Game Design & ORC

[Q_x]

I think the game, if players are not doing well or take random actions, should balance itself to a more or less noisy draw state. Even more, players, who are doing worse than random should not be easily beaten by randomly-acting machine .
Players should, in my opinion, not fight each other, but rule their own kingdoms (name it as you want) in the first place. If they are skilled enough, they should be able to dominate their opponent without really starting any major fight and proving anything.

How to do this is a different story, I'm giving plenty of examples, but I'm not any kind of master of game design, so it all ends in garbage can.

Some bitter stuff (forgive me, and forgive me twice if I'm wrong): "Tactical depth" is a bit wrong term to describe the situation of having 2-3 basically unplayable cards at hand and 4-5 creatures on the table, obviously attacking every turn. ORC is serving that situation for 90% of game time.

I think we're approaching the subject from the wrong side - GDD (or ORC?) should describe first how the game should look like, and the rules should follow. Now it's all too unstable, undefined. And "tactical" and "strategical" terms seem to obscure some voids that need to be solid in order for anyone to step in in terms of designing ORC. Else - to start our own rulesets, we have to establish a set of cards that will be "stable" in terms of their costs, values and descriptions, and even that is yet undefined.

Finally, there are many working mechanisms, some of them are operable for centuries without any major failures, but not every working mechanism is easy to operate, user-friendly, made with ergonomic design, not every one has this piece of "mechanic beauty" or "ancient magic" embedded deep in it's design. What I'm looking forward to see is a ruleset, that will not only be easy and will make me think while playing. It has also to be elegant in some machine-like way, make me see whole world in a bit different way.

So that's why I'm trying to push some solution that will make player think differently, balancing between some "values". For example when, with more cards on the table, you can influence the game less, and at the end you will basically have your hands tied, and you can win only if your enemy, having no other choice as well, will let you do it. Or when to increase your "firepower", you have to sacrifice some long-term benefits that will take some time to grow back. This is something beyond "stack surplus cards into piles to play the right cards". And it looks like it's against GDD's principle of simplicity, at least I was so far unable to invent any solution worth testing. I just happen to feel it's possible, but my brain is not wrinkled enough this to generate the right idea as fast, as I'd wish.

[snowdrop]

[Split topic to not derail the subject of the original thread more than it already had.]

I think the game, if players are not doing well or take random actions, should balance itself to a more or less noisy draw state. Even more, players, who are doing worse than random should not be easily beaten by randomly-acting machine .

I have probably misunderstood the whole point with that section. Could you explain it in a different way and in short? (I suck at "short" myself..)

(My brain also melted from what you wrote Players that "do worse than random" will per definition always be beaten by a computer that plays at random. In any case, I'm not sure where the randomnes comes in...)

Players should, in my opinion, not fight each other, but rule their own kingdoms (name it as you want) in the first place. If they are skilled enough, they should be able to dominate their opponent without really starting any major fight and proving anything.

Some bitter stuff (forgive me, and forgive me twice if I'm wrong): "Tactical depth" is a bit wrong term to describe the situation of having 2-3 basically unplayable cards at hand and 4-5 creatures on the table, obviously attacking every turn. ORC is serving that situation for 90% of game time.

Bitter stuff is actually seldom bitter when it comes from you, as most often you are constructive, and even if we raise some dust from time to time I think that's very important and adds in more ways than is currently obvious.

I know for a fact that ORC isn't flawed because it has been tested since the 90's. ORC is MtG with a) slightly different resource system that doesn't account for the criticism you have and b) an additional front, which also doesn't seem to matter for what you write. If this claim is true the scenrio you describe isn't caused by the ORC. It is the player(s) combo of deck build, card pool and decisions while playing that is causing it. We have done one play test, ever. Sad part is it's meaningless doing another until we nail stuff, at least in theory, and then re-check the existing cards.

a) If you have unplayable cards at hand it means you put wrong cards in your deck... or

b) If they are unplayable because of the rules then they are badly designed and need to be re-done until we get it right.... meaning the rules are ok but the cards aren't... or....

c) If the rules make anything and everything unplayable then we must ask ourself if we should rewrite the rules so they fit the cards instead (although that approach will always end in a disaster).

d) If creatures attack every turn or not is also up to the players, both of them, really, since nobody would attack if cost of attack is higher than gain. It also relates to the win conditions, which you are right about - they could be altered to make the game less aggro or combat oriented.

There was a reason why our play test played out the way it did - there wasn't anything more intricate to do than to play creatures and attack. Even their abilities were useless.

I think we're approaching the subject from the wrong side - GDD (or ORC?) should describe first how the game should look like, and the rules should follow. Now it's all too unstable, undefined. And "tactical" and "strategical" terms seem to obscure some voids that need to be solid in order for anyone to step in in terms of designing ORC

I think you are absolutely correct and that such a document should have been written ages ago. It's clear to me from this post that we envision the game being played very differently, but how can anyone have known since there is no docu... To be honest, I have no idea how such a document should look like. I'm not any more of a game designer than you or anyone else in here. If you have suggestions of questions that needs to be answered in such a document and which topics should be discussed in it, I'd be happy to start writing one up for us. If not I am at a loss.

For me WT was/is in the ORC just a more streamlined MtG experience with movement. I intended to not repeat what is "broken" in MtG according to myself and via that see if it can get a feeling and identity on it's own. The mission hasn't consciously been to create an MtG clone, nor do I think we are one more than any other CCG out there. For me it has just been natural to use MtG as a central measurement since 1) I'm an old MtG player 2) MtG is one of the top players out there with a pretty solid system, at least until a couple of years ago when they started to crap on it and 3) MtG is a proven, the most proven actually, CCG concept in existence. Naturally, much of what I imagine or don't imagine will be a product of that heritage.

That is also an explanation to why I have not really envisioned the game flow as you see it whe you write that:

in my opinion, not fight each other, but rule their own kingdoms (name it as you want) in the first place. If they are skilled enough, they should be able to dominate their opponent without really starting any major fight and proving anything.

That has not been the intension on the ORC. ORC for me has, hitherto, been totally combat oriented and more or less all cards have been about that.

Now here comes the fine part: I am not saying that your vision is wrong. I'd actually willingly admit that your vision is more appealing even to me. I think it sounds great if a game can be played out that way. I just haven't tried to design towards it. Not this far at least. And that is such a game altering thing that it must be built into the basics of the game.

You have indeed come with plenty of suggestions, both in mail and in threads that are here on the forum. What is never presented though is a coherent and complete system that can be play tested, with cards to go with it. I know that would be massive work for you and that it still could end up leading nowhere near anything finished. I know that since I often get such a frustrated feeling with the ORC and am at times close to scrapping it, just picking an already finished and working system that is out there, use that and alter minor stuff in it instead, as it would be much easier and save us the 2 years that have passed already.

I have three major worries about your vision:

1. Card count: It can easily lead to a game with way more than 60 cards in a deck. (Not that it has to do so, just that it will tend to do so.

2. Fragmentation: Easiest way to explain what I mean is to combine an RTS or FPS with something like Civ or Sim City and put it all in same deck. Needless to say, there is a huge risk you end up playing two totally different games at the same time even though we have one single name for it. I fear that if a player does very different things by using very different cards in the game it might lead to many of the cards not interacting at all with each other. Example: A card makes the creature deal +10 damage, another card makes you build a temple that does something that is totally irrelevant for all creatures in the game. Again, this doesn't have to happen, and maybe it isn't a problem after all. Worth thinking about it though.

3. Player interaction: What you wrote described a pretty solitary game which seems to lack or be pretty low on direct player interaction. I may have understood you the wrong way, maybe they can tend their own kingdoms while still interacting plenty, or maybe you imagine the interaction in more subtle and indirect ways (e.g. P1 sees what P2 does and responses by doing x with his own kingdom..) A conventional CCG is full of interaction, and I also think that a game should have that interaction in some way. I think there must be a reason for why another player is sitting there, so it doesn't become a game of solitary. This is of course all solvable, by for example having one half of the game that is perhaps called "build up" and another that is "all out war"....

Since I haven't designed towards your vision I have nothing to present that can make it come real. Honestly though, I would probably prefer such a rule set than the current ORC... if and only if it worked and added depth. Which brings me to:

Else - to start our own rulesets, we have to establish a set of cards that will be "stable" in terms of their costs, values and descriptions, and even that is yet undefined.

WT is setup so that everyone can create a ruleset and cards to go with that ruleset. I don't think you should be limited by the current boundaries of how the ORC cards look like: Frakk them, and create cards and rules on your own... at least as a proof of concept. That way you get whatever balance and stats you need, without having to rely on ORC. There is virtually no gain in tryng to use ORC cards for a new ruleset since, as you point out, the ORC is unstable and the cards are also so.

I have written it before and will write it again: Give it a try. I don't imagine you can go any slower than I have with the ORC, and I think you would come a long way, getting plenty of ideas by just trying it out. I'd love to see you do it and would support you in your endevour however I can if you believe you can create a system that is more first-build-then-fight.

So that's why I'm trying to push some solution that will make player think differently, balancing between some "values".

That's one of the core points in designing a game... I think it's done in all good games. Balancing out variables.

For example when, with more cards on the table, you can influence the game less, and at the end you will basically have your hands tied

Most games out there do it inverted: You start with nothing, and build up. Reason you do so is that you ge more options and more potential power. You could ofc go the other way around and decompose instead (Miniature games is an example of that, chess another).

Isn't it a motivational thing for players? They continue playing because they can expand/develop their game play, becoming more and more powerful? Getting more options, the deeper you dive into the game, the longer the time goes by?

In any case, I'm not for or against, and it doesn't matter what I think really if it's for another rule set. If it was for the ORC you could achieve something similar by using action points, but it's not really what you are after I think.

And it looks like it's against GDD's principle of simplicity, at least I was so far unable to invent any solution worth testing. I just happen to feel it's possible, but my brain is not wrinkled enough this to generate the right idea as fast, as I'd wish.

Everything can always be reduced and made simpler, up until the point we end up with 4-in-a-row-game. The simplicity isn't a goal in itself, it's just a good pointer when designing. I think you should make a rule set that is however complicated you want. If it works I'm sure elements of it can be replaced/streamlined to become simpler afterwards.

As for ORC, yes, I have pretty rigid requirements on how complicated stuff should get, but that's for ORC and the ORC idea (which isn't on paper) that has been explained in the start of the post. In the end a ruleset that is somewhat more complex but way better than one that is simpler is still the better rule set, no matter what the GDD says.

Let it take time. All good things do.

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Edit: I recommend you try out Legend of the Five Rings. You can play it using Lackey, it's in their list of games. It's the second oldest CCG and I have never heard anything negative about it. All I have discussed it with have said it has a build-up phase and then combat, and that it is very strategic game, more so than MtG. Sadly I havent had anyone to play/learn the rules with, but I'd be happy to do so with you as I am curious about it and I'm sure we could both learn a thing or two. Up for it? (That goes for everyone else that's reading this as well...)

[Q_x]

Uhh, I guess this is the type of discussion where the one that writes longest is right... I can handle that

That's the right primer to any forum babbling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JJjYNHZte4

I think the game, if players are not doing well or take random actions, should balance itself to a more or less noisy draw state. Even more, players, who are doing worse than random should not be easily beaten by randomly-acting machine .

I have probably misunderstood the whole point with that section. Could you explain it in a different way and in short? (I suck at "short" myself..)

Random player - mindless creature, knowing where to put which card, but doing this mindless, or randomly.
Worse than random - creature who does even worse than the above - for example not playing cards, or playing them in really sub-optimal conditions, attacking not randomly, but almost always to lose and so on.
Those players should not only be unable to "win" with any reasoning player. They should not be able to win at all. What I want to say is they should be more or less immobilized in their own backyards. One should not be able to play while acting without any "thinking".
There is pretty similar situation in blitz chess - take good and weak player and you know who will win, just because the weak will finally make a mistake from the book that the good has already memorized and know how to exploit. But take two weak players and the game will end in draw.
Example rule for old ORC - yet another bad idea of mine - is to let player draw two cards or draw just one and "heal" some influence (about 10% of starting value).

Some bitter stuff (forgive me, and forgive me twice if I'm wrong): "Tactical depth" is a bit wrong term to describe the situation of having 2-3 basically unplayable cards at hand and 4-5 creatures on the table, obviously attacking every turn. ORC is serving that situation for 90% of game time.

Bitter stuff is actually seldom bitter when it comes from you, as most often you are constructive, and even if we raise some dust from time to time I think that's very important and adds in more ways than is currently obvious.

I know for a fact that ORC isn't flawed because it has been tested since the 90's. ORC is MtG with a) slightly different resource system that doesn't account for the criticism you have and b) an additional front, which also doesn't seem to matter for what you write. If this claim is true the scenrio you describe isn't caused by the ORC. It is the player(s) combo of deck build, card pool and decisions while playing that is causing it. We have done one play test, ever. Sad part is it's meaningless doing another until we nail stuff, at least in theory, and then re-check the existing cards.

a) If you have unplayable cards at hand it means you put wrong cards in your deck... or

b) If they are unplayable because of the rules then they are badly designed and need to be re-done until we get it right.... meaning the rules are ok but the cards aren't... or....

c) If the rules make anything and everything unplayable then we must ask ourself if we should rewrite the rules so they fit the cards instead (although that approach will always end in a disaster).

d) If creatures attack every turn or not is also up to the players, both of them, really, since nobody would attack if cost of attack is higher than gain. It also relates to the win conditions, which you are right about - they could be altered to make the game less aggro or combat oriented.

There was a reason why our play test played out the way it did - there wasn't anything more intricate to do than to play creatures and attack. Even their abilities were useless.

We aimed at a game different in any possible way from MtG. I know ORC is heavy inspired, but at the same time it's completely different. First - we have short games and small decks. Second - we won't balance our budget with rare cards. Distribution model is the only real way MtG keeps balance in their game. That's from the design side, rules we have are also a bit different, mostly in many ways simplified.

If you think that MtG rules are good... What is written in their rulebook is only half of the truth about their system, the other half of rules is real economy and model of distribution - the game is designed in the way that the one who owns the best cards, most likely wins. Reduce this element, exclude all possible exploits, and you end up with a game that is pretty much random, where you have 1-2 winning strategies embedded in your deck and wins the one who happens to be able to introduce one earlier, or be able to defend a round or two longer against the opponent. You, as far as I'm able to understand this, did nothing to compensate the model. More than that - one can choose from the set of 11k MtG cards, we will have 300 at most. I guess those 300 just have to be good... Due to the fact that reasonable decks would be at most 2-faction, with some given strategy simply excluding some cards, a player will have at most 100 cards to choose from - probably about 20-25 different cards will be chosen. Quite restricting numbers, if you ask me. Also, we have this threshold, that we all feel we need it, but there was no good idea how it could work.
What I'm afraid of is the situation described above - the one, who happens to have the right cards first, wins. Decks being different by 4-5 minor cards, some almost certain loses or certain wins and so on.
(My idea for today is ditching the factions almost entirely and use scopes instead. A card may work in a given area (building, object, kingdom, front, terrain, name it as you want), may work with a specific race of type of unit only - basically making a type of card to be a list of tags, like Gaian Elvish Caster or Goblin War Machine. We can still include factions as a part of our world, just ditching all threshold and focusing on card text.)

So I agree MtG is an excellent, mature piece of entertainment. But I think it's unsuitable for what we want to take from it. Nothing against being inspired, but some things won't work the way we want and you knew it before I even knew about WT.

ORC is nice and simple. ORC will work, will make entertaining game. This ORC in + CObjects variant is really elegant rule set, even if not finished, and it looks to me like it will work well with all the elements we have now - with anything but factions. I'm worried about it being not quite flawless. Not that it's wrong or not good, it can be simply made better - that is, for example, suitable for more elastic winning conditions, longer or shorter game time, bigger or smaller decks - like within 50-75 cards in deck range, or up to 2 hours play. Not because it will improve antyhing in terms of entertainment, but it will help later in game testing and balancing, probably changing a thing or two will make it less prone to break.

And most of all, I want the player to think and be able to win mostly by thinking and managing his cards well. Not plot some fancy big blow ahead and wait for a certain cards to get into his hand, not just developing his table or wait until it's all over. And of course this is not thinking in terms of navigating within like thousand different factors. And not inventing those 2-3 cards that suddenly start to work with each other, really hurting the enemy more and more with time.

I'm not, and I will never be against a set of good and simple rules. Problem is what features the rules should have.

Another example is what's unsuitable in MtG... Resource system based on "eaten" cards - do you really think that's good? Do we really need a resource system that literally eats cards out of your deck? Why not just take some white cards and stick them inside your deck?
I'd rather see pure threshold introduced as the only "cost", than piles. Even with "no factions" approach, this could be a number that says how many cards with same tag as the first word in card type must be on the table. now it's like 15% of the cards will be played face down.

I think we're approaching the subject from the wrong side - GDD (or ORC?) should describe first how the game should look like, and the rules should follow. Now it's all too unstable, undefined. And "tactical" and "strategical" terms seem to obscure some voids that need to be solid in order for anyone to step in in terms of designing ORC

I think you are absolutely correct and that such a document should have been written ages ago. It's clear to me from this post that we envision the game being played very differently, but how can anyone have known since there is no docu... To be honest, I have no idea how such a document should look like. I'm not any more of a game designer than you or anyone else in here. If you have suggestions of questions that needs to be answered in such a document and which topics should be discussed in it, I'd be happy to start writing one up for us. If not I am at a loss.

I'm not sure, but ORC might need design document on it's own - that is in the first place precised what's left blank in GDD.
How should a typical game look like? We know - 1 hour, 60 cards, entertaining... But really - how many cards on table, how many cards in a fight, how many space on a table, how many cards on hand, how many rounds planned ahead. How big "strategies" should be, what tactical solutions would be considered typical, what type of mental activities should player take to manage his stuff during single round. how many cards should go to garbage during ordinary game. How players can hurt each other, when they should not hurt...
How anything of the above changes in time - like will we have some clearly developed stages of development and fighting? Or rather do we want it to go in parallel? Or maybe it's 10/90 relation, where fist 5 rounds is for development and later it's just pure fighting and playing every possible creature (current ORC)?

This still doesn't set anything in stone, but at least, if you want this rule cooperation to happen, you will know where to point people to to seek for the right types of solutions.

For me WT was/is in the ORC just a more streamlined MtG experience with movement. I intended to not repeat what is "broken" in MtG according to myself and via that see if it can get a feeling and identity on it's own. The mission hasn't consciously been to create an MtG clone, nor do I think we are one more than any other CCG out there. For me it has just been natural to use MtG as a central measurement since 1) I'm an old MtG player 2) MtG is one of the top players out there with a pretty solid system, at least until a couple of years ago when they started to crap on it and 3) MtG is a proven, the most proven actually, CCG concept in existence. Naturally, much of what I imagine or don't imagine will be a product of that heritage.

Sad part of this is that card games, especially where cards can introduce their own rules, can be amazingly rich in any possible way, and, as many FLOSS projects, we just copy existing ideas, pretty much used and abused for a decade now...

That is also an explanation to why I have not really envisioned the game flow as you see it whe you write that:

in my opinion, not fight each other, but rule their own kingdoms (name it as you want) in the first place. If they are skilled enough, they should be able to dominate their opponent without really starting any major fight and proving anything.

That has not been the intension on the ORC. ORC for me has, hitherto, been totally combat oriented and more or less all cards have been about that.

Now here comes the fine part: I am not saying that your vision is wrong. I'd actually willingly admit that your vision is more appealing even to me. I think it sounds great if a game can be played out that way. I just haven't tried to design towards it. Not this far at least. And that is such a game altering thing that it must be built into the basics of the game.

You have indeed come with plenty of suggestions, both in mail and in threads that are here on the forum. What is never presented though is a coherent and complete system that can be play tested, with cards to go with it. I know that would be massive work for you and that it still could end up leading nowhere near anything finished. I know that since I often get such a frustrated feeling with the ORC and am at times close to scrapping it, just picking an already finished and working system that is out there, use that and alter minor stuff in it instead, as it would be much easier and save us the 2 years that have passed already.

I have nothing against ditching my whole input into the community after all. I'm trying to stay productive at least in this single field of not-so-pointless looking for holes and voids.

I have three major worries about your vision:

1. Card count: It can easily lead to a game with way more than 60 cards in a deck. (Not that it has to do so, just that it will tend to do so.

2. Fragmentation: Easiest way to explain what I mean is to combine an RTS or FPS with something like Civ or Sim City and put it all in same deck. Needless to say, there is a huge risk you end up playing two totally different games at the same time even though we have one single name for it. I fear that if a player does very different things by using very different cards in the game it might lead to many of the cards not interacting at all with each other. Example: A card makes the creature deal +10 damage, another card makes you build a temple that does something that is totally irrelevant for all creatures in the game. Again, this doesn't have to happen, and maybe it isn't a problem after all. Worth thinking about it though.

3. Player interaction: What you wrote described a pretty solitary game which seems to lack or be pretty low on direct player interaction. I may have understood you the wrong way, maybe they can tend their own kingdoms while still interacting plenty, or maybe you imagine the interaction in more subtle and indirect ways (e.g. P1 sees what P2 does and responses by doing x with his own kingdom..) A conventional CCG is full of interaction, and I also think that a game should have that interaction in some way. I think there must be a reason for why another player is sitting there, so it doesn't become a game of solitary. This is of course all solvable, by for example having one half of the game that is perhaps called "build up" and another that is "all out war"....

Naah, not really... I like those purely fighting games, it just makes it hard to make a game like that really entertaining. You will simply sit and wait, playing strongest units landing on your hand. Whoever fights first is more likely to win, it's just too aggressive. Again - "sim city", or rather "card city", is out there, I've been actually playing it (forgot the name, but it was about districts, and you had different "roles" or "character" you picked with it's unique abilities) - the only difference being it's more suitable for 3-5 players, more about politics... We may easily put a concept like that into an extension.

Since I haven't designed towards your vision I have nothing to present that can make it come real. Honestly though, I would probably prefer such a rule set than the current ORC... if and only if it worked and added depth. Which brings me to:

Else - to start our own rulesets, we have to establish a set of cards that will be "stable" in terms of their costs, values and descriptions, and even that is yet undefined.

WT is setup so that everyone can create a ruleset and cards to go with that ruleset. I don't think you should be limited by the current boundaries of how the ORC cards look like: Frakk them, and create cards and rules on your own... at least as a proof of concept. That way you get whatever balance and stats you need, without having to rely on ORC. There is virtually no gain in tryng to use ORC cards for a new ruleset since, as you point out, the ORC is unstable and the cards are also so.

I have written it before and will write it again: Give it a try. I don't imagine you can go any slower than I have with the ORC, and I think you would come a long way, getting plenty of ideas by just trying it out. I'd love to see you do it and would support you in your endevour however I can if you believe you can create a system that is more first-build-then-fight.

I'm here not to work alone, I don't like it. I've said I'll start this pesky wiki place with all the rejected ideas (place where rejected ideas leave is quite harsh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuOvqeABHvQ )
I probably will drift away some day and do something if the things I need will be in place. Dunno what yet, so dunno what the missing things could be.
I work really badly, much like crazy inventors from Russian Sci-Fi. Nothing planned ever happens. Things pop into my head, and I find myself in the middle of, for example, making myself a knife - which I've been able to find a suitable piece of surgical steel for, machine it (with a hand drill...), heat-treat, polish and sharpen without leaving my 30 square meters even once - nor even making groceries for three days in a row...

So that's why I'm trying to push some solution that will make player think differently, balancing between some "values".

That's one of the core points in designing a game... I think it's done in all good games. Balancing out variables.

I think here I have to reword it. What I had in my mind were not variables, one that could measure or plan easily. I was thinking rather about planning risk, managing one's freedoms and abilities that you lose to gain more control over what's n the table.

For example when, with more cards on the table, you can influence the game less, and at the end you will basically have your hands tied

Most games out there do it inverted: You start with nothing, and build up. Reason you do so is that you ge more options and more potential power. You could ofc go the other way around and decompose instead (Miniature games is an example of that, chess another).

Isn't it a motivational thing for players? They continue playing because they can expand/develop their game play, becoming more and more powerful? Getting more options, the deeper you dive into the game, the longer the time goes by?

No, it's more exciting for me if it's the other way, it's also closer to how real world works - you grow quick when you're young, managing growth of giants is a task on its own. Game that let's you explode or beat your opponent really early is in my eyes flawed. That's something that can be usually fixed easily, for example by introducing some more advanced deploy strategies for a faction that has expensive units only, but it's a flaw when left like so.

In any case, I'm not for or against, and it doesn't matter what I think really if it's for another rule set. If it was for the ORC you could achieve something similar by using action points, but it's not really what you are after I think.

And it looks like it's against GDD's principle of simplicity, at least I was so far unable to invent any solution worth testing. I just happen to feel it's possible, but my brain is not wrinkled enough this to generate the right idea as fast, as I'd wish.

Everything can always be reduced and made simpler, up until the point we end up with 4-in-a-row-game. The simplicity isn't a goal in itself, it's just a good pointer when designing. I think you should make a rule set that is however complicated you want. If it works I'm sure elements of it can be replaced/streamlined to become simpler afterwards.

As for ORC, yes, I have pretty rigid requirements on how complicated stuff should get, but that's for ORC and the ORC idea (which isn't on paper) that has been explained in the start of the post. In the end a ruleset that is somewhat more complex but way better than one that is simpler is still the better rule set, no matter what the GDD says.

Let it take time. All good things do.

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Edit: I recommend you try out Legend of the Five Rings. You can play it using Lackey, it's in their list of games. It's the second oldest CCG and I have never heard anything negative about it. All I have discussed it with have said it has a build-up phase and then combat, and that it is very strategic game, more so than MtG. Sadly I havent had anyone to play/learn the rules with, but I'd be happy to do so with you as I am curious about it and I'm sure we could both learn a thing or two. Up for it? (That goes for everyone else that's reading this as well...)

Some day, why not

[snowdrop]

Uhh, I guess this is the type of discussion where the one that writes longest is right... I can handle that

No, I don't think size matters. On the other hand, some things take a while to explain, at least for me.

Off-topic:

That's the right primer to any forum babbling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JJjYNHZte4

The guy is totally correct that everything a persons says could be categorized as an opinion and that the admin on his forum wasn't really philosophically inclined and pretty clueless in is remark. Then again, the guy himself didn't pick up the actual point the ignorant admin tried to make: The admin only meant that the guy has a subjective point of view, albeit he used a lamer wording.

On topic again:

Those players should not only be unable to "win" with any reasoning player. They should not be able to win at all. What I want to say is they should be more or less immobilized in their own backyards. One should not be able to play while acting without any "thinking".

Thanks for clarifying.

They are, per definiton, not able to win over a reasoning player. (Meaning, if a player loses against them he/she isn't reasoning. If that happens it is still no problem - it's just like two apes playing the game. As long as they enjoy it I'm all happy.)

When re-reading I notice you don't mean it literary. It's good since It is very very hard to design a
game where the "truly best player" always wins. Let's resort to our monkeys again: Kasparov VS Coco the Gorilla. While it is virtually impossible for him to lose if he performs as he usually does, that particular day maybe something bad happened and he makes a bad move, and then by coincidence Coco does a checkmate. I think we agree on this. My only point here is that it is hard to design the rules in a way which makes it impossible for it to happen. (This is quite an interesting topic you have thrown at us...)

In a CCG I think much of the thinking is already done at the deck building level. A person that doesn't think will probably fail already there. I don't even see the ORC in it's infancy-stage where it was concept tested by us the first & only time as a game where an idiot would pull off a win somehow by a) building a wrong deck and b) utilising all cards wrong.

We aimed at a game different in any possible way from MtG.

Well, yes & no: "We" probably aimed/aim at different things, which is to be expected due to lack of docu. That is not necessarily a bad thing though. I on the other hand have never stated that my goal is to create something that is as different as possible from anything (well, except recently when I ranted about "Ludo".. I think I even wrote it in the GDD that our mission isn't to be creative, but to primarily be functional.

To be so we have to relate to problems that previous designers have dealt with. Among them is the MtG-team. They are luckily not alone: I'm quite sure there are plenty of more exciting CCG:s out there, some of perhaps notably better gameplay than MtG (from our perspective and according to our criteria). I don't mind discussing other games and trying to learn from them. Best way to do that is to play them plenty though.

the other half of rules is real economy and model of distribution - the game is designed in the way that the one who owns the best cards, most likely wins.c

True & agreed, to a huge extent.

Reduce this element, exclude all possible exploits, and you end up with a game that is pretty much random, where you have 1-2 winning strategies embedded in your deck and wins the one who happens to be able to introduce one earlier, or be able to defend a round or two longer against the opponent.

It's correct to exclude the elements you mention if we want to understand how it is actually designed (in contrast to which cards I couldn't afford and therefore lost the game due to me not being able to build me the deck I'd like to play with).

I'm not sure about this, but I lean towards the same conclusion: You are probably correct about 1-2 winning strategies per deck. I'm sure a deck can be created to have several more, but usually such a deck would perform them all so-and-so while a specialist deck that focuses on only one strategy will outperform the multi-strategy deck. Let's dissect two of my real decks and put your thougts to the test, and check out how at least I have built two decks I really like playing with.

Capitalist, now you'll die!
The cards, as graphics, reside here.
This is a deck that I created myself. The deck is a white-blue control deck, and I just noticed it's estimated value is around 578 Euros. Reason is some of the cards in it are even older and rarer now than they were 2005 when I built it and prices have gone up on them. (I'm tempted to find it on the attic just to sell off the cards to sponsor WT instead with that cash...)

Faction composition
4 blue
17 white
16 artifacts (non-factioned, neutral)
24 lands

As seen I hardly use blue, but due to some artifact abilities that cost blue to activate and 3 creatures and 1 sorcery that also are blue I am forced to put in some lands into the deck that are blue. Normally that is a bad call since those few cards would delay all the white ones from coming in.

In this deck it isn't a problem due to all the blue cards requiring only one blue and me having rare lands that produce at least both blue & white with virtually no drawbacks. With other words, these multilands that produce two colors more or less break the faction balancing in MtG and are a sweet dream to own (when they're not lost in attic).

I also field 2-3 more lands than I actually would need to. The drawback is that I get less other cards in the deck and that those 2-3 slots extra that the lands now eat up in the deck aren't as sexy as they could have been by fielding a creature or something else. On the other side, the whole reason I rather add some extra lands in this case is to make sure I can start executing my plan directly, without delay. I must make sure to really get some lands in hand directly, without a mulligan.

Experience show it is also "impossible" to get a bad start with this deck: Many lands and most of my cards being super-cheap to play makes it pretty fast and easy.


Card type breakdown
12 Creatures
6 Enchantments
5 Sorceries
1 Instant
14 Artifacts
24 Lands


Expense curve
13 cards have a cost of 1 mana
2 cards / 2 mana
9 cards / 3 mana
7 cards / 4 mana
4 cards / 6 mana
2 cards / 7 mana

Here I made a clear and conscious choice to field cheap cards: The more a card costs, the less I will have of it. 39% of the deck can be played during the first 3 rounds (include lands and it will become 78%).

Strategies
In no particular order:
Opening game: Rounds 1 - 3

Main goals in opening game: a) Max mana production b) Disruption (not kiling) of enemy forces and c) Building a ground defense of creatures. Here is how to do it:

- Cycle Eternal Dragon to fetch lands. By doing so you gain more resources and also better card draws later on since you won't draw needless lands.

- Use Enlightend Tutor to fetch any of the following:
a) Some of the spellbombs (get life or disrupt opponents creatures)
b) Steel Wall or Island Sanctuaty (total or partial creature defense for you)
c) Sol Ring, Mana vault or some of the Artifact lands to get plenty of permanent mana boost fast

- Fire off cheap Spellbombs, recycle them with Leonin Squire. Use Squire to either attack or block.

- Fetch more Spellbombs or Mana-producers with Trinker Mages. Defend or Attack with the mages, just as with the Squires. They are cannon fodder as soon as they have filled their main purpose - to allow you to get what you need from your deck.

- Lock Down individual creatures that are a pain in the ass with Cage of Hands. Buy back the Cage of Hands once you can neutralize the creatures in other ways further along the game or if greater threats appear on table.

- We have 6-7 cards that makes you draw more cards. Do so if needed, and you will get something to play with in hand. You can recycle most of them later on or by playing the above creatures.



Mid-game: Rounds 4-6
Goal with mid-game is to let the opponent build up an army of creatures, make yourself invulnerable or refill your life, and then kill off all creatures, while at same time trying to get an abundance of mana production.

- Play Auriok Salvagers,. Now you can start recycling the Spell Bombs for real. Use and recylce as much as possible. Avoid disrupting his creatures unless it's really needed. Try to use the bombs so you can fetch more cards instead.

- Plaincycle Eternal dragon. Get more lands!

- When opponent has many creatures: Nuke em all with Wrath of God. All creatures insta-die on table. Including yours of course if you have any, but it doesn't matter, as we'll soon see.


End game: 7 - 12

At round 7-8 the latest this deck has reached it's end game.

- Keep nuking all creatures every time opponent has a couple on the table.

- Get your Eternal Dragons from grave. Start attacking with them. They are harder to stop since tehy fly, and they do massive damage. Sacrifice them in defence if you really have to, althoiugh it shouldn't be needed due to your nuking and your Spellbombing + your Cage of hands. The Eternal Dragons are the core hittets in this deck. Should he lock hem down you can unlock them with the Spellbomb. If they die you can get them again and again.

- Play Salvage Stations, all of them, as soon as possible. Start recycling for free with them. That frees up more mana for Spellbombing but also for Eternal Dragon expenses. Once you get 2-3 Stations out the other player has usually lost.

- Use Pyrite Spelbomb on player or creature to kil them off, if the Dragons can't do their work. It's slow but it works.

Reduce this element, exclude all possible exploits, and you end up with a game that is pretty much random, where you have 1-2 winning strategies embedded in your deck and wins the one who happens to be able to introduce one earlier, or be able to defend a round or two longer against the opponent.

So, now we're back after looking at one of my deck builds for MtG. What can we deduce from my deck? I don't know. I think it's pretty streamlined (although not optimal yet). It can solve many situations and is very flexible. Only weakness is it can't remove Enchantments that are cast on me as a player, and it would fail miserably against a deck that focused on removing artifacts out of the game.

Question is, does that deck fall into your category of "1-2 winning strategies"? I think so. Strategy is to lower your opponents HP, but is that really a strategy? I don't think so. It is an objective. How can we accomplish it? In this case with mainly 2 creatures. Rest is there to protect me and disrupt + pave the way for these two creatures coming back and keeping the recycling of all around them as an intact eco-system.

Now, is this too simplistic for your taste? And would you rather have a deck that could win in vastly different ways? If you reply "yes" to that one - how do you construct that rule wise, with low amount of cards in deck?

You, as far as I'm able to understand this, did nothing to compensate the model.

WT compensates for rarity/price by having another distro-model. We also have "better" resource system even now when it's suspected to be broke. As for the rest, you are correct - it isn't compensated for since I didn' perceive it as a problem, nor am I sure how I would actually do it even if I wanted to.

More than that - one can choose from the set of 11k MtG cards, we will have 300 at most. I guess those 300 just have to be good... Due to the fact that reasonable decks would be at most 2-faction, with some given strategy simply excluding some cards, a player will have at most 100 cards to choose from - probably about 20-25 different cards will be chosen. Quite restricting numbers, if you ask me.

Well, honestly, those 11 000+ cards in MtG is a pure hoax. I'd almost call it a scam to market it that way. Yes, they do have 11k cards with different names and according to the rules they are different cards and all. In reality 5-20% of them are nothing but sibling or over-powerments. That means they have very similar variations or even revisons of one and the same card concept, for example dealing +1 more damage, or having another faction belonging with another cost. If correct the 5 - 20% of their card pool means at least 550 cards are not "unique" or "new" cards at all. They're crap that could be ditched altogether to simplify it for the players when they try to construct a deck from heaps of heaps of shit cards that WotC has released during the years, Heck, it would be fun to know how many percent of their 11 000 card pool that is rarely or never played at all. My bet is at least 20-25%...

I claim that it isn't possible to create a CCG with 11 000 unique pieces that can be part of the same game in a way that makes sense. I think that WotC prove this themselves when they create different "legalities": A legality of a card is nothing but a) block rotation to even out the imbalances of 11 000 cards, over 10 years of developing and b) an attempt to stop consumers from using the defect product you sold them which wrecks balance even in the contemporary legal block.

I openly challenge, any developer team out there to create a game that has even 2 000+ meaningful unique cards that aren't siblings or over-powering revisions of previous versions (many companies release a 1/1... then a year later they relase b 2/2, for same cost.. meaning there is a power surge, meaning they force players to not play with old cards and force them to buy new revision of a for some reason called "profit")

Us not using their distro model with random crap cards spreading and us allowing each player to freely pick from card pool means we have to create only cards that can be used in a meaningful way. Else they won't be used, and then we have just waisted good art and time for nothing. Now, that will happen. And we will need to discover and revise some cards every now and then. That isn't an issue.

Nor is our 300 card pool an issue. 220 -250 cards in a core set is standard in the industry. Yes, you are correct: It leaves the player with little to build from. It is just an infancy problem. All games have it. We will too. We can't create a game with 1000 cards, invest that much time and effort, and then release it, and hope for the best. We need to start small. Need to make those 300 solid, and once released an tested or a while, we should start releasing mini-expansion with like 3 - 10 new cards per faction. Rinse and repeat.

Yes, we will have restricting numbers for a deck build from the start. Then again, it doesn't hinder the people from playing the game... and I don't know what the way around it would be. What do you suggest we do? If anything this shows us what I am often talking about: That card compatibility must stay "as high as possible".... that allows them to build more decks with fewer published cards.

Also, we have this threshold, that we all feel we need it, but there was no good idea how it could work.

Q_x, that was below the belt, right in the nutsack. I'll reiterate: We need something like the threshold, a built in rule, that makes it harder and harder to play with a deck the more factions you field in it. That is why I feel I need a Threshold.

In MtG you have various currencies and creatures cost in different currencies and lands eat a slot in dekc, each. That is a self-balancing system when it comes to why you won't mix all factions in a deck - you won't ever be able to pay for card x when you need to use it.

In our case we have one "currency" and no lands. Hence we can't clone their good but for other reasons crappy resource system. We need to invent one of our own.

Now, I admit to the charge here - the original idea isn't pretty, but at least it was an attempt. I'd gladly swap it out for someting a) better working and b) at least as smooth. For example, my latest bid was to let the COS give you threshold points somehow... and I'm still trying to figure it out.

What I'm afraid of is the situation described above - the one, who happens to have the right cards first, wins.

In a sense that is always true. More than half of the game is decided when you build your deck. Rest is execution and other players deck build.

What this reminds me of is the discussion we've had elsewhere in forum about tempo: To you it seems as a negative thing that a player can reach the finish line/win before another does so, simply because he has built a deck that is created around being swift and speedy. I still don't consider that a problem in MtG, nor in the ORC... simply because each faction would/should have a way of dealing with such "rushes", and a conscious player would know that he has to fit opening game cards in his deck, even if he does have a slow deck. My MtG deck above is a nice example of that: I deal zero damage the first 5-6 turns, I just stall and play Walls to survive. Why? Because I'm not an idiot. If I didn't do that I'd lose the game.

A while ago I was more sceptic about your criticism and that you imagined(?) the game playing out in a very pre-determined tempo and almost lasting a pre-determined number of rounds. I am not as sceptical any more and have a neutral stance in the question. Problem is that the questions answer should depend heavily on the other factors in the rule set. In ORC, I see no valid reason (yet) for why players shouldn't be able to win due to speed IF and only if the other factions do indeed have counters, should they choose to field them in deck.

At the same time I am a player that is usually upset by rushes since I think it is trying to exploit something. I wouldn't mind seeing some solution to it where players knew more about the flow in the game. Then again - does that come at the cost of creativity, freedom and flexibility in the game? I don't know... Hard to say until you see the whole package in front of you.

(My idea for today is ditching the factions almost entirely and use scopes instead. A card may work in a given area (building, object, kingdom, front, terrain, name it as you want), may work with a specific race of type of unit only - basically making a type of card to be a list of tags, like Gaian Elvish Caster or Goblin War Machine. We can still include factions as a part of our world, just ditching all threshold and focusing on card text.)

I'm not sure you have ditched anything in what you suggest. What you do is get rid of logos and names. In the end the cards would still be the same and work with other groups of cards. Slapping factions on them is acually making it all easier for the player to recognize just that and also add some thematic value/identity.

I get the impression you ditch card types and want to replace them with a more fluid/flexible tag-system. I'm all in. As always: Create it and show it. I think it sounds both innovative (although some CCG:s have something similar maybe... Think X-files and Call of Cthuilhuhuhu perhaps) and open enough to be worth exploring further.

Nothing against being inspired, but some things won't work the way we want and you knew it before I even knew about WT.

True true.. I'm just a patient person and trust me on this - it's better that we try like 10 different avenues, fail on 9, and pick the one that is good and build upon that, than just taking first best just to get it done and see some "progress" since the progression would be on a piece of shit that would explode in our face 2-3 years later with expansions and all around...

I've sad it before and will say it again: We urgently need more rule developers, and we urgently need a team that is independent of me and of ORC. I think it would do all the good in the world.

ORC is nice and simple. ORC will work, will make entertaining game /../Not that it's wrong or not good, it can be simply made better

Yes, I agree. Much of what we had would already work as a game.. but, here we are both on the same page - it wouldn't be the optimal one and I think we wouldn't be 100% satisfied. Current ORC is not impressing me yet, and the whole setup is pretty casual. It's two main strengths for me is to "not have lands" and to be able to move somewhat. Beyond that I couldn't say, honestly.

As I usually always question what everyone writes about ORC I hope it isn't mistaken as me defending it. I'm not. I'm just trying to figure out the logic in the claims and evaluate them, as far as it is possible without having playtested.

What I truly hope will happen, and what I think would re-vitalize both the ORC and the project at large, is that another crew starts writing on a different rule set.

And most of all, I want the player to think and be able to win mostly by thinking and managing his cards well. Not plot some fancy big blow ahead and wait for a certain cards to get into his hand, not just developing his table or wait until it's all over. And of course this is not thinking in terms of navigating within like thousand different factors. And not inventing those 2-3 cards that suddenly start to work with each other, really hurting the enemy more and more with time.

Amen Brother. Now "somebody" has to create that.

(Btw, please check out videos of a game called "Summoning Wars", especially its rules/gameplay. is that something you fancy more?)

Another example is what's unsuitable in MtG... Resource system based on "eaten" cards - do you really think that's good? Do we really need a resource system that literally eats cards out of your deck? Why not just take some white cards and stick them inside your deck?

In MtG around 33% of your deck is always dedicated to being resources. The resources eat a lot of card slots of your deck, leaving only 66% of your deck to "playable cards" that actually do something. On top of that, since resources are dedicated cards, players often don't get optimal resource development and can lose games due to bad draws, getting too few lands etc.

WotC soon realised this and started "fixing" it not by reprinting all old cards and changing the core rules, but by releasing cards that could ease the pain. Cards that have abilities that fetch lands, cards that are not lands but that produce mana etc. Suddenly managing the broken system is a par of resource management in MtG.

Modern CCG:s learned quickly from the MtG misstake. They don't have dedicated lands/resource cards. They let you play any card as a resource - you just place it with its face down or however. This solves both of the problems in MtG: You never lose to bad draws. You always have an even resource flow if you depend on it.

Also, here comes the answer to your question why one would want a resource system that eats cards from deck:

1) As shown, it eats much less than MtG: Each card can be played OR turned into a resource. You make the choice.

2) As seen in #2, it leads to player having to make tough choices from time to time. Should I keep this kick ass card for play nor, or soon, or turn it into a resource to play another card instead? These kind of choices are good and work well (yeah yeah, I know we never made them in our concept test.. but really, nothing was good about that session. In theory this works. I practice also, in many games.)

You ask why one couldn't use tokens instead, or just blank cards from wherever. I think you have a point: What you suggest makes it possible to play with more of the cards in your 60-deck. Suddenly a 100% of the cards would be playable. However, you don't get players that have to make the decisions in #2, which is a minor loss. Also, your argument is only valid if a) players usually play until all 60 cards have been used/deck ends and b) the resource system eats a lot of cards.

One might also claim that it is always better to play a game with as few components as possible. If we can use the cards we already have without having to prepare new ones, be they blank or not, from a separate pile or a part of the main deck, it is more elegant to do so.

I am not fond of how piles currently work. I am trying to cook something new out of it, but only thing that comes to mind that excludes them altogether are pre-printed values on cards, or counting cards as you suggested yourself now. What I do know is that resource management of some kind should really be around... even if it wouldn't be the coolest in the world. Check out the resource system for a couple of CCG:s... what do you discover? Who has the "brilliant" solution or one that is noticeably better than our shitty one?

I'd rather see pure threshold introduced as the only "cost", than piles. Even with "no factions" approach, this could be a number that says how many cards with same tag as the first word in card type must be on the table. now it's like 15% of the cards will be played face down.

a) I'm open for suggestions.

b) I agree 15% of eaten cards could prove to be too much and will have a solution for those 15% in next iteration of the piles of crap.

c) Your suggestion, with the pre-printed number, has a serious deck building impact: It assumes that you always 1) fit cards that have 0 cost in your deck and that 2) you get them early and 3) that in situations where much of your stuff dies on table that you also have new zero-costers in hand.

That's three huge assumptions. You could maybe solve 1 & 2 by letting players lay them out before game start somehow, and 3... I dunno, see to it that there always are resource on table once they have been put there... hrm...

I'm not sure, but ORC might need design document on it's own - that is in the first place precised what's left blank in GDD.
How should a typical game look like? We know - 1 hour, 60 cards, entertaining... But really - how many cards on table, how many cards in a fight, how many space on a table, how many cards on hand, how many rounds planned ahead. How big "strategies" should be, what tactical solutions would be considered typical, what type of mental activities should player take to manage his stuff during single round. how many cards should go to garbage during ordinary game. How players can hurt each other, when they should not hurt...
How anything of the above changes in time - like will we have some clearly developed stages of development and fighting? Or rather do we want it to go in parallel? Or maybe it's 10/90 relation, where fist 5 rounds is for development and later it's just pure fighting and playing every possible creature (current ORC)?

This still doesn't set anything in stone, but at least, if you want this rule cooperation to happen, you will know where to point people to to seek for the right types of solutions.

Good examples.

Sad part of this is that card games, especially where cards can introduce their own rules, can be amazingly rich in any possible way, and, as many FLOSS projects, we just copy existing ideas, pretty much used and abused for a decade now...

I don't think FLOSS-people intentionally copy anything that they find bad or inferior. If they copy something it is to give it to the FLOSS world and/or to build from that. I believe the community at large is right to clone whatever and later on improve it, instead of more often re-inventing the wheel and re-discovering all problems and issues that the established alternatives solved two decades ago.

You conserve resources by cloning. Drawback is it hinders and limits creativity....

Then again: We have invited the whole world to create a rule set. We even give it hosting and all tools needed plus all art. For free. We have gotten the finger of no interest back. Nobody, and especially not me or the ORC, hinders anybody from developing an amazing new ruleset for WT. Yet, it's not done.

(I myself am already engaged in the few and final attempts at straightening out ORC and can't engage in a brand new set right now, not one from scratch, not one lead by me when I still have lessons to learn from the ORC attempts. I want it to be over and done with it before engaging in another attempt. )

You will simply sit and wait, playing strongest units landing on your hand. Whoever fights first is more likely to win, it's just too aggressive.

Well, yeah, there are such CCG:s, but I wouldn't describe MtG as one. On the contrary you would always lose if you played it as you described it.

Fighting and aggression == theme. It is also capturing something.. namely "direct player interaction". Would it matter if it was baking cakes instead? I take it that you do favour a more solitary ruleset than one with more direct action.

work really badly, much like crazy inventors from Russian Sci-Fi. Nothing planned ever happens. Things pop into my head, and I find myself in the middle of, for example, making myself a knife - which I've been able to find a suitable piece of surgical steel for, machine it (with a hand drill...), heat-treat, polish and sharpen without leaving my 30 square meters even once - nor even making groceries for three days in a row...

*hangs that section on fridge*

Priceless.

Game that let's you explode or beat your opponent really early is in my eyes flawed.

Aha. As suspected above somewhere. This changes a lot, really, for how creatures etc can be played... half the ORC would have to be revised... which isn't bad, it just isn't something that is easily patched with ad hoc rules. You want a more structured flow... hrm hrm hrm...

[Q_x]

I think it's the right time to break down the discussion into separate topics, or at least extract what's possible to separate. I've done it with card types/tags so far, the easiest part probably.
I'm in a mood "let's just do it quickly" today, plus we will exceed forum maximum allowed post length quite quickly and noone else will even bother...

When re-reading I notice you don't mean it literary. It's good since It is very very hard to design a
game where the "truly best player" always wins. Let's resort to our monkeys again: Kasparov VS Coco the Gorilla. While it is virtually impossible for him to lose if he performs as he usually does, that particular day maybe something bad happened and he makes a bad move, and then by coincidence Coco does a checkmate. I think we agree on this. My only point here is that it is hard to design the rules in a way which makes it impossible for it to happen. (This is quite an interesting topic you have thrown at us...)

I think we have to sort something out here.
There are many kinds of games when you think about resources, exhausting them, and winning conditions. Take chess, it's a game where limiting enemy resources and conserving own is the core element. Take a simple card game where you shuffle whole deck when cards end, and compare it with a game that whoever is forced to draw the last card - loses.
Now, assuming there is no resource exhaustion winning/losing conditions, weak players (those who show fatal deck, random actions, but understand they have to obey the rules) should almost never be able to win, and they need some huge coincidence to do so (near to Kasparov vs. Coco example). At least I see it that way. No matter if this would be the case of wounds getting quickly healed, or resources "growing back" - whatever, when left for several turns, will establish (or move towards) balanced state.
IT's not something I want from ORC to have, even if it's damn useful. It just should be possible in other rulesets. What it makes is twofold. First it doesn't let you hurt your enemy early, cause you have to overcome what game world brings first. Second it gives your enemy some time to prepare and counteract what he thinks is your plan or strategy.

BTW, it's truely the case where we vision completely different. And this was what I was talking about when starting my journey here about being not biased by any major product.
I have this funny vision of players playing a card game with completely abstract cards. A game that rules are completely obscure. External player should be unable to understand it just by watching. Even if he knows the rules, he is unable to guess the result not seeing the game from the beginning.
My second ambition, actually a real one, is to make a game that when starts, has only very basic set of rules, and players, while playing the cards, are shaping the rules in the way that makes them win.
I have to make PhD in astrophysics to invent it probably, those are quite close subjects...

On the other side, the whole reason I rather add some extra lands in this case is to make sure I can start executing my plan directly, without delay. I must make sure to really get some lands in hand directly, without a mulligan.

Piles stacked with random cards are excellent idea. With "what is discussed in another topic" I wanted to make sure that not only you don't need any separate type of "resource cards", but also to allow partially, or at least make an easy way, to somehow play cards from piles, making those piles effectively a second kind storage space after player's hand.

Problem is MtG is still extremely card-oriented. You spent probably more time and effort composing deck than playing with it actually, not even mentioning your expenses. So buying cards, checking what's wrong, buying more cards, checking more. Buying, buying, buying... Here players, at least those who care, will have a cheap laser printer, print and test what they want really quickly. Most probably this will result in many similar conclusions and 2-3 similar deck families will dominate the scene. That's what I'm afraid of, and I don't see how we can do anything better to counteract it.

Question is, does that deck fall into your category of "1-2 winning strategies"? I think so. Strategy is to lower your opponents HP, but is that really a strategy? I don't think so. It is an objective. How can we accomplish it? In this case with mainly 2 creatures. Rest is there to protect me and disrupt + pave the way for these two creatures coming back and keeping the recycling of all around them as an intact eco-system.

Now, is this too simplistic for your taste? And would you rather have a deck that could win in vastly different ways? If you reply "yes" to that one - how do you construct that rule wise, with low amount of cards in deck?

This is a tiny bit of a different strategy than what we have in WT.
you have only 35 non-land cards there, which is more or less a half of what could be in WT deck in the first place. There is a bit different game to get the right cards - most important thing is what comes first, goes into the pile first.
Second thing - there are no "static" cards there, comparable to our CObjects.
Third thing - I can't see any cards interacting really - at least in the way I'd call interaction. It all makes great ecosystem, as you wrote it, and it's an excellent deck. But, from what capabilities I expect the cards have in WT, those cards are flawed and overpowered, and whole this deck is one big exploit when I think about what I'd expect. What's worse is you'd have to pay for the capabilities with some real cash.
But let's just assume some things that are more or less probably likely to happen...
What if some important cards happen to be at the bottom of the deck? What if in first 15 cards you will have nothing that makes your strategy start, like when both damn dragons and smiled tutor residing in lower half? This is still a good deck, but in this case it will fail, or you will end up doing whatever possible to fetch at least some spellbombs from the garbage.
My final conclusion is if you have two similar players, but not even, with similar value stashed, but again, not even, in their decks, there is only luck factor, and more likely wins not skilled one, but rich.

One more remark is how player interact. Apart from stealing other's mana, or, as you said that, disrupting, there is very little interaction, and to be halted or defeated you have to be disrupted in the very right way. Again, this type of power is just wrong for me, like pure evil. And from what I've seen from CS, it will be better in our case - that is basically there are so far no means of disrupting things (apart from what's during fights). So I guess the pesky stuff is reserved for other factions mostly...

Now imagine there's no economical factor.
How would MtG look like if they will make everybody able to make any deck at no cost (and probably exclude any exploitable combos)? Which cards wouldn't ever be invented in the first place?

That's actually important... Print the cards you want, make best deck you're able to invent and test. Does it still makes that load of fun only to hit eachother? Cause I'm instantly hungry for having a garden where my plants grow, for having a backyard to play in, basically I want to have a kingdom to rule. CObjects are a brilliant example here and I doubt id I'd need much more than that.

I guess that shows also how different needs we have, or how the worlds we came from differ. Or how different our past happens to be.

That means they have very similar variations or even revisons of one and the same card concept, for example dealing +1 more damage, or having another faction belonging with another cost.

That's a part of economy on one side, and balancing process on the other. When there is no way back, they are really careful empowering cards from their realm.
It also makes you not only want the new cards... Just imagine winning any serious competition with old cards, and I mean really old... And still, all your lust, as a customer, is for those rare, but powerful cards.

I hope you knew it before, but irresponsible stripping down MtG from it's economy will lead to a pretty much dull game, not, as you said you want it, functional. There is no full proof given, but in our case there is the way back, hopefully without some folks making heavy riots on our forums, so it's not a big headache.

I claim that it isn't possible to create a CCG with 11 000 unique pieces that can be part of the same game in a way that makes sense.

It is perfectly possible.
Imagine a game of hacking. In order to hack, or make your objective possible, you have to connect your 16 outputs in most hurting way for your target machine. The cards would represent entangled, connected and broken cables going from left to right. You can easily exceed millions of possible cards with approach like that. More? Introduce some specific circuits, like increasing, multiplying, switching or inverting values.

What this reminds me of is the discussion we've had elsewhere in forum about tempo: To you it seems as a negative thing that a player can reach the finish line/win before another does so, simply because he has built a deck that is created around being swift and speedy. I still don't consider that a problem in MtG, nor in the ORC... simply because each faction would/should have a way of dealing with such "rushes", and a conscious player would know that he has to fit opening game cards in his deck, even if he does have a slow deck. My MtG deck above is a nice example of that: I deal zero damage the first 5-6 turns, I just stall and play Walls to survive. Why? Because I'm not an idiot. If I didn't do that I'd lose the game.

A while ago I was more sceptic about your criticism and that you imagined(?) the game playing out in a very pre-determined tempo and almost lasting a pre-determined number of rounds. I am not as sceptical any more and have a neutral stance in the question. Problem is that the questions answer should depend heavily on the other factors in the rule set. In ORC, I see no valid reason (yet) for why players shouldn't be able to win due to speed IF and only if the other factions do indeed have counters, should they choose to field them in deck.

It's not about speed after all. It's about having the right means of defending your place at the right time. If this time is soon (like in first three rounds), you will most likely have no way to defend yourself. This may not be true with CObjects if they would be the objective that defend and fights back at least a tiny bit. Else it's lust lack, whoever strikes first and beats his enemy - wins.
I'm not for forcing a given speed or stages. What I would ultimately want is that the player, who is way weaker, can grow way faster. Not overgrow due to having one creature less, just be this tiny bit faster.
As an nth rule that could serve an example:
You thrown 4 cards into the garbage last turn - no matter if those were casulties or events. In the following turn you can take 2 cards more from your deck and play cards that cost in total as much as 8 gold for free.
This will help after being beaten a bit. Not as much as I would maybe want, but at least it's not hopeless and gives some chances of fighting back. Still IDK if fighting back is the right model.

I've sad it before and will say it again: We urgently need more rule developers, and we urgently need a team that is independent of me and of ORC. I think it would do all the good in the world.

Sounds like a whole separate well-established team or 10000% of the excitement that goes around here to crowd-source a team like that. No way I'm going to think that hope alone can fix anything. What we need is testing and fresh ideas. Asking people does nothing - in FLOSS communities everybody's asking, you have to light a spark in people to crowd anywhere.

Now it's like the obvious theme actually bogs us down. There are plenty of s-f or fantasy card games, but few steampunk or postapo, not sure about cyberpunk here - those genres seems to have more agile followers than just plain old fantasy. BfW is helping us a lot, but it's still just a single game we're close with.

(Btw, please check out videos of a game called "Summoning Wars", especially its rules/gameplay. is that something you fancy more?)

Game won't run here. 512 MB ram, something like 32 or 64 MB for GPU, and a lib (visual-something?) is missing. Videos looks dull as hell, but I'm on it, one thing at a time.
Found it there:

About the lengthy dialogs, this is a very subjective matter. We like to tell a good story with some characters that are not as flat as in some other games. And you can just click through them if you don't want to read them

I guess that's 30% of what I expect from any cRPG, other 70% is left for world concepts and/or graphics that makes my head works (may be plain ascii if the world is made well - take Nethack) and for well-designed interaction. If this is a cool game - hell, no, not to look the videos of it. I dunno why they've made it 3D and not 2D.

Also, here comes the answer to your question why one would want a resource system that eats cards from deck:

1) As shown, it eats much less than MtG: Each card can be played OR turned into a resource. You make the choice.

That's actually brilliant and introduces great flexibility. What I wanted to say is we can do even better, recycling those piles somehow - cards in piles will most likely come in handy in the late game.

Fighting and aggression == theme. It is also capturing something.. namely "direct player interaction". Would it matter if it was baking cakes instead? I take it that you do favour a more solitary ruleset than one with more direct action.

I think we have different reasons for calling a game "aggressive". It may be obvious for you that you are going to attack every turn for most of the game, and it's not "aggressive". I guess it's just a matter of scale, but entangling whole game around the concept of growing and hurting opponents may not be the right thing to do.

If you look into history - most of the empires ended not due to being smashed by an enemy, but they exploded due to lack of internal integrity, and, as long as the time of travel was an issue, they haven't expanded due to the reason it was unreasonable to pay for any further expansion - training, moving, feeding and arming armies was just way too much. More than that - any typical story of raise and fall of a giant structure looks similar - things grow, feed with smaller things, start to fall into trouble only because of its size. This is not the case of many games, and I hardly see any reason why it's like so, apart from that it's hard to develop a rule set that will make things to work like that.
Again, no reason to reshape whole ORC, but maybe good idea for another set of rules.