Avoiding Melee Yahtzee

[Dentatus]

My experience with gear cards in TT wargames is quite limited - but I've always found them to be an unnecessary component - an illustrated reminder for a dice modifier. One more thing you have to buy to play the game but is little more than pretty table clutter.
Now a tactics/maneuver card for melee sounds interesting.
But do they bog down combat resolution? Instead of rolling dice are you playing cards one after the other, trying to trump your opponent? Are you substituting randomness of dice for randomness of the draw?       

[Elbows]

Depends entirely on your system, though there is a difference between "randomness of dice" and "randomness of draw".

For example; in Shoot N' Skedaddle for normal games, players draw random characters (from a deck), and they are then equipped with random weapons (from a deck).  So in this instance the weapon card includes the stats and special rules for the weapon, meaning a new player doesn't have to have a rulebook or know the stats of a weapon - it's right there on the card.  I can dictate the rarity of weapons by reducing the number of weapons of a certain type in the deck, thus removing the possibility of everyone showing up with the bestest/strongest/fasterst weapon, etc.  Now SnS isn't terribly melee based, but those are some benefits.  If I want a weapon removed from the game I simply yank the cards as opposed to editing a table, or random dice roll, etc.  Likewise if players don't own a miniature or model with that weapon and they want to play strictly WYSIWYG, you can remove weapons or characters from your decks to suit your model collection (or the theme of your particular game).

If, by contrast I had a dice table to generate a character or weapons...I could accidentally end up with a bunch of the same characters with a bunch of the same "best" weapons by some fluke rolls.  So with a deck of cards you're more in control of the actual "average" of what someone draws or generates.  If there is one single Buffalo Gun in the weapon deck...I won't randomly have a game where six characters draw the Buffalo Gun, etc.

For combat resolution - I used cards in other games.  Scrapheap, for example uses combat cards to resolve several things, the deck being multi-purpose.  Each card includes:
1) Number of activations a player gets on their turn.
2) The value of loot or treasure (which can in turn be money, relics/treasure, or traps)
3) Up to three damage results along the bottom of the card (which include wounds, stuns, and destruction of protective items)
4) The card can also feature the protective items, which indicate the attack is blocked if the model has the indicated equipment.
5) Some cards feature an Event icon which generates events (and can be used as timers for game scenarios), etc.

So the deck does a lot of the game's heavy lifting.  Weapons and special skills will affect the cards you draw, and in some instances you may be able to draw two cards and pick one, etc.  Some weapons such as clubs, etc. can trade a wound icon for a stun icon (stunning being pretty pivotal in both the fantasy and sci-fi versions of the game).  The club, while not being particularly deadly, is immune to being broken by an enemy attack, etc.  Swords allow you to parry, etc. etc. etc.  So combining weapon rules with the card system makes for a lot of really fun/interesting engagement.

The card shown, for example has the damage result of: stun and destroy helmet.  If the target Model is not wearing a helmet, well he's just stunned.  But these cards naturally develop a "story" when you resolve them.  Instead of "I wound you, make an armour save" it becomes "Oh man, I hit you and smashed your helmet in and you're almost unconscious!", etc.
 

[Dentatus]

Sounds interesting - altho I thought the original question concerned streamlining combat resolution so that massive quantities of dice and/or endless modifiers weren't required. 

If I understand your examples correctly, you're talking RPG- levels of detail where you're tracking not just general weapons and armor classes, but specific distinctions between weapons, hit locations, and degrees and various consequences of damage. That seems like a lot of book keeping - and that you've traded lots of dice for lots of cards. Cards or dice, that degree of grit seems fine for individuals in melee: gladiators or single Big Stompy Robots. But not large-scale battles.
 
I figured small-scale combat allowed for greater degrees of detail. But once you hit multi-squad games, vehicles, combined arms, a certain level of abstraction was required to keep the game flowing. Then the game mechanics either need more dice (the common solution) or need to be clever and elegant. Something like die-shifts in Stargrunt 2. (I've always thought that game was genius.) 
 
In your last example, what's the actual difference in game between "I wound you, make an armour save" and "Oh man, I hit you and smashed your helmet in and you're almost unconscious!" ?  If a hit lands without serious injury, why not simply have a Stun option for individuals the same way some games allow squads to be Pinned? Seems similar enough.  Regardless of your combat resolution mechanic, the battle's story still unfolds and all you need is a token to denote status.   

[Elbows]

I was not addressing mass ranked combat, merely pointing out that cards do a lot of stuff that dice do not.  I would elaborate on the last point, but honestly I don't feel like posting the entire rulebook here to explain further.  I started typing a lengthy response explaining it, but...we can skip that.

[Major_Gilbear]

I was not addressing mass ranked combat, merely pointing out that cards do a lot of stuff that dice do not.  I would elaborate on the last point, but honestly I don't feel like posting the entire rulebook here to explain further.  I started typing a lengthy response explaining it, but...we can skip that.

Yeah... I also did not address this when I mentioned cards in my post either, for similar reasons. I just wanted to write a contributing post, and not a fifteen-page discourse - and my post still ended up being quite long anyway!

I would say that cards are just a mechanism that has certain features, much like using dice. I happen to like a lot of the features that cards offer, as it "solves" a lot of issues that I typically find grating in games. And whilst cards can absolutely be used for mass-combat or rank-and-flank games of any era, and not just detailed skirmish/individual model games, it doesn't mean that they are always the best/automatic choice either. Even how cards are used has as much impact as whether you use cards to generate the results.

The biggest downsides to having cards in a game are:

# Trying to remember what each card represents if using a standard deck

# Whether using a standard deck affects how players "feel" about the game (might seem anachronous if used in an Ancients game for example...)

# Custom decks may impose an entry barrier to the game

# Custom decks often benefit from having an "almanac" of them somewhere, both as a player reference, and for posterity if the rules should ever go OOP.

I realise that most games used dice (and simple D6s at that), but I often feel that's why so many games fall into the same design spaces/traps every time, and why many new games frequently struggle to stand out from the crowd. You don't need a gimmick, but you do need to do more than just re-tread what others have done, which is hard if you're basically just using all the same tools and mechanisms as everyone else.

[Daeothar]

I must admit that I do like cards in games; as stated, they can add something that dice cannot. But what grinds my gears is the often totally illegibility of symbols on cards, to the point of frustration!

It may be the specific games with proprietary cards I've played so far, but (to me, at least) the used symbols are often confusing and hard to make out. I'm specifically referring to Puppet's War, which is a Malifaux spin-off (I don't know if Malifaux cards have the same issues) and the recent Masters of the Universe game.

Most of this is due to graphics design I reckon, but it still irks me.

Also, I have a range of decks of playing cards, to match different genres of games, and they don't distract from the atmosphere as much as cheap, standard card decks would, so there's a solution...

[Easy E]

I realise that most games used dice (and simple D6s at that), but I often feel that's why so many games fall into the same design spaces/traps every time, and why many new games frequently struggle to stand out from the crowd. You don't need a gimmick, but you do need to do more than just re-tread what others have done, which is hard if you're basically just using all the same tools and mechanisms as everyone else.

Well, that is prompting me towards a different discussion about giving your game a Hook, and mechanics are definitely a type of hook you can use. 


To date, I am still a big fan of using opposed dice pools with critical mechanics for smaller scale Model vs Model type games.  To me, this does the job. 

However, I was a skeptic about Meta-currency in Role-playing games until I designed using them.  Now I am more of a fan, depending on their intent in the game.  Perhaps I need to do more design work using cards to become comfortable with them?   

[Major_Gilbear]

Perhaps I need to do more design work using cards to become comfortable with them?

Why not?

Do check out Malifaux as a professional interest exercise though - it's just a poker deck plus two Jokers per player, and it yet still manages to produce quite a complex range of results through several clever mechanisms. It shows that even if you keep the bar to entry low by avoiding proprietary cards, ordinary cards can still do a lot.