by karishi
Grudunza wrote:
Glad to hear you're developing expansions for this great game!
The thing I feel a Shadowrift expansion needs the most is more "kingdom cards," or whatever they're called in this game. I think there are something like 18 different ones, and you use 8 in each game, and with some of those being skills and loot, it can feel like the variety of regular action-type cards is a bit lacking. So definitely a lot more of those, please.
Beyond that, more villagers/infiltrators, and more monster factions that work in some new and clever ways... And some other new wrinkles, whatever they might be, could be interesting.
The thing I feel a Shadowrift expansion needs the most is more "kingdom cards," or whatever they're called in this game. I think there are something like 18 different ones, and you use 8 in each game, and with some of those being skills and loot, it can feel like the variety of regular action-type cards is a bit lacking. So definitely a lot more of those, please.
Beyond that, more villagers/infiltrators, and more monster factions that work in some new and clever ways... And some other new wrinkles, whatever they might be, could be interesting.
I've been calling them "hero cards," and they are the thing I have in greatest abundance. Regardless of the number of monster factions I can invent, I think there'll be a minimum of another 5 heroes (aka another 20 hero cards). I have a total blast making them up, and they really change the tenor of the game.
When I started on the design I was sure I'd want tons of new villagers, infiltrators, and walls to swap in. The possibility that a certain Villager wouldn't exist anywhere in either deck was one of the main reasons I came up with the hunt (though it turned out to be necessary to make the game hard enough). However, even though I've got some written I don't think I'd include them in a first expansion. For one thing they extend an already long setup phase by making you count out a number of each type rather than slap down a stack.
*totally off on a tangent, here*
I tried a game Ascension-style, where I shuffled all my cards together and cards got replaced when they got bought. I also included a rule that the heroes could collectively replace 1 card/round from that line, so the line wouldn't stagnate.
Simply put, it didn't work. It actually made the game less fun because players felt like they had less control over what kind of character they would be, where the hope was they'd have more because they'd have access in theory to the whole range of 20 cards. I think it's because if you're going to be a character type you want to be buying the card that defines you as that within the first 2 turns. I'd bet that the average number of turns in a game of Shadowrift is lower than in Ascension, so the impact of not being able to buy what you wanted early is increased.