Kinda complicated to get rid of all Skull casters. Maybe replace skulls by rainbow gems.
Rainbow matches :
3- 1 mana of each color
4- 1 mana of each color + new turn
5- 2 mana of each color + new turn
Not complicated at all, just either have skulls do 0 damage, or not get created. Then you just don’t bring in a skull generator on your team. I’m against skulls doing 0 damage because then you make a board state that is too easy to manipulate vs. Ai.
I would rather just have either skull generators create something else (random colored gems would be my suggestion) or just not be selectable for this game type.
I was typing my answer and realized I might have misunderstood something and need more information.
Can you please explain some more how that would work? I mean, you only described how the battle goes, but how do you build your team? Is it a draft like in Arena or is it like another way for invading in PvP? Then what teams do you meet? Other people’s regular defense team or another team built only for that mode?
Because the problem is that you CAN’T win this with some of the teams we currently meet in PvP (like Glade Warden / Valkyrie / Sheggra Heart / Sheggra won’t do a SINGLE DAMAGE ever). Even a team made of 0 attack fortress gate could win in regular PvP mode (since 4- / 5- skull matches do +1/+2 damage)
So you would play it by clicking something special like how you start an arena game or how you start a treasure chest game.
You can pick your own team of four cards.
The game plays just like any other game except that there never any skulls on the board.
If you pick a card in your team that creates skulls, when you cast the card, it does nothing in this mini-game.
The point of the game is to give you an alternative to the normal PVP Invade match.
Without having skulls as part of the game, you have to pick cards to use that use magical damage attacks only. This gives you a completely different game, a completely different hand and an alternative to the main invade game.
It could be a very great idea, but… Absolutely do not make the rewards equal to PvP - then it will compete and a mini-game shouldn’t ever do that.
However, it could (for example) grant just some glory or suchlike…
Instead of making skulls creators do nothing which would require more programming, I would have them create the skulls but have the skulls disappear into random gems.
Well, in this case, that mean you have to register a team for this game (the registered team is then the one used when you are the defender against other players instead of your “normal defense deck” that could be made of skull spawners…)
So this means you will probably create your deck in a deck builder built in the mini game (and not use one of your 20 decks you have outside of the mini-game). As long as you go through another deck builder, it’s easy to ban cards on a case by case. So you can just ban skull spawners.
Then you don’t drop skulls during the game (that should be an easy part).
You shouldn’t go with something like
“skulls don’t do anything”, it’s not intuitive…
“this card won’t do its usual effect in that mode”, that would mean you’d need to explain why it doesn’t work the same way here and/or what is its effect in that mode.
It’s not “before each turn”, if Sheggra spawns a full board of skull, you’ll match some, it’s not “prior to each turn”. Skulls just can’t be spawned at all. But I get your idea, having a RP text to justify the mode. But then people will always wonder “lol, what would that card do in this mode?” try and be disapointed their card is utterly useless in this mode.
So I think it’s better to simply ban the card from this mode with something like a big cross over the card with explicitly written “Banned from this mode” so no question would need to be asked.
BTW reducing attack to 0 is not an option either (hi cards having their spells related to attack value : Cyclope, Lamia, Faunessa or some hero weapon like Cursed Blade or Giantslayer)
This could be a pretty decent idea for an alternate game mode. It would be different enough from the usual gameplay style to be an entertaining addition.
However, I think it should have an inbuilt restriction on many troops just to be functional. Skull generators are one thing, but there’s also Entangle, Hunter’s Mark, and many troops who remove, explode, transform or otherwise do anything in relation with Skulls (Frost Giant would be nerfed to death in this mode, for instance).
Most importantly, every single troop would in essence be a Fortress Gate on the board, except for a few specific troops whose Attack value does something else besides determining how much damage they do with skulls. With this in mind, the risk of launching a stalemate game could only be avoided by outright banning troops who don’t do damage with their spells. If you have even one troop who does no damage with its spell, there is always a possibility that you will be literally stuck if it’s the only survivor. No one wants to see two Entangled Fortress Gates fight to the death, as it could only possibly be death by boredom. ^^
PS: Skull-less*. When I first saw the thread’s title, I thought you were asking for “less mini-games”, and that you for whatever reason dubbed this project S.K.U.L.L. ^^ I was puzzled, since we only have 2 mini-games, how someone could possibly complain we have too many already!