#cardmaster conflict

[empress-runner]

sluissa, slime sorceress. background is a placeholder

[masamunemaniac]

Happy Valenslime's Day!

(old Cardmaster Conflict card art)

[masamunemaniac]

Eleni Grey’s Journey to Development Hell

An ancient unfinished comic about a girl with big dreams of playing Cardmaster Conflict with her friends.

Spoilers: Her legend does in fact remain very much folded.

If short abandoned comics are your sort of thing, then click here to read it. (unless you're on mobile, because tumblr sucks)

[masamunemaniac]

Moon Bunny: A hare who lives on the moon in order to avoid sitting at the bottom of the terrestrial food chain.

Old art I made for Cardmaster Conflict. For those of you new to Tumblr, this is only a summary and clicking Keep Reading will show the full post... 

Originally created for a Shigatsunobaka event card, which in the game’s early years pretty much meant a card inspired by arbitrary Japanese mythology (in this case. the moon bunny legend).

It was given the ability text “Share some mochi”, as a reference to the Japanese folklore, which also obscured what the ability actually did (a terrible idea for a TCG that we later rectified). As rice cakes don’t lend themselves towards any particular effects, we looked towards Chinese folklore for inspiration, which has its moon bunnies create elixir of life for Chang’e. What we decided on was inflicting two status effects on a target unit: Protection (nullifies the next damage taken) and Poison (takes 10 damage at the start of its owner’s next turn). The combination meant that the Protection wouldn’t stick around indefinitely as the Poison would cancel it, and if the Protection was used to block a hit then the unit would essentially take a delayed 10 chip damage.

(My desktop computer’s currently busted, so I can’t add a card image right now)

The moon bunnies are now a faction of bunny henge who, in ages past, enlisted the aid of a powerful moon kami to transport themselves to the moon and to make it hospitable to them, as they were fed up of the whole “being eaten” thing. To almost everyone else in present times, including the still surface-dwelling hare henge, the moon bunnies are nothing more than a myth. The only interactions that they now have with anyone on the surface is to send down the occasional strike team, outfitted with their superior technology, to advance the moon bunnies’ mysterious agenda - and unlike the ninjas, who carry out their missions with stealth and subterfuge, the moon bunnies perform theirs with speed and explosions - blasting their way in and out before anyone realizes what’s even happening.

[masamunemaniac]

Tengu Ascetic: A solitary bird henge, who could stir up strong gusts of wind to blow away anyone that might disturb their isolation.

Old art I made for Cardmaster Conflict. Click on the Keep Reading link to keep reading...

A bit too human-looking and uninspired in hindsight, having bird wings as the only physical characteristic to identify it as a youkai. They’re wearing a bunch of typical tengu trappings though: a yamabushi’s box hat, a pom-pommed sash, a feather fan for conjuring up winds, and long geta sandals. Or, as I realized after sketching it all out, basically Aya Shameimaru; turns out her silly hat and shoes aren’t just arbitrary design.

This was a bit of a style experiment at the time I made it, using I think one brush type for the tengu, one for the forest and clearing, and another for the sky, and without using any of the blending/blurring type tools for shading that I normally do. I think the end effect looks decent enough, but is kind of let down by the bizarre legs (it was hard fitting things into a 12:5 aspect ratio).

Dizzying an opponent’s unit would cancel its attack or prevent it from blocking, and was an ability seen on quite a few units. Dizzying could also cancel a unit’s activated ability, but only if they were slower speed; as Tengu’s own dizzying ability was at E speed (the slowest), it couldn’t be used for that.

What made Tengu stand out was its ability to conditionally return the opponent’s cards to their hand instead of just dizzying them. If the opponent is swarming you with a bunch of weenies, locking down one of them won’t accomplish much. Bouncing them meant you could lock down two of their units with one of your own (as the opponent had to wait until their next turn to replay the bounced unit, and it couldn’t normally attack right away), and make them waste their mana continuously replaying them.

Using buff spells to increase Tengu’s attack could let it blow away even bigger units, but leads to a sort of all your eggs in one basket scenario, where a single removal spell from the opponent could undo a lot of investment.

[masamunemaniac]

Pathwinder Kitsune: A mischievous fox, hiding high above a bamboo forest, warping the very landscape to confuse and misdirect the intruders below.

Old art I made for Cardmaster Conflict, a trading card game I ended up co-running before Things Happened™ and it was declared dead. More comments below the cut...

The same travelers appearing at both sides of the picture, approaching their own rather conspicuous footprints, is meant to give a sense of them being obviously lost; kind of like that lost forest map every other JRPG has, with screen transitions that warp you back to the start if you don’t follow the prescribed route.

The background itself is kind of an ugly mess, but I think the nonsensical perspectives and vanishing points contribute towards the idea of the travelers being led astray by unnatural means.

The name “Pathwinder Kitsune” was also a play on the term “pathfinder”, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what he’s doing here.

But you’d forgive that face if you caught him, right? :3

Combat in Cardmaster Conflict was kind of like combat in Hearthstone, except the active player declares all of their attacks for the turn and then they all occur simultaneously (rather than one at a time), and each of the defending player’s units can only be attacked by one unit per turn (no ganging up to kill them quicker). If a defending player’s unit isn’t being attacked, they can choose to block a unit which is attacking the defending player directly instead.

Between declaring the attacks and those attacks actually happening, players get a chance to use abilities, such as Pathwinder’s. His ability forces one of your opponent’s units to attack you instead meaning: • The unit which was previously under attack has been protected for the turn • That unit is free to either block a bigger threat or something smaller that it can survive if you wanted • The opponent’s unit attacking you directly can now be blocked by something more capable of dealing with it.

For comparison, there was a much more common (and more expensive) ability to “dizzy” the opponent’s units, removing them from combat altogether. Pathwinder’s ability was generally worse, but could be much better in the sorts of decks where you had trap cards or strong defensive units that you wanted the opponent's units to run into.

Overall I think his ability fits the flavour of a kitsune tricking others and sending them down the wrong path pretty well :3

I’m planning to queue more old card art and commentary, maybe once a week or so.