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 Overread wrote:
AA can allow a general advance across an area; it just doesn't allow an uncontested general advance.

Right, but if you do a "grand activation," you set yourself up for a bunch of similar activations, effectively recreating IGOUGO.

I have seen AA games turn into that.

Considering the scale of 40K in general you are well beyond uncontested movement, you are right in the killzone and battlezone where contesting should be a thing.

The problems with 40k are legion, and turn order is merely one of them.

That being said, there is a place for a low-effort high-visibility kind of wargame that GW used to produce. And as I've said, beer and pretzels games are quite popular - not everyone want 100 percent of their brain engaged.

In terms of mechanics, it's about knowing the desired play style and ensuring that the mechanics support this.

I'm too busy to do anything about it, but I'd really like to build some card-based wargames that involve minimal mechanics and focuses on player interplay rather than complexity. Keep the engagement primarily social. Someday, maybe I'll get the time.

I would say they matter only in as much as they generate the outcomes required for the game to feel like it should.

I would even say that mechanics that draw attention to themselves are bad. Mechanics shouldn't need to be visible if they're doing their job right.

If a mechanic is too visible then it becomes less about the game and more about the mechanic.

This can be more or less true depending on how abstract the game is. Yahtzee for example is completely abstract and the mechanic IS the game. Roll dice and get combos.

An rpg however, uses the mechanic as a structured method to represent something else entirely and so the mechanics shouldn't be the focus of playing the game.

 Hellebore wrote:
I would say they matter only in as much as they generate the outcomes required for the game to feel like it should.

I would even say that mechanics that draw attention to themselves are bad. Mechanics shouldn't need to be visible if they're doing their job right.

If a mechanic is too visible then it becomes less about the game and more about the mechanic.

I think this is generally correct. You want the mechanic to feel organic to what you are doing. My favorite mechanics are ones that accomplish several things at once while remaining simple. This is why I like card-driven (but not necessarily card-focused) games. If you draw off of a deck, you get some nice random variation, you get "fog of war," and you also get selective intelligence (as the player's hand grows, some kind of buildup is taking place).

And even things like the dummy button are useful because it's important means that the first thing you will do is check it, and in a military context, checklists are very much A Thing.

Conversely, the simplicity of the D&D system of rolling vs AC continually became more complex, and competing systems went even farther, requiring d100s to determine the exact results of critical hits, forcing comparisons between type of weapon and type of armor, speed factor, etc. At that point it was more about mastering the mechanic than having any kind of meaningful roleplaying experience.

Stuff needs to be fun too. A lot of people seem to forget that in favour of stuff that's clever and probably fun to think about, but less actual fun to apply.

Nomeny wrote:
Stuff needs to be fun too. A lot of people seem to forget that in favour of stuff that's clever and probably fun to think about, but less actual fun to apply.

Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I'm leaning into card-based systems. People love to look over a hand of cards and bluff each other. Or pretend that their five cards are all super-powerful. I'm not talking about a CCG, btw, but a system where cards function as logistics and rapidly deployable combat power.

There's also the fun of watching a rival player get his hand totally cleaned out, and everyone knowing that it's open season until the guy gets another draw.

Thirty years ago, I was one of those guys who wanted MOAR CHARTS and who conflated complexity with realism. But now I'm looking at leaner designs that cut to the chase. I want quick, easy mechanics that allow for the possibility of replay in the same session.

Cards are a popular trend lately thanks to Gloomhaven, Malifaux, and Kingdom Death.

I think when we start to consider fun we also have to consider the objective of the game itself.

Is the game designed to be fun, or are you building a complex faithful simulator where fun is incidental to accuracy and simulation detail.


Different games will aim for different objectives with their game system and a big part of game design is working out what you want and then building a set of mechanics around that objective.

Part of that is also player feedback once the game is live in the world. Esp if its a long term not a one-and-done single release.


I also think presentation comes into this too. A good mechanic presented poorly or in a complicated way can be un-fun or a bad mechanic in the game.

Cards are often popular as a tool because they let you have abilities in the game which can be quickly referenced and allow you a more complex status per-model whilst allowing easy tracking of the information.

 Overread wrote:
I think when we start to consider fun we also have to consider the objective of the game itself.

Is the game designed to be fun, or are you building a complex faithful simulator where fun is incidental to accuracy and simulation detail.


Different games will aim for different objectives with their game system and a big part of game design is working out what you want and then building a set of mechanics around that objective.

Part of that is also player feedback once the game is live in the world. Esp if its a long term not a one-and-done single release.


I also think presentation comes into this too. A good mechanic presented poorly or in a complicated way can be un-fun or a bad mechanic in the game.

Cards are often popular as a tool because they let you have abilities in the game which can be quickly referenced and allow you a more complex status per-model whilst allowing easy tracking of the information.

Fun is also wildly subjective. Which is why the generally accepted ultimate goal of game design is engagement. Our first instinct of course is to say it should be fun, but under even the slightest scrutiny it starts to fall apart. Fun is next to impossible to define. And what is most fun for one is a miserable time for another. What about games that are meant to make you feel bad? (Papers Please)


Cards can be a very excellent interface element that lightens mental load while creating tangible components to interact with in your play space. I like to convert random tables into card decks so I am not flipping around in a book and reading tables to get results.

Cards can simulate pseudo-randomness, and there's also neat ways information can be locked together. The board game Ankh does some really neat things, for example, by giving each player a deck of seven cards containing actions that can be played during conflicts (including an action that enables a player to collect played cards back to their hand).

Nomeny wrote:
Cards can simulate pseudo-randomness, and there's also neat ways information can be locked together. The board game Ankh does some really neat things, for example, by giving each player a deck of seven cards containing actions that can be played during conflicts (including an action that enables a player to collect played cards back to their hand).

Kemet does a similar thing for combat. For those that don't know kemet is basically a egyptian themed fast paced version of risk with extra bit. But the game has no dice at all. When you get int a fight you have a deck of 8 cards each with varying mixes of 3 attributes. Strength (which gets added to the number of guys you got to win the fight), Blood drops (which kill enemy troops) and sheilds (which cancel blood drops against you). Each fight you pick 2 cards. 1 to discard and 1 to play and you don't get them back until you have used all your cards. This way your opponents only ever know which cards you actually used and never which cards have been discarded secretly i.e. they have no idea which cards you have left.

It removes RNG and means fights are entirely an exercise in player agency and decision making. Pretty great.

 Lance845 wrote:

Nomeny wrote:
Cards can simulate pseudo-randomness, and there's also neat ways information can be locked together. The board game Ankh does some really neat things, for example, by giving each player a deck of seven cards containing actions that can be played during conflicts (including an action that enables a player to collect played cards back to their hand).

Kemet does a similar thing for combat. For those that don't know kemet is basically a egyptian themed fast paced version of risk with extra bit. But the game has no dice at all. When you get int a fight you have a deck of 8 cards each with varying mixes of 3 attributes. Strength (which gets added to the number of guys you got to win the fight), Blood drops (which kill enemy troops) and sheilds (which cancel blood drops against you). Each fight you pick 2 cards. 1 to discard and 1 to play and you don't get them back until you have used all your cards. This way your opponents only ever know which cards you actually used and never which cards have been discarded secretly i.e. they have no idea which cards you have left.

It removes RNG and means fights are entirely an exercise in player agency and decision making. Pretty great.

Freebooter's Fate resolves combat (at least melee combat) with cards. Each player has a set of cards representing the either 5 or 6 hit locations (I haven't played in a while so I forget the specifics, but eg head, torso, leg etc). IIRC, striker picks 3 cards, victim picks 2, matching cards are discarded and damage done to the body parts on the remaining striker cards. Sure, you might want a head shot because it's the best outcome, but your opponent knows this, but you know that your opponent knows this, etc.....................

Cards can be good game aids, I make unit cards for my intro games because it's much more digestible for a new player than looking at condensed stat lines - you can put the rules text on them for all the special rules so people don't have to look elsewhere.

But they do add to clutter around the table. I think you want a bit of space off to the side to organise things.

As for using them in game, I always loved the old magic and psychic phases in Warhammer. I have to say I've generally stayed away from card based systems other than that - I like dice!

If you want to talk about fun, we have a thread for that.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/812780.page

Lance and I are closely aligned here. Fun is wildly subjective and a designer should not design "for fun" because no one has the same idea on what that is. Plus, they are often contradictory.

it comes back to the nature of the game.

poker is purely abstract and the mechanics of the cards themselves is the point. so is yahtzee.

Most of the games discussed on dakka are simulations/models of some kind. There are layers between the mechanics and the output of the game.

An analogy might be computer code. From binary up to the different languages right to the graphical output.

Yahtzee is like playing a game in binary, you're just generating numbers and hoping for better numbers than someone else (and while this is technically true of all number generating games, the focus and feeling changes).

But go up to something like halo, fallout etc, and although every decision being made still uses the binary, the output and point of the game is translated through multiple languages into a visual action. That separation changes the focus of the game from the literal numbers generated, to the visual elements represented by those numbers.

And while that's a somewhat arbitrary distinction, it's clear from the psychology of gaming it makes a MASSIVE difference.


You could, for example, play halo in binary, just having the numbers generated pop up, if you knew that a certain set of combinations meant you shot someone etc (like reading the matrix code).


For wargames etc, those additional layers of abstraction between the generated numbers and the miniature actions changes the focus away from the mechanic itself.


IMO you can see when a mechanic starts to override the game experience if people start referring to it directly, rather than its outcome.

The phrase 'fishing for 6s' suggests the focus of the game has shifted from the outcome to the mechanic, which imo isn't ideal in a wargame.

I dunno, to me fishing for 6s means the game is overly simplistic and has no substance

I was fishing for 6s last night in Blood Bowl, because I was trying to throw a goblin at someone with the ball. It worked the first time, and less well the second time. Blood Bowl is a great game for keeping the dice mechanics a part of the action on the board.

The game didn't rely on you fishing for sixes to work though.

In current 40k if you build your army around devastating wounds, you are literally playing the game by fishing for 6s.

 Lance845 wrote:
Cards can be a very excellent interface element that lightens mental load while creating tangible components to interact with in your play space. I like to convert random tables into card decks so I am not flipping around in a book and reading tables to get results.

Absolutely. If you use "supply points" or logistics tables, eyes will glaze over and interest will fade. But if you draw supply cards along with combat units, replacements, etc., suddenly the eyes light up because it's all so exciting.

You get a nice fog of war element as well, as people pretend they have more (or less!) power than they do. The cards themselves are obvious, but people can do fun things like fan them or stack them tightly, further immersing them in the gaming environment.

Open speculation on who is holding what further deepens the engagement. Cards are wonderful.

 Hellebore wrote:
The game didn't rely on you fishing for sixes to work though.

In current 40k if you build your army around devastating wounds, you are literally playing the game by fishing for 6s.

Well yes. Likewise you don't have to build your army around devastation wounds (I'm assuming, I quit in 8th). Generally you're rolling dice and hoping for the best (or worst if your opponent is rolling them). I think the difference is that Blood Bowl lets you decide when the dice are going to be rolled, and in what order. You could probably replace them with cards very easily.

Nomeny wrote:
Well yes. Likewise you don't have to build your army around devastation wounds (I'm assuming, I quit in 8th). Generally you're rolling dice and hoping for the best (or worst if your opponent is rolling them). I think the difference is that Blood Bowl lets you decide when the dice are going to be rolled, and in what order. You could probably replace them with cards very easily.

One of the things that makes cards great is that the luck usually happens before the conflict is resolved. You know what you have, and it could be really good, but you don't know what the opponents have.

So you've got the dice-rolling equivalent of a 6. When do you use it? Does the other guy have one? Both use a certain randomness, but with cards it's about how you use it rather than the instant fact of a roll.

Mixing cards and dice seems to be something of a recipe for dissappointment. Mixing cards and miniatures is also tricky because cards kind of takes attention away from what is going on with the board and miniatures.

I disagree.

Forbidden Stars mixes cards and dice to create a very engaging (albeit a bit too time consuming for a 4-player game) combat system.

Gloomhaven uses cards to manage character actions to an absolutely great effect, even though you only play two every round. One of the most elegant and most intellectually rewarding tactical combats in tabletop games IMO*.

Both games are easily my top ones in their respective categories (and not just for me, as their BGG ranks show).

*-and of course other games, like Super Fantasy Brawl or Skytear use cards very well to determine what miniature characters do in combat.

I don't automatically dislike cards in my miniatures games.

I think they can be used well. But in a traditional wargame, I think they work best when the game is very "zoomed out" and then they simulate things like supply, morale, confusion with orders and so on.

I don't like cards for my lower level, more skirmish orientated game. I guess my point is, if my in game POV is that I'm the general in the backfield controlling a huge army, then cards used to bring in some of the randomness and chaos of that is immersive. Being a general is about managing chaos and creating more order out of it than your opponent.

But if I'm playing a squad based skirmish game, then my perspective is much more focused, and the cards feel like an intrusion into the simulation.

 Da Boss wrote:
I don't automatically dislike cards in my miniatures games.

I think they can be used well. But in a traditional wargame, I think they work best when the game is very "zoomed out" and then they simulate things like supply, morale, confusion with orders and so on.

I don't like cards for my lower level, more skirmish orientated game. I guess my point is, if my in game POV is that I'm the general in the backfield controlling a huge army, then cards used to bring in some of the randomness and chaos of that is immersive. Being a general is about managing chaos and creating more order out of it than your opponent.

But if I'm playing a squad based skirmish game, then my perspective is much more focused, and the cards feel like an intrusion into the simulation.

As you mentioned, cards can be a great randomization/resource management mechanic, and you can use them to power miniatures as well as conventional boardgaming (which is my thing).

But they also are an efficient way of dealing with character models and their special abilities. A card is a lot more portable and accessible than a spreadsheet or army roster.

I think the trick with cards however they are used - as information or as random pulls - is to avoid the feeling that you're playing a card game with models rather than playing a miniature game with cards.

The difference between the two can be subtle and sometimes a mater of perspective, but in general those who play miniature games want a miniature game where the models have meaning/impact/influence in the game. Where their 3D position (or at least 2D) plays into the game in a meaningful way.

If the card use replaces them to the point where the model is almost not required then sometimes in the structure of the miniature game has gone wrong.





Other issue can arise from things like having a card system and then never printing enough (eg GW does this all the time with info-cards); or having cards that regularly update but not making updates easily accessible/accessible at all (Warmachine 3rd edition developed this problem).

Cards as information packets works quite well. I make cards for all my One Page Rules units, and this helps my buddy who is not a wargamer to grasp what he can do on the battlefield - he has to pick up and look at one card per unit, and all the rules are printed on the card including USRs in full. When I made fixes to the rules I was able to put those on the cards as well.

Of course, it's a reasonable investiture of time to do that, and it's meant that once I had a version of OPR I was happy with, I stuck with it and didn't move on to newer versions, because they update quite a lot and I'd have to be constantly editing my cards and then printing and sticking new ones. There's something to be said for a stable game.

 Overread wrote:
I think the trick with cards however they are used - as information or as random pulls -

Don't forget cards as an interactive, managable pool of player options. It may be random or deterministic, strategic or tactical, but still effects of these cards determine what models/troops/characters can do, so it's not really a card game at all.

Twilight Struggle would be random and strategic in this example with players drawing cards from the same deck and playing them to affect the board state.

Excellent combat system in A Game Of Thrones is deterministic and strategic - players always know what leader cards their opponents have (and how much power their troops represent), so you could think combat is entirely deterministic there, but so much is affected by bluffs, negotiation, secretly placed orders...very thematic and a system that I dearly love -0 randomness, piles of player-driven uncertainty and tension.

Gloomhaven does a lot with cards but still is a tactical dungeon crawler on a map first and foremost. You just get a couple of cards there, 6-8, and play two each turn. One of them determines your initiative and for your move you choose one top and one bottom action to perform.


Used cards go to discard, so your hand gets smaller and smaller and you need to plan your turns in advance (love when games make me do that!). Once out of options you need to rest, refreshing your hand but you lose one card permanently. You also lose a card like that when you use one of the more powerful actions or when you use it to deny damage from one source. When you can't play cards anymore it's game over for your character.

So a pool of available actions, cooldown system, hit points, endgame timer, a crapTON of decisions from just a handful of cards and still the board and miniatures and positioning is where the actual game takes place! Love this design!

I'm inclined to fall quite heavily on the "yes it matters" camp. I think the mechanics matter alot. Some mechanics are more fun to play and some are faster than others. As someone who likes fun-fast games, fun-fast mechanics are absolutely core to my enjoyment of the game. Some mechanics (or combinations) are objectively faster than others and some are subjectively more fun.

A few examples:

-I love the gambling push-your-luck mechanic of Song of Blades. It's the core of the game and is quite a bit of fun. The game would be completely different with out it.

-Polyhedral dice are fun. In Space Weirdos not only do you get to roll lots of fun dice, but the utilization of those dice makes for very smooth ranges of probabilities. A friend of mine explains better than I here:
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2023/02/space-weirdos-review-and-number-crunching/

-Mech Attack's Damage grid (lifted from Centurion) provides a fun and visual way to both abstractly represent mech damage and visually reflect the different damage from different weapon types. It's core to the way the game functions.

-Even delightfully un-original Grimdark Future manages to put the fun of Buckets of dice (some of us like that) in a format that is fast and fun. It breaks no new ground, but boils a fun mechanic down to almost it's simplest form. One might even argue that it's fantastic "Army Forge" program for listbuilding is a set of mechanics that adds greatly to the overall game experience.

All of these are examples of mechanics that matter to the games they are from. Surely there are different ways to do any of them, but in all cases that would drastically change the feel of the game.

Cyel wrote:

Excellent combat system in A Game Of Thrones is deterministic and strategic - players always know what leader cards their opponents have (and how much power their troops represent), so you could think combat is entirely deterministic there, but so much is affected by bluffs, negotiation, secretly placed orders...very thematic and a system that I dearly love -0 randomness, piles of player-driven uncertainty and tension.

Fog of war is a wonderful thing and cards are the best way to do this. So many ways to do it - a guy has a huge hand, but is it all low-value cards? Oh, he's only dropping three, but wow, what a trio!

Simply moving models across a map and rolling dice loses this aspect of war, which I would argue is hugely important.

Cards are great, but I never use them for a simple reason.

Cards are a barrier to getting a game completed and in the hands of players. They are another piece of logistics that I need to build and coordinate, create the distribution channel, and figure out how to get the to people.

I hate to say it, but anything that can stop a game from being completed and put in the hands of players I tend to ditch. That includes bespoke components, a lot of custom chits, cards, boards, or special dice. I know tools and providers for all of this things exist, but it is another piece of post-production to manage. Words are cheap and easy to distribute in this day-and-age. That is my preference as an Indie guy.

Afterall, you can't be a game designer if you never get a game in people's hands.