Decks! and Rules!

There's lots of cool new stuff over in the playtester's page.  You gotta check it out!

First of all, we're excited to announce the creation and release of two playtest decks!  The first one is based on the "Quote" mechanic.  It'll be interesting to see just how this one plays out.  Almost every card has the ability, so if someone were good at memorizing, they'd be able to play verse after verse for free!

Then, there's the Strength of Faith!  This deck is made of cards from the Strength and Faith themes.  Those two play together quite nicely, bringing verses to the hand and drawing blessings.

It'll be fun to try these out and see how they play.  Give them a game or two and tell me how they do!

Also, there's a new version of the rules and the first cardset.  Nothing's really changed much.  There was a need for a clarification.  Now, verses that are played as a result of another verse's effect are not "played" but are "set". If a verse is set, its own effect doesn't trigger.  Its numbers still count in chapters, but no effects.  This keeps the long chains of effects down.

And, based on some feedback I got from James, I created a one-page quick start guide to get you playing right away.  The details of the game are still in the rules, but to just start throwing verses down, you can start with the quick start.  It's not so intimidating as 8+ pages of rules!

On the Phone

On the Phone - 10/3/2007 - Back to Top
Yesterday, I got an email from James H Fullmer, creator of the "Book of Mormon Battles" game.  He offered a few words of encouragement, and then asked me to give him a call and talk about LDS gaming.  I did, and we were on the phone for about an hour last night.

What a great guy!  He's been working on (and is now about to publish) a game called "Warriors of the Promised Land".  When I first heard about it, I was in a bit of shock.  Could the small niche Mormon audience actually support two CCG's?  Here, I hadn't even started yet, really, and there was competition.

But what fun to chat with him.  He had all sorts of words of advice and help to offer.  Try this, remember that when you plan for publication...  While I was getting too caught up in the scarcity mentality, he had that mindset of plenty that Covey talks about.  Dive in!  Give it a try!  There is plenty and to spare!

What a great guy!  Make sure you check out his game when it hits the LDS bookstores this month!

Mo' Geek at its Highest

OK.

I thought that, as the creator of a Mormon Collectible Card Game, that I would become the uber-mo-geek.  That would make me the L337-est of the L337.  The highest echelon of the nerdtheon.

Not so.

I have been way outcooled.

I found a site today where some people with a bigger sense of faith and fun even than I (and with way too much time on their hands) are translating the Book of Mormon into Klingon.

Amazing.  In some sort of twisted way, it reminds me much of the Sons of Mosiah, led by Alma the younger, who left the safety of their homes to preach the gospel to the bad guys.  Even if the bad guys in this case are, sadly, imaginary.

On the serious side, I do know that from attending a foriegn-speaking mission, that addressing the scriptures from the point of view of another language is a great way to really learn what the scriptures are saying.  In order to translate it, you have to truly understand it.  So, from that perspective, those who are attempting this undertaking will, at the very least, come out the other end with a deeper understanding of the scriptures.

In some ways, I can relate this project also to my efforts to build C&V.  In order to invent the special effects of the cards, I have to consider what the verse is truly saying, and see how to "translate" that into a way the verse plays as a card.

So, while I'm laughing at these guys trying to translate the B of M into Klingon, I'll also tip my hat to them!

Anniversary!

 -  - Back to Top
I just realized (by back tracking my MoBoy Blog archives) that the Chapterandversegame.com website is a year old!  It was established last September.  And that means that the first draft of the game itself was created within a few weeks prior to that.

Ah, history!

Normally, when a company has an anniversary, there's a big gigantic sale where they reduce everything to 50% off.  Well, all our products are free, so far.  Still, I hate to leave you all hanging.  So, we're announcing our 50% off First Anniversary Sale!  Buy all your cards for half off!  Heck!  Why stop there!  We'll do it at 100% off!  We're just givin' away the store!  Somebody stop me!

:-)

New Rules, More Playing

A couple of days ago, I got in some more playing with Brendon and Jared.  This time, we had a friend of ours from Mexico playing as well, Limhi (you'll recognize that name if you read your scriptures...)  In spite of the fact that he sometimes struggles with English, he did quite well, and in fact, almost won.  It was interesting to see him try and quote verses in English.  A couple of times, I knew the Spanish versions, so I let him quote them in Spanish.

I just got finished posting up a new set of rules, v5.4.  Not a lot of changes, but a clarification that will keep the game from spiraling out of control.  That's the concept of the "Set" card verses the "Played" card.  Any card that I play from my hand in the freeplay or after sacrificing in the regular play phase is considered to be "played", and it's effect is triggered.

On the other hand, if a card comes into play on the table top as a result of a verse effect, it's called being "Set", and its effect does NOT trigger.  However, once it's on the table, if it has an ongoing effect "while in play", that effect is valid.

I made changes to the cards themselves to reflect this difference as well.  Rather that having an effect read "...play a card from your hand." it now reads "...set a card from your hand."

That way, you won't have long strings of effects, like having a card throw down another card, whose effect throws down another card, which triggers another card being played, which causes, etc. etc.  You get the picture.

Also, there's now a hand size limitation rule.  Now, if you start your turn with more than 8 verses, you have to take the extra verses (your choice) and put them on the bottom of your blessing stack.

Don't worry.  The game's still fun.  :-)  Moreso, in fact!

"Play the Game Tonight"

Wasn't that the hook of some silly song from the '80's?  If not, it probably should have been.

Brendon and I played a game of Yu-Gi-Oh and I lost miserably.  That's pretty much par for the course.  The games are still fun, though.  I just don't put that much effort into collecting cards making killer YGO decks.  That's more Brendon's obsession.

Then, after that, we played a game of C&V.  That was really fun.  I love watching him try and quote the verses.  He's only 9, so he struggles with some of the words, but he gets them close enough.  He won that one, too, but it was a much closer game.  I was down to two blessing cards when he finally went out.  He threw down some good strategies, too.

We were just playing with random decks.  After the game, I started playing with some deck building.  I don't really have any ideas in mind, I just thought I'd start with similar themes.  I started with the idea of a strength deck.  But I didn't have enough cards to do that fully, so I'll have to print up more.  The thought occurred to me that because of things like the "Quote" ability, and the extra draw effects of the Faith cards, a Wisdom/Faith deck would probably do quite well.

I'll play with these ideas and then post what I come up with.

Scripture Plug-in for Firefox

This is one of those things that falls into the category of "Too Cool For Words".

But I'll still write about it!

Over at Moregoodfoundation.org, there was a blog posting about a plug-in for Mozilla Firefox that lists the LDS.org scripture search in your dropdown of search engines.  When I first heard of that, I was ecstatic!  I access lds.org to do scriptures searches a lot.  As an LDS blogger, I'm constantly looking up references, and I'm always there when I'm doing research for verse cards.  But it was always so tedious.  I'd launch the browser, go to LDS.org, go to the scriptures, go to the search, type in the search, etc...

Now, I just jump up to the corner of my browser, drop down the menu, type in my search and I'm good to go!

The Moregood Foundation is pretty cool, too.  It's a site and organization dedicated to making more good things about the church available on the 'net.

MRKH