N:FC v6

Reviving the TTWG-TCG combo.

Basically, list building and deck building are the same. A ship will have an ability and a number of cards that come with it. The cards go into your deck, the ability is on the ship itself.

Abilities may be things like "on Deployment, generate 4 Fighter, 2 Bomber and 2 interceptor tokens and place the ships within 3 inches of this ship" or "Once per turn, make one Railgun attack". Abilities allow each ship to provide its baseline utility without relying on drawing up a useful card. It also makes sure no ship is useless on a players turn.

Cards represent things the ship is capable of if it puts in some level of effort. Common or Uncommon cards may increase abilities where Rare or Legendaries may be one off things that ship can do or very powerful upgrades to abilities. Some examples would be:

Common (Drone carrier): "Generate 2 Fighter Tokens"

Uncommon (E-War): "Your opponent Draws one less card next turn"

Rare (Missile Ship): "Generate 4 Missile Tokens of your choice"

Legendary (Republic Flagships): "Fire the main cannon twice"

Different ships will get different things they can do, but there will be some generic cards like "Repair Hull" or "Quick Movement" that players can add to their decks. Players can add as many or as few of these Generic cards as they want.

Card Draw

At the start of the game players will draw a number of cards equal to the number of Active ships they have, active being ships that aren't destroyed or otherwise disabled. At the start of each round the players do the same. At the start of Round one players should have twice as many cards in their hand as they do ships. (Draw once for your initial, able to muligan once for free, losing a card each time after. Then draw your round one hand, cannot muligan)

E-War ships will be able to affect opponent card draw, negate abilities, and prevent cards from activating. They're the Control of this game.

Ships will have an "available cards" stat, for smaller ships this will be a number like 2-4 and the ship will come with 2-3 cards. The remaining slot can be an "upgrade card". An Upgrade Card is like a Generic Card except they apply to a specific ship or class of ship. (ex: Republic Flagship, or Destroyers). Larger ships will have an Available Cards stat of 4-8 and only have 4-6 cards. These numbers are ball park baselines and could vary from ship to ship.

This system would make Logistics ships actually useful because they could carry any Upgrade Card and would have an Available Cards of 4-12 (depending on size class) and would only come with Generic Cards. Importantly, this ship will give the player an action card draw, and a ship that can't use any cards. It's ability could let you discard in order to draw.

When you've run out of cards in your deck, Uncommon and Common cards can be taken from the discard pile, shuffled, and made into a new deck. Rares and Legendaries cannot come back into play this way unless something specifically says they can, like maybe a Destroyer Logistic's ships ability.

Booster Packs

Ships will come with the cards they need for play, buying boosters is mostly optional. Mostly because if you want to play a bigger deck and fill out all the Available Card slots on all your ships, you will need boosters. If you want holo or full art cards, you'll need boosters. Running a Logistics ship without having some boosters is useless.

Game Play

The default game would be a flat deployment clash. Each player places all their ships prior to round one start in alternating order. Draw their first set of cards, muligan if they desire. Round 1 starts. Draw round 1 cards and begin play.

Tokens are played on the table and have a card associated with them. For example a Drone Fighter will have the Ability to make 1 attack and move some amount. A missile can move some amount, or early detonate acting as an AOE but only for other Tokens. The card also list their HP, typically 1.

When a player makes an attack they roll a d10 to meet or beat their target's defense value. This d10 can be modified by the projectile type, Railguns get a +2. A ship will have 3 types of defense values; Kinetic, Energy, and Cyber. These are predetermined by game crafters, a ship with low/high values here in lore will get that represented with lower or higher defense values. If the attack hits, damage is dealt based on the weapon type. An autocannon is a kinetic weapon that may do one damage, and a Railgun may do two. A laser may do one, but a particle beam may do two.

An example of attacking:

I use one of my e-war Upgrade cards to disable an enemy ship. This is a Rare card that allows me make an e-war attack against a target ship, on a hit the enemy ship receives the Disabled effect, which means that ship cannot use cards, move, and does not count for card draw next turn. Because it's an e-war attack I only need line of sight, so I choose my enemies drone carrier to slow down the drone swarm. Their Cyber Defense is an 8, pretty tough and I don't have any bonuses, other than my Commander that lets me reroll fails once per game. We desperately need this drone carrier offline, so it may be worth it. I roll a 5, reroll and get a 9! Our point defense systems will get a chance to catch up.

Commanders are another way to make your fleet yours. individual ships don't come with a commander, but the faction starters will come with one. Additional commanders can be found in booster packs and range from Common to Legendary. Common commander are a step above the "academy fresh" commanders that are assumed the default in a ship that doesn't have a commander, they are good at one thing and only marginally better. Legendaries on the other hand are unique commanders with strong abilities. A commander is always tied directly to a ship, if that ship is disabled or destroyed the commander onboard is as well.