Game Balance

In Collectible Card Games, balance is a very interesting concept.  I mean, you want to have some stronger cards in your set, and a few really tough ones so that people get excited about collecting and playing those cards in their decks.  So, how is it that a game can be balanced if some cards are so powerful?

Achilles heels

One way to impact the powerful cards is to instill some weakness in the card itself.  Make the special rule such that it’s powerful impact only comes into play in certain circumstances.  This is the limit on “The Work of God” and “The Glory of God”  Their Ability only triggers when they’re together.

Other Powerful Cards

Another way to temper the power of a big bad card is to have other big bad cards that can stand up to it.  In Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh, the biggest baddest monsters always have to deal with other bigger, badder monsters.

High costs

In the economy of the game, more powerful cards should be harder, or “more expensive” to play.  Pearl verses, for example, all cost a sacrifice cost of at least 3 to play, one even costs 4.

Rarity

One simple way to balance out powerful cards is to make them rarer.  This can be done either in the game itself, by using the “Unique” special rule, or in the meta game, by including fewer of the powerful cards in the sets or packs.

Ultimately, it takes a lot of playtesting to determine if a set of cards is balanced.

Brendon and I made decks tonight and played a game or two. I’m very pleased that both of our constructed decks played very well against the other.  Neither one felt to be too overly powerful.    I don’t mind if a deck is powerful, as long as it’s not an automatic win every time.  As long as something can bring it down, it’s good by me.

Last week, we also playtested some games with random decks made from a set of one of each card.  That played out pretty well.  Then, we added an extra set of “normal” (not powered) verses (so there were two of each of those, and one each of the strong verses).  Those games played out pretty nicely as well.

I’m still finding verse with ambiguous wording, or other errors, but those are becoming fewer, and I’m getting more and more confident in the balance of the verses.  It’s exciting.







Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

The Title of Liberty

I’ve been bubbling over, lately, with ideas for a new set of verses!  I’ve been really excited about it, but I haven’t had any time to do much other than brainstorm an mull things over on my way to and from work.

This set will be set in the Book of Mormon, and will feature stories and lessons from Alma, Helaman, and probably 3rd Nephi.  So far, I think I’ve chosen these stories to focus on:

• The conversion of Zeezrom
• The conversion of the Lamanite kings
• The rise and fall of Korihor
• Title of Liberty and the Kingmen rebellion 
• The Lamanite wars 
• The Gadianton Robbers
• The preaching of Samuel The Lamanite
• The arrival of Jesus Christ in America

Much the content of those three Book of Mormon books is taken up describing wars and conflicts of various kinds, and so I’ve been working on a battle mechanic, to represent that.  It’s kinda tricky, because I don’t want it to become a wargame.  I don’t want it to simulate one player attacking another, but rather, a battle happening.  The tricky part of that is that it has to be activated by a player.  And, in order for that player to want to activate a battle-related verse, there has to be some in-game benefit.

Where the first set (Scripture Mastery) was all based in conceptual and doctrinal scriptures, there wasn’t much by way of stories.  This set, on the other hand, will have a lot of Histories icons, and new Markers like, “Righteous Character” and, of course, “Unrighteous Character”.  Special rules of many verses will play into those markers.

There will also probably be fewer Pearls and fewer “Keyword” verses.

As before, my goal will be to make the set playable both by itself, and combined with the Scripture Mastery set. The Scripture Mastery set is still in playtesting, and it's making for a great, fun, and consistent LDS game.  I want to test the overall set a few more times, and then our playtest team will start building constructed decks and we'll see if it's still balanced.

I’ll definitely keep you posted on how it all comes out!





Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

9.0 Cardset errata/revisions

We interrupt your blog browsing with a CHAPTER AND VERSE SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

Here are some fixes for some of the cards.  The set you can currently download at the left already contains these changes.

#121 is now named "The Ultimate Blessing", and its special rule now reads: "Unique ALSO, EFFECT: Keyword “Father/God”. ALSO, If this verse was played during your play phase, you may draw three blessings, then end your turn."

#38's special rule now reads: "EFFECT: Exchange chosen verse in one of your chapters with a chosen verse in your discard (its special rules are applied)."

Also note that even though Pearl verses have a "P" written in each space in the theme icon area, it still only counts as ONE icon of any ONE theme.

Thank you.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled bloggingz...




Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

Rules V9.1

OK, I just cleaned up the rules and updated the few graphics, so they should be online over on the left, now.  They should be ready to test!  Thanks to all who've downloaded so far!





Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

New Rules, New Cardset

OK, I've got the links over on the left updated!  Down and over to the left, where it says "Current Rules and Card Prototypes" are now linked to Beta version 9.0 rules and cards.  These include rules and cards for the Pearls, and the new, more powerful cards.

As I continue to clean them up, I anticipate that there will be at least a 9.1 or 9.2 version in not too much more time.  If you playtest them, you'll be a part of that effort!

A note on the cards:  As I was transferring the data from the spreadsheet to the actual cards layout, I wasn't able to figure out how to do six different cards on a page.  As a result, each page is six copies of one card.  That makes for a lot of pages.  What we've done is to cut them out, and now both Brendon and I have enough cards to actually build decks and test that process out.

Help us to test the new cardset!

Then, let us know how they play!  Which cards are confusing and ambiguous?  Which rules are unclear?  Which ones are more problematic?  Are there any unbalanced card combinations?  Infinite loops?

Help us to make the best LDS Card Game ever!




Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

Testing the New Stuff!

The other night, after Brendon and I had spent probably about an hour cutting and sleeving several hundred cards (and there are still more to go), we took a break from it and played a couple of games, all by the new rules.

It was a very different game, but very much the same.  They were possibly the two funnest games of C&V I've ever played.  They went quickly, and players turns didn't take too long.  The heavy hitter cards played a big role, possibly too much of a role.  I suppose that's true of almost all CCG's, though.

We haven't built any decks yet.  We're still doing some basic testing.  We'll keep you posted, and I'll put up the new cards and new rules soon!




Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

New Cards, New Rules

I mentioned that my son and I have been playing each Sunday.  That's been a lot of fun, and it has also revealed a lot about the game.

One thing I discovered is that there is way too much drawing from and searching of the deck.  One can play on and on, while the opponents are sitting scratching their noses.  There are a few options to stop this, of course, like the quote it challenge, but that can be a bit tricky to time, and you have to have verses available to sacrifice.

Another issue was poorly worded verse rules and effects, as well as power adjustments that needed to be implemented in some individual verses.

Finally, I wanted to start implementing some of my previous ideas, like the pearls.  I think the location verses will have to wait for another set, but I also wanted some extra-powerful cards that could make up the "rares" of the game.

So, over the last few days, I've been setting up the spreadsheets so that I can flow the verse data into card format, then I adjusted some of the existing verses.  Finally, Brendon and I sat down and started discussing and working out some of the power cards.  That was a lot of fun.  Here we are, reading the verses, discussing the meanings, and interpreting the meanings in game terms.  It was like scripture study, but it was fun, not drudgery.  In the context of the game, it was a whole new experience!

Of course, now, we need to rewrite the rules to accommodate the new cards and some of the new things we've been trying out.  This is version 9.0 of the beta rules!  We just keep on tweakin'!




Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

Fun with the Son

So, a couple of weeks ago, my son bounced up to me and said, “We need to play Chapter and Verse!”  It happened to be a sunday evening, and I was done with the Dutch Oven cooking for the day.  It seemed a clever Sunday night sort of activity, so I dug up the cards that I had, we shuffled them up, and started playing.

It was very exciting to me to see the excitement in him.  I love to watch as he reads an important verse he’s about to play, trying to quick-memorize it, just in case I make him quote it, or how suddenly the air is filled with words like “Faith”, “Strength”, and “Prayer” and it’s all a natural part of the fun.  We don’t even really notice it!

Well, I do.

But then, I’m a dad...

We decided that we were having so much fun that we were going to plan on playing each Sunday, a few games each time.  So far, we’ve held to that plan.  I’ve really begun to look forward to our playtesting sessions.

We’ve started noting ambiguities in the wording of the verse effects, and we’ve discovered a few combos that are a bit too powerful, and need to be tempered.  For example, “The Work of God” and “The Glory of God” should both cost 3 to play, instead of the current 2.  “Judgement Day”, by itself is really cool.  One in your hand and one in your discard is almost an infinite loop of drawing.  I’m still not sure how to fix that.

We’ve tried two different processes for closing up books.  Tonight, we talked about a third.  We’ll try them all and see which one works best.

It’s time to revise the cards, too.  With all of our notes, clarifications, revisions, and plans, we need to make a new set.  This current set has been around for two complete revisions of the rules!

I don’t know what the future holds for Chapter and Verse, but for now, it’s fun to play each week!





Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

An LDS Game Demo!

I played a very interesting game tonight.

A few weeks ago, as I was in a game shop up in West Jordan, I struck up a conversation with the owner, when I noticed he was wearing a CTR ring.  When I mentioned Chapter and Verse and told him it was an LDS game based on the scriptures, he said, "I'd play that!"

With that encouragement, I set up a time to demo it for him.  That was tonight.  We played a quick game, and he, being a long-time hard core gamer, picked it right up.  Even though I nailed him twice on the "Quote it" rule (which I rarely do when I'm demoing it), he still won.  I didn't even have to let him win.

His two initial comments?

One was that it was a fun game, which I sure appreciated.  Frankly, I just appreciated him taking the time go give it a whirl.

The other comment was that it might market better as a "LCG" or "Living Card Game". This is a model that a lot of very successful card games are going with right now, like Munchkin, Dominion, Killer Bunnies, and many others.  The idea is that you create a unique starter set, that people buy to begin playing.  That contains everything they need to start with.  Then, every so often, you release expansion sets, which are also complete sets, sold in a single package (rather than sold in small "booster packs").

One cool thing about doing Chapter and Verse that way is that they way the game is designed, you wouldn't need to start with the first set.  A new player could jump in and begin playing with any set.

Another thought I had would be to kind of hybrid it with collectibility.  For example.  Currently, there are 100 unique cards in the first set.  Suppose that you divided those into 60 lower-powered cards, and 40 stronger cards.  Each starter set could contain two copies of each lower card (as if they were "common"), and one copy each of the stronger cards.  Then, you could also create 25 really strong cards (the "rares"), and even sell them in a separate "powerup" set.

But then, what am I talking about?  I can't even get going with a first printing yet!  Oh, well.  At least it was fun to show the game to a receptive player.





Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.