Stances: Chudan

This is the most basic stance in kendo which balances attack and defence. If correctly assumed, the trunk (do) and right wrist (migi-kote) are hidden from the opponent. The throat is visible, but the extended tip of the sword threatens a thrusting enemy with a likely counter-thrust. The head (men) is the only clearly open target, but this too is easily defended. If the kamae is not broken, the user can step into striking distance of the opponent whilst maintaining good defence.

A beginner learns this stance first in order to learn the correct striking distance, issoku-itto-no-maai. -Wikipedia

Remember when I was talking about the rock/paper/scissors aspect of this mechanic.  This is the tactic that is going to make the player starting with Hasso groan.  Quite often, a player using Chudan is going to be able to block anything the Hasso player throws out at the cost of 1 form.  Though Hasso is fast, it can only activate 1 attack at a time, so despite being pretty aggressive, it’s going to have a rough time dealing with this.

Chudan is the opposite side of the coin.  It is passive, and it is the easiest way to refresh your form once it’s been spent.  Also notice that this stance doesn’t let you play, advance, or activate attacks.  The stance is supposed to be balanced in attack and defense, but not necessarily offensive or aggressive.  For this reason, I’ve chosen to make it primarily defensive and tactical to both encourage not hanging out in one stance, and to avoid the dreaded “NPE“. (which I will touch on later)   Because of the strong posture and basic nature of the stance, I’ve also made it the go-to stance to recover form, because it is the most defensible and probably most familiar.

As far as the game goes, with Chudan, you are building board control.  Notice how it allows you to play and advance tactics.  I haven’t touched on ‘advancing’ yet, so let me explain that.

When you ‘advance’ a card, you may allocate 1 form to it.  Some attacks and tactics require a little more time or focus to “ready”, so you may have to advance a few turns to activate the card you are using.

This is an example of gaining board control through tactics.
By playing this tactic, and advancing enough form onto it,
you can passively gain card advantage. (hopefully over your
opponent)  Also, until enough form is advanced onto the
tactic, it is considered to be blank, and has no effect.

Also note the lack of Kanji preceding the text, this means
the ability is usable in any stance.
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Here, we should also talk about NPE. (which stands for ‘negative play experience’)

Some decks want to get you to a point where you are prone.  Where you have no cards in your hand, and few cards on the board to assist you.  At this point, you are basically drawing off of the deck, praying to your ‘random aspect’ gods to get you a card that will bring you back in the game.  At the same time your opponent, while not necessarily attacking you relentlessly, has cards on the board to back him up, plus a hand full of cards.  Because of this, he can usually respond to and crush everything you do.  This is what NPE is: you’re playing, but not actually playing, just losing, and short of a miracle, you can’t do anything about it.

Now, some decks are wired to do this, so if it’s say… turn 6 or later, and you’ve fallen into this, it’s your own damn fault.  Just like the rush decks that catch you with your pants down. The trick is to make this viable, but not overpowered.
Here are the balancing factors I had in mind:

-Chudan is the last stance to act.  So all of the other stances have a chance to act before Chudan can play cards to the board.
-The window to advance tactics in Chudan occurs before the tactics that turn are actually played, this gives your opponent somewhat of a lifeline before they
go active.  There is another stance, that like Hasso and their attacks, is quick to advance Tactics.  This stance does not recover form or increase defense however, so there is risk involved in staying in it.
-Chudan cannot advance or activate attacks: I have to watch this closely, and not have any effects usable in Chudan that enable this.
-Chudan builds tactics slowly, since you can only play and/or advance one tactic a turn.  Gedan, the stance that builds tactics quickly is also a fairly risky stance.
-Tactics cannot deal damage… oh man, would this be a nightmare.

There is also the stance that is hopefully the bane of Chudan centric decks, which is the next stance to be discussed.

Anatomy of a card

I’m self-taught as far as Design goes.  I’ve taken an excellent History of Graphic Design class at ARC, but everything else has pretty much been trial and error.  I do have some reasons behind what I did though, and hopefully those reasons will be sound.  Maybe some of you pros can give me some feedback. : ) ) )

The big design decision I made was to make the game black and white.  The manga is black and white itself, so making the card game colored would really gimp my source material.  The template of the cards is also meant to loosely resemble the Manji itself 卍, which is the mirror image of the Swastika, which brings me to the first and probably most important aspect of this manga/game.  There is no anti-Semitic meaning behind this series at all.  As I’m sure most people know by now, the Manji is Hindu/Buddist in its roots, and Manji (a swordsman from feudal japan) takes it as his personal symbol, as you can read on the first page of every volume of this manga ever.

I decided to use Adobe Caslon as the font. I feel like that its use gives the overall design a historical feel (as opposed to a sans-serif) but not to the degree of say Adobe Garamond, which has so much personality, it may take some of the identity away from the card itself.

I should also note that this is a redone version of the game.  I actually made a working game of this about 8 months ago, and I wasn’t really impressed with the way it played. (I’ll go into some more detail later)  Now, I have a GD portfolio to prepare, and some new inspiration, so I’m ready to tackle it again, and hopefully this time it will end up pretty cool.

The Kanji in the right Margin is a product of the
new rules, and I couldn’t get the number to be
legible.  I’ve been asking around and it seems like
my former habit of putting a black glow on all of
my text to make it legible is a real eye-roller in
the design world.  Sara helped me out with this
dilemma this morning.

Me: Man, I can’t get this type legible.

Sara: Make the Kanji grey, you newb.

Me: Oh… wow. Yeah! Ok!

Before I had white Kanji similarly overlapped
with white text and a black stroke.  It looked ok,
but it was hard to read.  I was kind of afraid to
add gray, because of the white/black theme,
but I think it looks way better this way.

Stances: Hasso

I was surfing around on Wikipedia one day, and found a set of stances for historical Japanese swordplay (Kendo).  I know Wikipedia isn’t the most reliable source of knowledge, but hell… they sure wrapped the basics of Kendo into a nice little box for me to adapt to my budding game.  It was definitely enough to get me excited to start work on it again.

The main problem with the game in its prior state was how abstract it felt when you played.  You weren’t sword fighting in a 1 on 1 duel.  You were moving little tokens around a sea of cards and hoping to envelop your opponent’s sea with your own.

Having a stance system like this will hopefully add a new layer of strategy, and if your opponent starts to abuse something, you can punish him for being predictable.

The stances function sort of like a game of rock-paper-scissors.  I always used to avoid this concept, but I remember reading something that David Sirlin, a game designer/tournament Street Fighter player mused on.  Something like this anyway:
If you take rock-paper-scissors and give 3 points for every won rock, 2 points for every scissors, and 1 for every paper, the game gets a little easier to analyze, and you get some tangible strategy.   Will your opponent play the odds and just go for Rock every time?  1/3 won Rocks is worth 3 papers after all;  Will you spend a lot of time going paper? This will lock your opponent into scissors or paper, so you will deny them their highest score.  You may lose, but oh well, your opponent gets 2 points instead of 3, and then you can try to land a lucky rock (that they can only punish with paper after all);  Will you stick with Scissors all the time, because it is the most balanced choice?

So what I’m trying to do here, is get the flavor of RPS, but have the choices not be absolute.  (IE If your opponent goes offense, there is a defensive stance that will make it easier to survive, or if your opponent sits and turtles, playing tactics and trying to get board control, you can potentially punish them heavily for that.  However, these are just there to assist.  You’re not going to be able to completely decimate your opponent every time because they flipped scissors and you flipped rock.

There will also be cards you can play, or effects that you can trigger that are dependent on certain stances.  This is the purpose of the Kanji printed on the cards.  Effects preceded by  Kanji can only be played in the stance that matches that Kanji.  (IE, when you see any effect that starts with “木” the effect can only be triggered in Hasso, which according to the source, is represented by the element “Wood”.  木 is Kanji for wood or tree, making it a great descriptor for the stance.  Hope that makes sense.)

Using this information, here are the problems I’m trying to solve.
-Create a basic cerebral gameplan for the game (not just a bunch of cards with values, and 2 players that know about 2/3 what is going on); the players should be able to analyze the board after a few games, know the best moves to make, and given that, know the best counter-moves.
-Adapt the 5 stance system to the game, with an attempt to capture its essence through base ideas and mechanics I am already familiar with.

Here is the first stance:

The very first thing you do in a turn is choose your stance.
Both players choose a stance and flip them at the same time.
(If the same stance is flipped, the player with the most form
allocated to attacks goes first, and if there is still a tie, you
will need to roll a die)  Note the 5 squares on the upper right
side of the text box, and how one is filled.
This is the turn order, each stance has an order in which the
player can act, and Hasso always goes first.  Make sense?

Also, certain characters are more at home in certain stances,
as seen on their cards.  The number next to each Kanji on the
character card represents how many cards the player draws
from the top of the deck while their character is in that stance.

Once your turn actually starts, you perform the actions listed on the card in the order they come up.

Hasso (Wood)

It is an offensive stance, named for one’s ability to respond to a situation in any direction. Waki and hassō are not commonly used in modern kendo, except in kata. -Wikipedia

Hasso is described as an aggressive stance, with its strength being an ability to act and respond to any direction.  Put into CCG language, I take this to mean it values initiative and speed over all else.
In many CCGs, there are “rush” decks who’s purpose is to create “threat” quickly before an opponent has an opportunity to answer it. (real life comparison: your stove is on fire, and you are just getting out of bed).  Not a huge deal in the short term, but the deck has the initiative, and it hopes you are unable to answer it.
Of rush decks, there are two types, one that is meant to achieve the victory condition as fast as possible before you can stop it (Orcs/Baratheon Power Rush/Some Red decks in MTG(?)), the other aims to be disruptive, and tries to limit your options quickly and early, so you will become prone and easy to prod to death later. (Lannister intrigue decks/Dark Elves)
“Act and respond in any direction” sounds reactive. It gives me the idea of a stance that is meant to disrupt what you are doing, rather then go balls to the wall for the victory condition. (which in this game, is defeating the other opponent)

That being said, Hasso is fast, but limited.  Damage is capped… that is, Hasso will only be able to deliver 66% of your maximum strength.
Attacks will have average damage as follows: weak but quick attacks will have a damage of 2, moderate attacks, a damage of 4, and strong attacks a damage of 6.
Because of this Hasso will be unable to break the 4 damage mark easily.
However, Hasso will be quick.  Hasso can play quick attacks the turn they come out, or moderate attacks the turn after.  In a situation where an opponent already has his form allocated this will be enough time to get a shot in while their defenses are down.

Hasso effects: There will be effects called “scenes”.  Scenes are basically Events in Game of Thrones, or Instants in MTG.  They are surprise single use effects that can only be used in their respective stances.
When both players reveal their Stances (think a very fixed version of A Game of Thrones’ plot card system) Hasso is the first to act, this could potentially give Hasso some interesting advantages.

With this card, if your opponent decides to not block your attack
to save form for their own upcoming strategy, you can punish
them for being greedy.  A lot is to be said for going first.

There are more stances to come, so keep following if you are interested to see what is next.

Basic breakdown-

In order to win in Blade of the Immortal, you have to be the first player to reach 20 honor.

No, I’m totally joking.

To win, you have to survive a duel.  Like most battles in BOTI the actual manga, the CCG consists of 1 on 1 duels.
You choose your favorite character, build a deck around that character, and go to blows with a friend.

But how the hell do we sword fight with cards? Yeah, it’s as awkward as it sounds. Bear with me though, I think I have a good way to work it out.

For this example, we’ll use Manji: hero of the manga, he just had breakfast and his morning jog. He’s ready to go with no distractions.  On his card we will place 10 tokens, these are known as Form.  A representation of Manji’s focus.
I like to use Black Go stones to represent these because of the small size, but whatever is good.
Anyway, like we said, he’s refreshed, alert, and ready to go.  Attack him, I dare you.  He’s a Swordsman, a Kenshi, yeah, he’s gonna ruin your shit.

Say you attack him, and your attack deals 3 damage.  Not bad, but not great.  Manji can spend 3 of his 10 form to block your attack, completely negating the damage, leaving him with 7 left.  Since he’s just standing there waiting for you to attack him, he can fully block 2 more of these attacks before he needs to rest, at the cost of 3 Form apiece.

If you give Manji a chance to rest, he will be able to regain his spent form, and block anew, but lets say he doesn’t.  You attack with your 3 damage attack again and he only has 1 Form with which to block.  He can spend the 1 Form to partially block the attack, and will take the 2 unaccounted for damage as actual health damage.  Do enough health damage, and Manji will fall and you will win.  (Just make sure you cut him into small pieces so he can’t regenerate, silly immortals)

This is all just assuming Manji sits there and lets you attack him, but he may attack you back, and you need to spend form to attack as well.

Here is an example of an attack. Throughout
the game, instead of just sitting there and
blocking like a dork, you can allocate form to attack cards
to damage your opponent as well.  The amount of
form needed to activate attacks is represented by the
number of boxes in the margin (just 1 for this attack)
the number above it is how much damage the attack deals.

This particular attack has a “reaction” effect. A “reaction” is an
effect that goes off when a certain trigger has been activated,
the trigger for this card is that the attack has dealt full damage.
So when this attack deals full damage, you may do whatever
ability the card gives you (though you don’t have to).

Tactics are cards that are played from your
hand that stay in play and augment your
character. The card is considered blank until
enough form is allocated to it to activate it.
The amount of form needed to power the card,
is represented by the white square in the
margin of the card.  Any time you recover your
form, you may return any or all form from a tactic
to your pool, but it is not required.

This tactic has an “Action” effect.  “Action” effects are
triggered by the player any time that they like.  There
are action windows and special restrictions related to
the Kanji that I will go into later, but just know that
these effects are typically there for the player whenever
they need it.

So, the crux of the game, is how will you manage your form, and punish your opponent for managing theirs poorly.  (I.E If your opponent spends a great deal of form on attacks, and you manage to dodge, he isn’t going to be able to block with much.)

And there’s the basic breakdown, if you can understand how this works, you understand the game in its essence.

You may also be wondering what the purpose of the Kanji displayed on the cards is.  This relates to attack stances, and this will be the focus of the next post.

Hello World!

Hey all!

I want to welcome you to my next card game project.  The Blade of the Immortal Customizable Card Game, based around Hiroaki Samura’s Blade of the Immortal manga.

I’m a student of graphic and game design, and I felt that given my interests, this was one of the best ways to get some hands-on experience with both.

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Anyway, yeah.  Blade of the Immortal is awesome, if you’ve ever liked Manga in your life, you should read it.  Everything about this series is just great.  Gore, body parts, swordfights, political intrigue, monsters, vengeance, geishas with 3 sectional staves… I mean really… the printed page just doesn’t get better.

And all we have to show for this awesome manga is what? an anime that doesn’t push the limits at all… and a zippo lighter?

I want this game to fill the void. To hopefully capture the essense of Blade, and get new people into reading the series, (but above all else, be a lot of fun.)

I’ll post the first card very soon, and give a breakdown of the game.