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.
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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...
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Design Blog 111: Faction catch-up: T’au versus Servants
To wrap up this series looking at each of the factions I thought I’d cover both the most and least popular factions at once to see if the numbers give an indication of why they are / aren’t liked. So without further ado let’s check out how the T’au and Servants of the...
Design Blog 110: Why clans have taken so long
Let’s talk about clans, that near-mythical feature which has been promised to be ‘coming soon’ for quite a while. Why talk about clans now? Because work is underway on the feature, so it really is ‘coming soon’, and because one of Well Played’s guiding principles is...
Design Blog 109: Faction catch-up: Orks
Welcome to the sixth of our faction catch-ups, this time looking at those lovable, murderous scamps, the Orks. Let’s dive straight in: Attacks As befits tabletop Warhammer 40,000, the Orks have a high attack ratio and choose to attack over Readying 80% of the time....
Design Blog 108: Fear and Scout traits added
Back in blog post 94 we revealed the next four traits (the one-off events which trigger when a card is deployed) that we’re adding to the game: Poison, Regeneration, Scout and Fear. Poison and Regeneration went in a while ago and as the Fear and Scout traits came...
Design Blog 107: Design process: Battle pass – part 2
A few weeks ago I talked about designing a battle pass for Combat Cards - not to confirm exactly how that feature will work but to look at how I approach designing something new. Let’s continue by looking at what the battle pass is not and how I know that. Approaches...
Developer Update: v29.5 & Beyond…
Welcome to the first Developer Update of 2020! After a very busy 2019 saw the launch of Warhammer Combat Cards, we're looking forward to releasing a host of new features and updates over the next few months to make the game even better. Some of those will be...
Design Blog 106: Bodyguard point changes
A few weeks ago we ran the first round of changes intended to help balance the game by looking at Warlords and their special rules. This achieved the desired effect of making some previously unpopular Warlords (hi there, Yarrick) viable, but we’ll be returning to the...
Design Blog 105: Faction catch-up: Necrons
Welcome to the latest faction catch-up, taking us to mid-way through our look at each faction’s current state. As a quick aside, I received some feedback that these catch-ups aren’t terribly useful because they’re posted every other week and are using data from a...
Design Blog 104: Season pass design process – part 1
Rather than the traditional end of year look back at 2019, I thought I’d focus on the future by running through how I approach designing a new feature for Combat Cards. I’m going to use a ‘season pass’ as a case study for this because that’s what I’m working on right...
Design Blog 103: Faction catch-up: Space Marines
Welcome to part four of this series looking at each faction's stats from October 2019 and their card and damage distribution, win rate, popularity and so on. This week we're looking at the largest faction in the game, the Space Marines. As ever these stats only count...