Spellcraft - Collectable Card Game - by Three Goblins Ltd

[Sheinfell]

Hi Steve,
first of all, I hope you are recovering well. All best wishes from me!

The Undead cards sound quite interesting, looking forward to the new faction.
Got one question and two concerns about the new cards you mentioned:

Originally Posted by Steve at ThreeGoblins

Spell: Cloud of Bats: places a 0/1 Bat with Quick in each free slot

This looks very similar to the Dark card "Mass Collapse", just a bit weaker. What will the cost of the card be? And what is the reason to give the bats Quick? (Hhmm, now I can think of one specific scenario).

Originally Posted by Steve at ThreeGoblins

Stitched Golem : as cast removes top 2 minions from your graveyard, adding their power and health to its own

Does "top 2 minions" mean that the minions have to specifically be the 2 top cards of my discard pile? Or will it use the first 2 minions it can find in the pile? In any case, this sounds rather overpowered to me, even if it were a 5-cost card. You have other cards with similar potential (e.g. the Water card "Deepsea Thing", but those take time to build up, as opposed to instant action here. What will the card's cost and stats be?

Originally Posted by Steve at ThreeGoblins

Bone Dragon : ability to destroy outright any creature opposing it with less health than Bone Dragon

Same here, would you mind sharing the stats you have planned? No other card has a similar ability, so this sounds slightly overpowered as well.
Cards that comes close are the Dark "Darkling Assassin" and the Fire "Ruby Dragon", but their abilities cost mana (1 mana for 2 damage with the Assassin, 3 for 2 with the Dragon).

Again, best wishes, get well soon!
Shein

[Steve at ThreeGoblins]

Hello!

Just briefly :

Cloud of Bats is hard to compare to Mass Collapse as it generates 5 potential attackers, assuming suitable buffs. The reason for Quick is that in Spellcraft this generally equates to very agile and especially flying creatures.
It has cunning uses, many more of which will become clear when you see the other undead cards.

Stitched Golem : topmost 2 dead things anywhere in discard pile. It has in-built limits.

Bone Dragon: ability is expensive. More details later. Don't want to print something now as a very small chance a minor detail might change


Steve @ ThreeGoblins
PS your submitted deck is on the web site, under Deck Showcase
http://www.spellcraft-ccg.com/deck-showcase.html

[Sheinfell]

Originally Posted by Steve at ThreeGoblins

PS your submitted deck is on the web site, under Deck Showcase http://www.spellcraft-ccg.com/deck-showcase.html

Very nice, thanks alot!
You might want to remove the "(I will send you those decks, too)" in line 2. This looks a bit odd on the showcase (as the context from the emails is missing).

[Steve at ThreeGoblins]

Dear All,

Just a quick update.
First half of December should see one BIG update, including:

(1) Undead faction
(2) iPhone compatible (universal)
(3) Better use of iCloud
(4) Improvement to the look of many in-game screens
(5) Some card balancing changes (nothing major, healths, casting costs,etc)
(6) Newer artwork on many cards
(7) Nice new border art for all cards
(8) Graphical effects can be switched off if need be
(9) Some new achievements


As you can see, we've been busy! We hope the iPhone version will bring in many new players, so that 2-player matches can become a more realistic option.

Early 2013 we will endeavour to introduce a more varied one-player campaign that uses special cards.
After that, the next faction, already fully designed, is Air, which will focus on speed and time, really introducing a lot of very dynamic cards into the mix.


Cheers
Steve at ThreeGoblins
http://www.spellcraft-ccg.com/news.html

[Talbs]

Nice one. You've done a great job. I particularly have been hanging out for the iPhone version. I don't use my iPad so much, so an iPhone version will be great.
I had a go on the weekend again (have had the app for a while but not played a great deal).
It's very polished, art work is amazing, I'll just sit and look at that alone for a while. UI is simple and easy. Not sure about depth because as stated haven't played heaps. I'm sure it's reasonable. One thing I'm not sure about though is how a 4-1 card can come inand neutralize a 4-3 card, simply because they're attacks are the same. One card will only win in that situation if it gets a buff to a 5 attack. As far as I know this is the first game I know that does that. Not putting it down, just saying I'm on the fence with it. Makes u think about creatures in a different way which is good, but to me also takes some of the value out of creatures, maybe? Still, a different take on the attack/defense thing is refreshing.

As said, great work so far, very much looking forward to the update

[Mack the Knife]

First half of December should see one BIG update

[Steve at ThreeGoblins]

Hello Talbs,

Thanks for your comments. Always nice to hear player feedback. Or a line of dancing bananas (looking at you Mac )

Yes, the decision to have creatures of equal strength locked in balance was for many reasons, including:

(1) once a lane is successfully blocked you don't need to think about it, at least for now. Having played other games with lanes where creatures always damage each other, I found those unsatisfactory because I had to pre-calculate a large number of lane combats. It felt like a relentless grind.

(2) it is not only based our fantasy interests but also our historical wargames backgrounds, where stand-offs and defensive positions are normal, and players jiggle for control of certain key points in the line, exploiting any weaknesses.

How you envisage this in SC is up to you, whether the two creatures really are locked in mortal combat, are staring each other out , or unwilling to engage, etc.


One key tactic in SC is to suddenly change the status-quo, which is easily done , even with the most common cards. One really simple way is to just replace a weak looking creature with a much stronger one. This often catches an opponent off guard.

Early games with some inexperienced players can seem to grind to some sort of halt, much like in a board game like chess or such, where it approaches a stalemate - but this is easily broken in SC by cunning use of some very basic cards to manipulate cards strengths, move or remove them, etc.


In any case, with each new expansion, there are more and more ways to achieve whatever your goal is.
The next expansion , after undead, will see an emphasis on speed play, which changes the game dynamic quite a bit if speed is what your deck uses. It will also allow manipulation of Timers on cards for added mayhem.

The iPhone conversion, iCloud stuff and other things have taken longer than planned, often due to personal circumstances. But the undead faction has proceeded just fine, so I am confident of more regular expansions throughout 2013.


It may interested you to know that 8 more factions are already fully designed, so we're not done yet!

Regards
Steve @ 3G

[Mack the Knife]

8 more factions

really? in addition to Undead and Air?! is there room on the map? and, secondly, is that too many? for me, just like with Magic 2013 and 60+ cards per deck, too much of anything becomes overwhelming and makes it cumbersome to manage. there has to come a time when too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing.

[Steve at ThreeGoblins]

Originally Posted by Mack the Knife

really? in addition to Undead and Air?! is there room on the map? and, secondly, is that too many? for me, just like with Magic 2013 and 60+ cards per deck, too much of anything becomes overwhelming and makes it cumbersome to manage. there has to come a time when too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing.

It will be a slow build up, so I don't think it will be a problem. We are thinking long term. 2013 might bring 3-4 new factions at most.
And each faction isn't that big if you count the number of cards. In fact we might introduce the occasional extra card for all factions later.

Is there room on the map? Yes. If you look around you can see distinct patches of terrain.

In addition the level of complexity doesn't raise that much. It might be true to say undead is marginally more complex than ocean, but not by far.
Later a few more game mechanics are introduced but they are variations on what we have now, so nothing drastic. No learning curves!

Finally, it's why we provided boosters in faction of your choice rather than random mix, so you don't even need to get cards of faction X if it doesn't interest you to do so.


Thanks
Steve @ ThreeGoblins

[Sheinfell]

Very nice to hear about the upcoming update, Goblins!
Really looking forward to it.
Hhmm, maybe you should try to get coverage here on TA, now that you offer an iPhone version as well?

And if anyone feels like a match, let me know here, best a few hours in advance as I don't check permanently. I am on vacation the next week, so I should have more time than usual.
I did not find any matches over the last few weeks, sadly