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It is with great pleasure we can reveal our main secret gift for our backers which we've had up our sleeves for the past year. The Maelstrom's Edge card game! As of today, every $90 and up pledge will receive a copy of the card game for free!



Although the tabletop game is our focus for creating tactical, squad-based skirmish battles, the universe of Maelstrom's Edge is much bigger. We wanted to represent the larger scale conflict going on across planets and star systems, as factions compete for resources to build fleets so they can evacuate people from planets doomed by the Maelstrom. We've designed the Maelstrom's Edge card game to be a quick, complementary game to the miniatures game, giving context on an interstellar level to the battles being fought on the tabletop.

In the Maelstrom's Edge card game, you control a fleet in space which is in close proximity to a planetary system doomed by the Maelstrom. The planets are full of people desperately trying to flee, and are loaded with useful resources for long term space travel from water to ore to organics. Unfortunately for you, a rival faction controlled by your opponent is in the same system and wants the same resources that you do. You only have a finite number of ships to harvest resources, so some resources and people will inevitably need to be left behind. While you are busy harvesting resources, there is a constant flow of spacecraft coming from the planets, and they are ready to pledge their allegiance to whoever they reach first.

Manage your fleet, counter your opponent, stockpile resources and save a population, but beware the Maelstrom can strike randomly and at any time in the Maelstrom's Edge card game.

The Maelstrom's Edge tabletop game uses cards for missions and unit profiles. At the same time, we've spent a lot of time and money developing a large amount of high quality artwork, including a broad collection of spaceships for our universe. As card production gets notably cheaper per unit the more you make, it did not take much of a leap for us to realise that for very little extra cost, we could add an entire additional game to the Maelstrom's Edge boxed set in the form of a Maelstrom's Edge card game.

It is no secret when you go into a gaming store that large numbers of people are usually playing collectable card games, and with limited gaming space available in many places, a full on wargame is not always possible. The Maelstrom's Edge card game is designed to be a solution to that problem, allowing you to get your Maelstrom's Edge fix and bring in a wider number of gamers to play against, hopefully getting them interested in the tabletop game as well. Each game takes around 20 minutes to play, so when you dont have time for a full game of Maelstrom's Edge, the card game can fill the gap. We've also been able to enjoy the Maelstrom's Edge card game in pubs, waiting rooms and similar locations where a full tabletop game would not be possible.

We started development on the supplementary card game about two years ago, and have been tinkering and tweaking it ever since. We are pretty happy with it now, but it still needs some more playtesting before we put the rules to the final print, and we'll be happy to share the rules with you soon. Our long term goal is to make this into a standalone gaming product, but in the short term, we'll be focused on getting the cards into as many people's hands as possible and developing a card game which, like everything else in the Maelstrom's Edge suite of products, stands the test of time. The card game's development is independent of the rest of Maelstrom's Edge, so has no impact on the schedule or quality of the tabletop game.

We'll be providing one set of cards per boxed set for free right now, including in the no-models boxed set option! The final card count is not yet fixed, but it should be around 35 or so. All text shown is placeholder content, so please allow for its simplicity. There are five types of card, so lets look at them now...

Planet Cards



These are the heart of the game and four are provided and needed. Each planet generates a number of resources each turn, indicated by the number in the lower centre of the card. This can be modified by events such as a plague or rebellion. When resources cant be removed from a planet, they are stockpiled on the planet's card, building up ready for harvesting or destruction.

Syphon Cards



Your syphon cards allow you to extract resources (including people) from a world. Planets are large enough that you and your opponent can syphon at the same time, but you only get three syphons in the entire game for mining, physical resources and population evacuation. If you dont defend your syphon ships, you are going to end up in a very difficult spot.

Military Cards



Defense and offense are carried out by your military, which can consist of everything from small scout ships to full mobile starbases.

Modifier Cards



Ships and planets can be buffed with modifier cards, altering their strength or other attributes, but every card comes with a cost and needs to be purchased with your precious resources.

Event Cards



Events can occur at any time in the game, and can decimate or multiply your plans. The most dangerous event of all is the arrival of the Maelstrom, which can happen twice per game. When the Maelstrom arrives, a random planet is permanantly destroyed along with all cards attached to it. The planet is chosen in a high stakes bidding war in which you and your opponent must each decide privately on a random number between 0 and 10, and then those numbers are added together. You then count along the planets, going back to the first after the last, and the planet you end on gets destroyed, leading to some very entertaining second-guessing and bluffing, and some very delicate resource and placement management. Do you put all eggs in one basket and hope for the best, or risk spreading yourself too thin to protect your syphons from assault?

The game ends when a player is left with three or fewer cards, and no more cards are left in the draw deck. The winner is the player with the most resources in their stockpile at the moment the game ends. You can usually only play two cards per turn, but certain events can allow you to change the timing of the end game to your advantage and catch your opponent short, from playing an extra card to depleting their resource stockpile.

We've had a lot of fun developing the Maelstrom's Edge card game, and have had instances of playtesters immediately wanting to play again after their first test game which bodes well for the quality of our rules. We are very excited to share this game with you and polish the development of it with our Kickstarter backers. Thank you for your support and we look forward to sharing more information about this game with you in the future! Please feel free to ask any questions you might have from this teaser!

This is a really cool idea. I like that as with the rest of this game so far you have made something new and all your own.

That being said, I don't know if this game mechanic was really the best way to go with a card game. "Kill your opponent" has never failed to be enough of an incentive to play games such as Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone. Some of Fantasy Flight's card games are centered around objectives but those games also aren't as widespread popular or stood the test of time so we can't predict this games success based on those models.

M:tG has been popular the world over for many years and HS has become massively popular and competitive over a very short window of time because of an easy to learn, hard to master system which encourages laypeople who have no investment in the setting to pick up and play the game anyway

The fluff behind magic or hearthstone is brilliant but you don't have to convince them to like it just to play a game with you. I fear the opposite is true for the MEdge: CCG.

This seems more like a niche board game, for people that already enjoy Maelstroms Edge, played with cards instead of a board. The "take it anywhere" hook is nice, but if I have no one to play with, except the board gaming group, what's the point of taking my deck with me?

I predict taking the whole cardset with me and having to give someone the other deck (which I must balance against my deck so I don't crush them) and having to explain the whole universe and teach them the game system every time I want to play someone new. I can basically never count on having an opponent, especially not one that is higher skill level than I would be having taught all these new players.

A background-centric, non-intuitive game model is not something that sells starter decks to the masses or randomized booster packs to people that already have trouble getting games. That's 2x the chance of getting useless cards that I have buying a Magic the Gathering booster.

I assume the event deck is set in stone. Because if it isn't and you plan to release more event cards for people to add to the "random unbiased equalizer" how do you keep people from stacking the deck in favor of the deck type they are using? Such as a denial player having events deck made entirely of maelstroms?

The obvious choice is to leave it alone, which automatically makes your expansions from here on in more boring because you can basically only get a few types of cards. Planets, modifiers, and ships.

A choice to have a set event deck (ala the damage deck from x wing) makes a competitive scene harder to foster because the natural randomness of a shuffled deck, even one built to the most efficient possible competitive standard, is now compounded and possibly invalidated by which random events you draw out of the deck. The only way to reign this back in is modifiers that mitigate certain events. You pay a premium in deck space and board advantage but if you have a safety in place when the maelstrom destroys a planet and the opponent doesn't, you now have board advantage and deck advantage. X Wing uses this model with its critical damage effects and still maintains competitiveness

To sum it back up there are two questions I'm asking in this analysis: 1) how do you plan to draw a wider audience into this game? and 2) how do you plan to make this game both fun and competitive so that people continue to play this game for years to come?

I think the second question is already answered for me in regards to the wargame. And the first question has been beat to death on the tabletop discussion thread so I'll leave that horse alone. So this is all about the card game only.

Thanks for your thoughts bocatt. There seem to be some misconceptions of what the card game actually is there so I'll try to clear them up first.

'Kill your opponent' is one of the objectives you can aim for, though the objective to get the most resources is a very natural feeling one too (in the form of tokens/chits/coins/whatever markers you have on you at the time time and want to use). Citadels, Dominion, etc work just fine without needing to know a detailed backstory and not trying to kill people. You can play an entirely pacifist game and still win if you are that type of gamer, though it gets a lot more interesting when you try and double cross your opponent.

There is only one deck which is shared between the players. There is no deck building beyond both players starting with (moreorless) the same hand. When you want to play someone, you are not playing against a deck they've made, you just use the one deck you have.

The card game is incredibly simple and fast to pick up. It takes all of three minutes to explain the rules which cover less than a single side of paper. There is no obligation to know or appreciate the Maelstrom's Edge background - we've found the artwork on the cards strong enough to sustain and build interest from neutral playtesters we've brought in who have not seen anything on the fiction or tabletop side of things.

It is definitely a card game rather than a board game with cards, which plays in a fairly similar manner to a hybrid of the best bits of MTG, the star wars CCG and probably a touch of the game of thrones card game.

With regards to your questions,
1) how do we plan to draw a wider audience to the card game? - beyond the fact that we'll have a built in large crossover audience from the tabletop game and those who are invested in the Maelstrom's Edge fiction (well over 1000 people already), the game is fast to learn and entertaining, with our early adopters rarely stopping at one game and losers immediately wanting rematches instead of ragequitting over bad mechanics.

2) how do you make the game fun?
The mechanics are simple, but heavily balanced so that if you try and play one way, you are left vulnerable in another. The cost to play actions and cards eats away at your chance at victory while costing your opponent longer term gains, but then they can turn around and do the same things back to you, or build up their resources early and then try and cripple you in the later game. There are three distinct phases in the game that have evolved naturally from the way people have played it - the build up, the strategy phase and the end game. All three present distinct opportunities to change fortunes and win or lose which keeps things fun and interesting throughout, and the change in phase is typically triggered by people becoming desperate and willing to take bigger risks.

3) how do you make the game competitive?
We've carefully balanced it to date, but have significant scope to expand it. Deck building is not part of the game now, with a single shared deck, but deck building your initial hand (with restrictions) is the first thing we would like to explore. Adding faction/race bonuses is another element we've had fun trying out. Every event and action costs you points to play, so everything in the game is a double edged sword which needs careful consideration before playing, keeping the card game very competitive by design.