Tweakification Part Deux

Over the weeked in Ohio, I played two games of Reclamation, one with each of my brothers, and I wrote down several things that I either may implement or already have implemented into the rules. The following probably won't make any sense if you don't know much about the game. :) And these notes are a little long. But anyway, they include, but are not limited to:

• Plunder. In the game, when the Heaven player takes control of a battlefield, they plunder it. This previously meant that you draw a certain number of cards from your game deck (based on the plunder value of that battlefield). After playing it this way, that ended up not being much of a reward, because shortly after that you got to draw a lot of cards anyway. Thus, I have implemented the plunder pile. Instead of drawing those cards, you place them in the plunder pile, and can use them to pay the cost of cards in the future. The plunder values on battlefields has been reduced, from a range of 0-10 to a range of 0-5, and mostly in the 0-3 department.
  
• Rule of 4. I have implemented a rule of 4 (no more than 4 copies of one card title can be included in a deck). Some cards may be too powerful if you're allowed to have lots of them in your deck.
• Neutral constants. There are already neutral cards in the game. These cards are not automatically either Heaven or Hell, but can be played as either, and then become that allegiance. I will be adding (in this set or a future set) some cards that have the constant keyword, which means they are played to an area of the playing surface called the neutral territory. These cards will be active all the time, whether or not you are currently a Heaven or Hell player. One of the main functions of these cards may be to act as armories - some of them will be able to pass neutral items in between a player's Heaven and Hell forces.
• Bidding. One of the potential problems with the game is the way winning it is set up. Right now, the first player to control 5 battlefields (or a majority of the battlefields, whichever is lower) at the end of a turn wins (thus, each player has the same number of chances). However, if each player's Heaven army is doing really well and is controling a battlefield every turn, then the game will never end. Which is bad. So I am considering this change - players bid at the start of the game. The person who is willing to discard the largest number of cards from his opening hand gains the right to go first. Then, whoever controls 5 battlefields (or a majority) first wins automatically, so people may want to bid higher in order to gain that advantage.
• Redraw. I've also added the rule where if you're not pleased with your initial draw of 10 cards, you can shuffle those cards back into your deck and draw a new hand of 8 cards.
• Conflicts. The only built-in way to initiate a battle is to have your entire army battle another player's entire army. There is currently one card for each side that can initiate a conflict between one of your characters and one of an opponent's characters. This concept is going to be greatly widened - lots more ways to initiate conflicts between specific characters. While conflicts will be available to both Heaven and Hell forces, the Hell forces will have lots more ways to initiate them. Conflicts will be able to be initiated between specific rows or columns, for example. Since the Hell player has no built-in way to initate a battle (besides a retaliation), this is a good way for them to do damage to the opponent's characters.
• Multiplayer. While we did not try out a multiplayer game this weekend (I only had 2 decks), I already knew of one big problem. In the game, one player is Heaven, while all the other players are Hell. The way battles had been set up would allow for the current Heaven player to battle all other Hell players at the same time. In multiplayer, this would make it rather difficult for the Heaven player to win battles (and thus, hard to control battlefields, and thus, the game would last forever). So, I have implemented the rule that each battle will take place between only 2 players.
• Battles. One problem we discovered is that the battles themselves need to be more exciting. There need to be more temporary acts (interrupts) that you can play from your hand during battles in order to affect the battles. There need to be more unknowns going into a battle, so that it isn't simply counting up your total might each time, with nothing else happening.
• Miscellaneous. A few other mini-notes:
• There will be Hell cards that punish the Heaven player for not attacking during a turn.
• There are now more ways to refer to how characters relate to each other in a character grid (adjacent, horizontally adjacent, vertically adjacent, diagonal, and surrounding).
• Completed Creation and other Seventh Day-related cards have been weakened.
• Spirit of Darkness has become weaker.
• Satan has become more expensive.
• Apple of Knowledge has lost its ability to draw cards (but Tree of Knowledge now draws an extra card each turn if Apple of Knowledge is in play).
• During battles, the two players' characters grids will be treated as if they are right up against each other (forming one large character grid). Thus, one player's characters in their front row will be adjacent to the characters in the other player's front row).
• Future neutral constants will include walls (or named something similar); these will include cards played on uncontroled battlefields that allow defensive bonuses to whataver player is defending a battle at that battlefield).
• Future sets. Here is a potential list of future sets in the game. Each would cover both the name of the book the set is named after, and often other books in the same section of the Bible.
  
• Genesis
• Exodus
• Pentateuch
• Samuel
• Kings
• Chronicles
• Pslams
• Proverbs
• Isaiah
• Daniel
• Prophets
• Gospels
• Letters
• Revelation
  

I will continue today to work on the rules and cards, as it'll be a long process to get everything tweaked so it works right. As always, any comments or suggestions are more than appreciated. :)