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by andrewflnr 31 days ago
Interesting. I've been kicking around the idea of designing a similar game (probably in computer format tbh), specifically with the idea of mana being geographically located in a hex grid.

Any ideas for a more balanced version, or other thoughts about it? I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be curious to hear more details.
1 comments
sfRattan 31 days ago
It was mostly unbalanced because Magic: The Gathering wasn't designed with movement, range, or position in mind. So there were all kinds of effects interactions that didn't make sense and we always had to rule things on the fly. And there were definitely arguments about which cards should be faster or slower.

Other games to look at include the Undaunted [1] series by Osprey Games:

- They use deckbuilding-esque mechanics to simulate squad level combat in WWII.

- They also have staggered tiles creating a hex-like board. When I first saw undaunted I thought, "oh, I did that years ago with Mana cards!"

- There are little punch out tokens representing the cards in your deck. Who you have in your hand each turn represents who you can give orders to on the board.

[1]: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/63557/series-undau...

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andrewflnr 31 days ago
Gotcha. Hopefully I'll fare better designing it from scratch with that format in mind!

Thanks for the reference too. There doesn't seem to be a lot of data on that page but I'll look into it as far as I can.

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sfRattan 31 days ago
It's BoardGameGeek's aggregation of all the games in the Undaunted series. You have to click on the specific games (e.g. Undaunted: Normandy or Undaunted: Battle of Britain) to get the detailed info on each.

Edit: in the "Linked Games" tab.

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