Where is Affinity now?

So most of everything that I've posted to this point has been about the previous actions and history in the design of the game.  I've been working on the game quite a bit recently.  More specifically, I've had quite the bit of time in the last few weeks where I've been sitting in hotels and hospital waiting rooms with my laptop and the current playtest copy of Affinity.  The previous posts have gotten most of the bulk of the background story and development thoughts into the interwebs.  It is possible (if not certain) that future posts will reference a past thought process or decision, I would say going forward from here I'm going to be discussing and posting about mainly current development on the game.

Currently, the game of Affinity has the following:

• 4 unique factions based around the classic elements of air, earth, fire and water
• Each faction has 2 different mechanics that they utilize for an advantage and that synergize together
• 12 unique "Awakened" or player character/avatars, 3 for each faction
• 6 creature cards for each faction, broken into different "rarities"
• 3 spell cards for each faction, broken into different "rarities"
• 120 cards total in the main deck
• 1 card that starts the game as your ticket to adding cards to your deck, and ends the game as a card that allows you to swing tempo in your favor.
• An adaptable draft mechanic that I am very happy with.
• A sense of synergy among the cards that I am also very happy with.
• I believe I've even succeeded in beating the "draft the most powerful card" instead of "draft the best card for my deck" that I had set as a goal.  More playtesting will confirm this.

What I still need to do from a design standpoint:

• Balance the cards - This is always at the forefront of my mind, but I need to get the balance changes from near-complete faction overhauls to minor tweaks in card text.
• Playtest, playtest, playtest.
• Flesh out a story for the game - I understand that, if I were to pitch this to a publisher, they would work on this developmental piece.  However, the odds are that I am going to be Kickstarting this project because I don't think I could give up the control for the sake of just seeing the mechanics published.  To me, a game is a complete experience, which includes tying the story of the game into the mechanics to really get an in-depth experience.  I'm not a fan of pasted on themes.  Either I will be able to complete the project from start to finish, or I wont.
• Find an artist - I have someone in mind for this job, and I've talked to him about the project, the trick now is to get him some free time to be able to do the work.

Outside of tweaks and copious amounts of playtesting, I believe the mechanics for the game are going to be set from this point out.  That itself is a huge relief because that means that I have something unchanging that I can make other decisions around.  It's quite challenging when you have the ability to change the story, the card text, and the game mechanics when you encounter an issue that needs fixing because you have to hope that you're making the correct adjustment.

My real struggle is going to be the story.  I'm not exactly the best writer, I used to do quite a bit of creative writing "back in the day", but that's quite a long time ago for me.  This is unfortunately a sticking point for me, because I often make mechanical design decisions around what would or would not make sense in the story of the game.  One of the easiest examples of this was when I was designing a game around modern military units and trying to come up with abilities for those units.  Some of my initial notes had some units with the ability to heal other units, but how is that going to make sense in a modern sense?  We don't have magic, and healing certainly doesn't take place on the battlefield, so that was something that I had to remove.  Affinity needs the story for the game to be fleshed out at this point, and that's going to be my biggest focus going forward.

So that's where I am in the design.  If anyone reading this has anything specific that they want to know about the process or the game up until this points, or any suggestions or questions, feel free to post a comment.