Design Space - Part 1

     So recently there has been quite a bit of discussion around future design space and I thought that I’d throw my hat into the ring with some of my own designs (which I confess are not fully play tested or balanced) but which might provide a look at some of the potential areas that the Equinox team might go into. I have tried to err on the side of caution by trying to not make the heroes to overpowered, but don’t laugh too hard if I get it wrong! To facilitate this in this first article I have decided to focus on heroes, and I have one design for each faction. Sound good? Then let’s go!

     For the Axiom design I have chosen to focus on two things – one obvious and one not so obvious. The first obvious one is that all the heroes in the core set have 2 cards allowed in reserve and 2 landmarks allowed. The obvious thing to try is to unbalance these. So, let’s explore what happens if we allow Axiom to have three permanents in play – as Axiom loves their landmarks. To balance this out I’ve only allowed them to keep one card in reserve.

     The second less obvious thing on this card is a downside to balance the card out. None of the heroes in the first set has a disadvantage (well maybe except Nevenka rolling a 1!). Here we have a counter that builds up and forces you to move back an expedition if you end up discarding too many cards from reserve. Tapping to resupply is usually a good thing, but you really don’t want to keep too many cards in your reserve, so you end up with an interesting balancing act with this hero.

     The next most obvious and perhaps more basic design is to all a hero to give a keyword ability. Here we are allowing Thorsen to be able to smash up an opponent’s reserve. I felt it might be a little strong to always be able to do it (N.B – it might not as well) so I limited the ability. Now heroes could also tap to add abilities to a creature in play. We already have Arjun who can give anchored, but why not give Seasoned? The answer is that we would need a way of indicating that on the card which is a design problem for another day.

This is perhaps the most complex area I’m going to delve into. Lyra are all about randomness and so far we have seen dice mechanics, and random cards off the top of the deck. Here I am trying another aspect around this which is hiding information and bluffing. Here we are hiding what a character we have played actually is. You have to play at least 1 mana to do this and can later during dusk turn it face up by paying the remaining mana to bring it into play. Your opponent can gamble by giving you 2 mana to help you turn it face up to look at your hidden information, but that is effectively making your job easier.  The text volume on this card may be a bit high but I love the design space.

     There is two bits of design space being looked at here. Firstly we are giving the opponent a choice when we activate Kiassa which is an interesting space to examine. They can either have an extra card or let you have a free boost. The second thing we are looking at here (which we’ll see again in a bit) is using the creature types to focus the hero. Here we are looking at plants, a favourite of Muna.

     This card looks not only creature types but also spell types in its ability. The flavour of the card is your scout is going out and getting reinforcements. So, when you play a manoeuvre spell, you can bring back a scout or soldier creature from your mana to the reserve. This is playing into the idea also of swapping things in and out of your mana. This card needed careful templating to avoid you getting a net gain in mana by doing this.

     My final design showcases one aspect that hasn’t been explored yet but that is not obvious. A temporary holding pen that is not the reserve or the discard pile. This is making use of ‘wasted’ cards that fit into the Ymzir sacrifice strategy. What if you could re-use some of them for cheap? Normally the sacrificed cards would go to the discard and be wasted, but here, once you have built enough you can get to re-use them. It’s a slow re-animation strategy but it gives a whole different gameplay for a sacrifice deck that Lindiwe does.

     Many thanks to @Eazy for providing the card builder and to Midjourney AI for doing better than my drawing.