Doom and Redemption!

So, this week, I was all excited to start working on the Title of Liberty cardset, printing them out and getting them cut and sleeved, ready for playtesting. By the way, if you want to help playtest, just email me!

Then my son and I were talking about decks from the Scripture Mastery set, and he started wondering out loud if he could make a One-Turn-Kill deck. In Yu-Gi-Oh, that's where you kill off your opponent in, obviously, one turn. In this case, it would be a One-Turn-Win, since nobody dies in Seeker's Quest.

I thought, No way. It can't happen. I've set all of the verses where you receive blessings to have high sacrifice costs. But he thought that he could get enough draw verses going to overcome that. I was still skeptical, but I was, honestly, scared.

Well, to shorten the long story, he did it. It was a wicked deck, filled with verses that allowed him to draw blessings, and verses that allowed him to draw verses, both from his deck and the discard. Three games in a row, he won before I even got a chance to freeplay my first verse.

In the game design world, this is known as "Breaking the Game". I would have been thrilled if we had discovered this in the early playtesting phases of making the game. Instead, it came to light after the cards were designed and already available to the public! Yikes!

Seriously, I was quite dejected.

But, soon after, I regrouped, and he and I started talking about ways to "nerf" the verses in question.

Let me explain that. In his video/online gaming circles, if a game company makes a facet of a game weaker or harder to use, it has been "nerfed". To understand this word, think of a real sword, and next to it, a Nerf sword. That should clear up any confusion.

So, we had to nerf the blessing draw verses, and we did that by setting it up so that after receiving the blessing, you end your turn. That way, the other guy gets to play. We also nerfed the verse draws, so that they're not so many, or for greater cost. And, the few verses that pull from the discard, like "Judgement Day" don't pull quite so many, so easily.

That meant that I had to rework the graphics of the verses, and re-upload them into The Game Crafter's website. It took me a while to do all that, but it's done, now. Anyone who buys any of the Seeker's Quest products (Full games, boosters, or pre-con decks) will all contain the new versions of the verses.

There are a few of you who have bought the game already, and for you, if you contact me, and tell me which game set you bought, I'll make up a special booster with the right cards and get it sent off to you.

Here are a few of the "new" verses:

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.