COMING To Kickstarter Summer, 2023
A card game by Caleb Gannon, Phd.
Step into a gorgeous and bizarre simulation to experience a world unlike any other. With over 320 unique, full art game cards and 480 tokens / resources in the dream-like art style of Caleb Gannon, each game is as much a visual expedition as it is a contest of player creativity.
Algomancy was created to be a playground for ideas, where extremely open ended card designs are combined in endless possibilities. Players are given maximal agency to plan and execute their wildest strategies through a live draft and unique resource system, meaning the only true limitation is what you as the player can imagine.
The Game
Rulebook (In Progress) | Watch it Played | Tabletop Simulator | Additional Videos | Kickstarter Page
In Algomancy, you are an Algomancer vying for control over an AI simulation. By manipulating the source code of the world you are able to cast spells, summon armies, and augment game objects to modify their capabilities. Players use these Algomantic powers in a conquest to vanquish the opposition and become the last one standing.
Gameplay
- Adaptable playstyle
- Algomancy features a dynamic draft, where players draft during the game to sculpt their hands each turn. This gives each player complete control over their game plan and creates a balanced competitive experience.
- Simple Cards, Deep Gameplay
- Most cards in Algomancy have only one or two lines of text, yet they are designed to allow for a deep gameplay experience. Through mechanics like Graft and Augment, simple cards are combined together in endless combinations that keeps each game feeling fresh and unique.
- Eliminate Down Time / Waiting
- Algomancy has no turns and is designed so that nearly everything can be performed in parallel. In fact, the game works so well for multiplayer that you could in theory play with 100 players and still finish a game in a reasonable amount of time (assuming you had a big enough table!)
- Remove Play/Draw Disparity
- Because there are no individual turns in Algomancy, neither player “goes first”. This means that all players are on equal footing throughout the entire game and keeps every game fair and balanced.
The Factions
Earth
The Earth faction is all about balance and tranquility. Its gameplay is methodical, relying on static effects and viruses to keep opponents in check. With sturdy stats and a myriad of attributes, the units in the Earth faction are adept in combat.
Fire
The Fire faction is quick and deadly, harnessing small components together to inflict massive chunks of damage onto its opponents. With both spell token and sacrifice themes, Fire has an abundance of disposable resources. This allows it to incrementally accumulate advantages in a grindy, controlling game as well as enabling quick bursts of lightning-fast aggression.
Wood
The Wood faction is magical and mysterious, featuring two synergistic subthemes. Flowers are focused on growth and capable of amassing large armies at an instant. They are straightforward and direct in their aggression. Fungi have a different agenda, and are interested in infestation and manipulation. Together, this faction enables some of the deepest and strangest strategies in the game.
Water
The Water faction is all about tempo. Units that benefit from damaging opponents draw you into combat over and over again, while the ambush mechanic can keep opponents guessing your true intentions. The water faction takes hold of a game and maintains it through steady, incremental advantages. It’s interactive and engaging but can strike with frightening speed if given an opening.
Metal
The metal faction focuses on production, logistics and world manipulation. Assemble a swarm of robots and outfit them into a deadly force, or use the AI faction for game altering effects. This faction is explosive and supportive: It’s formidable on its own but it can become unstoppable when paired with other factions.
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What’s in the Game?
Algomancy comes with 320 game cards, roughly 200 resource cards and almost 300 tokens, for a total of almost 800 cards! With that, you should have enough to sustain a full 9 player game.
Additionally, Algomancy has a constructed format, and will have a constructed add on without the tokens to get players up to 2 copies of each card to needed to start building their own decks!
The Rules!
You can download the Algomancy Rulebook here!
While the rules are fully developed, the rules document is actively in the process of being written/typeset, and should be fully completed within a week or two.
The core gameplay of Algomancy happens in the combat phase, where players venture into realms occupied by their opponents to do battle. This is a fast paced and highly interactive sequence where players make tough decisions on how to distribute their armies across their offensive and defensive formations, as well as how they should use spells and abilities to interact with other players and turn the game in their favor.
Turns in Algomancy are global, meaning it is never an individual “player’s turn”. Instead of a back and forth turn structure, Algomancy utilizes an initiative system to specify who must act first as they move through each step of a turn cycle. This ensures an absolutely fair gameplay experience for all players, since no player gains an advantage by going first. It also allows for many aspects of the game to be run in parallel, allowing for a smooth and streamlined multiplayer experience.
During the game, cards are sourced from a live draft, giving players maximum control over their game plan. To start every turn, players pass packs cards around the table and can freely exchange cards in their hands with these cards in the pack. This flexibility makes for an extremely skill testing format, where it is the players, not the order of the cards in the deck, that determine what resources they will bring into battle.
With the two headline mechanics of Augment and Graft, players are able to combine the effects of cards together in a nearly endless variety, ensuring every single game of Algomancy is a new and unique experience. Because these mechanics can be utilized from previously fallen cards in the discard pile, it also gives players the opportunity to enact long term plans across multiple turns despite the highly interactive nature of the game.
Follow the Development
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