Shattered Plains Boardgame

[ScavellTane]

What do you think?

How would that work really?

[Fourth Of The Night]

Could be done a couple of ways:

#1 People play the various Highprinces, and compete for Gemhearts, Shards, and other Loot, which function as Victory Points.

#2 People play the various Highprinces and cooperatively fight the Listeners, with the win/loss being the defeat of the Listeners before the Everstorm is  summoned or capturing the Oathgate and escaping before their destruction by the storm.

#3 Two people play, one as the Listeners, one as the Alethi, with similar VP's as in #1.

[Walin]

Hearing the words “Victory Points” immediately brought to mind Settlers of Catan. That could easily be modded into a Shattered Plains game, what with the hexagonal tiles, random resource acquisition, and need to build roads (permanent bridges). Sounds pretty cool, though you could also make a Risk-like game as Fourth Of The Night said.

[Yezrien]

I'm surprised no one's done this yet. It's a great idea.

I could see it working like Risk. Each player is a highprince, moving armies from plateau to plateau. And you can choose your bridge type. Dalinar's big chull-drawn bridges are slower, but carry more men, so they're good for huge assaults. Sadeas's slave-bridges are faster, but can only transfer a few armies at a time.

The number of armies you can field is determined by how many gemhearts you collect, since it takes gemstones to soulcast food.

The Parshendi would be a neutral faction. Functionally, Parshendi are the HP of a gemheart. And it might cost a few armies to take certain plateaus due to "Parshendi skirmishers."

This might make the game horrendously long, but you could have a highstorm every 10 or 30 turns, destroying all Alethi units on the plains. You have to retreat to your warcamp before the next storm, or you lose armies. 

[The Gecko]

You could also mix all these ideas. I've played games like Scotland yard where one person is X and the others try to find him. Instead, one person is the mega-army of Parshendi vs up to ten highprinces. The Highprinces are trying to work together to kill the Parshendi but are competing for placement, the Parshendi is trying to kill all the Alethi. The game ends when either Parshendi or Alethi are dead. The if the highprinces, the one with the most gemhearts(currency) wins first and so on. Whichever Highprinces the Parshendi have killed are ranked below him. So say that 4 highprinces are playing, 2 die, but the Alethi win. The placement would be 1: richest Alethi, 2: other surviving Alethi, 3: Parshendi, 4: richer of the dead Alethi, 5: poor dead Alethi

[Carbonationspren]

3 hours ago, Belzedar said:

This might make the game horrendously long, but you could have a highstorm every 10 or 30 turns, destroying all Alethi units on the plains. You have to retreat to your warcamp before the next storm, or you lose armies. 

This reminds me of the barbarians in the Cities and Knights expansion of the Settlers of Catan. The barbarians have a little track that they travel on, going one space further every time a certain die is rolled (a 50% chance each turn). It looks like this (size spoiler):

Spoiler

Every time they reach the end, they "attack" and a bunch of bad things happen. I think this would be perfect for highstorms: you can predict when they will hit, but since it is up to random die rolls, you don't know exactly when. 

[The Gecko]

Perhaps every plateau has a coordinates pair that can be chosen with dice, so a 6 sided letter die and number die makes for 36 combos, from a1 to f6, then once per turn or round, a pupating chasmfiend shows up at those coordinates(so a gemheart goes there from the bank) 

One question we need to find an answer to is if turns will be a single movement or action, or if they will be huge/long sequences of actions like Risk. Personally I think that turns should be kinda short, similar to settlers where you get resources and do what you can, but movement is slow and you don't have enough stuff per turn for huge actions. I think that would be better for battles rather than the kinda one sided battles of Risk(Attacker rolls 3 dice, defender rolls 2, making battles not drawn out at all) 

So: How long will turns be?

How will battles be carried out?

[Carbonationspren]

Here are a bunch of thoughts:

What kind of board(s) will it have? I'm envisioning a main, central board with a map of the Shattered Plains, used for coordinating armies and gemhearts. Then, each player will have a personal map of their warcamp in front of them, used for coordinating political actions, like alliances, soulcasting, resource allocation, and bridge/spearman barracks/training. 

Main board:

13 minutes ago, TheBMSRanger said:

Perhaps every plateau has a coordinates pair that can be chosen with dice

I like this, maybe something like Catan (again) with moveable tokens to make things variable. The plateaus nearest to the warcamps would have a fixed, low, probability, but plateaus farther out would have higher probabilities that fluctuated between games. 

I like the idea of moveable tokens better than coordinates, that way we can provide probability. For example, if we had tokens numbered 2-16, and two eight-sided dice, tokens with 2 or 16 would have a 1.5% chance of being rolled, where tokens with 9 would have a 12.5% chance of being rolled. The problem that I see with that, is I don't think that it's realistic for a chasmfiend to pupate every turn. So, I propose (expanding on my idea above) that the dice also can move forward the highstorms or other special events (in a deck of cards, i.e. Jasnah shows up, Hoid offends everyone, etc.). Here is a possible probability chart (spoilered for size):

Spoiler

This would mean only 7-8 plateaus with chasmfiends, though, unless more than one appeared each turn. We would need a way to "share the love". Maybe each number corresponds to a region of plateaus, and another method (such as the specific roll of a certain die) corresponds to which plateau in the region. 

Player boards:

Each player would have a map of their warcamp. I'm thinking that there should be political/administrative/scientific/etc. actions, too. These could include soulcasting, training infantry, purchasing resources from traveling merchants, Vorin worship, fabrial research, and visiting parties to make alliances and trade. 

The boards themselves would have areas representing barracks, temples (soulcasters are ardents), merchant housing, storehouses (food and money), etc. Perhaps players could lay down cards that gave them certain abilities there. The boards would also detail each Highprince's special advantage/disadvantage (if that was included). 

Highstorms:

As @Belzedar said above, the Highstorms would wipe out anything on the Plains. Another thing, though is that Soulcasters can't create food without Stormlight. If a highprince's large gemstones are depleted, they can't soulcast anything. When the highstorm comes, all Stormlight reserves will be replenished.

Turn length:

2 hours ago, TheBMSRanger said:

One question we need to find an answer to is if turns will be a single movement or action, or if they will be huge/long sequences of actions like Risk.

I think people should be allowed more than one action per turn, but it should be structured. One possible sequence:

1. Roll the dice and resolve what happens
2. Move armies on the planes and (possibly) fight.
3. Trade with other players, play cards, purchase things, and Soulcast.

Two and three could be switched, but I think they should be distinct. There shouldn't be a "feedback loop" of options from alternating between fighting and playing cards.

[thegatorgirl00]

19 minutes ago, Carbonationspren said:

Each player would have a map of their warcamp. I'm thinking that there should be political/administrative/scientific/etc. actions, too. These could include soulcasting, training infantry, purchasing resources from traveling merchants, Vorin worship, fabrial research, and visiting parties to make alliances and trade. 

The boards themselves would have areas representing barracks, temples (soulcasters are ardents), merchant housing, storehouses (food and money), etc. Perhaps players could lay down cards that gave them certain abilities there. The boards would also detail each Highprince's special advantage/disadvantage (if that was included). 

This part of the game seems similar to Puerto Rico. 

[The Gecko]

A couple of other things: 

Perhaps the highstorms can benefit the Parshendi player in some way, allowing him to change his unit types. This would be good for him because he wouldn't have teammates to ally/trade with

2 hours ago, Carbonationspren said:

Each player would have a map of their warcamp. I'm thinking that there should be political/administrative/scientific/etc. actions, too. These could include soulcasting, training infantry, purchasing resources from traveling merchants, Vorin worship, fabrial research, and visiting parties to make alliances and trade. 

I like this idea, that the players 'share' the plains map, but each have their own small game going on on their own boards. 

2 hours ago, Carbonationspren said:

If a highprince's large gemstones are depleted, they can't soulcast anything. When the highstorm comes, all Stormlight reserves will be replenished.

This is similar to the base idea for deck building games, that when you buy a card it is discarded but added to your own personal deck to be used later.

So the Highprinces all play their own political game while simultaneously playing against the Parshendi player, who has control of that side of the game and the Shattered plains. 

I don't think that battles should be carried out like Chess or Risk. That would make things incredibly boring for the Parshendi player, though the highprinces have the other half to entertain them. The Parshendi should also be able to attack the warcamps themselves so as to have a chance for victory.

I agree with your ideas for turns, but I still can't think of a good method for the battles. In also not sure I agree with the idea of Bridges, it fits the story, but adds unnecessary complications.

[Carbonationspren]

2 hours ago, thegatorgirl00 said:

This part of the game seems similar to Puerto Rico.

That's actually kind of what I was thinking of. That isn't unique to Puerto Rico, though. I was also thinking of 7 Wonders, Bang, and Catan: Cities and Knights. But yes, Puerto Rico is the most similar incarnation of that. 

[Carbonationspren]

3 minutes ago, TheBMSRanger said:

I don't think that battles should be carried out like Chess or Risk. That would make things incredibly boring for the Parshendi player, though the highprinces have the other half to entertain them. The Parshendi should also be able to attack the warcamps themselves so as to have a chance for victory.

I don't know if I'm totally sold on the Parshendi being a player. It seems like there would be a lot less to do, and they would have access to a lot less resources. I think that Parshendi presence should be determined by the proximity to the warcamps and chance, so the chasmfiends closer to the camps would have a smaller likelihood of Parshendi, or at least a smaller Parshendi force. 

What makes more sense to me is once a chasmfiend appears, Parshendi will begin accumulating on the plateau, with the closer plateaus gaining forces slower. If a critical value of Parshendi accumulate before the plateau is attacked, the Parshendi take the gemheart and leave. If a highprince arrives, they will (somehow) battle the Parshendi.

Something that I thought about concerning turn order:

In a previous post, I talked about having a War phase and a Business/Politics phase for each turn. I don't have this all worked out, but another possibility would be to have War and Business/Politics rounds, i.e. everyone goes around and moves their armies/fights, then everyone goes around does their political maneuvering. This could make campaigning for gemhearts a little more fair, perhaps. Other things would have to change to make that work, though.

[The Gecko]

I agree with what you have said for the most part, though I really like the idea of a parshendi player, as playing as 'the enemy' has always seemed fun in games like these.

What if we made it so that if nobody chose to play Parshendi, then it proceeded as you wish, if somebody wants to play Parshendi, those few rules pertaining to that come into effect and the game now has a sentient opponent, which could change the playstyle of both armies and make the game unpredictable, unlike the quite predictable and consistent neutral player. Both would be fun, Both would work if that option is worked into the game.

[Carbonationspren]

35 minutes ago, TheBMSRanger said:

What if we made it so that if nobody chose to play Parshendi, then it proceeded as you wish, if somebody wants to play Parshendi, those few rules pertaining to that come into effect and the game now has a sentient opponent, which could change the playstyle of both armies and make the game unpredictable, unlike the quite predictable and consistent neutral player. Both would be fun, Both would work if that option is worked into the game.

I like that. I can see the Parshendi being an optional player, maybe for when you just want to add one more.

Speaking of players, how many can we feasibly support? There are 10 highprinces, but I don't think this would work as a 10 player game. We can probably have character cards for all 10, but only 6 could play at a time (7 with the Parshendi). Does that sound reasonable?

[The Gecko]

Well if every person has their own board, and isn't crammed onto the plains the whole time(and the plains are cleared occasionally) I feel we could make it a bigger game than most though it would probably require at least 3 princes. So 3-7 players? Possibly 8?

[Carbonationspren]

OK, so I've come up with a central board, and some more gameplay ideas, so I'd like to get some input. First, here's the board (size spoiler):

Spoiler

(Pretty much everything was done with a mouse, so artistic value is relatively low)

This is roughly based off of the illustration in WoK. I chose a hexagonal pattern, since it there are three "forward" directions from each plateau. (Square/rhombus/triangle-based patterns could work, too, but the hexagons have the most options for movement (and they look the most like plateaus) ). On the right side of the plains, there are holes, since the the plateaus get farther apart further out. The Tower is a big plateau in the middle. The biggest inconsistency from the reference drawing is that the Tower is centered, which I think is necessary for fairness. 

The rhombus-shaped plateaus can be moved on and off of, like any other plateau. I used them to add some variety and maintain symmetry.

The circles on the left represent the camps of the highprinces. Armies can be moved be moved off of the personal player board and onto the corresponding plateau in front of the camp (just numbered for now, I didn't want to draw the highprince glyphs with a mouse) and vice versa. 

The circles on the far right are highstorm counter. Every time a highstorm number is rolled, a token of some sort will advance down until the storm tile is reached, which means that the highstorm shows up. One thing that I'm not sure of is whether ten is too many or too few spaces to have. That can probably only be determined by testing the game. 

In the middle, the colored regions are a way of organizing the plateaus. In the proposed 6-sided dice roll table above, there are seven chasmfiend rolls. Each region could correspond to a roll of the dice. This could be determined by tiles that shift every highstorm, to keep chasmfiend appearances unpredictable. One thing that I haven't yet figured out is how to randomly and fairly choose a plateau. Each region has 20-21 plateaus (except region 7, which has 26 plus the Tower). I'm thinking either more dice rolls, or perhaps something dependent on the current location of the highstorm track could determine the specific location of the chasmfiend. 

 

 

One thing that hasn't really been specified at all yet is how the armies will be structured. Here is my proposal, and I'd like to get some input. 

There will be four kinds of armies: Soldiers, Shardbearers, man bridges, and chull bridges. Armies are allowed a certain amount of movement each turn. Armies can be split or combined, but they can't get between plateaus without bridges. Specifically,

• Soldiers: common forces, deal 1 damage per unit.
  • We could potentially differentiate between spearmen and archers; archers could attack from one plateau away, whereas spearmen would have to be on the same plateau as the enemy.
• Shardbearers: special forces, deal 3? damage per unit.
  • Everyone starts out with one full shardbearer, with the ability to duel other players or rent the King's Shards for a high price
  • If the highprince has no Stormlight, the Shardplate will not function, and cannot put a shardbearer in to battle.
• Man bridges: can move 1 unit (and however many shardbearers) 2 plateaus per turn:
  • These are faster than chull bridges (see below), which can only move 1 plateau per turn
  • Unlike chull bridges, they can die during battles
• Chull bridges: can move 2 units (and however many shardbearers) 1 plateau per turn:
  • These are slower than man bridges (see above), but they can move more forces per turn
  • These require chills to be owned and cared for back at the camp

I'd like input on these types and abilities. What works? What doesn't work? A lot of this probably will need to be tested with humans, but theoretical input is good now, too.

Another thing to consider is how these will be represented in the game. Though this is secondary in importance to actual game mechanics, I'd like to think about what kinds of pieces will represent these forces in a way that would be practical to make and wouldn't take up too much space, since the plateaus aren't super big. Would we want to do a Risk-style thing, where we have pieces for 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, etc. number of armies? How will that work if we divide archers and spearmen?

One thing that I'm still thinking about is how battles will actually go down. I'm thinking that we'd want some element of chance, probably with a die roll. How do we determine deaths and such? 

Parshendi (assuming a game-controlled player):

The Parshendi would "spawn" on the Tower and move toward the nearest chasmfiend. Once a certain number of Parshendi forces accumulated, if they were unchallenged, they would take the gemheart. Parshendi don't need bridges. At what point would they begin to move back towards their home for highstorm shelter?

 

Turn order:

I've made some revisions to the way I think turns should be structured:

1. Current player rolls for highstorm/chasmfiend/special event determination:
   • If the final highstorm space is reached, all forces on the Plains die, all Stormlight reserves refill, and all pupating chasmfiends vanish. No armies can be moved on or off the Plains this turn
   • If a chasmfiend is rolled, the exact location is determined, and a chasmfiend is placed on the board.
   • If a special event is rolled, a card is drawn and the event is resolved.
2. Everybody moves their armies at the same time:
   • Parshendi move too
   • I feel like having everyone move at once makes more sense as far as the pace of the game and the way that resource handling and such will probably work
   • This way, joint attacks can be mounted simultaneously
3. Players take turns doing politcal and administrative things.
   • These could include:
     • Soulcasting food
     • Training soldiers
     • Purchasing bridgemen
     • Funding fabrial research (science)
     • Trading with merchants
   • Players could receive some form of income on every turn, like new recruits or money from their lands. 
   • These will probably have special options in the form of cards. I think this game needs cards, but it isn't totally clear in my head how the cards would work, yet
4. Next player becomes current player, process repeats.

Other thoughts:

• What if the chasmfiends got sparser as the game progressed, mimicking what happens in the book? Something political would probably have to fill that void, maybe fabrials?
• In WoK, Elhokar baits a live chasmfiend to hunt for sport? Should that be possible here? It could offer a different way to get gemhearts.
• I don't think that chasmfiends need to "expire", since the Parshendi will get to any chrysalises that aren't claimed by players.
• Not all gemhearts are created equal, or are they? 

So, that was a lot. What do you guys think?

[thegatorgirl00]

7 hours ago, Carbonationspren said:

Funding fabrial research (science)

 

7 hours ago, Carbonationspren said:

These will probably have special options in the form of cards. I think this game needs cards, but it isn't totally clear in my head how the cards would work, yet

What if the cards are fabrials? You pay some large amount of money to fund fabrials research and draw a card from a deck of fabrials. Later, if you have enough stormlight, you can use the fabrial to get some boost in abilities. Potential abilities could include increasing the chance to win a battle Orr moving across the plains faster. 

[anna]

On 10/21/2017 at 1:41 PM, Walin said:

Hearing the words “Victory Points” immediately brought to mind Settlers of Catan. That could easily be modded into a Shattered Plains game, what with the hexagonal tiles, random resource acquisition, and need to build roads (permanent bridges). Sounds pretty cool, though you could also make a Risk-like game as Fourth Of The Night said.

Settlers of Natanatan!

[Fifth of Daybreak]

I've actually had a lot of thoughts on this and have made a few prototype boards, though I haven't done much more than that 

The Stormlight Archives: Race for the GemHearts

1

2-4 players

45 minutes to an hour

Worker placement/dice rolling strategy. 

 

Each player picks a highprince who has a strength in some way. Sebariel excels in the market, Dalinar can earn VP protecting the king, Sadeas has the fastest bridges. The game works as a combination of worker placement, set collecting, and dice rolling games. As others have said, imagine a mix of Catan road building for bridges, set collecting from five tribes for book collections and fabrials in the marketplace, and worker placement mechanics from Agricola and stone age for resource management. 

 

Then for the battle system, use the great synergy introduced in Champions of Midgard. Different dice represent different soldiers with different strengths. Spearmen are the weakest, then archers, then swordsmen. You could win shards in the arena which could be a large size die like a d12. When you fight a parshendi on the shattered plains you have to beat a certain threshold if hits against the chasmfiend to open it, or take out the parshendi before the do the same to you. Each strength die would have either damage or hammers for attacking the parshendi or the GemHearts.

 

If you're unfamiliar with Champions of Midgard:

 

 

I've actually considered taking this idea to Crafty Games once I get it more concrete, but I think the worker placement is the best way to get. It captures the feeling of setting up camp in the early days on the plains, and then the dice battle system they created for CoM is quick, fun, and adds a great element of random chance to an otherwise strategy heavy genre.

 

 

Edited October 27, 2017 by Fifth of Daybreak

[Mulk]

I agree you probably wouldn't want to give the Parshendi to a player as they'd have correspondingly less to do.  The only way I can think of making it work is juggling of forms, growing of food (the Parshendi do this in some manner using stormlight/gemstones) possible discovery of stormform as something that could happen and they probably have a bonus chance to find chasmfiends pupating faster, but then the point of the game wouldn't be game combat and chasmfiend stuff, but pointed at the Battle of Narak/Stormseat and you'd want to title it as such.  That would more probably be a two-player game though and would merit its own discussion thread.  

Alternately, what if the Parshendi are a game event unto themselves? Encounters with them normally would be linked to Chasmfiend events.  Adjust the probability tables some either by replacing some of the 2d8 stuff above, or else bump it up to a 2d10, 2d12 or some such.  I've mapped those out but I think you could make it work with a d20 or 3 or 4d6 or some such too.

Spoiler

Edited October 27, 2017 by Mulk
edited to place spoiler tag and for clarity

[Zaineph]

I like this idea, quite alot

Edited December 7, 2017 by Zaineph

[T8*]

An idea that I had while I was looking through this is that you could have the option of tunneling into the chasms and possibly finding ancient structures with knowledge or resources or something. Also, have you considered incorporating shardbearers on the battlefield and dueling on the political side?

[Graulas]

Hi! mi name is Graulas, i recently remade the alethi card game that parchmentengineer created here:

I liked this idea a lot, and is a bigger project than that one of the cards. Thinking about it, i had a few ideas for combat style, and that made me think about camps also, so i will order my ideas starting from the camps, going through expeditions and gemhearts and then battles.

First things first, you would have three types of "general cards" that would be at a side of the main board, and would be taken by players in different situations. The first one being gemhearts, would be obtained when the gem is taken from the parshendi or another prince. The second one, the battles (won in alethkar) would be obtained when the gemheart gets to the camp. and the third one being shardblades (blades+plates are all in one) would be exchanged for an amount of battles.

I was thinking of the camps about something more simple. I thought about a little board (10 of them) with 8 card-size printed buildings, 4 goverment and 4 military. 

On the goverment side, the most important would be the highprince's palace, here you will put all of your won battles and your shardsets (Shardsets would be needed to train shardbearers). The ardent building will be used to put fabrials (little technologies that would give you benefits in battle or in the camps). Then you would have a lighteyes neigborhood, that would be the one that sets your limit for knights and shardbearers, and a darkeyes neigborhood, that would set you limit for spearmen and archers (all of them could be improved with houses , so you can create bigger armies as you advance).

On the military side, you would have Knights barracks (for training knights, could be improved so you can train more knights per turn) Spearmen barracks (for training spearmen, could be improved so you can train more spearmen per turn) and Archers barracks (for training archers, could be improved so you can train more archers per turn). Finally, you would have a "bridges" space (Bridgemen huts for 5 highprinces, Chull stables for the other five).

ABOUT UNITS AND BRIDGES

You would have 3 basic types of units, knight archers and spearmen. The battles would work with each of the players rolling 2 dices. Spearmen get a +2 bonus against knights (defending and attacking), Archers get a +2 bonus against spearmen (defending and attacking) and Knights a +2 against archers (note that parshendi would only have archers and spearmen-like warforms, so cavalry couldn't be countered. This is the reason why lighteye neighborhood would be harder to improve, because knights are an advantage against parshendi).

The shardbearers, being an exception, would have a +6 bonus against all units, except another shardbearer obviously. If you pretend to kill one of them (you will be able to claim the shardblade card from the camp, allowing you to train your own shardbearer) you will need luck or another one of them. Parshendi would have shardbearers that rarely appear in most plateaus, but will at the tower.

Bridgmen squads would allow a unit to move 2 spaces each turn, while chull bridges would allow two units to move 1 space per turn. Each unit can only use 1 bridge per turn, more bridges mean a bigger army, not a faster one. Improvements for the "bridge" space in the camp would be basically bridge cards, that will increase your movement per turn, and also the amount of troops you would be able to move safely before the highstorm arrives.

ABOUT GEMHEARTS

Using the method above, you can get a practically random plateau for the gemheart to appear, and a random chance of parshendi to be already there. I would like to modify that thing a little, by adding a little chance of a shardbearer and two or three types of combinations for parshendi armies. I would like to use the tower differently, to trigger the end of the game. Each time a gemheart appears at the tower, a parshendi army with shardbearer would appear there too, and the highprince who win that battle would win the game (this would be difficult for highstorm cycle, and the size of the army specially made for that plateau).

BATTLE SYSTEM

So, the interesting part. I was thinking about something like this:

One player would be able to move his troops to an enemy-occupied plateu, and start an attack. The attacker will decide which of his troops (in the shared plateau) will attack and which enemy troop will be attacked, and the dice will be roled. If it's spearmen vs spearmen for example, then the higher score wins, and the loser unit is discarded. In the case of Spearmen vs archers, archers would add an additional +2 point to he number in the dices (from the values above). IN CASE OF A DRAW, BOTH UNITS WOULD BE DISCARDED.

That seems a little attacker-always-wining, doesn´t it? As he is the one who decides the attacks that fit the most.

Well, if the attacker can't kill ALL of the enemy armies in the plateau he is attacking, all his troops in that plateau will be discarded, so at the end of a turn there would be no shared plateaus. This would be limited by the unit type combinations, army size, and amount of bridges.

CARDS

The objective of the game is to take gemhearts. They will spawn randomly, and may or may not have parshendi with them. If there are parshendi, they would have to be defeated in order to take the gemheart card, in case there aren´t, it can be taken easily by the first one that arrives. Gemhearts can be stolen by another highprince during a battle while in the plateaus, for this to happen, the attacker must clean the plateau where the gem actually is from your units.

One the gemhart arrives at your camp, you can automatically change it for a battle card AND a random improve card. After you reach (maybe 5?) you can change it for a shardblade card, that would allow you to train a shardbearer. Note that there is a limit of how many knight/spear/archer you can train per turn (determined y the barracks improvements, basic value is 1) but there is not a limit for shardbearer training (if you have the shardblades to do it)

Shardbearers will be a big advantage when a gem appears at the tower, so they would be a priority.

Improvement card will be in a mixed deck facing down, that would be used by all players, and the cards would be random.

Improve cards will include: Houses (for darkeyes), Manors (for lighteyes), Bridges (one card for both), Generals (3 types, for the barracks, training limit), and different kind of fabrials, that could give advantages like a +1 attacking or a +1 defending or a +1 againsta parshendi, stuff like that. Soulcasters would increase the draw of improvement cards from each gemheart, allowing you to draw 1 more improve card (with 1 soulcaster, each gem would give you 1 battle and 2 improvements, and you can have many of them)

 

Tell me your opinions, please

 

Edited December 22, 2018 by Graulas

[cubelith]

1) The idea of the Highstorm counter working similarly to the wildlings in GoT board game is great, hovewer it can't be very random, because the highstorms are so important. Every time after a storm, a dice is thrown to determine how many points will be skipped, and then it moves roughly 1 point per turn (a die with a zero, a two, and 2 or 4 ones). The GoT board game can generally provide inspiration, for example the order giving system.

2) The Highprinces of course need their special abilities and starting states (armies, shards, etc.). The board doesn't need to be symmetrical, because the abilities/starting states may not be exactly balanced (for example an easy access to important fields can be paired with a weak ability, or starting shards compensate for a weak starting army). There could be a limitation that Dalinar can only buy chull bridges, while Sadeas can only buy bridge crews.

3) Whether the Parshendi are a player or not, there should definitely be a rule that if they win, all the Highprinces lose. So it is not full rivalry, but also not full cooperation either, as places are assigned basing on some points (Gemhearts?). The game ends when the Everstorm comes (it has a progress bar moved with the same die as regular Highstorms, but far longer), and the final battle commences or something else determines whether the Alethi are able to win (the rivalry could happen even then). Points are counted as a sum of gems, remaining armies and some other factors (like the amount of Parshendi killed).

4) Stormlight would work as money, with gems holding it (providing income) - basically when a Highstorm comes, everyone gains the amount of SL determined by their total amount of gems. Gems are generally earned from Gemhearts. Since the SL left would get wasted, you can soulcast on a rush, so half of your SL stays with you when a storm begins (in addition to the amount earned). Not extremely accurate, but easy to implement and generally makes sense. Gems can be traded or spent as well.

5) You need to pay your units in SL every turn (feed them). You can discard units, but it should have drawbacks (soldiers turning to brigands, so maybe a small gem cost), so it's better to have a relatively small army that you can consistently support. 

6) You can fund research using SL and/or gems, it moves on a bar similar to the Stormlight counter (roughly one point per one purchase, determined by the storm die). Every time your bar reaches its end, you get a random fabrial card out of your deck. Each card can be used as a spell in a battle (with some SL cost), they return to your hand after each turn (or each can have it's own cooldown). If you want, you can trade a technology to another Highprince, then they only need to pay some low cost to discover this particular card (and pay you the price you set, either in gems or SL). 

7) Shards are just like the fabrial cards, played in battle for some SL cost. They are generally stronger and/or cheaper than fabrials. For a cost in SL and gems you can always use the King's shards. For duels, I think there could be a bidding mechanic - each player participating in a duel secretly prepares an amount of SL, then they simultaneously uncover it, and the higher bidder wins the enemy's shard, but both spend the amount of SL they bid. If you don't have a shard (you used the King's for the duel) you lose gems. I don't yet know how to make the challenge mechanics (whether one can refuse a duel etc.).

8) Buying armies should be generally cheap, maybe a low cost in gems (but you have to feed them). Spearmen, archers (ranged unit, but very weak if attacked directly) and swordsmen (stronger than spearmen, more expensive to recruit, but easier to feed relative to the power) make sense.

9) There should also be scouts, either as a regular, very fast army that doesn't need bridges or as something else. Basically scouting would reveal the map to every highprince, so it's a joint effort, but the one scouting would get more precise information. For example, they would know the precise amount of Parshendi at a chrysalis, but would have to give a range of at most 5 (or other amount). So one can see that there are 10 Parshendi, but tell everyone else there are 5-10, or 9-11, or 10-15, so this could be used for a kind of bluffing. You can also use shards to scout at a SL cost. 

10) There are bridge crews, chull bridges and permanent bridges to buy. Bridge crews are faster, but can die, and can transport less units than chull bridges. Permanent bridges are a bit expensive, but last for the whole game and can transport as many units as you want. A movable bridge would just travel with an army (with chull bridges allowing two armies on the same tile or something).

11) The Parshendi could indeed be the "hp" of a chrysalis, and the one who deals the final blow gets the gemheart (which enables "stealing"). They would also need some kind of a counter to check when they take the gemheart and leave. The Parshendi also have a deck, and a card is randomly drawn for each fight (e.g. reinforcements - the Parshendi gain one strenght every turn). Each card could also have a symbol for weather (rain weakens archers, heatwave weakens swordsmen), but there would be a fabrial (or two separate ones) to counter this. Units get damaged when they attack (a die throw, as it's easier if a unit can only be full, wounded or dead), and archers die if exposed (e.g. there is an empty tile conecting them and the Parshendi or something like that). Wounded units can be healed at camp. 

12) There could also be chasmfiends (to be avoided, unless you have two or three shards). And some event cards of course.

I think I'm gonna make a prototype of this (as a computer strategy) and see what happens.

Edited December 28, 2018 by cubelith

[RedFive887]

Hi, I know this forum was a long time ago. Does anyone know if a game was actually made? I love the idea!