What If I Made Show Accurate CardWars? - Devlog 00

what's Card Wars It's a fantasy card game that's super complicated and awesome but well no it's kind of stupid never mind my goal is to create a show accurate tabletop version of Card Wars the iconic Adventure Time card game and have decided to publicly document that suffering there are already official adaptations of the card game but they take a lot of Liberties to make a digestible playable game I intend to take as few of these Liberties as possible to make an overly complicated mess of a game which is what cardboards presents itself as in the show this first devlog is going to serve as an introduction to the series so I'm going to begin by picking apart all the information and footage we given to figure out what we already know and what rules and systems I'm going to have to fill in myself the game is primarily shown in two episodes card wars and daddy daughter Card Wars which I will now refer to as ocw and DCW respectively with the O and ocw meaning original so you know I'm talking about the episode not CW itself Card Wars also makes appearances in wake up and the distant Land Special beo however in wake up all we see is a throwaway Cameo and the game they show in beo appears to be some sort of variant played holographically I'm going to be ignoring this or addressing it later there's not really a way to avoid making a lot of assumptions about the information we're given about Card Wars so I apologize for how much I'm about to say I assume this implies it seems like and other similar statements lastly before I begin I'd just like to contextualize how crazy Card Wars is we are told that this game features simulated combat worker placement commodity speculation and blind auctioning try to remember we're talking about a card game all right now that we're passed the intro let's begin setup believe it or not the writers are talking directly to me when they wrote This Moment into ocw which laps in my face about this whole Endeavor but also causes the entirety of the setup to be skipped now let me explain the rules that's basically the basics okay so unlike most card games they have a board between them this is where all the simulated gameplay takes place after the time skip setup occurs both Finn and Jake have a hand of five cards and two decks one of which is a discard Pile in front of each of them is a row of land cards a row of creature cards and then a row of buildings or land feature like things which I will refer to as structure cards for now the creatures and structures sit under the land they occupy in the same Lane most of the structure cards correspond to a simulated structure on the map and some of the creatures do as well although many creatures and structure cards in play do not become simulated until they perform some sort of action interestingly Jake also has cards hidden under other cards at the start of the game such as the Mortal maze Walker as will become a theme this is inconsistent when we move on to DDC W the players only have one deck and nothing except the land itself seems to start simulated on the board despite them still starting with creature and structure cards in front of them like before we also learn in ddcwsa one of four combat Lanes which are derived from one of 16 themed elements we hear Jake rattle off a number of these elements but I will come up with the others later which actually sounds super fun a last small side note about setup is that at the beginning of the game in ocw you have to floop your land cards to get them on the map which makes it seem like a voluntary action so that you could hypothetically have combat Lanes on your board with UNF floop land cards beneath them setup done now for turns I was about to write in the script that this is where it gets complicated but it is all complicated Jake is very clear that the first thing you do in your turn is discard a card and draw a new one which is simple enough but the only other piece of direct information we get on turn structure is the existence of a battle phase this does however clue us into a general phase based structure to the turns so for now I'm dividing the turns into four phases draw in discard main phase battle phase and end phase with these things established I'm going to break this next part down into more of a play-by-play since it is very erratic and defining overarching rules for turns will require a lot more time and individual care Jake has the first turn he does not draw on discard so it's likely the first player skips this step the first thing he does is floop one card which seems to be the term for using a card special ability he then moves onto his battle phase he activates a unit that he already has on the board to attack and cast a spell activating a card is noted to be distinct from flooping what's interesting is that after Jake declares his attack agency is now passed over to Finn but he isn't purely restricted to defensive actions and can floop his iconic Pig which indirectly stops Jake's attack ending his turn Finn's turn begins heops and discards then plays a structure and proceeds to floop it in another structure he already had on the board which for some reason only simulate onto the board after being floped despite his other buildings not requiring the same my instinct is to assume that buildings with passive effects are always visible and buildings with more active effects need to be floped finess played a card and floop two cards his battle phase now starts during which he activates his ancient scholar creature to perform some sort of special research action and then he moves his pig into a structure it shares a lane with moving the pig does not floop or activate it these two turns are inconsistent but can be followed somewhat logically due to their Simplicity I've thought a lot about the difference between flooping and activating and based on the little information we have I believe it is that flooping a card activates its unique ability and activating a card prompts it to perform a more General action that any card could like attacking or studying apparently but maybe studying is a function of the schoolhouse that enters and not the scholar and the creatur is activating to interact with it it's safe to assume the cards can only be activated or flute once per turn with both actions causing the card to be rotated to indicate that it has now exhausted its AC it isn't specified but since Finn floops his Pig on subsequent turns without performing any specific actions to UNF floop it cards likely reset and become usable again at the end or beginning of a player's turn automatically Jake's next turn is nonsense he skips drawing and discarding plays a spell and activates a creature the activated creature attempts and fails some sort of scare action likely made possible by the spell cast prior and it is then implied that he could cast another spell if it were applicable he then floops one of his structures and afterwards casts another spell after all this he declares that he still has his b phase during which he reveals a creature from underneath one of his land cards then activates this creature and another to attack Finn which is where it gets even more convoluted during Finn's reaction phase as I will now call it his ancient scholar finishes studying a new skill and uses it to revive his Pig he then floops that pig to eat Jake's corn this once again takes care of one of Jake's attacking units indirectly next Finn's Spirit Tower structure acting on a presumed passive ability converts the attacking Spirit Walker to his team which makes sense I guess what's weird is that Jake seems surprised by this honestly Jake legitimately just seems bad at this game he is frequently surprised by simple transparent actions that Finn takes as if they were the result of a lucky fluke strategy he is surprised the pig can eat his corn despite it being a built-in action of the card he's surprised that his creatures can't scare Finn's pig to death despite him watching it enter the cave of solitude and then here he is surprised that a structure he could see on the board activated its automated passive ability against him he genuinely has no idea what any of Finn's cards do even though he gave fin this deck these are Jake's cards you can probably see why I'm not going to keep digging into turn structure until a future video so this is all a problem for future Caleb who I have a very tenuous relationship with moving on card types and Anatomy on the surface this seems pretty straightforwards there are spells creatures structures lands and artifacts we never get to see an artifact played at least that I know of but we get to see the text of a card that refers to them so I you know we they I know they exist I guess it stands to reason that most cards are also defined elementally just like the Lan cards with a card like the Husker Knights clearly being of the Corn element even if the cards aren't categorized like this the immortal maze Walker must have some sort of definition as a spirit since it being a spirit was relevant to the ability of the spirit tower now let's talk about land cards these do not appear to be shuffled into your deck your chosen four land cards are simply placed in the front row of your face up cards during setup each defining the landscape of its Lane surprisingly the most unhelpful and confusing information the show gives us about the cards turns out to be just what's literally shown on them all cards have an image which takes up the majority of its face a number on the bottom left and its name towards the bottom with a small blurb under it with its information the number on the cards can be a bit odd but I think it represents the health that the card has most cards that are obviously creatures have a fraction instead of an individual number which I think is safe to assume represents health and attack the card beanball Bama has an X instead of a number which probably means it's an instant spell so it has no life however cerebral bloodstorm which is also likely a spell has a 10 I would imagine this is because its effect isn't instantaneous and behaves like a creature for its duration but who knows the spell teleport also has a number the issue here is that it simply isn't enough information the cards have very little text to explain what they do and the cards we get to see up close don't always do what Their text actually says when recreating these cards or new ones I would like to avoid paragraphs of text if possible so I'll likely be using lots of keywords which I will have to Define later now for combat oh yeah baby the meat and potatoes although actually this part isn't that long during a player's battle phase they can activate creatures to make them attack attacks can be specific and Target individual creature or structure but there are also times when attacks are cleared with no target implying the target could be the opposing player directly however this wouldn't be consistent with the rest of the game so my current assumption will be that if a non-specific attack resolves the creatures will attack the health of the land card directly across from them next is the actual battling we get to see it pretty clearly when the pig fights the wandering bald man so let's break it down Finn activates his pig to attack the wandering baldman the pig moves through multiple lanes and onto Jake's side of the board to reach its Target which means there likely isn't any sort of movement restrictions once there the two exchange blows until the man dies there seems to be a random element there because Finn is unsure which will win but this could also be due to his inexperience that said the damage dealt varies the pig does one attack that does one damage and then another attack that does two there are a few explanations for this the most obvious is that the combat has a random element as efor mentioned which would probably have to be resolved with dice if adapted to a tabletop game the other explanation is that there are conditional to the damage dealt successive attacks could do more damage or the Pig could have been made Angry once hurt and gotten stronger for his next strike it does kind of look like he gets more mad but this also implies the pieces have simulated emotions these are of course just a few example ideas given how convoluted every other function of the game is and that the combat is described as simulated I assume there is far more complexity possible to these battles that we don't get to see because the only fight we get to see is between a mostly naked man and an ordinary Pig so how do you actually win in ocw Jake declares himself the Victor because Finn has no creatures left which is incredibly straightforwards you have no creatures left that's a Game Boy although it is a very odd Wick condition for a game like this but I suppose it's not too crazy considering you get to start the game with creatures already in play it would be nice to close the lid and leave it at that but there is one moment that opens it back up in DDC W partway through the tournament Jake wins a tie game due to a point lead Cat's game but by turny rules the slight point lead gives the win to team dignified which means that somehow during the game the players are scoring and tracking points it's possible that points are only used in tournaments but regardless I'd still have to design the mechanic just in case people want to play this tournament style now before I conclude and get to work I just want to touch on One More Concept the simulated aspect of the game that is frequently mentioned in the show the game operates via advanced technology or magical nonsense and has many automated systems and interactions if I were making a video game we could replicate this and while that may be a fun Avenue to explore at some point certain elements will have to be altered or simulated by hand to accommodate the tabletop format that I've chosen for example if combat damage is random players will have to roll dice on the table as mentioned instead of letting an invisible system take care of it this is totally fine in my opinion but it isn't exactly going to be the same experience as a result I acknowledge that carbo can only be truly replicated digitally with our current level of Technology however working physically has many merits it'll allow me to revise and prototype much faster and it'll have a lot more flexibility to change systems even far into development and most importantly it'll make it somewhat possible to finish this in my lifetime so like I said the combat can be replicated on a table but where the blizz gets real is the wandering bald man I'm serious as the name suggests Jake's wandering bald man wanders around however towards the end of the game and during Finn's turn he appears to drift from his mud landscape onto the adjacent one naturally without Direction This has crazy implications the game has potential to be constantly simulating all sorts of interactions and potentially have things happen even if both players just sat there and stared at each other which is exactly what happens still on Finn's turn the wandering bald man re-enters the mud landscape and sinks into the mud getting stuck this is presented as a completely random uncontrollable event which potentially had an impact on the following battle it has with the pig if we really wanted to simplify it it is possible to write this off as a feature of only the wandering bald man but even if that were the case we can't do that on a real table that is unless we want to bring tabletop RPG elements into this and have a game master simulating the world and creatures but we do not want to do that so that's that the structure and elements of card wars in a nutshell I didn't mention everything because I plan to break down the game and look at each aspect more carefully in future devlogs I plan on watching ing the episodes a few thousand more times in slow motion so I'll inevitably contradict myself as I draw new conclusions in future videos this is going to get confusing but hopefully a fun sort of confusing despite Card Wars looking like an objectively broken game where you can lose on the first turn before you can even do anything have all your strategy thrown out the window by an arbitrary rule or have everything slow to a crawl to address Niche mechanics and interactions I'm going to try to take what I'm given and actually make something fun to play it definitely will not be balanced but more of a game just played for fun about you know the experience and the story thank you so much for watching I plan on making a lot more of these but if you check out my Channel or twitch I've actually been making gaming content until this point I know that's nothing like this at all but if you like me it's more me and I'd appreciate you giving it a shot okay uh bye [Music]

Channel: BigHoles

Views: 1,597,055

Keywords: Adventure Time, adventuretime, jakethedog, jake the dog, finn the human, card wars, cardwars, adventure time cardwars, devlog, tabletop games, tabletop, boardgames, boardgame, bmo, princess bubblegum, candy kingdom, ooo, the lich, boardgame design, game design, gamedesign, indie game, indie, gamedev

Id: aWd5t0SGYC8

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024