Play Testing Has Begun
It has been some time since I have updated the site and I feel like I owe it to you folks who have signed up to give you some news. Since moving to Texas it has been a real battle in the realm of finances and even more so in the time I have had to work on projects. Not to say that I haven’t been working on things intermittently, but just not like have had the time to in the past. Having a 22-month-old son is almost as hard as people told me it would be. Given the challenges I have faced I decided to shift gears a little bit.
Over the past year, I came to the realization that I was trying to climb a rockslide. I was trying to build a gaming empire focused on war gaming miniatures and writing a rule set for said war game. While I made huge progress, and learned a ton along the way I discovered some serious hurdles I never thought would be so tall. Financial it was hard to fund all the items out of pocket like I had done before, but more importantly it was difficult to find folks willing to learn a war-game. Even those familiar with popular games just had no interest in reading 90+ pages of rules that were deep and expansive. Coming to these two conclusions I decided to pursue some other ventures to help build my Feyalis universe and to get people interested. I decided it would be much easier to make a Feyalis CCG (Customizable Card Game) and to raise money selling accessories.
I don’t want to spend much time on the selling part of things because you can simply check out my online shop to see what I’m selling. But to keep it short here I will be selling inexpensive acrylic laser cut tokens for all sorts of games and applications. I will also be bringing back the dungeon tiles I made before and start loading up on 3d printed items too. So, check out my shop and see all the unique tokens I have on there.
Now the fun stuff, The Feyalis CCG!
I started on this game a while ago and had so many conflicting issues with writing the rules given how hard it is to reinvent the wheel. I have not given up on war gaming so I decided to make a game that plays like a war-game but has the combos and deck building of a standard card game. This unique concept just hasn’t really been done well in my opinion and I felt it should be tackled. A couple of the more important items I wanted to tackle are unit diversity and power creep.
In most CCG’s attacking and defending are as simple as declaring when and where each of them happens, forcing players with powerful cards to simply get them out to win. When there is no place to go to avoid these power cards you either have the answer for them in hand or get wrecked. I don’t think it is entirely fair that a card should be that powerful on its own. In a war game, you must move them well and place them in the right positions to make them effective so it really creates opportunities for good players to beat poor ones. This happens even with bad cards versus great ones. Having a positional awareness is what CCG’s lack and I have remedied that within Feyalis Battles.
I have also brought into light a starting board you get to choose ahead of time by spending resources, as well as a mechanic best described as a living sideboard call the “War Chest”. With these two mechanics, you have some control over your starting position and ability to generate in game resources, as well as the ability to handle one off situations. Given standard tournament round timing, I see this game being a 1 round battle and the winner moving forward. If only 1 game is played there should be a way for players to battle significantly overwhelming combinations without committing their entire deck to fighting them. Games should be won by good players with well thought out decks, not mediocre players with overpowering cards.
Another aspect of CCG’s that seems to be a staple is the power and toughness mechanic. High power is high power, and low power is low power. While these are simple and easy to grasp, they create more situations where some cards just aren’t playable or some cards are just always insanely good and without weakness. There are so many cards that simple
never see play because they will never be good in any situation compared to other cards. I have worked for months on a system I am happy with that creates unit diversity without being complicated. Making units good in general is easy, but making units effective against other units without getting complicated is a challenge. I feel it is important to create cards that allow people to play what they like without handicapping yourself. After going through 5-6 different systems I am proud to say I have finally found the system that works and have started the process of making cards for the game.
This is enough for now, but I will update my blog and Instagram with new cards as I play test the game. With the simple rules that allow for deep interaction It will be a breeze to get a finished and playable version of the game. I have found great success on Tabletop simulator and the ease in which it lets me change cards, tokens, and dice without any expense. I have faith I will finish this game in 2017 and have a launch early next year.
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