Pre-Orders Are Up! Also, An Article About Card Synergy

Hey guys first of all if you missed the Kickstarter, you can read all about pre-ordering Mage Tower here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/648592395/mage-tower-a-tower-defense-card-game/posts/308655

Secondly, I'm going to talk about something very important in Mage Tower- CARD SYNERGY.  Card synergy is super important in deckbuilding or deck drafting games, and Mage Tower is a little bit of both.  If building/drafting your deck is one of the main gameplay mechanics, there have to be strategic decisions involved or else you're just always picking whichever card is slightly better than the others.

So let's talk about different ways that cards can provide synergy:

#1 Cards That Provide No Synergy

Okay, theoretically every card has some synergies with other cards, but this is definitely on the low end of the spectrum.  Flame Volley is good for destroying monsters, particularly the two furthest monsters if they are both big and not angry.  But it doesn't care what other cards you have - it always does the same thing!  Synergies are created by making cards care about other cards, which creates complex interactions.

Let's talk about what happens when you have too many cards that don't have the potential for synergy.  Selecting your cards just becomes about choosing whatever card is the most efficient.  One example I'll give is the video game Diablo 3.  Building your tableau of 6 active skills and 3 passive skills is kind of like building a deck, but 90%+ of the skills don't have any synergy potential built in.  When assembling your "deck" of skills, how much different is "Drop poison on a bunch of enemies" vs. "Shoot fire at a bunch of enemies"?  vs. "Shoot arrows at a bunch of enemies" vs. "Throw grenades at a bunch of enemies"?  They all accomplish the same thing (damage a bunch of enemies), so obviously you'll just choose whichever ability is the best at that job.  This makes "deckbuilding" and choosing your skills quite boring.  If every card was like Flame Volley and didn't synergize with other cards, drafting your deck in Mage Tower would also be quite boring.

#2 Cards That Want One Card To Synergize With Them

Okay now we're getting into synergy territory, and this is the lowest level of synergy.  These cards are designed to deliberately "buddy up" with another card, and are much more powerful this way.  They may make you draft cards you wouldn't normally draft.

Forgemaster is a super blunt version of this- he wants an Equipment in your deck, and if you've got one suddenly his ability is much more efficient.  He will make you draft pretty much any equipment to do this, even if it's bad.  You may draft several Equipment just so it's more likely you'll be able to take full advantage of Forgemaster.

Juggle also wants one card to buddy up with- preferably the most powerful 4-cost card you can draft.  If you draft an above-average 4-cost card, or a 4-cost card that is really good for your particular deck,  suddenly it's like you have two of them.

#3 Cards That Synergize With An Array Of Cards

These are probably what people think of when they think of cards that provide synergy, and they can influence a huge chunk of your draft picks.  For example, if you draft Ambassador, suddenly drafting a ton of "Boon" and "Attack" cards sounds like a great idea because they will all be lower costed, which is a huge deal.

Harbinger Totem deals 3 damage for 3 energy which isn't so great, but if you have a ton of 3-cost cards he becomes 5 damage for 3 energy which is awesome.  In this game and many others, over time you start to really appreciate cards that are efficient for their cost, and Harbinger Totem is very efficient if you design your deck to let it be.

#4 Cards That Anti-Synergize With Your Opponent's Deck

   

Here's a whole other class of synergy you probably weren't expecting, but is actually pretty obvious.  If your opponent has a particular strategy, there are cards that your opponent doesn't want you to have in your deck.  You may be saying "Is that really synergy"?  Well, let's talk about it.

Memory Beam destroys a Permanent or Equipment an opponent controls.  If your opponent's strategy hinges on a specific Permanent or Equipment, obviously Memory Beam is awesome against them and has great "anti-synergy" with their deck.  

Fleet Battle also provides anti-synergy in a more interesting way- if your opponent's deck is based around using a lot of low cost cards and emptying their hand every turn, they probably don't have 2 cards to discard to Fleet battle, so suddenly it's a really efficient card at killing monsters that has no drawback.  If they however have a deck where their hand is always loaded with cards, suddenly Fleet Battle's synergy with the opponent's deck is in *their* favor (though it doesn't become a completely horrible card).

Treasure Goat is a lot like Fleet Battle in this sense, if the opponent's only Defender/Permanent/Equipment is the Knight in their starting deck, you're going to get way more mileage out of Treasure Goat than you would normally be able to.  If they have a ton of these cards though, Treasure Goat's synergy with their deck will be in their favor.

So as you can see, synergy can be achieved with any card that cares about other cards or players, and having a deck that completely destroys the opponent's strategy can be just as good as having a lot of cards that work together in your favor.

Conclusion

So is synergy good or bad?  Well, it's a tool, and in deckbuilding/drafting games it's an important tool, and it's a shame when it's ignored.  When the game designer isn't cognizant of how much synergy they're injecting into the game, often there isn't enough, or enough different kinds, and the game just kind of feels like you're picking whatever choice is the most efficient.  In Mage Tower I've definitely been very aware of how many cards of each of the above types I've provided, and tried to fill holes where needed.  The right level of synergy can create a lot of interesting back-and-forth interaction while players draft their decks.

Co-Op Monster Deck Mini-Expansion Stretch Goal Reward **Full Preview**

Today I'm going to go over each card in the co-op monster deck mini-expansion, which will come for free with every copy of Mage Tower if we hit the $12,000 stretch goal.  Go to the Kickstarter page if you would like to pledge: Mage Tower's Kickstarter Page

The main thing that makes the co-op monster deck different from the base game monster deck is that the monsters are more powerful and there are a wider variety of monsters and monster abilities.  Why is this?  The base game is focused around drafting a cool deck, stopping your opponent from drafting a crazy deck, and using strategy and tactics to mess with your opponent and optimize your strategy against the monster deck.  Since about 1/4th of the cards in the game interact with the opponent and there are over 170 cards to draft from, the monsters need to be *kind of* plain in the base game to make the game about your deck and interacting with your opponent.  In the co-op mode however you aren't interacting with your opponent, and the monster deck can't counter your attempts to draft an awesome deck.  For this reason, the monster deck *has to* do crazy stuff all the time so it really feels like an opponent that is messing with you and wants to win!

So let's go over the cards, and remember that the card names and especially art are very much in flux!  Anyways let's start strong with Village Mob:

Village Mob

This card is built for co-op play, obviously.  The cool thing about this card is that it provokes you and your ally to discuss who can afford to lose two cards, and cooperating in co-op mode is always a good thing!  The second thing is that it has an instant effect when it hits the monster board, which makes revealing cards from the monster deck more exciting.

Treasure Goblin

Treasure Goblin is another card that can make co-op play interesting, by promoting the players discussing who should be the one to kill it and get the gold.  If a player has a strategy that would really benefit from a lot of gold, you may want to have them take it.  The decision isn't always relevant or important, but when it is it's a good thing, and when it's not getting free gold is still fun!

Dire Gator

Dire Gator is just a plain interesting card because he's so easy to kill, but killing him might not do anything if the Gatorspawn still damages you, and if you don't kill him 2 damage doesn't really hurt much anyays.  There might actually be times where you and your ally agree not to kill him if you have something else you can spend your energy on.  Like Treasure Goblin it's not always going to lead to hard decisions, just once in a while, which is a good balance.

Apocalypse Rider and Giga Orc

These cards are pretty plain overall, but working with your ally do deal 10 or 11 damage to one monster is usually pretty fun.  Every monster can't have a crazy ability, and having to deal so much damage to one moster to kill it practically *is* an ability.  It also promotes players to say things like "Okay if I get 3 damage on the Giga Orc can you kill it on your turn?", so these cards actually do promote cooperation.

Melkin

Since co-op needs to be about the monster deck doing crazy things to mess with you, Melkin fits right in.  Since these are free for the monster deck to "play" they can turn a difficult turn into a *really* difficult turn, or just annoy the heck out of you!  Like Village Mob, these are basically a card that make you interested to see what cards are coming out of the monster deck.  When you get two Melkins and 13 points of monsters in a turn you'll know what I mean!

Harm Elemental

Harm Elemental is just a really annoying "vanilla" card (vanilla means it has no abilities).  It's annoying because in general it's slightly overpowered for its point cost.  Sort of like how Dire Gator is slightly underpowered for its point cost, this can shift your priorities at times.  You might work really hard to kill a Harm Elemental that's further down the monster board by comboing your cards with an ally.  As you can see, even the plain cards in the co-op monster deck can create strategic decisions.

Harpy Queen

This is another card that just makes you need to keep an eye on what's going on and that makes it feel like the monster deck is an opponent that is trying to mess with you.  You may be able to kill it with your ally, or you may try to use up your defenders if they'll die anyways.

Gargoyle

Gargoyle is a card that may make you have to change tactics, or manage your cards differently.  You may want to save your higher damage card for the Gargoyle, or if you'd have to waste a lot of resources to kill it you may want to use your energy for something else and have your ally kill it.  It's not a super crazy card but it can create interesting decisions during gameplay.

Monstrosity of Gandaar

The best for last!  The trick with this guy is he takes three turns to attack you instead of two, and he has way more health than he should.  Teaming up to take the Monstrosity of Gandaar down is totally fun.  There's also only two of them, and they can make the point values of the monsters coming out go up to 17, which is crazy!  (There's no high-end limit for monster points in co-op mode, but without Monstrosity of Gandaar there's no way to go over 14 points).  So anyways he definitely adds excitement when revealing cards from the co-op deck.  When will he show up?  Will he show up at a bad time?  Fortunately his ability, while allowing him to have more health, actually makes him more balanced since if he does come out at a bad time you still have three turns to kill him.

Anyways that's the co-op monster deck, it's super hard to beat but also super fun!  So spread the word about Mage Tower so we can hit the stretch goal.  Later guys!

-Brett Brimmer

Some New Card Designs!

Hey guys, I had an awesome 4-player playtest session last night, showed a few new people the game and everyone enjoyed it.  We played with completely randomized decks instead of drafting since everyone else was new, and ended up with some crazy decks.  I got owned by someone who was losing early on but caught up once they got an engine going where they drew a ton of cards, discarded them to get gold, used the gold to get prize cards, then used the prize cards and all the card drawing to draw their whole deck.  WHOA.  They even drew their whole deck, discarded it, then drew it again all in one turn!

Anyways I'm going to talk about a few cards I created recently to fill in some holes and the kind of strategies they lend themselves to.  The goal when designing these cards was to have interesting player interaction combined with interesting draft and deck building decisions.  I'll try to keep it a little light on the game terms so you can understand what the cards do, but you can check out the in-depth gameplay video if you want to know more about how the game works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D00GcENem30

One new card is Bodysnatcher, which is a Defender that steals one of your opponent's basic cards out of their deck and puts it into yours.  It also gets bigger and more powerful the bigger your deck is, so if you steal a bunch of cards and buy a bunch of prizes he can get huge.  He also has great synergy with the "Ennoblement" promo card which can add another card to your deck every time it's played!

Another card is called Marble Highway, and it's a card that actually lets you react to and prevent attack cards from other players, for free.  In addition to that, it lets you make monsters on your monster board "angry" which means they are close to attacking you, and in return you deal damage and get gold.  You have to balance the risks and rewards of this card, or you can just save it to block an attack.

The third card is Burning Sensation.  This card promotes decks that have a lot of Permanents, Equipment, Defenders and card draw by damaging all players based on how large their deck is.  So if most of your cards are in your hand or in play, you get hurt less by it.  It's obviously a good counter to a Bodysnatcher strategy since their deck will be huge, but it's also good against people that are focusing on low-cost cards and empty their hand every turn, or against people that are going for a lot of prize cards.

The fourth card is tentatively named Treasure Jackal.  This is a really undercosted Defender that dies instantly when the opponent plays a Defender, Permanent, or Equipment card, and gives them a gold and a life to boot.  The trick with Treasure Jackal is trying to make sure your opponent doesn't get many of these types of cards in the draft, and/or making sure you play your Jackal after they've already played their cards that can counter it.

The last card is named Siren.  It's a very small Defender that's free to play, and it lets you look at the opponent's hand and the top four cards of their deck and play an Ability or Monster-Attack card from it if you pay the energy cost.  Siren is great at disrupting an opponent's strategy and helping against super powerful Ability or Attack cards by stopping the opponent from playing them and letting you play them.

Well those are some new cards that were added, I've been looking for cool ways to add even more player interaction and drafting strategy and all of these cards really go towards that goal.  The cards these are replacing were cool but just missing a little oomph that really made you think.  Even though the game has been essentially finished for a while now, I am constantly playtesting and tweaking the game to make sure it's the best game it can be.  Thanks for your support guys!

What to expect when the Kickstarter launches and more playtesting stuff

What to expect when the Kickstarter launches

Okay guys, honestly I hardly know what to expect when the Mage Tower kickstarter launches this Friday, Kickstarter is a strange beast and is hard to predict.  One thing is for sure- people like to support projects that are going to be successful.  Part of the fun of Kickstarter is watching a project flourish from start to finish and riding the waves with the project creator.  For that reason it's totally important that the project gets off to a good start.  That's why it would be awesome if you followed Super Mega Games on Twitter (@SuperMegaGames1), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/SuperMegaGames), and pledged even at the $1 level when the project starts.  Visually, I'd rather have 35 backers at $1 than 1 backer at $35- it just looks good when a project has a lot of backers.

It'd be awesome if the project got a lot of backers out of the gate, but I'm planning on buying ads on various gaming websites throughout the project, and I'm hoping it will spread by word of mouth, but the fact is a lot of people just like to wait until the last few days to pledge.  The earlier you pledge the better, I even am going to have a special backer reward for the first 25 people: they will get their names on the Kickstarter exclusive promo card and get a small $2 discount on the game.  I've seen people add their backer's names to rulebooks- but this is going to be right on the front of the card overlayed over the card art!  Sweet!

More playtesting stuff

I just had a cool playtesting game, basically there are a limited amount of cards called "Prize Cards" you can add to your deck during gameplay by spending gold.  This isn't a deckbuilding game like Dominion though- your deck is pretty much finished before the game starts, and the prize cards just help you even it out a bit.  Anyways, there are cards that give you extra gold, which means you can buy extra prize cards.  One player just happened to get a ton of cards that give gold, and though their deck was fairly weak in the beginning of the game it gained a ton of power and they managed to win.


I think late-game strategy decks are a great thing, it's fun to try to play with cards that are better the longer the game goes on to see how far you can push it.  One thing I became cognizant of as I playtested was that certain cards made the game shorter, and some made the game longer.  Cards that attack other players make the game shorter, because you're spending resources you could be using to fight monsters and the enemy is getting damaged by your attack.  Likewise, there are cards that help yourself a lot and help other players a little and these make the game longer because everyone survives against the monsters longer.  I call these two types of cards "Attack" and "Boon" cards, and recognizing how they affect the game length is an important part of building your deck and deciding if you should go for cards that are better in a long game.

Little subtleties like how cards affect game length are usually something you'd read on an advanced strategy site for a game, but in Mage Tower you can easily see "Attack" and "Boon" right on the cards.  With time you'll learn which of these cards have the greatest effect, and they are just another one of the small things that add to the depth of Mage Tower.

Update- Kickstarter Coming July 13th!! Also Playtesting Stories

Hey guys, we've been hard at work on the Mage Tower kickstarter project.  We originally wanted it to start in June but there was so much to get done that we think it would be better to launch mid-July (July 13th).  Here's what we've been up to:

-We finished all of the card art and purchased a prototype set of cards with the actual art (before we were using TCG cards in sleeves with a card-sized paper proxies inserted).  It's pretty awesome and we wanted to be able to actually show you the game in the Kickstarter video.  Speaking of which...

-We shot a video for Kickstarter with me (Brett) talking about Mage Tower.  We also shot a video of some of the cards and a gameplay overview.  The Kickstarter is pretty much all set to go, we're just waiting to launch it mid-July and we're finishing up the rulebook and game box art.

-We're playtesting the game constantly.  It's taken *so much* playtesting to get Mage Tower where it is, and at this point most of the cards are pretty sound.  The main goal is to make sure every card is fun and balanced.  With over 170 different cards to test, it takes a while to test everything, but the more we test the more we have a keen eye for what works.

SOME RECENT PLAYTESTING STUFF

I'm going to talk about some recent playtests and some decisions that were made to change cards.  Since the official rulebook (and the game, for that matter) aren't out yet, I'll try to keep it simple.

Crusade Playtesting
-There's a pretty fun card called "Crusade" that lets you get up to three defenders out of your deck with cost 4 or less and put them right into play.  This card is fun to draft with, because it really gives you incentive to draft cheap defenders, and having a deck with a theme is always fun.  The problem was that if you lucked out and got exactly the kind of defenders you needed, it was extremely powerful.  On the other hand, if you didn't get the defenders you wanted, or if you didn't get any more cheap defenders besides the Knight in your starting deck, you might not even want to play it (it costs a lot of energy).

Crusade has always been fun and was never on the chopping block, but it was a bit too swingy.  I thought about it and decided a good solution was instead of getting three 4-cost defenders, you could get any number of defenders with total costs equal to 10 or less.  For one thing, this lets you get higher costed defenders, which makes it less swingy in the sense that you'll usually be able to draft cards you want for it. Secondly, since the cost is limited to 10 it can never get *too* ridiculous.  Since high-cost cards are generally weaker per energy than low cost cards, you're still better off getting cheap defenders, but getting bigger defenders works great too, and you're never going to get more than 10 energy worth of defenders.

After playtesting the card with this change it's even more fun than it used to be- it's fun having the goal when you're drafting to "Get at least 10 energy worth of defenders."

Doomsday Playtesting
This is a card that, in a super simplified explanation, slightly increases the general amount of monsters that come out of the opponents' monster decks to attack them each turn.  It was a cool idea, and the gameplay was cool, but it suffered from a glaring problem- the confusion and memory issues weren't worth the coolness.  If Mage Tower were a video game the computer could just remember that it has to bring out more monsters every turn, but the player having to remember it is just annoying.  Also it messes with a very basic rule of the game, so suddenly instead of remembering the rules you have to remember the rules and remember how this card changes the rules.

Another problem was that since the ability was such a powerful attack it had to not deal any damage to monsters on your own monster board.  This makes you feel bad because you're not killing monsters, and super powerful attacks make the enemy feel bad because I mean, that's what they do.  So it was a card that confused people and made *both* players feel bad.

I'm planning on differentiating cards on difficulty levels so that new players aren't overwhelmed- probably in Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.  I always felt like this card was Advanced Plus, like I didn't really want anyone to see it until they'd played with every other card and then maybe they'd want to play with this weird card.  Don't get me wrong- Mage Tower is 100% all about weird cards, but this just was more trouble than it was worth.

That's all for today
Most of the other changes I've made recently are very small, tweaking values up or down or changing the wordings of cards.  We will definitely be testing it up to the end of the Kickstarter though to make sure the game is as fun and balanced as possible.  Remember, the Mage Tower kickstarter project will start July 13th!

-Brett Brimmer

Card Preview #2: Rolling Boulder

For the last card preview I talked about a super-strategic card, but today I'm going to talk about a more fun chance oriented card, Rolling Boulder:

If this card can get through a few monsters, it can deal 10 damage for 5 energy which is pretty much the most energy-efficient card in the game!  Even though it seems like you have to get lucky and have just the right combination of monsters in a row, there are a few ways you can help set this up.

For one thing you can use cards that damage monsters down the line or set up a monster to be killed.  For example, take a look at Frogcast and Artillery:

 

If you Frogcast the second monster, all you have to do is kill the first monster and you've started the chain reaction.  As long as that third monster has 3 or less health, you'll pull off the full combo!  Artillery, on the otherhand, lets you soften up the closest four monsters so that it's easier for Rolling Boulder to plow through them.  These combos don't guarantee you'll get the 10 damage done, but it just shows you how many ways there are to help it out!

Some other things that can help are Defenders and Boon cards.  Since Defenders stay out turn after turn until they die, they give you more options for varying amounts of damage you can deal to the closest monster to set it up for Rolling Boulder - and attacking costs nothing.  "Boon" cards are cards that help both you and your opponent, thus making the game last longer, thus giving you more opportunities to get a sweet Rolling Boulder combo off.

So as you can see, even though Rolling Boulder looks like a "fun" chance card through and through, there are ways to help it out, and when you do finally get the combo off it's all worth it!

Card Preview #1: Element Cannon

For the first Card Highlight we're going to be talking about the card Element Cannon.  Element Cannon is a "build around me" card, meaning there's certain types of cards you want to draft to support it.  If you draft the right types of cards it becomes insanely powerful.

So what types of cards are best with Element Cannon?  Small, cheap Defender cards.  Element Cannon turns any defender, no matter how weak, into an easy way to kill huge monsters like Giants or Demons.  Take a look at the card Wisp, for example:

By itself Wisp is a moderately powerful card that costs no mana, gives free damage, doesn't waste a card, and is good with Equipment.  With Element Cannon out, however, it kills a Giant for 2 mana without even using a card!  This is exactly the kind of card you want in your deck with Element Cannon.

Take a look at another card-- Parrot Familiar:

Parrot Familiar's main use is to copy an opponent's Ability card.  After that, it's just a useless Parrot that can't even deal damage.  But with Element Cannon out you can turn the useless 0/1 parrot into a Giant-killer!

You get the idea - turn any defender that would otherwise be weak into a deadly attacker.  The thing to keep in mind is that Element Cannon is fairly useless with larger defenders.  Sacrificing a 5/5 defender to Element Cannon is pointless because the 5/5 could have killed any monster anyways.

Although Element Cannon is a "build-around-me" card, it isn't useless without cheap defenders.  It can turn a Knight's 3 damage attack into a 5 damage explosion.  Generally any defender with 3 or less power at least gets some benefit from Element Cannon being out.

There are some cards out there that are even better combos with Element Cannon - finding cool combos and interactions is what Mage Tower is all about!