An anniversary, a transformation

It’s been a week or two since we updated this page, or for that matter, the wiki.

It’s not for a lack of activity — in fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Instead, we’ve been busy with a slew of new ideas and new rules … so many in fact, that it may be time to consider calling it a new game.

That might seem arbitrary, but for the developers — KBD and TNT — it makes good sense.

It’s been a year since we started out, and we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t, and what people like … and what they don’t.

Let’s start with the negatives.

1. Some of the game action cards — Twists and Jinxes — are simply too arbitrary, or too convoluted to be practical. For example, the Bounce card is a terrific option, but most of our players have a hard time understanding when to use it.
2. The developers weren’t really prepared for the ura-monster trend. In retrospect, it would have been nice to support that precept with some specially designed monsters, but it faded out of demand before we could properly adjust to it. Really, this is a failing on our part.
3. Perhaps understandably, our players are only interested in games with the highest-point monsters. Anything less than 26 points or so is seen as undesirable.
4. A lot of the Special Powers are misused, or neglected altogether. Brain Drain and Life Drain are the prime culprits here. And we have yet to see anyone use the Heal ability in game play. It just never gets a chance.
5. Similarly, there’s no real distinction between a bonus to Attack and a penalty to Guard, or vice versa. Which means some of the powers are the same, but just have different names. For example, what’s the real difference between Hard to Hit -1 and a 1-point bonus to Attack? Not much.
6. Mismatched monsters are still a very common problem — in fact, without a kingpin monster in an army, weak monsters are steadily picked off. In battles with three or four players, we find the standard strategy is to kill the weakest monsters, claim the bonus point, and charge into battle again.
7. On a related note, point-rewards are fun, but have become so overdone that they’re threatening game balance in some cases. One of our players has a Rat King with an Attack rating of 13 — not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it seems a little overboard.
8. The mechanics of a game that designed creatures against a three-dice bell curve leaves for a lot of underpowered monsters. New monsters brought into the game are standing on 5-4-3 or 3-6-4 and forced to face off against 26-point monsters … or be traded for something the developers created. In other words, this is directly affecting creativity, since there’s no value attached to a handmade monster. They’re too weak.
9. A lot of the optional rules are in place as standard rules, but need reworking or better definition. The Spoils of War rule is a good example; another would be the fact that our players regularly use one of the optional rules for monster creation … which means it shouldn’t be optional.
10. Cards need a visible point total, to help quickly scan for monster parity.
11. Regenerate is too expensive for as rarely as it is used.
12. This game has always needed a better name.
13. Esoteric monsters or monsters with unique powers (like the Zombie or the Human Porcupine) were unpopular.
14. Immunity is a fantastic ability, but after a year of play, we’ve seen it used properly about three times.

(One other note that might be worth mentioning: There have been some software updates to the Wikispaces backend that are making page updates there slightly difficult. To be honest, that’s another something that has kept us from publishing new creatures.)

On the other hand, we have some positive notes that came to the forefront in the past year.

1. Players really like the ability to throw cards during battles, to sway the outcome. Twist cards, in particular, are player favorites (even if Once Again is still too bizarre to explain).
2. Having a reward for a victory makes a lot of people happy.
3. Army-versus-army battles are reinforcing player teamwork, which is an unexpected bonus.
4. Creating a monster is still one of the best parts of the game.
5. Our core statistics — Hit Points, Attack and Guard — are working well, and the actual combat mechanics are solid. Speed is a factor that is surprisingly important, particularly when three DNAs are on one team.
6. One Special Power is generally enough to occupy a player through a battle. Creatures with split abilities — like the Lava Thing‘s half Earth Damage, half Fire Damage — are quaint, but unnecessary.
7. In fact, most players don’t seem to associate one particular power with their monster. They design a creature with the main statistics in mind, and Special Powers are tertiary.
8. The Raise power is probably one of the most sought-after powers in the game … which surprises us.
9. Groups were rarely used, but still make sense and can possibly make a comeback, if handled properly. Environments … probably not so much.

So overall, there are some underlying points at work here.

1. Cards are useful and enjoyable in play, but they need to be streamlined drastically.
2. Monster creation needs to reflect the power of the monsters actually in the game, but remain flexible.
3. Speed should be among the core statistics, and cards should show a monster’s total up front.
4. There should be a reward for victory, but adding points to a monster’s powers gradually takes them out of a practical range for play.
5. If there’s not a real distinction between a bonus to one side and a penalty to another, then it’s possible to eliminate subtraction altogether from the game mathematics. This might be a little difficult to understand; suffice to say that we’d rather see powers with pluses, rather than minuses.
6. A homemade monster should be just as important and effective as one made by developers.
7. Special powers aren’t terrifically important, but should still be included.
8. Groups can work, and so can immunity. In fact, the two things are not unrelated.
9. Perhaps most of all, the rules that are in use on a daily basis should be the core rules of the game … and that includes ideas brought in by players.

With all that in mind, it’s time to think about redrafting the game.

KBD and TNT are already in the playtesting stage for a second edition, with most (if not all) of the above ideas built in.

• In short, monsters start with 12 points, and a single die roll is added to that.
• The total points is parted out between Hit Points, Attack, Guard and Speed.
• Each monster picks a group (which is to say, picks a dominant power) and that determines its immunity.
• In a battle, players start each round with three cards, with random powers on them. Players pick one card to apply to their monster for that round, and that round only.
• Play continues in the standard fashion, but at the end of the round, the used cards are returned to a shuffled stack.
• Surviving monsters get another card at the start of the round, and the game continues.
• When a monster is defeated, a player can keep a special power card, and include it in their hand in future battles.

It may be tough to see imagine this, so we’ll try to put together something visual in the weeks to come.

In the mean time, keep watching this space, and we’ll keep working on the finer points.

Like a proper name for the game. … 😉

 

Rule clarification: Raise and BPV

Originally, when we designed the Battle Monsters game, there were a limited and preset number of monsters, with strict and exact abilities.

Designing your own monster came about later, when a number of our players came up with good creatures that deserved to be part of the game.

Over time the rules have shifted and occasionally changed, because of how our players use them.

We need to adjust — or clarify — one more today, and this time we’re going back to the Raise ability.

Originally that Special Power was limited to princess-class monsters, and a limited version appeared with the Boss Zombie, and the Centiscorpion Prime.

In both of those cases, the Summoning monster was limited to only one type of creature. It made sense, in both cases.

Princesses, on the other hand, could roll a die and draw in as many monsters as they showed on the die, so long as they came from their Group.

Or, as an option, a Princess could Call one monster from outside her domain.

In all of those cases, a monster never Raised a creature more powerful than itself. That simply wouldn’t make sense.

And it still doesn’t, now that we’ve opened that ability to anyone in the game.

Our rule clarification for today is to set a small limitation to Raise (or Call or Summon or Gate or Assemble or whatever you like to call it): The summoned creature must have the same or less monster points.

So you cannot assign the Assemble ability to a 12-point maintenance robot, and then bring a Typhoon Robot into the game.

Clarifying this rule hopefully keeps the spirit of the game in line with the original concept, while still giving players the option of using the ability for low-point monsters that summon their kin, or lesser combatants.

Cheers, and enjoy.

As promised: Cold Damage

A week or so ago, we mentioned that there wasn’t a provision for Cold Damage even though some monsters should employ that.

Both the Snow Man and the Ice Dragon were mentioned as examples, and both relied on Water Damage to explain their powers.

We’ve added a brief description of Cold Damage to the wiki, and we’ve already updated both of those monsters — and perhaps a few others — to show that ability.

As a side note, the Ice Dragon’s immunity to Water Damage has been updated to Immune: Cold, which also makes more sense.

The proviso is that the cards probably won’t be updated for a while. We have a backlog of monsters to publish, and quite a few “revisions” (like the ones we showed a few days ago) that need to be released too.

And as always, the wiki takes precedence over the cards. When in doubt, use the statistics shown on the wiki.

A few upcoming ideas

We’re always collecting ideas for new regulations and abilities, and we have a few prospective ones we’d like to share.

At present we don’t have rules on the wiki for these, so they’re really only mentioned as a hint of what we might see in the coming year.

• We’re considering pulling some of the Jinx cards that we’ve been using over the past year, and replacing them with updated concepts. The problem is that some of them, like Freeze or Bounce, are rarely used … or are rarely used correctly. Simpler, quicker ideas might work better.
• Similarly, we’ve mentioned one-shot magical powers in the past, and we’re playtesting some of those ideas for a third card effect. For example, a player could use a card to add a single point of Fire Damage, or add a one-time immunity in an attack. If we come up with proper cards, we’ll publish them here.
• The ura-monster rules seem to work okay as they are, but to be honest, not many of our games have multiple monsters for single players. That means a lot of corroboration has to take place if there’s going to be an ura-monster in battle.  We’re planning on putting together an ura-monster or two of our own, in the coming months.
• We have a couple of Special Powers that might be added because they don’t seem to fit elsewhere. Just as an example, both the Ice Dragon and the Snow Man have Water Damage listed, with the logic being that ice is water. But really, that should be “cold damage,” and right now we don’t have a cold damage per se. That is likely to change, and if it does, those cards will be updated.
• Finally, we had an odd situation in a game a couple of weeks ago, where a monster with only a single Hit Point was at risk of dying if it made an attack. A Bounce card was in play, and because the monster was quite powerful, its own special damage was going to destroy it. At present there’s no provision to allow a monster to pass on an attack; all monsters must attack or perform a special action. That’s probably one of the first — and easiest –changes we’ll announce.

Anyway, those are a few of the things in the works here. Like everything that we mention, this is all optional and open to addition (or subtraction) from your game. 😉

Rule clarification: Summoning

We have to take a short break in the latest string of monsters to point out a small rule clarification.

This time it’s the Raise power that is in question. Remember that the Raise power is also sometimes written as Call, Gate, Summon or Assemble, depending on the group.

It’s important to note that a monster removed from the game cannot be Raised back again.

In other words, once a creature is removed from battle (“dies”), a princess or another creature can’t summon that card back into the battle, with the Raise ability.

The reason for that is a very clear one: This avoids using death as a kind of “reset switch” for a card.

If the rule were reversed, it would be possible to suffer a defeat, drop a card out of battle, summon it back in the same round, and have it enter the fray at full strength in the next round.

Naturally, that’s not acceptable.

We’ve updated the wiki to show the rule change.

At long last, tentative ura-monster rules

Hopefully this was worth the wait. We have some prototype rules for ura-monsters on the wiki now.

In short, ura-monsters are flipped cards, where the image on the back of the cards forms a larger, more powerful monster.

It’s a nifty trick, and something we’ve seen in other games too. Or heard about, at least.

We’ve avoided this until now only because it tends to ramp up the game stakes, boosting battles between 12- and 14-point monsters to sudden death matches between 28-point dreadnoughts.

It’s probably safe to say that those rules will be streamlined as time goes on. TNT and KBD talked about these things in the past, but this is one of those things that needs to be used a lot, to see how it behaves.

A lot.

Give it a try and tell us what you think. It’s listed as an optional rule and unlikely to ever shift into the main game, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying out.

Veteran points

We keep toying with the rules for Battle Monsters, and collecting ideas for new ones.

We told you about ura-monsters a week or two ago. We don’t have any news to report, but we might have a ruling in a week or so.

Another idea we have mentioned before, and mentioned offhand as an optional rule, is an idea of veteran points.

It might be an odd term; you can think of it as “experience points” if you like.

The problem is that Battle Monsters units are fairly static. There’s no real provision for battle experience.

Each monster is thought to arrive on the field with no past experience to shape their strategy.

It may occasionally be interesting to allow victorious creatures a point — whether after a battle or after defeating an opponent.

(In the wiki, it’s weakly described as “Spoils of War.” We’ll probably change that.)

That point can be allotted to any of the three statistics, or saved to purchase more effective Special Powers.

It does mean the value of a creature goes up over time, but it also means a creature can improve upon its design too.

Oh, and it does mean some sort of tracking system is required, which will mean an actual, physical adjustment to a card to show its veteran status.

We use stickers. 🙄

But … our test battles find this to be an appealing idea, and so we’re probably going to add it as a full-fledged Optional Rule.

Give us a few more chances to test it, and then we’ll present it properly. 😉

Single-shot special powers

We have a lot of Optional Rules that you can try, if you want to spice up your Battle Monsters games.

One that we have been toying with, but haven’t implemented, is the idea of one-shot, single-use Special Powers.

If you recall, we have actual cards you can use to indicate a special ability or power. For the monsters we publish here, they aren’t needed because the abilities are written directly to the card.

And we mentioned the idea in passing in that same post — shuffle the cards, hand out one card to each monster.

The player then has the option to use that special power at some point in battle. It’s a one-time, single-use special power, just for fun.

(Of course, as an option to the option, you can give the monster that power for the rest of the game.)

For things like Elemental Damage or some defensive powers, we roll a die at the time of use, to know its strength.

It’s an oddball way to use the cards, but it helps to keep things interesting. Like we said, there’s no rationale for giving a Zombie Fire Damage +6.

And in some cases it’s not really logical (why would Water Doom use — or even need — Brain Drain?), but it’s definitely entertaining.

P.S.: Still no ruling on ura-monsters. We’re tinkering with it. We promise.

Clarifying Life Drain and Brain Drain

This is a short note today, to point out something that may not be clear, on the Life Drain and Brain Drain Special Powers.

As is mentioned in the wiki, both powers take a fixed number of Hit Points from their target, and boost the Hit Points of the attacker by a fraction.

The total boost can’t push Hit Points over its natural maximum. And no additional damage is counted against the target — it’s a fixed value, no more and no less.

But to be clear, if the attack kills the target, the attacker still gets the fixed number of Hit Points.

So even if the target has only one Hit Point remaining, the attacker will still get the number written on its card … not to exceed its natural maximum, of course.

This may seem counter-intuitive and you’re always free to adjust the rule as you see fit.

But for our purposes, this seems to be the simplest and most efficient way to keep the game moving.

Tomorrow, we’ll have a new monster for you. 😉

Ura-monsters

A little while ago TNT and KBD talked about ura-monsters, but we don’t have any real rules for those yet.

The ura-monster — which would be better written as 裏モンスター, and means “back” or “reverse” — is usually one or two monsters drawn on standard pages. But on the underside they connect to form a larger, more powerful monster.

So maybe two robot warriors could be flipped to form a larger, more powerful assault corvette. Or two lesser dragons could sacrifice an attack round to flip, and become a massive strike dragon.

It’s clever, but also sounds like something borrowed from some other popular card games. These days it has become a little more common in Battle Monsters, particularly among one small group of players.

The obvious problem is that two or three standard monsters, when combined, quickly surmount the casual 30-point limit.

For a while we’ve had Zombies that could stack, but it would take a stack of six or seven zombies to finally breach that limit.

And in any case, without another high-point monster in the game (or another ura-monster), an ura-monster can quickly take over the battle.

Like we mentioned, there aren’t any rules for ura-monsters yet. We’ll keep testing them and see how they work.

If we can come up with a system that doesn’t overwhelm the current game mechanics, we might write optional rules for them.

But that’s a little way into the future.