Phase order, resource piles, villages

[Erundil]

This is what came to my mind after some thinking.
Turn and fronts
Instead having only one play phase and attack phase for both turns, each turn has a play phase for the first front and another one for the second front. Same for attack phase.
Thus the order of phases becoming:

• 1. Unmark
  2. Upkeep
  3. Draw
  4. Play for the first front
  5. Move or Attack for the first front
  6. Play for the second front
  7. Move or Attack for the second front
  8. Entrance
  9. Clean up
  10. Discard

Cards that affects only a front can be played only in the corrispondent phase, both for active player and for passive player.
So if the passive player wants to play a spell that affects only his first front he must do it in the playing phase he has after the active player's first front play phase.
Cards affecting more than one front can be played in both phases.
Cards like "a creature in opponent's north front gets -1/-1 and a creature in your north front gets +1/+1" are affecting only one front, the north one, so can be played only in the corrispondent play phase.

Resource Piles
The wiki is not so clear about resource piles. First it says that card are openly declared one turn in advance and then it says that creatures comes into play on the entrance phase. It doesn't says then when spells are resolved but still the first part says "cards" not creatures and the entrance says only "creatures".

Towns/villages
This is a new type of card. They have a cost and are played as other cards, but they must always be the first card in a resource pile; normal gold card can be added on top of the village card.
Village cards can produce more than 1 gold and can have some abilities as well.

[Ravenchild]

Have you any cards in mind that would benefit from such a rule?

As for RP: Creatures can't attack the turn they are put into play. Creatures are placed on unoccupied resource piles of adequate size when they come into play and are "released" the next turn.

I'm not very fond of the village idea. It means that you need to have a certain faction of village cards in your deck, taking away space of (usually) more interesting cards. And you will have trouble getting RP started. I suppose you will lose a lot of flexibility here, if I understand your proposal correctly.

[Erundil]

The purpose of separete phases for the fronts is to have a more important strategic choice to do, both in defence and in attack as the result of the first front attack phase will influence the second front attack phase.

As per village cards i will explain better. They can be used as first rp card or as a gold card when turned, and they're not meant to be a lot, but 3 or 4, or none. This will allow the gameplay to be extented also on resources management, since at the moment there are just gold cards.

[snowdrop]

Instead having only one play phase and attack phase for both turns, each turn has a play phase for the first front and another one for the second front

In the ORC ruleset the idea is during one and the same turn a player can either attack with creatures or move them during two different phases. Whatever is done in the first of those phases can't be done again in the next.

However, when in one of those phases the player is free to interact with any of his/her two fronts. Reason I wanted it that way was to offer a wider space for actions.

I think your suggestion is one way to handle it, somewhat different, but certainly worth trying out when concept testing. The benefit I see with it is that it could force players to try to "sync" what's going on in each front more, a task in itself. (However, this typically works best in full information games (e.g. like chess), and to a lesser degree in games with hidden elements and potentially swift turnovers, like in most CCG:s.)

Resource Piles
The wiki is not so clear about resource piles. First it says that card are openly declared one turn in advance and then it says that creatures comes into play on the entrance phase. It doesn't says then when spells are resolved but still the first part says "cards" not creatures and the entrance says only "creatures".

(I'm sorry for that, as it is probably my mess: PLease re-check, I believe I have cleared it out in the wiki. If not, please spank me and I will. )

The openly declared 1 turn in advance is not correct info any longer: Cards are not declared one turn in advance. That text was a remain from when I imagined the game should be played with no random card draws, in which case it made some more sense.

Cards resolve in this manner:

1. You announce you want to play the card & pay for it by marking a RP.
2. Other players subturn, givin him a chance to respond.
3. Your turn to do the same if he/she did (and back and forth).
4. Card resolves. Active players turn continues.

As per village cards i will explain better. They can be used as first rp card or as a gold card when turned, and they're not meant to be a lot, but 3 or 4, or none. This will allow the gameplay to be extented also on resources management, since at the moment there are just gold cards.

For a card to become a card type (supertype, e.g. like "creature" is) there should be very good reasons and wide use throughout the core and future expansions as well of that card type. I'm afraid what we end up with here is adding a type that sounds as if it will be underused or, if it is not, as some kind of variant of the Magic/Enchantment cards that are/will be around in the game already.

With other words, if something can pretty much be done with already existing card types no new (super) types should be introduced for several reasons, learning curve being one, card compatibility and game fragmentation being another.

I believe your idea can be tranformed into a couple of Enchantment cards. Generally though, I am probably against the idea of playing face up permanents among the resource piles, as it makes it harder to percieve what is in play, what is on a pile / hand / front etc. This is also the same reason for why RP cards are played face down, to keep the table as clean from clutter as possible.

Resource management is in WT in a degree that is independent of there being additional benefits beyind the RP:s themself in the following ways:

a) Player must, each turn, decide if he/she will lay down a card as a resource or save it for later play from hand. Depending on if you're in the start of the game, mid game or end game, and your needs that game, you will lay down pretty different cards as resources, ranging from cheap to very expensive.

b) Player must have a proper amount of RP:s....

c) which is balanced against proper resources in each RP.....

d) else she/he'd have to reconfigure the RP:s, which will be punished... and if he/she needs but wont, he/she will risk of falling behind in the game.

Given that a RP is totally depleted once it is used no matter what the cost for the played card was we end up with the above type of resource management. Now, I must admit that Q_x has some reservations against it and wasn't impressed when we did some very early concept testing, but I think it seems solid (albeit just in theory and until we see it's total brokenness in more concept tests ; )) I claim there is way more resourcemanagment in WT than meets the eye...