Kingdom Build Tree cards

[Curufea]

A thought I had was building the tree with cards.  You would have one deck per player, and each deck would be thematically designed to fit one of the factions.
You have one card for each unique building, and several cards for the Watch Tower, Training Grounds, Palace Expansions etc.

Each card has the title, the artwork (and faction to avoid confusion), description and what existing cards it can attach to.

You place the connection underneath the existing card.  Some card can be attached to more than one other card.  The instructions should also include "if there is no space on a parent card (e.g. Market) then you may attach a card to a child of that parent (e.g. you could attack a Tavern to the Bank, Forge or Palace Extension)

Unfortunately, attachments are limited in size on this forum, so here's a link to 3 pages to print out for these cards.
http://www.curufea.com/Wikka/wikka.php?wakka=BattlegroundFantasy

I'll put the tree together and take a photo to demonstrate when I have time.

[Curufea]

Example of all the cards (plus two of the ones you can have more than one of).  Please excuse the dirty rug in my study

[andrewgr]

Neat!

The first version of the game that I pitched to YMG had multiple copies of every resource you could buy.  Each player had a card that represented their kingdom, and you would get copies of each card that you bought.  You'd put them together to form a deck, and store them in the box in between sessions; when you got together for the next game, you'd take the cards out of the box and hand each person their deck, using their kingdom marker cards as seperators.  Then you could tell which resources you owned by looking at which cards you have.

I liked this system primarily not due to practical reasons, but because I thought it gave some sort of tangible, tactile feel to "owning" your kingdom and "owning" resources.  The game is already very abstract, without even a map; I wanted there to be at least something you could hold in your hands and feel as if you had built.

That said, when you start to do the math for all the cards you'd need, it very quickly becomes completely cost prohibitive. 

The version you're proposing is more detailed; it has seperate artwork for each faction, and also the notion of "attachments".  I'd have to see that in action before I made up my mind; I'm worried that with, say, 6 people all getting together to play on campaign night, it would take up an awful lot of room to lay them all out that way.

Some variation of this does strike me as being a very reasonable download for the Monthly Kingdom...

[Chad_YMG]

That looks really cool.  

[andrewgr]

Oh, and BTW, that .pdf you pointed to is wicked cool.  Thanks!

[Curufea]

Ah good, glad it worked.  Unfortunately the PDF is only the bitmaps of the images - it'd be smaller if I used the vector data.  I should have included a ruler for size with the photo.  However - each card is the standard poker/magic/battleground size of 2.5x3.5 inches, the layout is about 4x4.5 cards so is 14"x16" in size and does take room - this could be fixed with either smaller cards, or a larger overlap on the cards.  If you want separate 300DPI images, or the photoshop file, let me know and I'll put it on my site as well.

You could just have conditionals written on the cards - "only build if..." and just lay the cards out in neat overlapping columns like solitaire/klondike to take up less space - but that is not very visually appealing.
However - a tuckbox for the faction's kingdom could store the cards between campaign turns, putting just the building cards in that you have built.  But it does mean packing and then setting up between each campaign meeting. 

It would be good to have faction themed cards - it matches the idea of baggage/camps for DBA/DBM that match the army, or the different building structures for Starcraft, Warcraft or other RTS games.

I've only got the High Elf cards, but have Kingdoms (and Mercenaries and the Terrain) on order - so I've not tried to do any artwork for the cards yet

[Curufea]

I've now got all factions and will be posting faction specific building cards for anyone who wants them.

First up-

Men of Hawkshold

[Curufea]

Undead Army

[Curufea]

Lizardmen

[Curufea]

Orc Army

[gull2112]

Wicked cool!

[lazyj]

Dude that's amazing! Great work!

[Curufea]

Of course, it would be better with 3D buildings - but who has time to do 23 models for each faction?

Umenzi Tribesmen

[Curufea]

High Elves

[Curufea]

Elves of Ravenwood