I'm aware that some of this post may not make complete sense because there aren't complete rules for the game available to the public at this time (there aren't even complete rules typed up at this point), but hopefully this makes sense.
There is a quote I once read in relation to game design that goes something like "Remove as much as you possibly can from the design, and no more." I really try to take that concept to heart when designing games. I enjoy the challenge to create something that doesn't have rules in there that seem un-necessary if you can streamline it into something else. One such occurence took place recently for Affinity in the combination of some phases. This might not sound like much, but the ramifications were quite large.
Originally, the phases were setup in the way that you would play spells & use powers, then attack, then manifest constructs, and then another phase of play spells & use powers. This had the clever process of giving constructs "summoning sickness" without actually spelling that out in the rules of the game, but it was also very regimented and new playtesters were constantly trying to manifest constructs before they attacked, and then attack with another construct they had in play. I took this as a sign that it just wasn't intuitive to do things the way that I had structured it, all for the sake of not spelling out a rule for "summoning sickness". So I combined the phases into one, allowing someone to manifest a construct, attack, play a spell, attack with something else, all as long as you didn't manifest and attack with a construct in the same turn. This also increased the power level on some cards to make them more useful, without being too powerful, which is always a good thing in my book.
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