Card Game Update: Villainous threats! What are they?

 Welcome back! Time for another preview of my new card game! Recently I received my prototype in the mail from TheGamecrafter.com so I can start really fleshing out the rules with playtesting. This will involve a lot of gaming over here and I will be posting more information as that goes! 

Here is what the game looks like right now!

So exciting!

Today I'm going to tell you about another card type. This would be enemy creatures or characters I just call "threats" or "enemies". When revealed from the deck, you are in combat and must hope that your d6 rolls are better than theirs! Hopefully, you'll have one of those allies from last post to help you out! So let's see what they look like, starting with a generic creature.

As you can see, this is the same layout as your player card, bosses, and allies. The stats mean exactly the same as with all of them. You have the name, affiliation or identification type, the stats, then health and special abilities. 

"Hey, you keep mentioning health, Dave, but how do you track it?"

Glad you asked! Sorry I haven't explained this one yet! See that number in the shield? That is the health points. Damage is tracked consistently with either dice or tokens (however you prefer). Nothing heals without something to trigger the healing effect. So if you hit the Skeleton for 2 damage, it will stay at 2 health until either hit again, or healed by another effect, or its ability kicks in and you have to fight it again. Skeletons are funny that way. You might notice that this enemy has a zero for mentality. That not only means that it cannot use mentality, but that it cannot be controlled. Combat is explained in prior post, so if you are new to this, you may want to go back a bit and read up.

Let's look at an enemy character:

As you can see, Railroad has all the same stats and his affiliation gives him a special ability that is listed on an additional card. They get the same bonuses for additional members being in play as allies do, so +1 to all stats if there are other Foundation members in play. Railroad has a bonus if a certain location is in play that could make him even tougher if another member is around as well. One thing about Railroad however is his drawback. In the novel, Chaos Rising, the hero Nyhtwulf, scrambled Railroad's mind and it took 6 months to recover. He fears Nyhtwulf as a result. Right now, he is the only character with such a drawback, but it may rarely happen in play. We will get to locations more later but I will say, if you choose to make your players face this guy, make sure he gets his trainyard bonus.

Now for a special look at a really nasty enemy who ties down the game:

When building your game, you won't want more than one of this sort of threat for your players because more than one in play at the same time, will definitely end the game. Yes, there is another one. Maniac's attacks count for every player and ally active and all have roll defense against him. Other threats in play remain active, but no more cards can be revealed until Maniac is defeated. He is immune to mentality effects and spells so save them to help your friends. Who knows, maybe you'll have King Falcon for an ally and he'll help you take down that foreboding 15 health. Being immune to mentality and magic also works in your favor because the current boss can't use them on him to buff him either.

And there you have it. Pretty straight forward and next time we will over the challenge cards, the third and finally card type from the event decks! Thanks for joining in!

CARD GAME UPDATE: Get Some Allies!

 If you've been following along with the updates for my new card game, Heroic Missions, you know that it's time to see what allies can do for you in this cooperative card game. If not, you might want to back up a few posts and catch up on the info. I'm currently awaiting my prototype to be shipped to me from TheGameCrafter.com and then I plan to do an unboxing on youtube. So stay tuned. Till then, allies are heroes in the event decks that can boost you or fight for you outright. Each one has special attributes and affiliations to make them even better. And believe this, you will need all the help you and your friends can get. So let's take a look at an example.

You should immediately see some familiar information on Dreamseer's card. She has stats and health just like you or bosses. Those stats do the same thing for allies that they do for you. Having ally give you plus 1 in all your stats. But you can also have an ally go forward to do actions for you including combat. So lets go along with the information on the card. 

Affiliation: Right below her name is Dreamseer's affiliation with her team the Strykeforce Guard. Affiliations are listed on a note card with the game and each has their own special abilities to add to their members. In this case, when a member of this team uses the intercept ability they gain +2 defense. Intercept is a standard game ability that allows you or an ally to get in the way of an attack on another player or ally and take up defending it. That also means taking damage if it doesn't work out. 

Recruit requirement: Where it says REC is where you find out what you have to roll from your mentality dice to gain Dreamseer as an ally. If your mentality doesn't give you enough dice to meet a requirement, you get to roll that as the minimum number of dice. Breaking down the numbers, when you roll your mentality and let's say you have an MNT of 5 (so you roll 5d6) you need to get 3 dice to come up as anything from 2-4 in order to recruit Dreamseer. Unless another ability allows for it, you may only have one ally at a time. If an ally comes up in your assigned missions, you must try to recruit and failure counts against you (see earlier posts). 

Special abilities: Right under her health you see the special abilities she can use (or you can use when it comes to some allies).  As you can read, she has mind control and that is a 7d6 attack for her to take control of an enemy and use them to attack someone or something else. In her next ability she can combine two of her stats for 10 dice total to attack an enemy requiring they use their endurance to defend (even if another of their stats would be stronger or better for defense). Of course, Dreamseer's main drawback is her health. She can only take 4 hits before she's gone. And aside from mentality, her other stats are pretty low and may not defend her that well. So she needs to be used with some tactics in mind.

Past that she can use any abilities her stat levels allow (listed on another note card that we will get to later) or that you could do with the same stats. Now, lets get a peek preview of a couple other allies you'll want to work with.

First, let's check out Halley of the Chessmen. Firs note his recruitment and see how easy it will likely be to get him on your side. You only need 2 dice to come up 4-6 and he's ready to help you out. As soon as you recruit him, he gets an artifact attached to him that will make him even more dangerous. It gives him +3 defense and he cannot be counter attacked. Halley's best attack is only 6 dice, but he can target 2 enemies no matte where they are on the table. Considering he can have up to 9 dice for his defense, Halley can be hard to take down. As a member of the Chessmen, if another member of this team is in play, none of them can be stunned.

Now this is a combatant you want out front taking on threats directly. The Gator is a little harder to recruit, but he's a triple 9. 9 dice for both strength and endurance with 9 health. Even better is his ability to count 3's as successful dice that enemies will have to defend with minimums of 4's. The Southern Watch get +2 defense against spells that applies to the player they ally with. 

Now for the coup de grace that I know my readers want to know about. Yes, it's King Falcon.

Arconians have use of fire and lightning with immunity to both built in. KF gets equipped with 3 fat artifacts that make him a force of terror for any enemy on the table and even the bosses are nervous. It won't be easy to recruit him with low mentality but if you do, he has 12 health and stats that can do nearly anything. He's everything a cosmic hero should be. 

Another point about allies is that they are color coded bright green to their stats and health. While this may be an issue for color blind players, only allies have REC. Anything else is a threat. Next time, we will see what some of those threats look like. 

Thank you for all your support and sharing the news. Stay tuned for more GZ information and follow me!

Card Game Update: Who's the Boss?

 For those who have been following along, I am currently awaiting the delivery of my new prototype of my cooperative card game that you build to challenge 3 to 4 of your friends. So if you aren't up to date on the info, you might want to back up a couple posts and check it all out.

Today I'm introducing you to what the bosses are like. I'll go with what I see as the easiest or beginner's boss to put up against your players. The boss is the end goal to defeat and each one comes with their own deck of 18 cards to threaten players with. I know I haven't gone into the total setup of the game yet, but that is for later on.

So, here is Prof. Zombie.

First thing to note is how he has stats just like player characters do. They work for him the exact same way they work for players ( and other threats from event decks). The Prof. has 20 total health and a couple of interesting abilities that cannot be countered (bosses cannot be controlled, instantly defeated, or have their abilities countered). The first ability grants any threat with the word 'zombie' in its name bonuses of +1 to all stats and health. This does not amplify Prof. Zombie as he counts as a boss and can only amplify deck threats. He does have a card that comes out making all threats in the deck count as zombies.

Every time a player completes a "mission" (more on that later), the boss reacts and reveals a card from their personal deck. Let's take a look at a couple of Prof. Zombie's cards.

Yep, players can turn traitor, but only one player can be a traitor at any one time. You can fix it too if you don't mind beating up your friend a little bit. This card takes effect as soon as it is revealed and Prof. Zombie rolls 7d6 against someone. If 3 or more hits are left undefended, then that player will turn on his buddies. Yes, being a traitor means using your turn to attack your friends. 

Talk about raising the stakes. But what does this mean? Well, the player with the lowest endurance is considered captured and can take no actions until rescued. Any player may use their turn to attempt that rescue. A round is the time period for all players to take one turn from the time this card comes into play. You will want to use the highest of your personal stats from the ones required on the card. If your strength is highest you will roll d6 equal to your strength and hope that four dice come up as 4-6. If they don't, you failed and your turn is over. But don't fret. Death is not necessarily the end. If a player can use magic or has the right powers, they can revive a player at half health to jump back into the game.

Just in case anyone wonders, all of these effects are story accurate to the books based on the characters. You don't have to read them to enjoy the game, but the lore is cool to know.

Let's look at one more of his cards.

Any player may have up to two threats in front of them at any time, but no more than that. Still, the ability to put "from the deck" threats into front of players adds to the danger. Of course, when you build up your game for your players, you can leave the cards that match up to a card like this off to the side so they are easy to find when called for.  And these are just three examples of  many. Each boss has their own specific effects that match up to them and each has their own special abilities and health. The highest health for a boss? 50. You'll want to get some play experience before you try that on. 

Next time, I will show you what allies are like. Be sure to follow and always be up to date on GZ. If you want to find the books, check out the links section. Thanks for reading and roll those dice high.

Card Game Update: What's Your Character?

 Today I'm going to give you some insight to how my new upcoming game, GZ: Heroic Missions plays by showing you who or what you get to be. That's right, you get to be one of several character types, best selected at random. If you've been paying attention, I've teased two of them in the past; the warrior and the speedster. Today, we'll take a look at the warrior again. Let's see what the items on this card mean and how they work for you in the game!

So right from the top we have the name of the character type. This is the warrior. Below the name we have a set of 5 red stars with stat names next to them. As you can read, they are strength, speed, mentality, agility, and endurance. The first important thing about these are the numbers next to them. HM uses a great deal of dice combat with standard six sided dice (not included) and you need a lot of them for a host and 3 or 4 players. The top three stats are attack stats and the bottom two are almost entirely for defense. Mentality can go both ways. The numeric level of the stat indicates how many dice you get to roll when taking an action that involves it. 

So, if the warrior makes a strength attack, she will roll 5d6, but how do you know what hits? The standard for what I call a "successful dice" is a roll of 4-6. So the warrior will keep all dice that come up 4-6 and discard the rest. The warrior's target may then make a defense roll with the dice for the appropriate stat and try to roll numbers to cancel out any potential hits against them. Canceling out an attack dice means rolling a defense of equal or greater than that dice's roll. So a 4 can be eliminated as a hit by any rolls of 4-6. After seeing how many dice are eliminated, any left count as damage at the rate of 1 per dice. 

Now is where I mention that all players start with 10 health. More on that later. 

Next over to the right we have the warrior's abilities. As you read, the warrior gets to draw 2 reward cards for the beginning of the game. Reward cards give additional support in the way of all sorts of items and abilities so starting out with 2 right away is pretty awesome. The warrior may also may use weapons regardless of any special requirements they might have and can even equip an extra weapon. Weapons often add to your stats and give you extra dice to roll. Each player character has its own special abilities. 

That's pretty much all there is to the player character card and the game will come with 12 different characters to play. Each one adding their own special flavor to the game.

Next time we will take a look at the threats you face as in the bosses themselves! 

Please remember to follow me here, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and google Galaxy Zento. It's a universe that only comes to life because of you.

Galaxy Zento: Heroic Missions: New Cooperative Card Game!

 As many of you know, I have been hard at work with new GZ art and plugging into card making for this new game. Well, now that I am ordering my prototype, it's time to hit you with some juicy details about what this game has in store!

Mind you, a great deal of testing will be underway when I get my prototype, so official rules have not been written! So let's dig into what is settled!

Game Builder! I'm calling this a game builder because it's the kind of game that you, as the host, will build to challenge 3-4 players with a villainous boss and all sorts of terrible threats. You choose what challenges your players will face in the 3 event decks they will play through. You will also choose allies for them to meet and recruit for extra assistance. There will also be additional game play alternatives to change things up and make the replay value even higher. 

Did I mention the word 'cooperative'? That's right, 3-4 players will work together on missions to break down the plans of an evil boss (one of 5 currently available). Beware failing missions! 10 missions in the failed pile and your team loses! You will be able to assist each other in missions and gain allies to help and boost you further. And for every mission you complete, you get a reward card and sometimes special powers. 

In coming posts I will get into various game functions in detail, but for now you can check out a few game examples.

Player Character: Assigned to you at random with special abilities and stats to play from.

Bosses: The villain you are working to take down in the game with varied levels of difficulty.

Challenge cards that you complete as you reveal them (counting as your missions) by rolls of 6 sided dice. 

Enemies you have to fight with lots of dice rolling. 

Allies you can recruit to boost and assist you.

But what are all those numbers for? That's for another entry, for now you get this sneak peek into what the game looks like and you're only scratching the surface of what will be GZ: Heroic Missions! Keep following for more information that will come very soon.