by 9inchnail
Hi,
I've recently purchased Star Realms (deckbuilding game with a space theme) for Android and really liked the concept. It is VERY similar to the DC DBG so I'm sure that it can somehow be transferred. English is not my first language so forgive me if it gets a little clunky.
If you know both games, I'm sure, you'll understand what I'm getting at and can help me work this out.
The main difference between the two games is that the two players are not fighting against a common enemy (the super-villain) but each other. You buy your cards, gain power just as usual, BUT you use that power to attack the other player. In Star Realms you have two currencies, one for trade, one for attack. We have to find a way to make it work with just the one power in DC. Maybe it works just fine, I haven't tested it, yet.
- Both players choose a hero
- same starter cards and you setup the game as usual but you ditch the super-villains
- variant: one player actually chooses one of the super-villains to play with. Since they don't have any bonus powers, the hero player can't use his either. Shouldn't affect the game that much, if you want, you can just make up powers for the villains. As soon as Forever Evil is released, you can just use the super villains in there.
- every player starts with the same amount of health points (50 or 100 maybe)
- you buy cards from the line-up as usual or you use your power to attack your opponent (or both, of course)
- defense cards can be used to protect yourself from attacks
- played locations also protect a player, you have to destroy them first before you can hit your opponent. The destroyed location goes back to the owner's discard pile
- you can also use hero or villain cards as bodyguards. You play them in front of you and then they have to be beaten, too before you can be attacked. Note: if you put a villain or hero in front of you, it's powers won't take effect, they are gone from your hand until they are defeated and put back into the discard pile.
You basically have to decide if you want to use them to bunker down or attack.
- optional: super heroes can only use heroes as bodyguards, super villains only villains. To keep it really thematic, you could also forbid heroes from purchasing villains and vice versa in the first place.
- variant: you could also permanently destroy cards or maybe "turn" your opponents fighters and get them into your own discard pile. Maybe you would have to pay the regular price to beat them, +2 to turn them. Something like that. Thematically, the bad guys would use some sort of mind control, the good guys would just bribe the enemy.
- this should be playable with more than two players, I just prefer head-to-head.
- what's missing right now is a way to heal yourself. There are no cards for that since there's no healing mechanic in the game. We would have to come up with something or accept the fact that you just can't heal. One possibility would be to destroy a card and gain as many HP as that card costs. Something like that. The same way you could spend HP to destroy wounds in your hand.
That is basically it. I hope you get the picture, it's still an outline but I think this could work. I really recommend getting Star Realms for android or iOS, it's really fun and should illustrate what I'm trying to do here. At first I thought the one currency would make this hard to apply since you can get combos that get you 40, 50 or 60 power which would take a huge chunk of the enemies' HP. Then again, I've been hit in Star Realms with 50+ attacks, too. You can always increase HP if this really is a problem and the bodyguard mechanic should also factor in here since you don't have that in Star Realms.
What do you guys think? Maybe someone can playtest this and report back.
You're welcome to add ideas and improvements.
