projects.addama.net

Card Battle

Card Battle is a 2+ player card game that aims to capture the play concepts in Magic: The Gathering while only using a standard playing card deck.

I was inspired, as with many things, by a late-night Youtube rabbit hole that put me in front of several homebrew card games using playing cards. If what I have made here isn't your jam, these might be:

Setup

Each player will need their own deck of playing cards, Jokers included. Each player should ensure that their deck is properly shuffled before beginning play.

Basic Concepts

Like in Magic, you are a powerful entity that uses Mana to summon Units to fight your enemies and defend you, which you support by casting spells. Unlike Magic, there is no deck-building aspect - each player effectively has the same deck. However, as we know from playing card games, even the same deck never deals out the same way twice.

Card Piles

Each player has the following card piles:

Cards that you own always move between card piles and play areas that you own. You will never move any of your cards into any of your opponent's card piles or play areas.

Play Areas

Each player has their own play areas, into which cards are played:

Tapping and Un-tapping

Similar to Magic, cards in your Roster and Mana Pool are tapped, or turned sideways, to indicate that they have been used.

Tapped cards are unusable as long as they remain tapped, and are only un-tapped at the beginning of your next turn.

Discarding and Un-discarding

Cards that are discarded are placed face-up onto the top of your Discard Pile. The Discard Pile is still considered "in play," and may be inspected and interacted with.

Certain mechanics may allow cards that you choose from the Discard Pile to be un-discarded back into your Hand. If there are no cards in your Discard Pile, un-discard actions do nothing.

Removing and Un-Removing

Cards that are removed are taken from the top of the Draw Pile and placed onto the top of the Void Pile. The Void Pile is considered "out of play" and cannot be inspected or interacted with.

Certain mechanics may allow cards from the top of the Void Pile to be un-removed back onto the top of the Draw Pile. If there are no cards in your Void Pile, un-removal actions do nothing.

You may not look at the cards that you are removing or un-removing.

Mechanics

Player Health

Each player's health is represented by the number of cards in their Draw Pile. Damage is dealt to players by removing cards from the Draw Pile. Similarly, un-removing cards is equivalent to healing player damage.

Types of Card

There are three major classifications of cards in Card Battle:

Face Cards, or Units, are played into the Roster, and are your main means of attack and defense. You may only have one Unit of each kind in play at a time, meaning that you can only have a maximum 4 Units in your Roster: one King, one Queen, one Jack, and one Ace. Units come into play tapped.

Number Cards can be played in three ways:

Mana

Each card you want to play costs Mana. Mana comes in two colors: Red and Black. Black cards cost black Mana, and red cards cost red Mana.

Any Number Card may be played into your Mana Pool for free, adding 1 Mana of its color to your Mana Pool permanently. Red cards give red Mana, and black cards give black Mana. Playing Mana does not cost Mana, and there is no limit to how much Mana you can have, but you can only play one Mana per turn. Mana comes into play tapped.

Attachments

Number Cards may be played as Attachments to Units in your Roster, kind of like outfitting them with weapons, equipment, and spells. You can show that a Number Card has been attached to a Unit by stacking it on top of the Unit so that all card markings in the stack are visible.

There is no limit to the number of each kind of Attachment that a Unit can have. You may discard an already attached Spade or Heart to replace it with one you wish to play instead. Attachments may be played on tapped Units.

The suit of the card determines the effect of the Attachment:

If a Unit is killed in combat, all of its Attachments are discarded with it once the combat has been resolved.

Instants

Number Cards may be played for an instant effect regardless of whose turn it is, so long as you have Mana to play it. Once a card has been played as an Instant, it is discarded.

The suit of the card determines the effect of the Instant:

Combat

Face Cards are Units that you summon to attack your opponent and defend you from their Units' attacks. By default, they are considered to have 1 health and 0 attack values. Spade Units on the other hand, have a default attack value of 1.

You may initiate combat if you have either of the following in your Roster:

When you declare combat, tap any number of Units (and their Attachments) and let your opponent know that you are starting combat. Your opponent then taps any number of un-tapped Units in their Roster to defend, then chooses which of their defenders defends against which if your attackers. Multiple defenders may defend against one attacker, and multiple attackers may attack a single defender. The defender decides how to spread the attacker's damage between their Units. The defending player may choose not to assign any defenders.

Tapped Units may not attack or defend while they remain tapped.

Combat damage is determined for both attacker and defender(s) simultaneously. To assess combat damage, compare the total of the attacker's Spade Attachments' number values with the total of the defender's Heart Attachments' number values. If one or both of these Attachment types are missing, refer to the defaults above.

Any Unit that has a lower Heart value than their opposite combatant's Spade value is killed, and is discarded at the end of combat. If their Heart value is higher, they survive and are not discarded.

Once survivors and casualties have been determined, resolve any other effects from Diamond or Club Attachments from both sides.

Once combat and all effects have been resolved, discard all Units who have been killed, along with their Attachments.

If there is any damage that was not defended, it is dealt as damage to the opponent by removing cards from their Draw Pile. A round of combat could theoretically end with both players taking damage, though you should attempt to minimize this occurance by being strategic in your Attachments and how/when you attack or defend.

Unavoidable Damage

Some damage is unavoidable, which means that it directly affects your opponent's health without the opportunity to be defended against.

Unavoidable damage is always assessed after all other sources of damage, if any, have been resolved.

Jokers

Jokers are a rare commodity, and have particularly powerful effects that are different depending on how you choose to play them.

Jokers cost 1 Mana of any color to play.

Jokers played as an Instant are a counterspell, causing your opponent to discard a card of your choosing that they are in the process of playing. The affected card causes no effects and is treated as if it was discarded from your opponent's Hand directly. Once an Instant Joker is played, it is discarded.

Jokers played as Attachments make the attached Unit's damage unavoidable for one combat session, after which the Joker Attachment is discarded. Attachment Jokers cannot be removed by Instant Club effects.

Jokers that are discarded are removed from the game entirely, do not go into your Draw Pile or Void Pile, and cannot be played again.

Course of Play

The game is played in turns, alternating between you and your opponents. Determine who goes first by drawing a card from your deck and comparing the value; the player with the highest value goes first. If more than 2 opponents are present, the order of play goes to the right of the first player, or some other method that the group agrees to.

When play starts, each player draws 5 cards as a starting Hand. Over the course of play, you may have any number of cards in your hand-there is no minimum or maximum.

When your turn begins, you must perform the following actions in order:

  1. Draw a card from your Draw Pile,
  2. Un-tap all of your tapped cards

You may then perform any number of the following actions as long as you have cards in your Hand to play and Mana to spend:

Declaring combat must be the last action that you take on your turn. Once combat has been resolved, or when you decide not to declare combat, your turn is over.

Any player may play an Instant during any player's turn.

Mulligan

Any player may shuffle the first Hand of the game back into their Draw Pile and re-draw 5 cards one time in order to try for a better starting Hand.

Loss Condition

Any player who cannot draw a card from their Draw Pile at the beginning of their turn loses the game.

Example Combat

My Unit:

Your Unit:

I declare combat by tapping my Jack. My Jack's 6 of Spades Attachment means it has an attack value of 6, but it has no Heart Attachment, meaning it has the default of 1 health. You tap your King as a defender. Your King has 5 total health, and 1 unavoidable damage, but is not a Spade, nor does it have a Spade Attachment, so it has the default 0 attack value.

My Jack does 6 damage to your King, who absorbs 5 damage because of its health value, but unfortunately dies without doing any damage to me or my Jack. That leaves 1 un-defended damage that is applied to you. Your King has a Diamond Attachment, which applies 1 unavoidable damage to me.

Results: My Jack lives, but your King dies. Your King and all of its Attachments are discarded. We both take 1 damage. Since your King died while carrying 3 Spade Attachments, you now un-discard 3 cards from your Discard Pile into your Hand.

Analysis: This was a fairly bad play on my part, because not only did I cause 1 damage to myself, but I allowed you to un-discard 3 cards of your choosing, which will make you very powerful on your next turn. The only reason why this might have been an acceptable outcome is if I was significantly far ahead, and I need to knock off every health you have when I can, or if I know that you were building that King up for a big attack that would have ruined me if I allowed it to happen.

Appendix A: Advanced Rules

You may decide with your fellow players to implement any of these rules to expand play, make it easier or more complicated. It is not likely that these are balanced in any way, so proceed at your own risk.

Graveyard

The Void Pile no longer exists. Any card that would be removed is instead discarded to the Discard Pile. This means that dealing damage to your opponents puts more cards into their Discard Pile, which they can pick and choose out of when un-discarding. Similarly, un-removing takes cards from the top of the Discard Pile and places them on the top of the Draw Pile.

Free For All

Any card can be played as a Unit, Attachment, or Instant. When played as an Attachment or Instant, Aces have a value of 1, Jacks have a value of 11, Queens have a value of 12, and Kings have a value of 13

If playing with Picky Units, Units may only have Attachments less than or equal to their value.

Strong Houses

If you have three out of the four Unit types (King, Queen, Jack, Ace) in your Roster with the same suit, they all receive benefits from all Attachments on those cards, cumulatively, but they all lose their Attachments whenever one of their same-suited Units attacks, even if only one is chosen as an attacker.

Hand Size

Advanced Units Rules