Discussion: Evolution Cards

So as we have done a whole heck of a lot of changes, another thing we now need to consider is the balance of the evolution cards.

Before the evolution cards would add or subtract from different attributes of each species. As we discovered in the second playtest session this was too much for the players to handle. We noticed that the players would end up with situations where a player would perform multiple calculations (i.e. 4-2+1+2) to even determine if they won or lost a battle. Though this worked for us when we were playtesting it because of our familiarity with the system it was not something a player new to the game could handle with ease.

To solve this, we think it would be best to have only four types of evolution cards. These would be:

• Camouflage (Must have total strength of 4 or higher to beat card)
  
• Wings (+1 Movement)
  
• Parasite (Steal an opponents evolution card)
  
• Spines (+1 Strength)

The main change is that we have combined all the logisitics of evolution (attack, health) into the one attribute of strength. Now the issue is we need to think about balancing the deck with respect to these evolution cards. My personal thoughts on the matter are to have the following setup:

• 1 Camouflage card
• 1 Wings Card
• 2 Parasite Cards
• 3 Spines Cards

Wings and Camouflage are the strongest cards and should be minimized because we don't players creating invincible characters or winning the game too fast. The parasite cards add the nice "gotcha" factor and the spines cards are just a good base to have since the battles are now settled by the nice balance of strategic chance (or "str-ance" if you will :-P).

Thoughts?

-Ryan