How to Play Towers (or a version of it) with a Standard 52 Card Deck

[Elite01]

Hmm I know we don’t know much but from what we got I assumed there wasn’t much card draw in this game. 
 

I kind of imagined each player starts with a king or flag or something they are defending. They have all the cards/troops in their hand and can decide if they want to field a large number off troops or just a few. 
We see something like this when Gawx loses the three way game because he “started too strong” 

 

if you alternated placing troops you could could choose a few strategies 

-spend time deploying troops (if you have a limit to how many you can do at once) 

-rush, a small number of troops but trying to get the flag quick 

-harrying force, recognize your opponent is commiting a large number of troops and focus on defeating troops while losing the round 

I’m sure there’s more, just spitballing 

 

[Dalluminum he/him]

2 minutes ago, Elite01 said:

Hmm I know we don’t know much but from what we got I assumed there wasn’t much card draw in this game.

I agree that there shouldn't be a lot of card drawing, but they emphasize the ways of losing with superior forces, and one was random chance. Given that this is a key lesson of the game, I assume some randomness is involved in gameplay, but maybe I'm reading into this too much. I also think that since the idea is to train people for military strategy, getting them accustomed to lack of total control would be important.

Once again, this game was built with variations in mind, so any rules we're deciding between could be another variation.

Another spitball: should players always start with a Shardbearer in hand? If cards are randomly drawn, it's possible you won't get your Shardbearer until the end of the turn, which might be too big of a disadvantage. This could be the balance between total control and the game being unwinnable through random chance.

[Elite01]

Good point, adolin even says random chance can affect victory right? so maybe there could be some card draw that wasn’t described… we can just spend the next couple years asking Brandon haha, 

I would assume don’t have your shardbearer in hand but I think there would need to be some kind of king or flag to have a consistent goal.

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

Hi all! I’ve made my little write up of my rules and I’ve put them in a google doc. They’re under the assumption that terrain is drawn like other cards from your deck and YES it has shardbearers starting in hand. Feel free to look it over/give it a playtest here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EHbPpyBBEmQRGQA_wMtWiasi4jxoXYPp66wqM-DQ0AU/edit

This is still a living document so any and all questions and clarifications are appreciated

[Elite01]

Looks good, I’m not as good at specific rules but it seems pretty solid. I was reading through the rules and had some random thoughts 

- why is the game called towers? Would be interesting if the deck you drew from was in the battlfield and was your armies “tower” 

maybe one win condition could be destroying your enemies tower or deck somehow? Like if it suffers 3 “attacks” you can’t draw anymore. Heavy conjecture but would be interesting to have the deck be something the pieces can interact with…

[Dalluminum he/him]

12 hours ago, NotLiamRoss said:

Hi all! I’ve made my little write up of my rules and I’ve put them in a google doc. They’re under the assumption that terrain is drawn like other cards from your deck and YES it has shardbearers starting in hand. Feel free to look it over/give it a playtest here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EHbPpyBBEmQRGQA_wMtWiasi4jxoXYPp66wqM-DQ0AU/edit

This is still a living document so any and all questions and clarifications are appreciated

Nice, this looks good! I only have two concerns. I don't know if having terrain in hand is worth the loss in troops. This would be a specific thing to try in playtesting, giving one player lots of terrain and the other none in their starting hands: it's possible it could be very unbalanced. This also makes adding cards beneath mountains to increase their size trickier, because it has to come from a player's deck and you need to remember to put that back in the right deck.

My other concern is that drawing a completely new hand every round mitigates the consequences of losing troops. If you were just going to draw a new hand of ten cards anyway, losing troops means almost nothing. Maybe this is a good thing, keeping the future rounds winnable for the loser, but it also seems to contradict what Adolin says about saving your troops for future rounds. Again, playtesting would help make sure we keep this balanced, I'll try to get back to you with results as soon as I can.

 

12 hours ago, Elite01 said:

Would be interesting if the deck you drew from was in the battlfield and was your armies “tower” 

maybe one win condition could be destroying your enemies tower or deck somehow? Like if it suffers 3 “attacks” you can’t draw anymore. Heavy conjecture but would be interesting to have the deck be something the pieces can interact with…

I love this idea! Making everything super connected like this is a big thing in videogame design. Maybe attacking the tower means an instant win, or maybe you just lose random cards from the deck. What do other people think?

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

59 minutes ago, Dalluminum said:

My other concern is that drawing a completely new hand every round mitigates the consequences of losing troops. If you were just going to draw a new hand of ten cards anyway, losing troops means almost nothing. Maybe this is a good thing, keeping the future rounds winnable for the loser, but it also seems to contradict what Adolin says about saving your troops for future rounds. Again, playtesting would help make sure we keep this balanced, I'll try to get back to you with results as soon as I can.

Ah I should say that troops stay in hand between rounds, you just draw 10 more cards at the start of each round. This makes for a strategic advantage to holding troops in reserve or retreating troops as it means you will have more troops available for you in the next round, which seems to be supported by the text

[newMania]

On 12/23/2024 at 7:31 AM, Elite01 said:

I think a 10x10 board just to stick to theme

For terrain I could see the 11-13 cards put in a pile, shuffled then the top card is revealed to indicate what kind of terrain? Like if the jack of spades is revealed that means there’s a chasm through the middle? Not 100% sure on it

 

you could have each player draw a terrain card and they are allowed to play it? So one could place a chasm and one could place high ground then troop deployment occurs.

i was thinking that the terrain could be set up pre game. As in have a separate terrain deck made up of face cards, shuffle and deal three to each player who then take turns playing terrain onto the board before deploying troops. This would allow some degree of control as you can choose half of the terrain to benefit yourself and hinder your opponent as well as randomness as you have no idea what terrain you will receive and no control over where your opponent plays it. And sets it up before deployment so you can plan around it. 

4 hours ago, NotLiamRoss said:

Ah I should say that troops stay in hand between rounds, you just draw 10 more cards at the start of each round. This makes for a strategic advantage to holding troops in reserve or retreating troops as it means you will have more troops available for you in the next round, which seems to be supported by the text

I was thinking you could do something similar to GWENT. which is almost the same as what you had. Draw say 10 cards to start the game. play the round and at the start of the next round you only draw 2 and then 1 more in the final round. this would boost your hand slightly to give you more options however still gives importance to whats already on the board. 

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

20 minutes ago, newMania said:

i was thinking that the terrain could be set up pre game. As in have a separate terrain deck made up of face cards, shuffle and deal three to each player who then take turns playing terrain onto the board before deploying troops. This would allow some degree of control as you can choose half of the terrain to benefit yourself and hinder your opponent as well as randomness as you have no idea what terrain you will receive and no control over where your opponent plays it. And sets it up before deployment so you can plan around it. 

First off, hi! It looks like this is your first post ever on the forum! I'm flattered it's on this little project, thanks for your attention and thought.

I definitely want to playtest the game both ways, with terrain in deck and a separate terrain deck. I'm of the opinion that simpler is better for starting out and as such two decks are simpler than three, but if it winds up being a huge detriment having terrain in hand (it's hard to say without playtesting how good terrain really IS, it might be busted to have all 6 terrain cards, even if you only have 4 troops to man the terrain with) then we can definitely try to put them in a separate deck to get rid of "dead" draws and feelsbad scenarios.

24 minutes ago, newMania said:

I was thinking you could do something similar to GWENT. which is almost the same as what you had. Draw say 10 cards to start the game. play the round and at the start of the next round you only draw 2 and then 1 more in the final round. this would boost your hand slightly to give you more options however still gives importance to whats already on the board. 

I haven't played GWENT myself but this is an interesting lever to keep in mind for balance while playtesting. There's no reason you need to draw 10 cards each time, I just wanted to start there because it feels good to have as many holy Vorin numbers in the game as possible :P. This is something we'll need to look at in playtesting for sure.

[newMania]

4 minutes ago, NotLiamRoss said:

First off, hi! It looks like this is your first post ever on the forum! I'm flattered it's on this little project, thanks for your attention and thought.

 

Yeah I've been a lurker on the site for a few years but until now have always enjoyed just reading. I've felt pretty taken by the chapters of adolin teaching the game and went googling thinking someone must of had the idea of wanting to make a ruleset and found your post. 

19 hours ago, Dalluminum said:

Another spitball: should players always start with a Shardbearer in hand? If cards are randomly drawn, it's possible you won't get your Shardbearer until the end of the turn, which might be too big of a disadvantage. This could be the balance between total control and the game being unwinnable through random chance.

 

I was thinking this too. I feel that if cards are randomly drawn and you don't have a shard bearer in hand it could represent a real life scenario of the shard bearer not being ready or not arriving yet. Then drawing them in a later round could really boost your chances in later rounds. 

They say it's good sometimes to retreat if you can see the round being lost. If you didn't draw a shardbearer in round one you could maybe try bluff your opponent into thinking he's been deployed forcing them to commit more on an early round so that you could hope hes ready for a bigger assault on a later round. 

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

19 hours ago, Elite01 said:

if you alternated placing troops you could could choose a few strategies 

-spend time deploying troops (if you have a limit to how many you can do at once) 

-rush, a small number of troops but trying to get the flag quick 

-harrying force, recognize your opponent is commiting a large number of troops and focus on defeating troops while losing the round 

I’m sure there’s more, just spitballing 

This is exactly what I was thinking, and it's outlined in my rules document. Players alternate deploying troops at the beginning of the round, and at any point can decide to stop placing. Is this because they want to hold troops in reserve for a sneak attack? Is this because they think the round is already lost and don't want to overcommit troops to a losing battle? It adds a level of mindgames which I think is really interesting

 

Something I added to the rules mostly just as a way to ensure the game actually ends. I've made it so that if one player only has their Shardbearer on the field, it can be captured by an opponent's shardbearer. I think this makes sense flavour-wise (a Shardbearer with supporting troops should be able to take down an opposing Shardbearer all else being equal) and also makes it so if someone is thoroughly beat in a round, they don't just fling their Shardbearer into the opponent's line trying to take out more troops before retreating, which I think would slow the game down and be quite annoying to counter given how hard it is to normally capture a Shardbearer.

[Dalluminum he/him]

16 minutes ago, NotLiamRoss said:

Something I added to the rules mostly just as a way to ensure the game actually ends. I've made it so that if one player only has their Shardbearer on the field, it can be captured by an opponent's shardbearer. I think this makes sense flavour-wise (a Shardbearer with supporting troops should be able to take down an opposing Shardbearer all else being equal) and also makes it so if someone is thoroughly beat in a round, they don't just fling their Shardbearer into the opponent's line trying to take out more troops before retreating, which I think would slow the game down and be quite annoying to counter given how hard it is to normally capture a Shardbearer.

I like this idea: definitely a good addition.

 

59 minutes ago, newMania said:

I was thinking you could do something similar to GWENT. which is almost the same as what you had. Draw say 10 cards to start the game. play the round and at the start of the next round you only draw 2 and then 1 more in the final round. this would boost your hand slightly to give you more options however still gives importance to whats already on the board. 

I like this too, maybe 4 and 3 instead. Again, something to tweak, but I love where we're at right now!

[newMania]

10 minutes ago, Dalluminum said:

I like this idea: definitely a good addition.

 

I like this too, maybe 4 and 3 instead. Again, something to tweak, but I love where we're at right now!

I've played a lot of Gwent over the years and feel it has a few similarities to towers. Gives me the same vibe, just more physical pieces rather then cards. But the way the mechanic works in gwent has always felt good. Your cards feel important because there isn't much more coming and then few cards you do get in later rounds feel immensely important as reinforcements. 

[newMania]

What are thoughts on units having a value. Like infantry having a value of one, cavalry having a value of 2 and a shardbearer having a value of three. And units need to beat another units value to win, even values can either cancel each other out or destroy each other. Adjacent units could provide advantage, giving each unit a plus one value. 

Two infantry would need to be placed against an enemy to remove it from the board. Four infantry to beat a shardbearer. 

 

Terrain could give advantage or disadvantage. An infantry on high ground could gain advantage allowing it to remove an enemy infantry on its own. A river could give disadvantage of minus one value meaning a single I fantry would lose to another single infantry. 

[newMania]

I had another thought about movement and attacking. What if movement and attacking were two seperate phases of a turn in a round.

 

Moving one card at a time, I can't see a situation where a shardbearer could possibly be surrounded as any infantry that came near it would be killed by it the next turn.

 

What are thoughts on taking turns to move each piece once until everything has been moved or until a player decides they do not want to make further movements and then attacks happen simultaneously.

 

I feel this could mimick an actual battle more realisticly as well as give the game more of a diplomacy feel than chess. I think it would also help open the game up to adding in a third player. 

 

It could also give a player the option to retreat at the start of the next movement phase, allowing them to return any card that is not surrounded and has direct line of sight to their base. Retreating would award the other player a win for that round. 

Edited December 30, 2024 by newMania

[Dalluminum he/him]

7 hours ago, newMania said:

I had another thought about movement and attacking. What if movement and attacking were two seperate phases of a turn in a round.

 

Moving one card at a time, I can't see a situation where a shardbearer could possibly be surrounded as any infantry that came near it would be killed by it the next turn.

 

What are thoughts on taking turns to move each piece once until everything has been moved or until a player decides they do not want to make further movements and then attacks happen simultaneously.

 

I feel this could mimick an actual battle more realisticly as well as give the game more of a diplomacy feel than chess. I think it would also help open the game up to adding in a third player. 

 

It could also give a player the option to retreat at the start of the next movement phase, allowing them to return any card that is not surrounded and has direct line of sight to their base. Retreating would award the other player a win for that round. 

This is a really good point. In chess you can capture queens with other pieces by ensuring that defending the queen would cost them other pieces. With the rules we have outlined, though, nothing is more valuable. Like we said earlier, the Shardbearer is like a combination queen/king, the most powerful and the one you need to defend the most. In chess, it would be near impossible to "checkmate" the queen.

Maybe this is just part of the game design: Shardbearer are scary. We see firsthand how destructive they are, and Kaladin was the first in decades to bring one down singlehanded without Shards. In a real battle, you'd counter an enemy Shardbearer with one of your own or retreat... but with our current rules, there isn't really a way to bring down a Shardbearer with your own.

Looking at it closer, though, I think the problem solves itself: if you have a Shardbearer in front of theirs, they can't kill yours without surrounding it, and they can't get past it unless they move to the side (which you can then copy, blocking them again). But even if you forced the opponent to move right next to your other troops, those troops will be killed immediately. The best you can do with both Shardbearers on the board is essentially lock them into one-on-one, then attack their other forces, hoping to do enough damage that they retreat. The other option is to just attack their forces with your Shards and hope to do enough damage that they bring theirs back to defend.

It does seem that there should be a somewhat plausible way to kill a Shardbearer, but if they spend their movement on retreating troops, you might be able to at least threaten an attack on their Shardbearer, so they'd need to attack your forces, leaving an opening for you to do even more to the defending troops. Then the rule we added comes into play where a Shardbearer without any troops on the board can be killed by the other Shardbearer.

All in all, the more I think about it, the more the system seems to work out. This kind of just proves my philosophy about games: model then after an existing system, and many balancing issues work themselves out.

 

We still might want rules for moving multiple pieces, perhaps adjacent infantry or something, but playtesting will tell us how necessary that is. (I'm working on playtesting, I promise lol).

[Dalluminum he/him]

Sorry for the double post, but I (finally) got around to a bit of playtesting. I mostly focused on ensuring that gameplay was logical and made sense. I played with a few assumptions we haven't actually lined up:

1. You cannot move your troops through any troops, friendly or enemy. I could see moving friendly troops through each other as an option, it could smooth out some issues I experienced. I'm also thinking Shardbearers should be able to move through friendly troops either way, but please let me know what you think.

2. I messed around with the idea that each troop can only move along one axis (forward or backward) in the direction of their long side. You would get one one free "reposition" each move phase where you can rotate one of your cards 90 degrees. I also allowed Shardbearers to reposition if they move during the attack phase. These rules made flanking make sense: if attacked on their long side, most troops are weaker, enabling strategic reposition to keep flanks safe.

3. If a Shardbearer is on the edge of the battlefield or next to a mountain, it can be killed if the rest of its sides contain enemy troops. This is obviously to prevent invincible Shardbearers on the edges of the board, I just thought we should spell it out.

I also played with terrain in the deck, and I still have mixed feelings about it. Positioning terrain is indeed really good, but I still can't tell if it is enough to compensate for lack of troops. Maybe for every 2 terrain cards you play you get to draw 1 card? More playtesting is needed here.

Interestingly, I ended up with a kind of stalemate situation at the end of round two that I wasn't quite sure how to call. I was playing with the Wax and Wayne playing cards. 

This is Black's side of the board (this is a simplified recreation, the blocks on the sides are boundaries). Red has no troops left except the Shardbearer, and no reinforcements in hand. Black only has one other card on the battlefield, but has another in hand. It is currently Red's turn, and Black won round one.

Red currently cannot kill Black's Shardbearer, but there's no way for Black to capture Red's: they can always move away. Even if Black allows Red to retreat, there's no incentive to because Red would lose the game. In chess this would be a stalemate, but it really seems that Black has an advantage here. Should we call this round a draw, or does Black win because he has the advantage?

 

Feedback is welcome and desired!

Edited December 30, 2024 by Dalluminum

[newMania]

3 hours ago, Dalluminum said:

Sorry for the double post, but I (finally) got around to a bit of playtesting. I mostly focused on ensuring that gameplay was logical and made sense. I played with a few assumptions we haven't actually lined up:

1. You cannot move your troops through any troops, friendly or enemy. I could see moving friendly troops through each other as an option, it could smooth out some issues I experienced. I'm also thinking Shardbearers should be able to move through friendly troops either way, but please let me know what you think.

2. I messed around with the idea that each troop can only move along one axis (forward or backward) in the direction of their long side. You would get one one free "reposition" each move phase where you can rotate one of your cards 90 degrees. I also allowed Shardbearers to reposition if they move during the attack phase. These rules made flanking make sense: if attacked on their long side, most troops are weaker, enabling strategic reposition to keep flanks safe.

3. If a Shardbearer is on the edge of the battlefield or next to a mountain, it can be killed if the rest of its sides contain enemy troops. This is obviously to prevent invincible Shardbearers on the edges of the board, I just thought we should spell it out.

I also played with terrain in the deck, and I still have mixed feelings about it. Positioning terrain is indeed really good, but I still can't tell if it is enough to compensate for lack of troops. Maybe for every 2 terrain cards you play you get to draw 1 card? More playtesting is needed here.

Interestingly, I ended up with a kind of stalemate situation at the end of round two that I wasn't quite sure how to call. I was playing with the Wax and Wayne playing cards. 

This is Black's side of the board (this is a simplified recreation, the blocks on the sides are boundaries). Red has no troops left except the Shardbearer, and no reinforcements in hand. Black only has one other card on the battlefield, but has another in hand. It is currently Red's turn, and Black won round one.

Red currently cannot kill Black's Shardbearer, but there's no way for Black to capture Red's: they can always move away. Even if Black allows Red to retreat, there's no incentive to because Red would lose the game. In chess this would be a stalemate, but it really seems that Black has an advantage here. Should we call this round a draw, or does Black win because he has the advantage?

 

Feedback is welcome and desired!

With regards to your stalemate, I feel that both players could agree to a draw for the round giving neither player a point. This would mean black is playing for the win next round while Red is playing to tie the game. Still not much incentive for red to call a draw though. Maybe we need a rule that forces a draw if neither player is committing to an attack for more then two turns. 

 

8 hours ago, Dalluminum said:

This is a really good point. In chess you can capture queens with other pieces by ensuring that defending the queen would cost them other pieces. With the rules we have outlined, though, nothing is more valuable. Like we said earlier, the Shardbearer is like a combination queen/king, the most powerful and the one you need to defend the most. In chess, it would be near impossible to "checkmate" the queen.

Yeah that's it, apart from a shardbearer nothing really holds more value over anything else. This is part of the reason why I was messing around with the idea of pieces having a value. I see infantry as kind of like a pawn. Lowest value unit but lots of them. 

 

Archers holding the same low value but able to attack at distance. 

 

Calvary should be worth more than an army and a way to do that I feel would be to give them a higher value. Like a single infantry unit shouldn't be able to take them down alone, but maybe archers could. 

Also with your stalemate, I think the move phase and attack phase happening seperstely could solve this also. With the way you had the game in your picture, the red shardbearer could just keep moving around trying to flank something. Black player will only be able to move one piece per turn and eventually may end up not being able to protect both. If movement happened before attacking, this gives black a chance to position two pieces to reds one piece before attacks happen, which would be more likely to force red to have to retreat or either commit to removing one unit at the cost of their own. 

[Haydes]

Hey! I’m new as well but delighted to find someone workshopping a way to play towers after finishing the book this weekend. I am a wannabe board game designer and would love to help! I have some quick thoughts but I would also be willing to go through the rulebook to edit for clarity and conciseness as I’ve written a few rule books now.

 

I would change artillery to archers, there are hardly any references to artillery but archers are commonly used, I was confused seeing artillery and I think it would take people out of the stormlight theme.

 

I agree with no board for now, if we did a later version with a board we could also include the little pieces yanagawn had. (As long as we’re designing a board, it could be interesting to figure out how to make some 3D printable figurines)

 

I might consider rewording “area one card’s width in front of the player”, that’s not super clear.

 

It looks like NewMania mentioned this in the time I was writing this up, but I agree - If we move one troop at a time like chess, how could a shard bearer ever be surrounded on all four sides? They are the best troop type and I can’t see a scenario in which if they get surrounded by nearby infantry they’re not just taking out one by one. With a starting hand of 10 troops (and less if terrain is involved) troops are very costly to lose, and putting them anywhere near a shard bearer will have massive losses) would you consider making the movement phase to move two or three troops? That could help.

 

I don’t believe you address what happens if you still have cards in reserve (or just troops, can you keep terrain in reserve?) at the end of the round when you shuffle deployed troops back into your deck. Do they stay in your hand or get shuffled in with the deployed troops?

 

Per your question about not knowing which way they’re facing with modern playing cards, I think for the first iteration of the game it could be that they could move either forward or backwards and it should be fine! I liked Dalluminum’s idea of a free reposition to rotate 90 degrees.

 

In regards to the stalemate situation - What about a rule that a shardbearer could ‘duel’ another shardbearer, taking them both out of the round but not the game? Similar to how when Adolin duels Abidi on the battlefield everyone clears a space for them, the battle continues around them, but they can’t focus on anything else. That way in this stalemate black ‘duels’ red’s shardbearer, taking them both out for the round, making black the winner? There could be unintended consequences of that, but it could be a way to nerf shardbearers a bit which feel op right now. I might reconsider them moving and immediately taking as well, but I understand you shouldn't nerf them too much as they're incredibly powerful.

 

Also @NotLiamRoss are you on the 17th shard discord? You could try posting in their tabletop-games channel, you might find other people willing to help! Excited to see how this goes!

Edited December 31, 2024 by Haydes

[Elite01]

Okay I finally had a chance to take a look at my book and found some other nuggets 

“You can look at your hand, and deploy cards as armies on the table. Maneuver your troops, change their capacities according to the armies you deploy next to them. “
 

- interesting part is you can change the capacity of a card based on its allies 

 

“May finished with more points than yanagawn”

-this is during the three person game and it appears there is some kind of point system

Edited December 31, 2024 by Elite01

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

Wow this is a lot of traction on this thread. I’m sorry but family stuff over the holidays has meant I don’t have as much time as I’d like to sit and respond. Keep on theory crafting and posting stuff and I’ll make sure to type up my thoughts to all these excellent points in the new year

[Dalluminum he/him]

2 hours ago, Haydes said:

I would change artillery to archers, there are hardly any references to artillery but archers are commonly used, I was confused seeing artillery and I think it would take people out of the stormlight theme.

Yes please, I've already changed it in my head, so it's confusing to see it different when referencing the rules!

2 hours ago, Haydes said:

In regards to the stalemate situation - What about a rule that a shardbearer could ‘duel’ another shardbearer, taking them both out of the round but not the game? Similar to how when Adolin duels Abidi on the battlefield everyone clears a space for them, the battle continues around them, but they can’t focus on anything else. That way in this stalemate black ‘duels’ red’s shardbearer, taking them both out for the round, making black the winner? There could be unintended consequences of that, but it could be a way to nerf shardbearers a bit which feel op right now. I might reconsider them moving and immediately taking as well, but I understand you shouldn't nerf them too much as they're incredibly powerful.

This is a good idea: it kind of feels wrong to have a Shardbearer completely unable to confront the other one! Maybe attacking the opponent's Shardbearer with your own freezes them both for the next turn so they can still be used later.

 

29 minutes ago, Elite01 said:

Okay I finally had a chance to take a look at my book and found some other nuggets 

“You can look at your hand, and deploy cards as armies on the table. Maneuver your troops, change their capacities according to the armies you deploy next to them. “
 

- interesting part is you can change the capacity of a card based on its allies 

 

“May finished with more points than yanagawn”

-this is during the three person game and it appears there is some kind of point system 

I remembered the point system, but kept forgetting to bring it up when actually typing, so thanks for bringing that up!

It's possible the point system comes from capturing troops, maybe calculating score similar to how chess material is counted?

The point system seemed designed for games with more than two players: they obviously knew who won without counting score. It would probably mainly be used in tournaments for placing second and third. I think it's optional enough we can ignore it for now, but if anyone has an idea for how it could work, I'd love to hear it!

 

One more thing: thank you all again for your participation on this thread. I've never felt more like a part of the Brandon Sanderson community, and I'm proud of what we've accomplished already!

[Haydes]

I like the idea of points, but it would probably work best for the 2+ player version to keep it from going forever. Imagine if there were like 6 players but you had to wait until everybody had either retreated, forfeited, or lost all their troops, it would take forever!

 

Could we do first to a certain number of points, say 10 or 15? The way to get points could be like Dalluminum said capturing troops, so the first to capture 15 troops regardless of which player wins?

 

And agreed Dalluminum, its been fun to watch the collaboration!

[VanWagon He/Him]

15 hours ago, Dalluminum said:

This is a good idea: it kind of feels wrong to have a Shardbearer completely unable to confront the other one! Maybe attacking the opponent's Shardbearer with your own freezes them both for the next turn so they can still be used later

Hello, I don’t have much to add but, when I was reading about shardbearer combat in a 1v1 situation I couldn’t help but think of Windruners and Heavenly Ones. Although not Shardbearers, when the two acknowledge a duel, those near “honor” the duel allowing the two to fight uninterrupted, much like Adolin and Abidi. But with heavenly ones duels, they accept defeat of their opponents without killing them. This could possibly allow for shardbearer to engage in a duel with another bearer, but also allow them to disengage and retreat if the battle requires it, causing the other shardbearer to allow this retreat without an attack of opportunity. Maybe this disengage retreat could be the qualification for a lost round to the one choosing to disengage and keep their shardbearer up. 

 

Also earlier there was talk of an actual tower on the field that could be attacked and defended. For this I had the idea of having the Joker card as a stand in for the tower. There’s two jokers in most standard decks allowing for each player(assuming that one deck accounts for 2 players) to each take a joker as their tower and place it on the “board” to protect and attack. Unless I have missed where the joker is used in the rules thus far, I think this is a good use of the card for those looking for a “physical” tower that is not the deck of the player. 

[PARJ4]

On 12/28/2024 at 9:49 PM, NotLiamRoss said:

Hi all! I’ve made my little write up of my rules and I’ve put them in a google doc. They’re under the assumption that terrain is drawn like other cards from your deck and YES it has shardbearers starting in hand. Feel free to look it over/give it a playtest here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EHbPpyBBEmQRGQA_wMtWiasi4jxoXYPp66wqM-DQ0AU/edit

This is still a living document so any and all questions and clarifications are appreciated

hello i have played this and it is really fun but i have a question how am i supposed to win with the shardbearers on the field? here's a example

both people have there shardbearers on the field and neither of them want to loose so it ends in a draw. because you need at least 4 people to kill the shardbearer or i even if i have 4 people the other player isn't dumb enough to let there shardbearer get surrounded