Steel Plains is part Deck Building Collectable Card Game, part strategy board game where players design and vote for up to X new cards to be cycled into the game very month. Up to Y cards can be cycled out of the game each month.

Inspiration for the actual gameplay mechanics are drawn heavily from Dvorak, Magic: The Gathering and Mojang's Scrolls

Overarching Gameplay Goals:

• A players turn has to be entirely uninterruptible by other players so that games can be played asynchronously and over possibly longer periods of time.
• Have enough definition in the factions of the game so that players can vote correctly on what cards suit which colours.
• Hexagonal shared board where pieces get placed and played as time progresses

The setting is general, family friendly, light fantasy.

Some specific plans:

• Have a three month cycle for cards:

  • In the first month, a card is in concept status, and only the top X voted in (more "in" votes than "out") can make it to the next stage
  • The second month of card cycle is art and coding, and again an "in" or "out" vote applies.
  • The third month is beta testing of all cards that made it in, and again, an "in" or "out" vote applies - this will include any previously removed cards that have regained an "in" vote
  • All cards that made it in at the beta testing stage gets accepted and "printed" into the main game.

• Card removal cycle:

  • Every month, all cards currently in "print" are available to be voted out, the top Y voted out will be pushed into an area where they can be revoted and third-stage beta tested before possibly bringing it back into the game.

• Card printing cycles

  • Every card "printed" and handed to a player will have its edition stamped onto it so that it can increase in value over time
  • Still thinking about how to limit print cycles of cards otherwise.

• Factions

  • Green: Nature
  • Blue: Willpower
  • Red: Chaos
  • White: Light

Primary Card Types:

• Creature: Summon a movable unit on the board
• Structure: Summon an unmovable unit on the board
• Land: Place a land type on a friendly or Steel Plain (unclaimed) hex
• Spell: A once off effect that changes the state of the world in some way
• Enchantment: An local or global effect that sticks around as long as the enchantment is in play
• Equipment: A physical item, placed on a creature and can be moved, dropped and have no specific owner.

Decks & Mechanics:

• Dual decks:
  • Main deck, minimum 40 cards, limit of 3 per kind
  • Land deck, minimum 30 cards, limit of 4 per non-basic type, no limit for basic land types.
• Discarded cards get added to the discard pile
• If you need to draw a card from your deck and there are no cards left, shuffle discard pile and it becomes your deck. Effectively bottomless card pile
• All cards, when played has an effect and goes to the discard pile, so the card itself is only a 'spell' as such, never the actual artifact.

Land Placement:

• Inversely proportional to base size:
  • 1 hex : 3 per turn
  • 2-3 hexes: 2 per turn
  • 4-5 hexes: 1 per turn
• Separate land 'hand' of 4 cards, replenishes to 4 every turn.
• Each land hex has an amount of space
• Land types:
  • Plains: White/Green/Fast/Big
  • Mountains: Red/Green/Slow/Small
  • Rivers: Blue/White/Medium/Medium
  • Hills: White/Red/Medium/Medium
  • Swamp: Red/Blue/Slow/Big
  • Tundra: Green/Blue/Fast/Medium
  • Forest: Green/Red/Slow/Medium
  • Mudflats: Blue/White/Slow/Small

Subtypes:

• Any card can have arbitrary keyworded subtypes that can be referenced by other cards
• Basic lands implictly have the same subtype as its title, along with 'land'
• Other lands can optionally share a subtype of a basic land, along with 'land'

Mana:

• The function of mana is to provide resources for your spells in hand and activated abilities of units on the board.
• A land can be sapped as a resource for mana, once per game.
• Sapped mana expands your total accessible mana pool for every round, and doesn't rely on the land any longer.
• You can only sap a single land per turn.
• You can only sap lands that you own.

Bases:

• Players start with a single base and can expand up to 5 blocks (normal 7-sized map)
• Each expansion costs gold
• Each base produces a certain amount of gold per turn
• Each base has its own health counter.
• Once a base is destroyed, it cannot be rebuilt by normal means.
• Once all of a player's bases are destroyed, they lose the game.

Gold's function:

• Gold is consumed by units on the board for various activated abilities.
• Construct extra bases

Download from http://example.com/FIXME.

FIXME: explanation

$ java -jar steel-plains-0.1.0-standalone.jar [args]

FIXME: listing of options this app accepts.

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Copyright © 2013 FIXME

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License, the same as Clojure.