Clash, Slash & Bash

All the cards can be viewed here.

Introduction

Clash, Slash & Bash is a blend of battle chess and digital card games. I have been a fan of games from both genres for years; Super Robot Wars, Dota2 Auto Chess, Hearthstone, Clash Royale are among some of my personal favorites. The motivation for me to create this game was to combine the strengths of the two genres: positioning and calculation. I noticed that most battle chess nowadays are digital games, but I always believed they are better off as tabletop games.

As a result, I made Clash, Slash & Bash as an experimental attempt. It is goofy-looking with bad jokes all over the place, yet its gameplay is a turn-based strategic war with heavy emphasis on positioning, calculation and decision-makings. And since I believe that multiplayer games are social by their nature, hopefully through getting people to play my game face-to-face, we can once again socialize in real life and feel closer to one another in this post-pandemic era.

Inspiration

Clash, Slash & Bash adopts the ‘spend mana to play cards’ mechanics from Hearthstone, and battle chess elements such as battling on a grid-based map are mostly inspired by Clash Royale as well as Fire Emblem.
The art in Clash, Slash & Bash is original except for two cards whose artwork were taken directly from Plants V.S. Zombies and a meme picture online. This game adopts a dramatic cartoon art style to match the goofy flavor of card design.

Overall

A two-player battle chess game
Place your cards strategically, attack weaker enemies and the enemy character to win

Game design

1. Flow Chart

This is a simple demonstration of how a typical game goes. Card effects trigger throughout the game. This process is not included in the flow chart for the sake of simplicity..

2. Rules (Simplified)

Rules in this section are simplified and only meant to explain how the game works. Please refer to Rulebook section at here for the actual detailed rules.

Players each chooses a character card, a 9-card deck, draws 4 cards from it and the game starts.

The younger player goes first, at the start of their turn, they collect 8 coins from the chest, draws a card from their deck.

Players spend coins to play cards.

There are two types of cards, mercenary and spell. Mercenaries attack and try to kill each other. Spells do weird things.

Each mercenary on the battlefield can move and attack once during their turn (except for the turn they were played).

The maximum number of roads a mercenary can travel in one turn (Speed) is specified by the boot symbol, and a mercenary’s attack range is specified by the bow and arrow symbol.

When mercenaries attack each other, the attacker kills the enemy if its ATK (specified by the sword symbol) is equal to or greater than the enemy’s DEF (Specified by the shield symbol).

Played spell cards and dead mercenary cards go to the bottom of their owner’s deck.

Mercenaries can move through the map and try to get close to the enemy character sitting on the round grid. If the enemy character’s health points drop to zero they win.

3. Card Design

The stats/balancing design can be very delicate. Each mercenary card shares 6 dimensions that can affect gameplay: Cost, ATK, DEF, Range, Speed, and special effects according to their descriptions. I kept in mind a standard model: an m-cost mercenary that does nothing special should have the stats of m/m+1 ATK/DEF, 1 Range and 1 Speed. This model ensures that a higher cost mercenary always kills a lower-cost one, and mercenaries with same costs cannot kill each other. The problem is that the game would not be very interesting if all of the cards are like this. Then the logic of introducing special effects is: for stronger special effects/more range/higher speed, a mercenary card has to compensate by sacrificing some stats (costs more, less ATK, etc.). Switcherooster and Witch’s Apprentice are good examples.

The new question that comes along is this: how does one determine how much Switcherooster’s effect is worth? It really depends on how you play the card. If you switched position with an enemy’s key card and won the game because of this swap, this card should be worth all the coins you have. If you switched position with a friendly mercenary which would have killed the enemy character and this swap cost you the game, this card should be worth less than 0. Therefore, it is impossible to fix a cost for this card through calculation in the designing process. The same goes for most other cards. I have only succeeded in giving each card a proper cost after monitoring and documenting 22 iterations of playtests.

The card UI design is original but have been influenced by all the Trading Card Games or Deck-building Games I played over the years: Hearthstone, Slay the Spire, Griftlands, ….

4. Flavour Design

The flavor text in the lighter fonts can be an explanation of the card name, a bad pun, a callback to other jokes or other cards… any random thing that is hilarious.

What is more important than the seemingly goofy card design is Clash, Slash & Bash’s true flavor when it comes to gameplay: less is more. The description on each card is 1 sentence max yet the possibilities in cards’ interactions are endless.

Within one line of descriptions, so many decisions can be made: where do I place the , where to move my so my other mercenaries gain +1 ATK, do I kill the Gravefruit, do I play this mercenary here and assume my opponent does not have Switcherooster in hand… These decision-makings makes Clash, Slash & Bash’s re-playable.

I would describe the flavor of Clash, Slash & Bash at the first glance as goofy, which is great-I like stupidity and I like making people laugh. I gave every single one of my cards some flavor text to enhance this flavor.

5. Strategies

Clash, Slash & Bash is not a casual game and strategies can be extremely complicated for hardcore players. Some general advice to be better at the game are: taking key grids, try to maintain an advantage on board through killing enemy, and hitting the enemy character directly when you can.

Advanced strategies mostly deal with the subject of countering. For example, Cereal Killer is the most powerful card in the game (the only card that costs 8 coins) but can be countered by Swordfish. A player can save Cereal Killer in hand until their opponent played swordfish.

Another subject is play order. Playing Witch’s Apprentice before Golden Touch gives you 2 coins, while the other way around you only get 1.

For players even more hardcore, Clash, Slash & Bash rewards calculation. Because there is a rule that played cards & dead mercenaries go to the bottom of their owner’s deck, after rounds of playing one can actually calculate what their opponent is drawing and what is in their hand to play accordingly.

6. Playtests

There is really no better way to test the playability of a board game than actually testing it. Clash, Slash & Bash went through 22 iterations of playtests and numbers of balancing patches. For earlier rounds I played as both sides, later I played with my friend Zhengyi Su, a deck-building game specialist. Special thanks to him for these playtests. During each playtest, some minor changes were always made. Here we only include 4 where significant changes are introduced.

Note: in the complete version of the game, players should be able to build their own decks from a pool of cards. For this prototype I made 18 cards and split them into 2 decks. Here we record the final version of these two decks:

Deck A: Backstab, Golden Touch, Miner, Disappear, Witch’s Apprentice, Switcherooster, Cereal Killer, Knightmare, Hydra-gon.

Deck B: Wall-nut, Comedian, Muskedeer, Loan Shark, Banner Bear, Gravefruit, Silencer, Escapegoat, Swordfish.

Playtest 1:

Game time: 25 minutes

Turns lasted: 22 turns

Winner: Deck A

Recorded thoughts: Cereal Killer is too agile and all over the place, hard to counter. The game feels like it does not matter what players do, just wait until turn 15/16, play Cereal Killer and win the game. No meaningful interactions when Cereal Killer can just kill everybody. And game time is too long.

Solutions: Mercenaries now have to wait 1 turn before they can move and attack. Give a 4 cost 4 ATK 5 DEF 1 RANGE 1 SPEED mercenary to Deck A, a 5 cost 8 ATK 1 DEF 1 RANGE 2 SPEED mercenary to Deck B. Remove the coin growth mechanic, players start each turn with 8 coins.

Playtest 2:

Game time: 10 minutes
Turns lasted: 10 turns
Winner: Deck A

Recorded thoughts: Cereal Killer is still hard to counter. The 8 ATK 1 DEF mercenary is really easy to counter, and playing it for 5 coins is a complete waste of money. Too many cards that deal with the coin mechanics, recording coin growth/loss in a board game is unnatural and a lot of work. Even if Cereal Killer cannot hit ‘face’, Deck A can win slowly through chipping damage to the enemy character with the spell that deals 2 damage, since there is currently no way to restore health in this game and Deck B can never go through Cereal Killer.

Solutions: Reduce the range of Cereal Killer from 1 to 0. The 8 ATK 1 DEF mercenary now can move and attack right after it is played. Set its cost to 6 (this mercenary later became Swordfish). Remove the spell card that gives a mercenary +2 ATK/DEF this turn. Remove the mercenary that gives 1 coin after killing an enemy. Reduce DEF on Escapegoat to 4. Give Comedian a new effect of restoring 3 health to its owner.

Playtest 13:

Game time: 25 minutes

Turns lasted: 24 turns

Winner: Deck B

Recorded thoughts: Deck A loses very slowly and painfully because the average stats on mercenaries in Deck B is just better. Rounds of slight changes in their stats finally add up to make a real difference. The only reason Deck A gets to drag out the game for 24 turns is because of Disappear. The game is not fun when Deck A just tries to defend with Disappear and live for more rounds.

Solutions: Add 2 cost to Escapegoat (from 5 to 7). Increase Hydra-gon’s ATK/DEF to 6/6. Increase Miner’s ATK/DEF to 3/5. Decrease Muskedeer’s ATK/DEF to 4/3. Change the map from dots to connected grids (for aesthetics).

Playtest 18:

Game time: 15 minutes

Turns lasted: 13 turns

Winner: Deck B

Recorded thoughts: Game feels pretty balanced. Deck A got ‘greedy’ near the end of the game, chose to hit face with Cereal Killer when he could have switched it back to defend with a Switcherooster and likely win the game after 2-3 turns. Silencer feels a bit too strong for 5 cost because it shuts down 3 cards in Deck A.

Solutions: Add 1 cost to Silencer (from 5 to 6). Reduce 1 cost to Switcherooster (from 5 to 4).

Art

Clash, Slash & Bash adopts a dramatic cartoon art style to match the goofy flavor of card design. All the original artworks are designed by Yanchen Hu and implemented by TT Fu.

Rulebook

Background:

You and your friend play as two wealthy nobles trying to bash each other’s heads in through a battle of some bizarre-looking mercenaries.

Component List:

18 rectangular cards, 2 round character cards with paperclips to indicate current health points, a map, a chest and 25 coins.

Set-up:

Each player chooses a character to their liking, then place the character cards on top of two round grids with the corresponding color. The players then shuffle their 9-card decks and draw 4 cards from them as their starting hand. The younger player goes first.

Typical Turn:

The player takes 8 coins from the chest and draws a card from their deck. They can pay the specified amount of coins (seen at top-right corner of the cards) to play cards in their hand. If they have mercenary cards (the cards with three circles at bottom-right corner) on the battlefield, each mercenary can take actions. The player can end their turn at any point or when there is nothing more to do, and they put unused coins back into the chest.

The hand size limit is 5. If a player has 5 cards in their hand they cannot draw more.
Play mercenaries on grids with the same color as their character cards.
Players can only Mercenaries cannot take actions the turn they were played.
During a mercenary’s turn, it can move once through number of grids along the path up to its speed limit (specified by the boot symbol); it can attack another enemy mercenary in its attack range once (specified by the bow and arrow symbol).
When determining if an enemy is in attack range, count the number of roads it takes to connect the two cards. An attack range of 0 means the mercenary cannot attack adjacent enemies (it would have to first move to the enemy’s grid, then attack).

When a mercenary attacks an enemy, the enemy attacks back only if the attacker is in its attack range.
In an attack, if the attacker’s ATK (specified by the sword symbol) is equal to or higher than the enemy’s DEF (specified by the shield symbol), enemy is killed.
When a mercenary dies, place it at the bottom of its owner’s deck.
Spell cards (the cards without three circles at bottom-right corner) are placed at the bottom of their owner’s deck right after they are played.
There cannot be more than one mercenary on the same grid.

Win Condition:

When the enemy character card is in a mercenary’s attack range, it can attack the enemy character directly instead of attacking another enemy mercenary. Each character has 30 health points to start the game, and takes damage equal to attacker’s ATK value. If a character’s health points drop to 0, this character loses the game.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

Q: What happens when a card’s description contradicts the rulebook?
A: Follow the card’s description. Rulebook is a generalization for most possible scenarios.

Q: What happens when you play Disappear on your own Knightmare?
A: Knightmare would go to the top of your opponent’s deck because it left the battlefield.

Q: When does the effect of Witch’s Apprentice trigger?
A: It always trigger as long as Witch’s Apprentice is on the battlefield. Same goes for Loan Shark and other cards that do not specify when their effects trigger.

Q: What happens when you play Disappear on a mercenary but its owner’s hand is full?
A: That mercenary dies instead.