Star Wars ccg design intent, notes and other musings.

Before I begin, a few words on 7.3.

The last few weeks have been a gut wrenching for me and I’m sure many of the others who helped with the set. There are plenty who could say “I told you so” but many are showing their character by just getting behind the Competitive Balance Team’s erratas and I applaud them and CBT for their quick action. Their changes, I think, will over time be seen as good solid fixes and I hope over time the cards that 7.3 added to the pool will be seen as very positive for the game. I’m very proud of the work that everyone did on this set, from playtesting to proofing.

That being said, I’m very excited about the Design contest. I’ve publicly stated that I’m going to give this design thing 3 sets to see if I’m cutting it. I think this Design contest will help bring out some talents that our community has and will give the Advocates a nice pipeline of potential designers to consider for when any of us move along, whatever the reason. I do think that with the right team in place (and despite what just happened, I emphatically feel we do have a GREAT team) that almost anyone can design for this game.

We will learn. We will improve. We will all have fun playing Star Wars for years to come.

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So when I sat down and decided to bring Spice mining to life, I was faced with a few challenges. Somewhere out there Eric Olsen had supposedly jotted down the bones of the theme, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. So I literally I only had the various Kessel sites to start with.

I’ve read the Kevin J. Anderson books where Han has some adventures with giant spiders and the like on Kessel, but I didn’t want to go that way. I decided that the best thing to do would be to study the extant site’s game text and try to make something that worked with all of them.

I searched for cards with Kessel in lore, title, and game text, and then only one of note was Spice Mines of Kessel v – which seemed to be a really nice counter to Watch Your Step (WYS) but one that was never played since there wasn’t a platform to run it on. I could change that.

The Extraction Facility was the key site to building a theme around. Based on the Dark Side’s game text, spice cards had to come from both players. In other words it was not just a simple retrieval mechanism. Based on the Light Side’s game text, Dark Side would have to get a benefit from the spice cards greater than pseudo retrieval for it to be “worth” using the place-out-of-play (OOP) text.

Armed with that, I decided that some sort of destiny matching would determine mining “success”. There are a few other games I’ve played that inspired the mining mechanic… stuff like revealing cards and maybe drawing one if a condition is met, that sort of thing. The destiny drawing would thematically represent “digging” for spice. Since I wanted to somehow get a Light Side card in the mix, and messing with tracking is fun, I decided that you could force your opponent to draw destiny. From there, the dual success conditions arose.

I decided to make spice mining a mission instead of an objective since I felt it paralleled farming better and also that as a theme it wasn’t objective-worthy. But how would the deck start? Kessel system plus one of the 2/1 sites is a pretty bad non-objective ratio. So I created the new site. At first, it had the Admin pull on it but over the course of time that migrated to the device. At all times I felt that it should protect Kessel from being converted since that would be another dig at WYS. I’ll admit that I forgot that Kessel’s game text was canceled by the objective since it never comes into play with modern WYS builds… that would be something cool to fix with a future “Kessel” card. The office also provides a costly out in case a key card of yours gets spiced.

So I have a good start, I just need to build the platform… and that was accomplished with the “Kessel” card pull. Now you could start 2/0 or 4/1 and set up your locations with the mission itself as you start mining. This was also an out in case the deck ended up weaker than it seemed. Any future player/designer could make a card with Kessel in title and you have a pullable helper for the deck.

Let’s talk about what you can do with spice cards. You can “retrieve” them with the site. They passively add to drains (with Spice Mine Administrator out). If you are at the Extraction Facility, you get out of phase drawing. You can reduce damage by 1 essentially. And you can take yours into hand with the Administrator. The opponent can shut some of these down by killing the Administrator, putting cards out of play at the Facility, or using the Office’s game text (but you get something in return). I really was happy with how these various options turned out. You always have something you’d like to do w/ a spice card, but often times you don’t have enough of them to do it. I think that’s a fun tension to have.
One of the more controversial bits of game text was “autospicing”. Here I refer to paying 2 to stack any card from Lost Pile on the mission. Once we started making lots of things for spice cards to do, against some aggressive LS decks they would get rid of all your cards and you would be a sad clown. I felt autospicing was well costed and gave some intriguing options and flavor to the deck. The deck doesn’t activate a ton so pulling off the autospice into hand combo @ 5 Force is pretty burly but you can have some fun with it. In a build I was messing with, I ran the Empire’s Back v and Limited Resources. I would autospice one of them. My opponent would have the opportunity to use the Office’s game text, and if he did, I would “retrieve” the autospice and then take the other interrupt into hand and play it still for some direct damage. I contend that this is a fair mechanic since Light Side can fight you at the Extraction Facility, save Force, and OOP your cards or just kill the Administrator.

The device didn’t exist at first but came in the second round of testing (as well as the Program Trap restriction… good job testers!). Since spice wants to run something close to Hoth Combat Readiness V’s character and vehicle build, the testers rightly pointed out that it needed something more to distinguish it from that deck or else people would just play what already has been proven. I decided that some damage mitigation would be ideal, and I could make it so that it’s a mild counter to Profit direct damage as well.

The Administrator is inspired by Moruth Doole, and the premium members did a great job selecting the base card. At first, he added to your mining destinies draws (X was +1) but testing showed that text wasn’t needed. That was good since the mission was too long and I had to switch some text around.

I hope you enjoyed this look a spice mining and a short look at my design process for it.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series that spotlights how a card came to be.  I’ll be focusing on cards from 7.2 that I had a hand in, namely player created cards.  Thomas and Ryan can weigh in on some of their own designs down the road.

With the new ability for player creators to make full template cards, James Barnes wanted to bring to life a character found in Blizzard 2′s lore- the paranoid General Nevar.

His initial incarnation was VERY similar to the final product:

General Nevar (V)
Power 3, Ability 2
Deploy 3, Forfeit 4
P2, 3:Blizzard 2. Once per game may \/ an exterior Hoth site with one [DS icon] or a non war-room battleground (except Endor system).

I let James know that he had some additional room to play with if he wanted to try to capture some of the theme of the character and he was excited to add more to his card.

His second attempt added a deploy bonus to Hoth and some bonus text that encourage him to be alone (cause he’s paranoid):

General Nevar
CHARACTER – IMPERIAL
POWER 3 ABILITY 2
[Pilot]2, 3:Blizzard 2. Deploy -1 on Hoth. Once per game may \/ an exterior Hoth site with one [DS icon] or a non war-room battleground (except Endor system). Power and defense value +2 while alone.
Original concept by James Barnes, Dantooine Regionals 2010
DEPLOY 3 FORFEIT 4
[Pilot] [Warrior]

Aaron Nelson, who is now heading up player card development (I’m still helping) suggested some different texts that might see more play since in many decks you would want him to be on an AT-AT.   James went off on those ideas and suggested some texts that let you mess with the opponent’s hand, since paranoids like to check up on people.

James settled on this, which is pretty much his final text pending some proofing corrections:

[P]2, 3: Blizzard 2. Deploys -1 on Hoth. Once per game may \/ an exterior Hoth site with one [DS] or a non war-room battleground (except Endor system.) Once per game, if piloting at a site where no other characters present, may peek at opponent’s hand.

Development and playtesting on this card went very smoothly, mainly since he was a solid fit into many decks.

Next, we had to figure out what card this should go on.   James suggested Imperial Gunner, Snowtrooper Officer, and Captain Pellaeon, and settled on Pellaeon.  This is where one of the sillier aspects of volunteering for the game came into play.  Obviously many people can see a card before it’s released, and I’m sorry to say that some people slightly abuse that foresight by trading/buying for cards that will be virtualized, especially if they look strong.  James eventually was able to spoil Nevar (with Pellaeon as the base card), but after some thought he decided that he’d like to change the image to Commander Gherant mainly so it was easier to get (uncommon vs premium) and in a deck like TTO that runs Pellaeon you don’t have two guys with the same photo.  On an evil note, we all enthusiastically approved this change because it would mess with those people who pre-bought some Pellaeons.  I’m sure he’s get some love someday, but there’s a reason why all spoilers are subject to change!

Congrats to James for designing another well done card!

BTW – The design team has started to send 7.3 to development!

Hey guys, long time no blog!

Lots of things have happened since the last post. And you guys deserve more information about what happened.

Based on the design chat that happened a long time ago, 7.2 was supposed to be 50 cards + player cards and to come out in Mid November. Now, it’s about 25-30 cards total and will be coming out Mid December. Here’s how we got from one reality to the other.

At Worlds, Scott had a good number of players talk to him about our release cycle and the concerns they individually had about us releasing too many cards too often. Some of the reasons I mentioned in my last post. He pulled me aside and got my input on that idea as well.

After Worlds, from what I understand the Advocates all got together and started discussing the idea of fewer cards coming out per season. This discussion dragged out way farther than expected, and made the Mid November date unrealistic.

Finally, the decision was made to drastically lower the number of cards released in a given year. The Advocates told the Design Team to pick out their best, most impactful 10 cards and those plus all the players cards that passed development and playtesting would make up 7.2.

We have a very agressive schedule for testing, but we are planning to be just as aggressive in cutting problematic cards. We don’t want to mess around since it’s not fair to try to shoehorn in big fixes in such a small time period.

Additionally, we are aware that an MPC event usually happens in early January. Because of that, we will be taking a two-pronged approach to making sure that all of the player base has access to key cards in their preparation. First, we want to spoil the major cards to you instead of a mix of cards. Second, we will be releasing a text spoiler when the proofing blackout begins on this set. While minor changes will likely happen, we felt that the players seeing the text earlier would be for the best this time around. It also could act as a dry run for if releasing these texts early truly does let us put out a cleaner PDF on the “release date”

Now, schedule wise the first round of cards is in testing as we speak. The second round, at the most, will introduce one new card. The other changes will be minor tweaks or outright cuts.

Since so much has changed, I’d like to do another designer chat. Let’s plan on doing on from noon-1 PM EST next Friday, November 5.

I’m in the process of buying a house, and I’m about to go meet the inspector today and check all the little things you have to check when you buy a house. The electrical, plumbing, heating, insulation….and the foundation.

In many ways, designing a new strategy for a card game is like building a house. You put in place a foundation, then build up around that with lots of other cards to make it all work together and actually do something cool. The foundation in this case is often the objective or recently a mission that describes what it is you are trying to do at the most basic level. It’s the platform.

For the Rising set, we took a look at a lot of “houses” that had already been built, and looked for ways to improve them. One that we identified early on was Rebel Strike Team. RST sits on a shaky foundation, one built on a high-risk, high-reward concept of controlling the Bunker and blowing it away. Everything is built around blowing away that Bunker, and one of the best decks that did that also won a Podrace the same turn for even more one-turn-punch. But when you have such a shaky foundation, should you even continue building on it?

One of my first goals was to set about fixing the foundation for RST. Finding ways to reduce the risk while still keeping the associated reward balanced enough to be worth it, but not so crazy as to be broken. Once the foundation is fixed, we can start adding on to the house….

DISCLAIMER-  more my opinion than that of the design team as a whole

So, a few people on some of the “worlds recap” threads have posted about how they feel that the PC is putting out too many cards, and that most cards that they do put out don’t have a high degree of playability. In other words, like decipher sets that contained some good card but a lot of fluff.

From an overall game perspective, I can completely see the rationale for putting out fewer cards. All volunteer teams should be able to focus more intently on a small set and discover its flaws easier as compared to a 50+ card set. With fewer major events/decksharing the meta does not shift as rapidly as it has in the past. PC leadership could focus on planning events instead of worrying about the next impending set.  An aging player base can adapt to new cards easier due to their lessening volume.

I think the most compelling reasons to consider this is to let the meta adapt… think of cards like Medium Transport v… it lay dormant for some time until decks like Entanglements started to see more play, and then the meta adapted by packing cards like that without needing design to step in. I think that’s great! We have over 2000 possible cards that could address meta shifts without design intervention.   At times design has created solutions that are either too weak or too overbearing… so I’d rather the “invisible hand” of deckbuilders the world over address things before looking to design to do something.

So, if it were to me, as much as it would suck to have to trim down our sets, I would endorse putting out fewer cards.  But of course, it’s not up to me.  Whatever is decided, I will gladly do, and will be happy to help keep this game we all love alive and kicking.

…is one that I follow these days. I feel that one of the strengths I bring to the Design Team is the fact that I’ve played several different games at a competitive level (I didn’t say pro level; I can count on one hand the times I’ve won checks). And to increase that level of perspective, I also follow the blog of Mark Rosewater, Lead Designer for Magic: The Gathering.

A few weeks ago, Mark said something that floored me:

“I am one of the most successful Magic designers of all time with more sets to my credit than anyone in the history of the game and my hit ratio is under ten percent. While I have great ideas I also have mediocre ones. How do I tell them apart?”

When it comes to my own designs, I am almost heartbroken when just one of my cards is judged “not good enough” or “needs work” by the rest of the team. Developing that level of self-criticism, where you can look at one of your mediocre ideas and say, “This is mediocre,” is still something I’m learning. But it is crucial when our virtual sets are between 20 and 50 cards, tops. There’s not a lot of room for fluff. Like recently I had an idea for a cycle of cards that would have a neat little “Hidden Weapons” feel to them, while requiring your opponent to draw the destiny. But since they were basically unconnected to any of the themes and concepts we are planning on for Block 7, there was no real need for these designs. And balancing the power level of a card that forces your opponent to draw a destiny was going to be incredibly difficult anyway, so the cards died before ever making it off the drawing board.

The full blog that I took that quote from is one where Rosewater talks about the archenemies of the Designer, both in the work environment (Magic’s Rules Manager) and in the creative arena (that quote describes how his own doubt can be his worst enemy). Go read the full blog right here.

The Empire rises November 12.

So first, an update. We are pretty much ready to present both 7.2 and 7.3 to development, but are waiting for the go-ahead from Scott/Sonn. Some player cards are already being developed, and a few have been approved for playtesting. 7.2 is going to be a big set that will add a lot to the game before the MPC. We hope you like the results.

Since all three of us have gone public, I think this is a great opportunity to find out from you what you want to know about (besides spoilers). To that end, I’m in the chat (in the background) most of the day. On Friday, July 30, I’m planning on having a live chat where you can tell me what you want us to know about and generally answer questions to the best of my ability. It will start at noon and go until 3pm or so, and I will try to keep copies of questions and responses and post them to the boards afterwards.

But let’s talk process, a little. Sonn can weigh in with this much better, but from what I knew as a player card guy there were a lot of things schedule wise that were changed to accommodate the Revolution. This was part of the reason that Block 7 changed from Galaxy at War to Rise of the Empire.

When I was added to the team, Sonn asked us for any ideas we had that would fit the theme of the block, so in a lot of was we were looking to emphasize the grunts that made the Galactic Civil War happen. Some stuff that we liked would actually have text posted. Things went into limbo for a bit, but after the name change we had to review how our cards fit the new block theme, which led to lots of scraps and reworks. We would comment on other’s designs and try to refine them while we waited for our timelines.

Eventually, we got the go ahead to start putting sets together, which we did in a semi-haphazard fashion. We created a master list and discussed our most recent ideas & texts, and if we thought it was ready to pass along we would add it to the master. This master is what will be given to development, hopefully soon. There has been some movement between sets and some more tweaks as we wait, but we are confident that these sets will both give new deck options to both sides of the Force.

The Empire rises November 12.

Name: Ryan French

Age: 30

Location: Port Angeles, Washington

Favorite LS Deck: After five years or more of hating WYS, I finally built it a few years back….and now it’s my favorite. The amount of utility that you get from the objective, balanced against the relatively poor selection of characters available, makes for some very interesting gameplay situations. While it’s my favorite deck to play, I wouldn’t dare try to design helpers for it, because we’ve seen over the last two years that it can easily get out of hand with just a few tweaks to its available character pool.

Favorite DS Deck: CCT starting IG-88. I put this deck together right after Virtual Set 5 came out, and it’s rarely been out of my deckbox since then. The amount of choices you are faced with in searching your Force pile every turn makes for very interesting games, and the platform can be stretched to incorporate nearly anything you want to add. I’ve carbon-frozen Obi-Wan, We’re the Bait’d a captive Leia to stop Luke from Jedi Testing, even Epic Duel’d from this platform. IG-88′s searching ability allows you to keep a toolbox ready for any situation, and I love that level of control over my destiny.

History with the PC: When Decipher put up the announcement about the PC, I joined immediately, hoping to make it as a card designer. I sent in my ideas for an “Enhanced Hoth” set as part of my application, but it was not enough. Instead I was brought onboard as one of the first proofreaders, back when we used an email list to communicate, and I remember pitching an email fit over the original wording of K’lor’slug (V) and Molator (V) (if played as originally written, they prevented any character from leaving the table during the damage segment of battle, while also requiring those cards to be forfeited, which is defined as “lost during the damage segment”). My level of input waxed and waned with the years, until the Re-Edit Project began, and under the leadership of people like Silee and Shewski, the proofreading team codified our guidelines and rules, and became a lean mean proofing machine. Since then I’ve been asked to help handle rulings questions in the Rules Forum, and now, finally, 9 years in the making, this SWCCG card designer is now fully armed and operational….

Personal Design Philosophy: I have several goals in designing a card or theme. First, the design must be elegant. I don’t want to design a monstrosity that is impossible to read and impractical to keep track of during play. I want my card or theme to be simple (as much as possible, and we all know that “simple” to a SWCCG player is about 3 times more complex to any other card gamer), both in understanding how it works and in seeing it do its thing on the table. Second, I want my design to be creative. I don’t want to just re-hash things that other cards already do; I don’t want to make the next set of combo cards. I want to mine unexplored design space. One of my current designs started from the question, “What can we do with Out Of Play cards?”, while another came from “Let’s see if we can explore the movement rules a little.” I don’t want to break the game, but I do want to explore it a little more. And I trust our Development Team to keep me in check if I do go off the deep end. Third, the design must be flavorful. By that, I mean that the title, lore, picture, and game text should all meld together to support the idea behind the card. A great example here is the new R2-D2 we just put out in 7.1, which the current Design Team all had a hand in brainstorming. My goal for an R2-D2 card was to show off his ability to coordinate the Rebels when they were moving around on the Death Star or Cloud City, as well as his ability to screw up the security countermeasures of those areas. And when we settled on the destiny manipulation and it was evident that he, as a presence-less and thus hard-to-kill droid, needed a stronger drawback, the element of being captured was, again, a very true-to-life drawback for R2-D2 to have, as he was so intensely pursued by Darth Vader throughout Episode IV. This is the droid the DS is looking for, and having him be captured if the Rebels ever lost track of him was the perfect complement to the design goal of that R2-D2. Another example, albeit a somewhat poor one, is my original V-Lite design, Maul’s Sith Speeder. I wanted that bike to have a mechanic allowing Maul to leap off of it into combat, just like he does in the movie, to gain some advantage. The advantage ended up being a loss of immunity to the Jedi (representing the surprise element of Maul’s sudden appearance) as well as the ability to track that destiny-5 vehicle around for some future destiny draw (representing Maul’s constant vigilance of his surroundings, as seen in one of my favorite Star Wars novels, Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter). While I would rather have the underlying card be Fear Is My Ally (both for the picture and for the fact that I have a copy autographed by Ray Park himself!), I’m satisfied that the Flare-S Racing Swoop does a good enough job of representing Maul’s swoop bike, and thus all the elements tie together to produce a flavorful card.

Your ideal meta: I certainly like it when any deck is good enough to bring to a tournament, but I realize that there’s almost always going to be a few decks that are top notch. The challenge is recognizing when a deck is perhaps too good to be giving help to (such as WYS is right now) while still designing exciting cards for the rest of the game. As with any creative endeavor, it’s difficult to hear that your ideas are off-limits, but luckily I rarely want to design cards for what are already the best decks. While I may enjoy playing WYS, I enjoy designing cards for more downtrodden decks like Rebel Strike Team much more. And I suppose none of that really answers the question….right now, I would have to say my ideal meta is one where my beloved CCT IG-88 deck doesn’t have to resort to “dirty tricks” like the torture card to win games, and can instead crush the opponent using various personas of Darths Maul and Vader instead! I also want to see a little more balance represented in the top decks, by which I mean that a deck like Profit, which focuses on only one arena, is at a marked disadvantage compared to decks that are able to play in both arenas. I want to see more games decided by battling, I suppose, and less by “drain racing.” But, as always, the best meta is one where people are excited to play, and that is firmly my goal: design exciting cards.

Name Thomas Caspersen
Age 30
Location Trondheim, Norway
Favorite LS Deck Hmm, picking favorite decks is kinda weird to me because over the years I’ve enjoyed playing so many different ones. If I try to look at the big picture I’d say TRM, because of the “toolbox properties” that deck has, being able to adapt to whichever deck opponent is playing. But I must also mention MWYHL Asteroids. Not because I think it’s a healthy deck to have at a top tier (I really don’t), but because when played right it gave me an unique sense of control, like understanding the code of the matrix. Sort of. Thank god this is a geek forum 
Favorite DS Deck I think I have to go with AOBS here. Why? Because, for the most part I love the GOOD expanded universe stuff, and it’s a deck mechanic that, more so than a lot of other decks, becomes stronger the better it’s played. Or to twist it around; it’s only as good as the player wielding it. I guess you could say that about a lot of decks, but as I said, I think it is even more so the case with AOBS. But I need to add ISB as an honorable mention, it’s just so well designed and creatively inspiring. Simplicity and elegance that goes hand in hand.
History within the PC I started out as a proofer around the end it the re-edit I think. Pretty sure the first thing I ever did for the PC was a last minute read-through of the re-edit cards. Since then I’ve been involved with a few other projects until I ended up here in Design.
Personal design philosophy As everyone else, and their grandmothers, I have my own opinion on which cards I like and so fourth. I don’t like cheese, but I do accept it in small doses. The perfect deck/strategy for me design-wise is the one that is a perfect combination of balanced gameplay and star wars theme. One without the other is a failure imo. I also enjoy making themes as opposed to random single card helpers. That probably has to do with me liking to “tell a sw story” when I make cards. Even when I make singles there are small details here and there which have been put there for a very good reason thematicly, but which might not always be so apparent to the regular swccg card fan. That is also one of the challenges I face, not overthinking stuff like that and trying to do too much. I love the original trilogy and the main EU stuff (Black Sun, Thrawn, Rogue Squadron). Not so much the prequel themes. But I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the Clone Wars series. Heh…
Your ideal meta Quite the nugget. My view on this more or less changes from year to year. There are good arguments for trying to restrict the meta to 3-5 decks for each side, and there are good arguments for trying to make as many decks as possible playable at any given time. But one thing I am certain of; this is a game of SKILL, and as such I feel that it’s important to make sure that skill is an important factor when determining the outcome. Both in singles games and in tournaments. Balancing 50 LS decks with 50 DS decks is just completely impossible. Designing cards specificly to “repair” autolosses however is something I am very much for. The best road to a healthy meta imo is to aim for few or no autolosses amongst the commonly played decks. Disadvantages just makes stuff amore interesting, to a degree of course, but a good player should “always” have a fighting chance with a good deck.

Hello from your 7.2/7.3 Design Team!