Comeback Mechanics

When designing a game, part of the challenge of being a designer is ensuring that the first player to gain an advantage over other players in a given system is not guaranteed to win the game.  That would make for a very boring experience for the players involved, and generally speaking a very fast resolution to your game.  There are many games out there that include Comeback Mechanisms in their game.  There are many places that a designer may place them to ensure that the players have access to them when needed.

Here are some examples of Comeback Mechanisms in other games:

In Magic the Gathering, the Comeback Mechanism has been explained by the designers as the ability to build up your lands over time.  The assumption being that as you have access to a larger mana pool, you will have the ability to cast more powerful spells and creatures than the ones that your opponent was able to play for lesser mana costs.  Obviously this system has worked well enough, looking at the current lifespan of the game, but it introduces an interesting negative feedback loop into the game as well.  If the assumption is that Creatures and Spells that cost more are exponentially more powerful than those that cost less, then if you are able to circumvent or reduce those costs in some way, then you're able to abuse something that was designed with the ability to shift the tides of battle as a way to continue your early edge in the game.    It also brings with it the assumption that a single, high-cost card is able to swing the game into your favor, which is also not always the case.  There are many low-cost counters to high-cost cards that allow an early aggressive edge to keep their edge, continue their tempo, and win the game.

In Summoner Wars, there are different event cards that have been dubbed as "Catch up Events" or CUE that are included as a Comeback Mechanism.  These events generally require that your opponent have more of a specific resource than you have, either Magic or Units or both, and then allow you to circumvent costs of summoning or shift Magic from your opponent to yourself.   This is not a bad system, but it is abusable in being able to hold back your ability to play cards on purpose to be able to activate a CUE while not expending resources that you would otherwise be expected to have spent.  I think a better alternative may have been a # of cards in your discard pile, or a # of cards remaining in your deck.  No system is foolproof, however, and both of those could also be abused in other ways.

In Power Grid and many Eurogames, a very common Comeback Mechanism is changing player order based on victory points.  Since you track your victory points along the way, it's easy to dictate who is "ahead" and who is "behind."  In Power Grid, the person who is in last place will get to act first in the auctions as well as purchase their resources first and therefore purchase them cheapest.  The issue with doing this is the public knowledge of who is "ahead" and who is "behind", and the fact that players are able to game this system to their advantage.  Most often, the player who will be able to win in Power Grid will be the person who stayed behind or in the middle of the pack for the majority of the game, and used the last turn to jump ahead of everyone else.  It's actually an interesting problem where taking actions to move yourself forward to victory actually sets you up to lose the game.

So when designing Affinity, I had thoughts of Comeback Mechanisms in mind, I knew that there was a great point at which to determine when someone was "behind" in the game.  Since two opposing Awakened need to be defeated to win the game, at some point there will be one player with 2 Awakened in their Awakened stack, and one player with 1 Awakened remaining in their Awakened stack.  At that point, the player with only 1 Awakened left is generally going to be "behind" in the game, unless the other face-up Awakened has very little Essence remaining in play.

So the first Comeback Mechanism that I put into the game was something to regain tempo to the person who was behind.  Allow them to use Aether Surge, a card that up until that point was only used to add more cards to your deck, to be able to gain a tempo advantage.  I did this by giving Aether Surge the ability to allow a Construct to attack the turn it was manifested (which it normally is unable to do.)  This is how the game was playtested and balanced for months, and it seemed to work out okay, but the reality was that I wasn't paying attention to the results as much as I should have been.  You see, I didn't automatically realize that after Player A's first Awakened was defeated, he would use his Aether Surge cards to be able to defeat Player B's first Awakened, who would then be able to use their Aether Surge cards to be able to defeat Player A's second Awakened.  It didn't happen this way every single time, which is why I didn't catch on to this happening as quickly as I would have liked, but the percentage was probably close to 80% of the time.

I have since scrapped that ability on Aether Surge, as well as added some more tactical options for the game in Combat, making it a very decision-rich game from turn to turn and allowing someone to use tactical advantages to bring themselves back from behind.  For the last few months, there haven't been any official comeback mechanisms in place, but I've noticed that the percentage that the person who loses their first Awakened also being the person who loses the game to be around 60%-65%, which is higher than I would like to see.  I've recently been testing a new mechanism called "Blessing of the Aether."  This is a mechanism that comes into play for the first person to have an Awakened defeated.  It's simply a modifier to the player's hand size, which causes them to refill their hand to 8 cards instead of 7 for a new Awakened, as well as increasing the Innervate of their last Awakened by 2.  These two small changes allow the benefit to compound over time, where your second Awakened has more raw Essence to work with each turn, giving you a better chance of overcoming the advantage that your opponent started with.  In addition, when the other player's first Awakened is defeated, they won't gain the same advantage, making it a better comeback mechanic than the original Aether Surge solution.

Different Game Modes

I previously mentioned in the post First Public Playtest that there is some difficulty in teaching the game to new players who are generally unfamiliar with competitive card games.  There are quite a few nuances in these games that someone who has a history of playing competitive card games, even at a casual level, will be able to understand and take for granted a time when they didn't understand some basic concepts.

I tried what I mentioned in the post in creating a quick 3-5 minute play through of the mechanics of the game before teaching people the draft portion and playing the "real" game.  I tried it with a few new players, and where it did succeed in it's goal, the general feedback was that it made the game feel simple and shallow due to how short it was.  I'm not sure if there is a psychological aspect to learning the "game within the game" in 5 minutes that causes this, but it's obviously taking away the richness in decisions that the game has to offer.

Through some good feedback that I got after posting the call for playtesters, I've decided to try packaging the game with a "Basic" and "Advanced" mode.  What this essentially entails is that the "Basic" game will be taught and played with balanced pre-constructed decks that are made up of a majority of the cards currently in the game.  I've removed one of the elements from the mix (Shadow, since it has cards that specifically need the Aether Stream and Nether Pile to function correctly) and created 4 pre-constructed decks where 2/3 of the deck is made of one Element and the remaining 1/3 of the deck is a complimenting Element.  I also picked out two Awakened to be used for each deck, and added their items to the decks.  This brings the decks to 20 cards each, one of four different factions, and the ability to learn the mechanics of the game and explore the interactions of the different elements without needing to make those decisions in a draft format.

After playing the pre-constructed decks a few times, players should be able to move onto the Advanced Format, bringing in the drafting mechanics, a completely new element, 1 new Awakened for each element, and be able to have the cards interact in ways they previously have never seen.

Initial testing of these pre-constructed decks has gone pretty well, and forced me to re-analyze and tweak some cards to have even better interactions with certain Elements that I had yet to do.

In addition to this change, there was also commentary on the importance of multi-player.  It should be no secret that I've designed, tested and balanced this game primarily for a 2 player game.  Competitive card games of this nature just work best in the 2 player format.  The game can easily be played as multi-player, but you have the problem of player elimination in a game like this.  If 3 people really want to take out the 4th player, there's generally not much you're able to do in a 3 on 1 pileup.  Table politics become a very important factor in situations like this, almost more so than the cards that are in your deck.

Now there are some formats that were suggested and that have been used to try and "fix" this multi-player problem in games with player elimination.  Predator/Prey is one of those, where you can only attack the person to your right or left, but I've never been a huge fan of that format because you're not able to have a significant impact on the person who is trying to eliminate you from the game, and if the person who is supposed to be attacking them is failing at their goal, that makes your goal even harder.

Another suggestion that was brought up was a format where you only need to eliminate the person to your right/left to win the game, but you can attack or assist any of the players in the game.  This is interesting from the concept of having a different goal than each other player, but also giving you the ability to prevent someone else from winning the game by knocking out a completely unrelated player if you're willing to spend the resources to do so.

The format that I am most interested in trying to balance would be a 2v2 Team mode, which is what I tried out last night.  I haven't got all of the specific details worked out as far as the number of Awakened that should be played per player (1 or 2) or if you should be able to eliminate one player from the team, or if you need to knock down both players to zero essence in play to defeat them both at the same time, but it was very straightforward for people to know who their allies and who their enemies are, and know what areas you could sacrifice when you think/know that your partner is going to be able to back you up.  No real backstabbing to take place in this format, but I'm not the biggest fan of that political nonsense in games anyway.

Looking for Playtesters!

Here is the post the I made at both boardgamegeek.com and bgdf.com looking for playtesters.  I'm also posting in here for anyone who might read this blog but does not frequent those two sites, as well as for posterity sake.


What is Affinity?

Affinity is a deck-building game for two to four players about magic-wielding characters who are battling it out for power among five different factions.  Each player controls two characters, called Awakened, who are affiliated with a single faction.  These Awakened cast spells, manifest Elemental Constructs and use complex items to defeat other Awakened.  Defeat all of the Awakened that oppose you, and you win!

Aw man, another deckbuilder?

Before you continue, you should know that in Affinity there are:

No Victory Points - Unless you consider crushing your opponent as a Victory Point.
No weak starting decks - Each time you start the game you will draft a new and unique deck to start the game with.
No random pile setups - All of the cards are available for use in Affinity every game.

Affinity is not a Collectable Card Game (CCG), but the play of the game is similar to drafting and playing a CCG much more than other deckbuilders.  At it's core, Affinity is a head-to-head competitive game.

Sounds cool, what can I do to help?

Over 200 hours have been put into closed playtesting this game, now it's time to get that number closer to 1000.  The time has come for some good old-fashioned blind playtesting to be done on Affinity!

I'm looking for the game to be playtested primarily with the 2 player version of the game, as that is what the game has been primarily designed and balanced around, but some playtesting in 3 and 4 player would be good as well.

In addition, I've got the rules typed up, but I know that they are far from perfect.  Please, please, please point out anything that doesn't make sense, could use clarification, or if (and likely when) you come across something that is not clearly explained in the rules.

If you're curious about some of the changes and thoughts that have gone into the game until this point, feel free to browse the development blog here.

Any person, or group of people who helps with this project will at a minimum have my gratitude.  Past that, and depending on their level of involvement, you can recieve credit in the rulebook and a free copy (or copies) of the game!  (Subject to opinion, but I'm a fairly generous person.)

ALL FEEDBACK IS WELCOME!



Game Details
2 to 4 players (2 players recommended)
10 minutes to learn, 30-60 minutes to play (Faster play the more familiar you are)

Game Components
-15 Awakened Cards
-15 Item Cards
-12 Aether Surge Cards
-60 Construct Cards
-30 Spell Cards

Affinity Rules v1.0

Affinity Cards v12.0

Affinity Cards with color titles v12.0

Additional Notes:
When printing the game, it would be extremely beneficial to print each different element's cards on different color paper.  The time that this saves in visual recognition when playing the game is immensely important.

*I have also provided a copy of the cards with colored titles, but I would advise against printing the game in full color unless absolutely necessary in an effort to save people's ink cartridges.

I have not provided backs for the cards, as the way that I normally playtest card games is to put standard pieces of paper into card sleeves with old CCG cards for backing.

The images on the cards are playtest images only, and are not the final art for the game.

If there is anyone out there who would like to assist me in creating a Vassal module for the game to assist with the playtesting process, please PM me!

Elemental Summaries

I've recently typed up a few sentences for each element to assist new playtesters in understanding what I'm trying to accomplish within each element, as well as bring them up to speed with what each element typically does.  This isn't meant to be the hard and fast truth, as there are always gong to be exceptions to the rule, but this is a good jumping off point.  Since I typed it up for the playtesters, I've decided to share it with whomever reads this blog as well.



Air
The element of Air is focus on small constructs and cycling cards.  It is an easy element to grasp the concept of, but a hard one to really master.  Their Awakened have less essence to work with than the other elements, balanced with the fact that they draw more cards, and have alternative costs in the form of discarding cards from their hand for a benefit.  Ideal play with Air will be spending your essence drawing and discarding lots of cards while still manifesting constructs and bolstering them with special cards that have discard effects.

Earth
The element of Earth is focused on Growth and Combat.  The entire game is about combat, but Earth is just better at it.  Their cards are straightforward, adding essence to Constructs in play, and getting bonuses when they attack or even additional attacks.  Any construct under an Earth Awakened is a potential force to be reckoned with.  Ideal play with Earth will be manifesting a few constructs, and bolstering them with additional spells and effects to create unstoppable constructs in combat.

Fire
The element of Fire is focused on Essence Removal and Rebirth.  Their focus is on removing the Essence from opposing constructs through the liberal use of spells and powers, along with playing cards directly from the discard pile.  Ideal play with Fire will be utilizing a combination of spells and constructs to remove essence from the opposing constructs in play in an efficient manner.  To go with their efficient essence removal, they are also able to replay their cards from the discard pile which allows them to use their cards more times than another element would be able to do.

Water
The element of Water is focused on Control and Big Constructs.  Their Awakened have the most Essence in the game, and their cards allow them to steal opposing Essence and Constructs, manipulate attacks, and generally make it hard for their opponents to do exactly what they want to do.  Ideal play with Water will be controlling your opponent's every move, making them do what you want them to do even though they might not even know it.

Shadow
The element of Shadow is focused on manipulating the Aether Stream and Exiling cards to the Nether.  They run a fine line between control and chaos for both themselves as well as their opponents.  They are a very interesting element in that they are the only ones that interact with the Aether stream and the cards that are removed from the game.  Ideal play with Shadow will be Exiling your own deck to be able to use the Nether as an extension of your own deck while at the same time denying your opponent the cards that they want from the Aether.

Addition through Subtraction

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.

Back in the Saddle

The month of December is usually a fairly busy month for everyone, either you're impacted with family obligations of your own, or impacted with additional work at your job due to other people's family obligations.  If you're one of the many lucky individuals like myself, you're impacted by both.

That's not to say that I got no work done on Affinity during the last 6 weeks, I just didn't have the time to work on the game and type up some new blog entries to let people know what was going on.  I got a few more playtest sessions in, one of them with another group of game designers and another with a very good friend of mine where we were able to get a lot of games done in a relatively short amount of time.  Lots of changes have been made to individual cards, I've reworked the phases of the game, tweaked the initial draft setup, the ongoing draft mechanism, and I've added a 5th element to the game.  The last playtest also had me reconsider the number of cards in the deck and I'll be testing those numbers going forward.  In addition to that, I also got in touch with a friend who is a really good writer to work on some backstory for the game and I've been talking to a few artists to see if they'd be interested in the project as well.

All in all, I'd say the development is coming along nicely.

First Public Playtest

Last night was the first time that I've taught Affinity to anyone outside of my friends.  I found a group through Meetup.com that meets once a month of aspiring designers and people willing to playtest games in their prototype form and offer constructive feedback.  I got a chance to teach Affinity to 3 other people over the course of two games where I watched people play the game and instructed them along the way.  The reception of the game was very positive, they felt it was very balanced, well-designed, and had a desire to play again.  There were only two negative comments that I recieved, which I'll get to in a bit.

The first thing I realized was holy cow am I rusty at teaching games.  The second run through I was much, much better, but the first time I was jumping all over the place and didn't have a dynamic flow for teaching the game to players who were completely unfamiliar with the mechanics.  Teaching the game to new players is not something that is mentioned much, if at all, by designers and I quickly realized how important this process is.  It's commonly said that first impressions are everything, and I think that is going to hold true for teaching a new game to someone as well.  You'll occasionally hear reviews for games along the lines of "You need a few plays to really understand what's going on" and I now understand how important it is to mitigate that feeling if at all possible.

After each game we played, which took about an hour to teach and play a full game, we did some brainstorming as to what would help a new player approach the game.

• Problem: Remembering the order of the phases, remembering what the keywords on the cards do.
• Solution: Cheat Sheets

This was a suggestion that I completely agree with.  I've played collectible card games for 15 years and these have been in nearly every game I've ever demoed or played.  I overlooked creating one of these before this playtest session, but I will certainly have these prepared for the next one.

• Problem: Not realizing the different nuances of the factions.
• Solution: Faction Blurbs

This was something that game up in the second game because one of the factions is a bit combo-oriented and not necessarily obvious how to play them to their fullest potential at first glance.  I think this can be alleviated by having a few sentences about each factions that explains in a general sense what their strengths and weaknesses are.

• Problem: When playing the game, you need to draft a deck for yourself to play before knowing what the cards do.
• Solution: Splitting the Demo into two parts

This is the biggest thing that I took away from this playtest session.  There are really two parts that you have to learn in Affinity one being the drafting/deckbuilding mechanics and the other being the mechanics in playnig the cards against one another.  Unlike similar games, you're not just buying cards that allow you to draw/buy more cards.  You're buying cards to combat your opponent, and those interactions need to be learned and understood to help you decide what you want to draft in your deck.  The problem arises in the actual game that to play cards to combat your opponent, you need to draft them to build your deck before knowing what they actually do.  In an attempt to solve this, I'm going to work on a setup of cards that can be used to quickly demo the interactions of the cards and display the game mechanics for a few turns which can hopefully be done in 3-5 minutes and then stop that "demo" to start the full game with the drafting mechanics.


All in all, I think the night was very productive and I plan to attend each session if possible.  Outside of teaching and playing the game, I also did a little bit of networking with another designer who let me know of another design group that gets together twice a month that I should be getting an invite to.  Also one of the perople I taught the game to has an artist that they'd like me to get in touch with and a publisher that is located a few hours from where I live that they are in contact with.  Not sure what the future holds, but I like having some potential prospects.