[Design Journal: Castle Siege] A Game of Medieval Warfare

The armies are gathering beyond the castle wall. You strengthen your fortifications while they gather reinforcements. An arduous battle awaits. It will be their aggression against your persistence. Can you hold out long enough to force them into retreat? Or, will they overrun your battlements and claim the castle for themselves?

A few days ago, I was inspired to begin work on a new card game. I think the inspiration came from reading about the forthcoming card game Android: Netrunner from Fantasy Flight Games. What makes that game rather unusual is the fact that it features an asymmetrical design. The game is for two players, but each player plays very differently. There aren’t a whole lot of games like this. Most games have each player acting on the same principles. The only other game like this that I could think of off hand was Mr. Jack.

I was thinking about the prospects of an asymmetrical design, and I was trying to think of what sort of concepts could fit this idea. The first idea that came to me was a game about laying siege to a castle. One player would take command of the besieging army, and the other player would defend the castle. From there, Castle Siege was born (working title).

Keeping Things Simple

A lot of the ideas I’ve been working on lately have been rather complex and expansive, so I wanted this game to be fairly simple and contained. But I also wanted it to have enough depth to allow for some variety in strategies for each player. One thing I especially wanted is for every card to be usable by both sides, so that both players could draw from a single deck of cards. I’ve done this by printing two different abilities on each card, one along the bottom for the siege player, and one along the side for the castle player. Here are the basics of how the game works.

This is the Keep. The empty space is for card art.

The castle player starts with one card in play – their Keep. The castle player can expand their castle by playing more cards from their hand. They can add more structures, such as walls and towers. They can give their structures features, such as moats and secret passageways. They can also fill their structures with soldiers and other personnel. Each structure and the other cards attached to it are considered a “fortification”.

Meanwhile, the siege player builds his forces by playing a variety of cards that represent soldiers and siege engines. Everything from humble footmen to knights, and from battering rams to trebuchets.

Each round, after both players have had a chance to play cards, the siege player organizes his forces into one or more “armies” and declares an attack for each of his armies. He can attack any card the castle player has in play, except that he can only attack the castle player’s Keep if that player has no other structures in play. To resolve the attack, the players compare the “Attack” value of the siege player’s army to the “Defense” value of the fortification the castle player’s card belongs to. If the siege player’s Attack is greater than the castle player’s Defense, the attack succeeds, and the card they’re attacking is discarded.

The goal of the siege player is to destroy the castle player’s Keep. The goal of the castle player is to survive for a total of ten rounds.

This Is How War Works

Here is an example, to try and explain a little better how the game works in practice.

Click for larger image.

The castle player has three fortifications. One consists solely of his Keep. The siege player can’t attack that, because the castle player has other structures in play. His second fortification is a Wall, tricked out with a Moat and a Treasurer. As you can see, the Moat makes this fortification more difficult to approach, and the Treasurer allows the castle player to gain extra Gold each round. Gold is a resource players use to “buy” the cards they put into play. Finally, the third fortification is a Tower backed up by a couple of Archers. Ignoring the Keep, lets take a look at the defenses of these other two fortifications.

Click for larger image.

The Wall grants +3 Defense on its own. The Moat and the Treasurer add nothing else to this fortification’s Defense, but the Moat does make it so the siege player will have to discard a card of their own before attacking it.

The Tower has only +1 Defense on its own. The two Archers each grant +1 Defense to the fortification though, and the Tower has a special ability to gain another +1 Defense for each person attached to it. So this fortification has a total Defense of 5.

  

Now, what does the siege player have? He has an Assassin, a Footmen, a Siege Tower, and a Trebuchet. He divides these forces into two armies, one consisting of the Assassin and the Footmen, the other consisting of the Siege Tower and the Trebuchet.

Click for larger image.

The siege player discards a card (because of the Moat) and the Assassin and the Footmen attack the castle player’s Treasurer. They’re pitching a wimpy +1 Attack against that fortification’s +3 Defense. Normally, this would mean that the attack fails and nothing happens. However, the Assassin allows the siege player to ignore the +3 Defense from the Wall when attacking a person, so even with just +1 Attack, the attack succeeds and the Treasurer is discarded. The Wall and the Moat remain in play.

Next, the Siege Tower and the Trebuchet attack the castle player’s Tower. The Siege Tower allows this attack to ignore Defense granted by the Tower itself, but the attack still has to overcome the +2 Defense granted by the two Archers in that fortification. Fortunately for the siege player, the Trebuchet grants +3 Attack, overpowering the Archers. At this point, the attack would succeed and the Tower would be discarded as the Treasurer was, except the castle player has another option. He discards a Footmen card from his hand to gain +1 Defense, bringing him even with the Attack. If the siege player had a card in his hand he could discard for extra Attack, then he might still be able to win this melee, but otherwise the attack has failed. 

Hopefully, from this relatively brief preview you can see how Castle Siege is turning out to be a game that is simple to play, but has some depth as well. Playtesting I’ve already done has lead to some modifications and advancements to the game’s mechanics, and the game continues to improve. I’m looking forward to developing this game further, and getting more people involved in playtesting in the future.