Update & The Balance

My, my, my how hard it is to balance a game. I am currently beta testing The 3rd Printing Of "Blue Mist", specifically with Magic players and I'm seeing new problems emerge. As it turns out Aminosuro & Karo Kathijrell might be a little overpowered and while I think that term has been thrown around a lot, I think in this case it might be valid. I say might because I've seen both sides of the issue. Let me explain, Aminosuro & Kathijrell are the only characters who are capable of summoning, this allows the player to take 2 turns. Now I've been offered a host of solutions and I'm also exploring some other options in regards to other parts of the game.

As it stands, Blast attacks are the only attacks that cannot be countered and therefore the operative question would be "Why would you use a Beam then?".  The answer would be you'd use a beam on a character without a deflecting weapon but maybe that's not a solid enough answer. I have quite a bit to think about and consider but one of the solutions I liked was making a standard base of HP for all Summons and that seems like a great idea (because then I don't have to worry about balancing power levels). Likewise making more cards unusable by Summons would be beneficial as well. My final consideration would be should I reduce the Blast damage to an extent that even though it's a guaranteed hit the effort makes it less advantageous or should I add a stipulation to Blasts? I'm strongly considering making Blast damage half that of a Beam. That I think is a solid trade off.

Update #7

So after a few sessions of playtesting I've hit an interesting problem, now granted I've been playing this game solid since high school and never once hit this problem but therein lies the virtue of showing it to other people, you get a fresh perspective. And perspective is the nature of the card DOOM Technology.

There are only 2 copies of this card in a deck of 49 cards, so your chances of drawing it are 2 out of 49, so as you can imagine it doesn't pop up early on. But in the last 2 playtest session I've had this card has emerged and both times the holder of it was the victor. Now I've played this game before and have lost with DOOM Technology but that was by virtue of it occurring later in the game than early on. The thing is this card negates an entire game mechanic (Drawing Mist cards for your special attack) and therefore it allows you to spam your special attack until your opponents die. Now granted that was the design of it, for it to be very powerful, but have I made it too powerful?

Now the solution here is to add it to another expansion as I do have a plan for it later and as my wife put it, I don't have to remove DOOM Technology from the core set, but if I don't remove it I need a counter for it. Now if I did add it to a later expansion I DO have plans for what that'd look like and I do think it'd be fun. Balancing a game is hard, I think a few more playtests will help me decide what to do. I think maybe if I stacked the deck and then see what happens we can go from there. Until then, catch you lot later!

Update #6

The 3rd Demo print is in and NOW we're ready to get started on a lot of things! I found an artist and the promo work for the Kickstarter is done (for the most part). The next part is all up to me and that requires me to shop "Blue Mist" around and get some eyes and testimonials on it to draw people in. I can't show you guys the promo art yet, I'll save that for the Kickstarter but ultimately we're in a good place with this, now it's just a matter of doing it. Catch you guys later!