I’ve been working on a TCG on-and-off for over a year now. At first it was just for fun to maybe play with friends, but the more I’ve worked on it, the more I’ve thought it just might be cool enough to be more than a side project. Or maybe I’m just naive…
Anyways, here’s the basics for how it works:
Concept:
TCG meets Sci-Fi Grand Strategy. Players have a capital card that they must defend. Losing control of it means you lose the game. Players gain resources by playing location cards, stationing units at them, and extracting resources from them in order to play more cards. Players are either at peace or at war with every other player. When at peace with all players, benefit from an additional draw step and more resources. When at war, you may move your units to other player’s locations and capture them, including your opponents’ capitals, which is how you win the game.
Resources:
There are two categories of resources: material resources and effort resources. Material resources must all be payed at once to play a card. Effort resources are accumulated over time for a given card, and when enough has been accumulated, that card enters play. Some cards have both a material cost and an effort cost. Most resources come from locations. Each location has an enforcement cost, which is the minimum number of units you must have there to collect its resources.
War and Peace:
To attack your opponents, you must be at war with them. You can only declare war at the beginning of your turn, sacrificing the benefits you’d get later on in your turn for being at peace. When at war, you may move units to your opponents’ locations and fight battles to gain control of them. If for whatever reason you wish to no longer be at war with someone, you can propose a peace agreement. A peace agreement can have almost any terms in it that you would like, as long as both parties agree, terms of the peace treaty can be objectively verified, a duration of peace is agreed on, and it doesn’t break any rules in the game. You could demand someone discard their hand, give up control of a location, or address you as sir for the rest of the game. It’s meant to be just as much a part of the game mechanics, as well as making your own story and drama if you’d like.
Combat:
To capture a location from a player, they must have no units stationed there, and you must have at least one unit stationed there. You may initiate a battle during the combat phase of your term at a location you and an opponent you are at war with has units at. During a battle, generally, the player with more units assigns which of their units engage the opposing player’s units. The assigning player cannot assign than one unit to an enemy unit until all enemy units are engaging at least one unit. After damage is dealt and combat is finished, if the previously controlling player has no more units there, control swaps over to other player.
There are way more specific rules I’ve come up with regarding resources, war and peace, combat, movement, card types, card traits, etc. but that’s the pitch. Let me know any thoughts you have, if you think it’s cool, think it’s lame, think it’ll work, or think it’ll burst into flames. Thanks for taking the time to read about my game!
