Developer Blog
Written by Stu Maine – designer at Well Played Games – check in every Friday for the latest developer blog, covering:
- The design decisions behind the gameplay
- Tactics and tricks for each of the card Factions
- Upcoming changes, events and the studio’s plans
- Insights and behind the scenes at a games studio
- A look at the Warhammer 40,000 references used
- Warhammer 40,000 hobby content
If there’s a subject you’d like to see the blog cover or you have a question, get in touch via [email protected] and let us know.
Recommended Must See
Design Blog 84: Global launch catch-up
Hi there. As we’ve just launched the game worldwide, I wanted to use this week’s blog to get new players up to speed, and give them and our veteran players a look at what we have planned for the game. Welcome If you’re reading this then I assume you’ve downloaded and...
Design Blog 79: Live updating new cards
Over the last couple of weeks you may have seen us adding Sister Amalia Novena and the Chaos Ogryn, Ordrogg, to the game. These appeared alongside other new cards, so to the public they seem just like anything we add to the game, but for us these were important...
Design Blog 38: Luck in Combat Cards
Every now and again I like to discuss an area of ‘high level design’ - that is something which I, as a game designer, think is interesting and worth talking about, even if it won’t help you win battles. So this week I thought we’d look at where chance, luck and risk...
Design Blog 30: How Combat Cards fits into your hobby
Something a little different today, so apologies if this is a bit rambling. Some friends and I visited Warhammer World (Games Workshop’s HQ, miniatures exhibition, gaming hall and cafe) recently, and this got me thinking. Y’see, the venue was packed - there was a...
Latest News
Design Blog 97: Poison and Regeneration traits live
A couple of weeks ago I talked about the new traits that we're adding to the game and why we're adding them. I'm pleased to announce that the first two of these traits will be rolled out on Monday / Tuesday next week, so their introduction doesn't disrupt a weekly...
Design Blog 96: Faction catch-up – Chaos
A long, loooong time ago I ran a series ‘faction focus’ blog posts, looking at how each played, their tactics, weaknesses and so on. As it’s been a couple of years I thought I’d revisit each faction over the next few months, alternating these posts with ‘normal’...
Design Blog 95: A Tale of 13(ish) Painters – the conclusion
A few months back Well Played Games ran their own version of the classic White Dwarf series ‘A Tale of X Painters’, with each of us trying to paint 50 Power / 1000 points in stages. The plan was always to end the series with everyone heading to Games Workshop’s HQ...
Design Blog 94: New traits 7 to 10
As I’ve mentioned before, as well as working on big new features we’re also making a number of smaller improvements and additions to the game. One of these is to add four new traits to the game, taking us up to 10. Last week’s blog looked at why we’re adding new...
Developer Update: v28.3
Welcome to another developer update! We've just released v28.3 which includes some new features that many of you have requested, so keep a look out for the update reaching you soon. We'll be talking about the new features shortly, but first we wanted to discuss some...
Design Blog 93: Designing new traits
In exciting news we’re about to add some new traits to the game, and while I’ll discuss them in detail next week I thought I’d run through how we create them first. Traits To ensure everyone’s up to speed, traits are the one-off powers that each card uses when it’s...
Design Blog 92: Seasonal leaderboards – what, why and when
The Combat Cards team is working on a lot of different features, updates, improvements and fixes right now, so I’m going to share some of the work in progress over the next few posts, beginning with ranked mode. Loops Currently we have two game 'modes' - normal...
Design Blog 91: Vengeance of Sekemtar and live-ops
I’ve talked about how we select cards to be Warlords and bodyguards before, but this week I wanted to focus on our Necron faction as an example of Combat Cards’ ‘live-operations’. Live-ops is what we call the servicing and updating of a ‘living’ game, where we...
Developer Update: v28.0 – The Future of Warhammer Combat Cards
Welcome to another Developer Update! Version 28 is now live, and with it comes a number of improvements and fixes in various areas of the game. The team has been busy laying the foundations for some awesome upcoming features, and with this update we wanted to break...
Design Blog 90: The possibility space of Combat Cards – part 2
Welcome to part two of this look at what designers call the ‘possibility space’ (part one is here). Last week we discussed ‘width’, so this time we’ll cover the other axis - ‘depth’, and wrap up with a look at what all this means to Combat Cards. Depth On the...