I’ve posted before about why we have Campaigns in Combat Cards, but I thought it might be interesting to run through how we add new ones to the game.
First, a quick overview: Each Campaign pits two factions against each other in a week-long battle. Players control one faction, and the AI the other. Each time you beat the AI you climb the leaderboard, but it gains more points to spend on its deck, and its cards get more upgrades. Similarly, each time the AI beats you it loses points and upgrades. At the end of the week, you earn prizes depending on your final score. Now, onwards to the interesting stuff!
Research
Our first task with each Campaign is to decide which factions are battling each other this time. While we ensure every faction appears as both the player and enemy side of battles, we do favour the factions which have more cards in the game. Doing this gives players and the AI more tactical choices for how they build their decks (because there are more Warlords and bodyguards to choose from). This is also why we’re going to add more Warlords to the game soon.
We then start looking for ‘historical’ battles between those opponents in Warhammer 40,000 lore. Sometimes this is easy (Space Marines vs Chaos, for example), but other match-ups take more research (Orks vs Necrons, say).
We gather these references by searching Codexes, rulebooks and sourcebooks; from Black Library stories, and through White Dwarf articles and battle reports (our collection of White Dwarf magazines stretches back to issue 100, so we have plenty of reference!).
For each Campaign we need an evocative title and a short description. Of course, we have to take some creative liberties with the details, because often a battle will feature one particular Warhammer 40,000 army, but we group multiple armies together into factions. For example, the Forgebane campaign was specifically fought by the Adeptus Mechanicus, but ours lets you field all of the armies in our Servants of the Emperor faction.
Why
A quick note about why we do all this research, or even bother to theme each Campaign around a 40K battle – after all, the gameplay would be exactly the same if we simply said ‘faction A versus faction B, fight’.
I’ve talked about ‘authenticity’ before, but there’s more to it than that. When we launched Combat Cards we didn’t know if players would enjoy the Campaigns or the ‘regular’ battles more, and its fair to say we’ve been surprised at how much effort and dedication players put into each Campaign.
Obviously some of this will be down to wanting to top the leaderboard or get the best prizes, but as a 40K fan myself, I know that joining in with an iconic battle like the Plague Wars or one of the wars for Armageddon is much more evocative than just A vs B.
Artwork
Example from the current Campaign, showing how Games Workshop’s original artwork is cropped into our Campaign banner, and then applied to the Campaign card pack.
Once we’ve decided on a historical battle, we find a piece of Warhammer 40,000 artwork that features the factions involved. We then send all of this to Games Workshop, who give feedback on the text we’ve written and provide us with a high-resolution copy of the artwork.
Going back to the ‘why’ – we could make our own artwork for each Campaign, but including art from the Games Workshop studio adds another element of authenticity to each Campaign. It also allows us to include a mix of classic and modern art, catering for both newer and veteran 40K fans.
The artwork is cropped to fit our Campaign banner, and also run through an esoteric and unknowable tool which turns it into artwork for that Campaign’s card pack.
Conclusion
With the final tasks of setting the fixed and random prizes, and setting its start and end dates, another Campaign is ready to roll out.
As I mentioned earlier, players are really enjoying the Campaigns, so we’re planning to enhance them in a couple of ways. I can’t go into too much detail yet, but we’re looking at areas like scoring, the AI, boosting cards, special rules, etc.
Keep an eye on CombatCards.com or our Facebook page for updates, and you can get in touch through either of those. Do let us know if you have any feedback on Campaigns – we’re always interested to hear from players.
Thanks,
Stu
Today’s campaign (playing as Chaos Faction) essentially restricts players from any success unless they rank above 30. I started 3 weeks ago ish, currently rank 17 but can only field 4 bodyguards as that’s all that is available to me at this rank. >:/
While we like the Campaigns rotating through every faction, it does mean that sooner or later new players meet a Campaign they don’t have many cards for.
It’s why we offer the weekly Campaign pack, which include all the cards from the two factions in that Campaign (irrespective of whether you’re high enough Rank to have unlocked them).
But even if you ignore those packs, it’s always worth taking part in the Campaign and collecting the prizes, no matter what your final score is.
I am loving the game and save up so that I can always buy the Campaign Pack prior to a campaign so I have some cards and its fun. The one that just started, “Forgebane” doens’t have an associated pack in the shop. I don’t even have a warlord (im level 21) and was hoping to jag one from the pack.
Having good fun in the game, keep it coming.
Unfortunately a minor error caused the Forgebane Campaign packs to not appear. The relevant coder has been recommended for the Penal Legion and a fix will be in place as soon as possible!
If you keep up with the Free packs, Kill packs and the Victory packs, I have found that I easily accrue the 300 plasma needed to buy the campaign packs (200 + 100) at the start of every campaign which generally provides some cards that are immediately useful, but all of them are great in future situations. I have spent some small amounts of money but only for coins to upgrade and the rest I’ve collected from the free packs and campaign prizes. Other than the first and second campaign I have finished in the top ten and actually come first and second quite a few times now. It won’t take long, just to be structured in your approach.
Very interesting to hear that you guys are of a similar vintage to myself, because anyone with White Dwarf magazines of that era are getting long in the tooth. I started collecting them at around issue 86 and still have them all in pristine condition, although very well packed away due to a hiatus in use. What I recently dig up was my Rogue Trader rulebook which made a grizzled old gamer reminiscent of old days. If only the old Squats were still around. Keep up the good work
Thanks for the comment. Vintage is a good word, though we use ‘veteran’ around the office!
One of the coolest aspects of working on this game is being able to go all the way back to the very beginning of Warhammer 40,000 for reference. That said, I don’t think we’ll see Illyan Natase in Combat Cards anytime soon.
I’m also a “veteran” from about the same time (mid 80’s). loving having new games in the 40K universe to explore
The campaign started before I was rank 5, but that’s ok as you will met opponents who also lack all the bodyguards. I reckon I’ll end up outside the top 400, but that should still give me multiple free packs, and I cannot complain about that.
Exactly – even if you can’t top the leaderboard, the Campaigns still give out a lot of prizes and can really boost your collection.