love the final product to be something like Star Wars meets Munchkin. It has some depth and potential for complex interactions, but it’s relatively simple, especially in comparison to a game like Magic: the Gathering. That’s built into the game intentionally by giving it fewer card types and having all resources limited to a D6. I’m debating other stuff specifically with how they impact complexity. Fun is paramount for me and it doesn’t take much for this to dive too far into tournament-like competitive considerations which is not what I’m aiming for. If it starts to feel too much like that, I’ll tone things back. That said, sometimes diving into some technical rules nitty gritty is fun so there is still room for some of that.

[moranmagic]

Mechanic: Overwhelming Force

Specifically drawing on the idea of a game somewhat like Viktory II.

In Viktory II there is a limited form of this mechanic where you get an additional combat dice if you attack a hex from at least two different adjacent hexes. Focusing in on that, I’m imagining a game with more potential mobility and more emphasis on projecting force over the game board.

By default combat would provide a single dice (D6) and that hits on a roll of one. Not good odds. You increase that by one for every hex adjacent to the one being attacked that you have a unit in. This naturally tops out at hitting on anything six or less if you completely surround the attacked hex (attacking from one hex and friendly units in the other five around it).

May want to limit it short of that, but depends on play testing, I think. Also uncertain if it should require you to attack from all those adjacent hexes or just have the units there. I’m leaning toward requiring those units to join the attack, especially if you don’t cap the on hit increase.

[moranmagic]

I appreciate the feedback!

There are additional issues with reducing resource dice as the additional spell cost. Namely how much it would potentially slow a game down (though if you have a dice at 6 and reduce it 4 times in one turn to go off, you are probably looking to win that turn) since you then have to slowly build back up. The other issue I see is if there are decks that are fine casting one spell a turn (and maybe one on their opponent’s turn) then they get along really well compared to a deck that wants to build up to one explosive turn and then has to recover.

But the biggest thing is I just need to play test it at this point. All these potential issues might just be fun points of drama in the game and provide interesting strategies. It may be more feature than bug.

The discard route I think creates more problems that need to be solved “outside” the game. Like how much do players draw each turn, what happens if your deck empties, stuff like that. I do think there are ways to make what you discard an important decision and to play around with it, but that would mean committing to that being a constant part of the game, like if Magic said “Madness is now evergreen” which I don’t think is a thing I want. But again, gotta play test and find out.

The best part is I can make some baseline cards and just do both systems and see how they work. It doesn’t really require making entirely new sets of cards (though some may be broken under one system and weak under the other).

Space Wizards

I’ve made some progress on this recently and really need to start a mock up for play testing. Here’s the gist:

4 card types:

Aliens, Magic, Relics, and Wizards

Aliens cards are monsters you summon to fight for you. They have an attack and a defense. I’m also toying with the idea of every creature (every card?) having a third stat called mana or something like that. Not one hundred percent on that.

Magic cards are one-use spells. They do something and then the card’s gone.

Relics are magical items and “ideas.” So everything from a big sword to a magic mirror to a space ship to more abstract things like the feeling of anger or a curse. These things stick around.

Wizards are powerful cards and the namesake of the game. I’m really enjoying how they function so let me lay it out in more detail.

Wizards enter play with a six-sided dice set to a specific number. Each turn the player controlling the Wizard can do one of two things to that dice. Increase or decrease it by one, or roll it. Then for whatever number it’s showing, you do the corresponding effect. Most Wizards would have three effects and two numbers corresponding to each effect by default though that could change.

Additionally, Aliens can attack Wizards and whenever a Wizard would take any amount of damage from a source, you reduce the D6 for that Wizard by one. If it would be reduced below one, the Wizard dies. I’m trying to figure out if this means lower numbers should have more powerful effects since staying down there makes the Wizard more susceptible to removal, or if the higher numbers should have more powerful effects since your enemy can damage the Wizard to try to prevent you from getting there.

Resources:

Space Wizards has four resources, all represented by their own six-sided dice. Each player starts with their own set of four different colored dice each set to one. On each turn they can increase one resource dice by one.

Each card has a cost to cast. So a card may require three green mana (or whatever I end up calling these resources) so you need the green resource dice to be at three or higher to cast that spell. Players can cast one spell each turn if they have the resources for it. Casting a spell by default doesn’t reduce your resources at all.

To cast additional spells on a turn you need to do something and I’m currently debating what that thing is. My two main ideas are that you need to discard a card as an additional cost to cast extra spells OR that you have to reduce a resource dice by one and then can cast another spell you can afford with that new resource total showing.

Both have design issues to keep in mind. The first adds powerful to card draw, already typically a very powerful mechanic. The second strengthens any resource acceleration I might include in design. And confining any of those to a particular color would thus seemingly advantage that color over the others.

This also means the highest possible cost for a mono color spell is six of a color. The most expensive possible cost under this design is a total of 24, a card that costs six of each color. Which also presumably means a 24-turn game barring acceleration mechanics.

Creative:

Literally I’m just imagining airbrushed wizard murals on the sides of vans. I want that as a game. That’s the vibe. It’s light-hearted and silly and I would love the final product to be something like Star Wars meets Munchkin. It has some depth and potential for complex interactions, but it’s relatively simple, especially in comparison to a game like Magic: the Gathering. That’s built into the game intentionally by giving it fewer card types and having all resources limited to a D6. I’m debating other stuff specifically with how they impact complexity. Fun is paramount for me and it doesn’t take much for this to dive too far into tournament-like competitive considerations which is not what I’m aiming for. If it starts to feel too much like that, I’ll tone things back. That said, sometimes diving into some technical rules nitty gritty is fun so there is still room for some of that.

[moranmagic]

Space Wizards

I’ve made some progress on this recently and really need to start a mock up for play testing. Here’s the gist:

4 card types:

Aliens, Magic, Relics, and Wizards

Aliens cards are monsters you summon to fight for you. They have an attack and a defense. I’m also toying with the idea of every creature (every card?) having a third stat called mana or something like that. Not one hundred percent on that.

Magic cards are one-use spells. They do something and then the card’s gone.

Relics are magical items and “ideas.” So everything from a big sword to a magic mirror to a space ship to more abstract things like the feeling of anger or a curse. These things stick around.

Wizards are powerful cards and the namesake of the game. I’m really enjoying how they function so let me lay it out in more detail.

Wizards enter play with a six-sided dice set to a specific number. Each turn the player controlling the Wizard can do one of two things to that dice. Increase or decrease it by one, or roll it. Then for whatever number it’s showing, you do the corresponding effect. Most Wizards would have three effects and two numbers corresponding to each effect by default though that could change.

Additionally, Aliens can attack Wizards and whenever a Wizard would take any amount of damage from a source, you reduce the D6 for that Wizard by one. If it would be reduced below one, the Wizard dies. I’m trying to figure out if this means lower numbers should have more powerful effects since staying down there makes the Wizard more susceptible to removal, or if the higher numbers should have more powerful effects since your enemy can damage the Wizard to try to prevent you from getting there.

Resources:

Space Wizards has four resources, all represented by their own six-sided dice. Each player starts with their own set of four different colored dice each set to one. On each turn they can increase one resource dice by one.

Each card has a cost to cast. So a card may require three green mana (or whatever I end up calling these resources) so you need the green resource dice to be at three or higher to cast that spell. Players can cast one spell each turn if they have the resources for it. Casting a spell by default doesn’t reduce your resources at all.

To cast additional spells on a turn you need to do something and I’m currently debating what that thing is. My two main ideas are that you need to discard a card as an additional cost to cast extra spells OR that you have to reduce a resource dice by one and then can cast another spell you can afford with that new resource total showing.

Both have design issues to keep in mind. The first adds powerful to card draw, already typically a very powerful mechanic. The second strengthens any resource acceleration I might include in design. And confining any of those to a particular color would thus seemingly advantage that color over the others.

This also means the highest possible cost for a mono color spell is six of a color. The most expensive possible cost under this design is a total of 24, a card that costs six of each color. Which also presumably means a 24-turn game barring acceleration mechanics.

Creative:

Literally I’m just imagining airbrushed wizard murals on the sides of vans. I want that as a game. That’s the vibe. It’s light-hearted and silly and I would love the final product to be something like Star Wars meets Munchkin. It has some depth and potential for complex interactions, but it’s relatively simple, especially in comparison to a game like Magic: the Gathering. That’s built into the game intentionally by giving it fewer card types and having all resources limited to a D6. I’m debating other stuff specifically with how they impact complexity. Fun is paramount for me and it doesn’t take much for this to dive too far into tournament-like competitive considerations which is not what I’m aiming for. If it starts to feel too much like that, I’ll tone things back. That said, sometimes diving into some technical rules nitty gritty is fun so there is still room for some of that.

[moranmagic]

I experimented with this a bit for Space Wizards and the issue I ran into is two-fold:

1, you really don’t want abilities in more than one color as you are naturally much more limited in how you divvy up the color pie

2, if you provide any sort of color fixing at all, it’s much much easier to play gold good stuff decks

I think it naturally points itself toward a rock-paper-scissors kind of balance but with more levels as a card game can be more complicated. For example, if you did this for Magic, maybe creature removal goes something like rock beats scissors beats paper beats rock as far as efficiency of removal. But access to evasion might go rock beats paper beats scissors beats rock.

So you don’t get enemies and allies but you can still dive into how one pair works together in specific aspects of the game while another pair is better at other aspects.

The short of it is yeah, definitely not Magic at three colors.

What's the smallest number of colors Magic could have before the color pie feels like a different mechanic? 3?

The ARC system which was an early attempt at being an intro TCG for Magic (while not being exactly Magic) used three colors. It was a little off as it was missing allies and enemies.

I’m not sure you go below five without feeling very different.

[moranmagic]

Note to self

Game combos to explore:

Catan: the Gathering - use Catan resources to buy Magic objectives (draw a card, destroy a creature, etc) and use mana (like 5 to 1 or something) as Catan resources. You take your Catan turn and Magic turn simultaneously, rolling dice and doing all trading during upkeep. Draw signifies all Catan trades are done. You can trade Magic cards and permanents?

Terraforming Dune - a mashup of the 1979 Dune board game and Terraforming Mars I have only the haziest idea of.

[moranmagic]

Mechanic: Difference Between 2D6

A player rolls 2D6 and subtracts the small one from the high one. So a roll of 3 and 4 means you take 4 minus 3 for a result of 1. If a 6 and 2 is rolled then you take 6 minus 2 for a result of 4. In the event a player rolls doubles, the result is the number rolled (for instance if a 3 and a 3 is rolled, the result is not 3-3=0 or 3+3=6, but just 3).

This results in the following possible rolls:

1 on a (6-5) (5-4) (4-3) (3-2) (2-1) or (double 1s) 2 on a (6-4) (5-3) (4-2) (3-1) or (double 2s) 3 on a (6-3) (5-2) (4-1) or (double 3s) 4 on a (6-2) (5-1) or (double 4s) 5 on a (6-1) or (double 5s) 6 on (double 6s)

There are 36 possible results (thanks @starch255 for pointing out you can toll 5 and 1 or 1 and 5, which both result in 5-1=4 but which still both have to be accounted for in determining percentage chance of getting a given result) so the percent chance of each result is:

1: 30.55% (11/36) 2: 25% (9/36) 3: 19.44% (7/36) 4: 13.89% (5/36) 5: 8.33% (3/36) 6: 2.78% (1/36)

Or to put it another way, you have a greater than 50% chance of 1 or 2 as a result, and less than a 5% chance of a 6, making it roughly equivalent to a critical success or failure on a D20. Edit: Now it’s even less than that, since there are 36 possible rolls, not 21 as I erroneously had originally. So it’s even rarer than a crit on a D20 but I think consequently more reasonable for the use I suggest below.

My inclination for the use of this mechanic is to determine resource generation. You could always count on 1 or 2 and then rarely might get as many as 6. But I question how unbalanced and lucky that makes it for the player who randomly gets double 6s. Perhaps that just means you need other mechanics to help balance that out, like the robber in Catan.

[moranmagic]

starch255

i'm pretty sure there are 36 possible results, cuz there's two ways to roll each difference (ie 5-1 or 1-5) and only one way of rolling doubles

That is true. I’ll have to update the numbers on the original post then. Good catch!

Mechanic: Difference Between 2D6

A player rolls 2D6 and subtracts the small one from the high one. So a roll of 3 and 4 means you take 4 minus 3 for a result of 1. If a 6 and 2 is rolled then you take 6 minus 2 for a result of 4. In the event a player rolls doubles, the result is the number rolled (for instance if a 3 and a 3 is rolled, the result is not 3-3=0 or 3+3=6, but just 3).

This results in the following possible rolls:

1 on a (6-5) (5-4) (4-3) (3-2) (2-1) or (double 1s) 2 on a (6-4) (5-3) (4-2) (3-1) or (double 2s) 3 on a (6-3) (5-2) (4-1) or (double 3s) 4 on a (6-2) (5-1) or (double 4s) 5 on a (6-1) or (double 5s) 6 on (double 6s)

There are 21 possible results so the percent chance of each result is:

1: 28.57% 2: 23.81% 3: 19.05% 4: 14.29% 5: 9.52% 6: 4.76%

Or to put it another way, you have a greater than 50% chance of 1 or 2 as a result, and less than a 5% chance of a 6, making it roughly equivalent to a critical success or failure on a D20.

My inclination for the use of this mechanic is to determine resource generation. You could always count on 1 or 2 and then rarely might get as many as 6. But I question how unbalanced and lucky that makes it for the player who randomly gets double 6s. Perhaps that just means you need other mechanics to help balance that out, like the robber in Catan.