Welcome to the first entry on our Dev Blog at GameDev.Net! This time, we’ll tell you about the strategies and play styles in our in-development collectible card game Causa, Voices of the Dusk. We’re very interested in knowing and incorporating your feedback.
Let’s begin with a short review of the novelties in the rules of this CCG:
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Each player begins the game with 20 Resistance points.
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In Causa, there are 3 types of cards: Characters, Events, and Supports.
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Characters have attributes such as Attack and Defense, and are played to the Scene.
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Events are played and trigger their effect instantly.
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Supports are played to the Shelter, can be activated once per turn to trigger their effects, or constantly trigger their effects while they’re in game.
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There are no resource cards. You can play up to two cards per turn, as long as you have enough Cause.
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To increase your Cause, once per turn you can ‘sacrifice’ any card from your hand or from the game, moving it to your Cause Zone. This is called Dedicating.
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You can only Dedicate one card per turn, and each dedicated card grants one Cause Point.
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Although Dedicating cards to your Cause might seem like a sacrifice, this is only temporary, since you can Require cards from your Cause as if it were a second hand.
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Requiring implies that once per turn you can play a card from your Cause Zone. If you do, your Cause will decrease by one, since you’ll have one less card in it.
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The only requisite to Require a card is that you have enough Cause Level, and that you still have at least one play remaining (max of two cards per turn).
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Dedicating and Requiring are actions that you can do at any point during your turn, which allows for a greater versatility when compared to games that have a strict phase order.
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To win the match, you must lower the opponent’s Resistance to 0. To do this, you may attack them directly, or aim to wear out their deck. Once their deck runs out, for each card that they’re unable to draw, they’ll receive 5 points of damage.
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Wearing out a deck can happen fast, since each turn you’ll draw at least 1, and continue to draw until you have 4 cards. With this, we expect to deliver a more dynamic experience than other games in the genre.
Based on this game system, Causa seeks to offer a great variety of strategies. Up next, we’ll show some basic aspects of different strategies in each Power: Glory, Wealth, Influence, and Spirit.
GLORY
Glory is the most straightforward strategy, and can be the easiest for those who’re just starting to get into the game. It’s based on characters with solid Attack and Resistance attributes, along with being able to deal direct damage to the opponent Leader or their characters.
It’s basic strategy is aggressive, where the Warrior archetype dominates, focused on buffing it’s characters and attacking directly. However, interesting Midrange and Control strategies come into play thanks to the Laborer and Survivor Archetypes.
Mechanically speaking, Glory is focused more on quickly attacking and Dedicating cards to its Cause instead of Requiring, since keeping a high Cause is needed to bring out the strongest cards to the game. In this power there are high level cards that can define the game, such as the Elyrian Guardian, and Hurl Weapons.
WEALTH
Wealth strategies aim to play with Resources (decks), both yours and your opponents’.
In Wealth, you can find cards that allow you to draw additional cards, and others that offer great power for low level, at the expense of reducing your deck, like the Mercenary Archetype does. To maintain this resource engine in motion, it has the most amount of cards that allow you to recover cards from your discard into your deck. This way, you can get the best cards faster, while avoiding running out your deck.
This power has cards that benefit each time you draw cards due to some effect, and when you’re forced to spend your deck. These Synergy strategies can be found within the Merchant and Aristocrat Archetypes.
INFLUENCE
Influence is a special power for more experienced players, who have an interest in a more strategic game. It aims to move cards between various game zones to obtain diverse effects, and prolong the match to exhaust the opponent’s deck. In this power, the Schemer Archetype shines for their excellence in controlling the opponent’s game.
Despite this, Influence has one of the fastest attack strategies with the Rogue Archetype, which tries to gain the upper hand in the first few turns (Rush).
Finally, we can also find the Intellectual strategy that uses support cards and characters that recover your Resistance, and to prepare the needed conditions to execute powerful Combos.
SPIRIT
Another strategy prefered by experienced players is Spirit. In this power you can find units that by themselves are quite weak, but become stronger each time you’re damaged. It has powerful spells that can strengthen your allies and weaken your opponents.
To counteract the self-inflicted damage by the Witch Archetype, Spirit relies on Priests and Mentalists who help keep your Resistance stable, and keep opponent Characters “pacified”, preventing them from attacking every turn.
Spirit has some of the most powerful and versatile cards in the game, however they usually incur a high cost for the player, which requires a high strategic capacity from players who dare to master this Power.
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To wrap up, we think it’s important to mention that strategy building in Causa is heavily guided by the different Character Archetypes and playable Leaders, since some promote deck building of a single archetype, while others rely on the synergy between diverse archetypes. We’ll soon share more details on the role of Leaders in Causa, as well as information about various skills and keywords.
What do you think about this first look at the strategies in Causa, Voices of the Dusk? We really appreciate your feedback to keep working on the design of the game!
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