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 116: Precise wording in traits + special rules
Contrary to what you’d expect, life as a videogame designer is only 50% casinos, car-chases and throwing henchmen off the Eiffel Tower. The rest of the time is spent discussing incredibly specific details about how pieces of our game should or should not work....
Developer Update: v29.12 & Ranked Season 4
Hi everyone! We hope you're all keeping safe out there in these uncertain times. What you can be certain of is that the team is still working hard on bringing lots of new features to Warhammer Combat Cards, albeit from the comfort of our own homes! Working from home...
Design Blog 115: Perfect Information in Combat Cards
I wrote about randomness in Combat Cards way back in the carefree, could go outside and lick anything we wanted, days of blog post 38. This week I wanted to expand on that by looking at ‘perfect information’, and what that means to videogames. Intimidating A game has...
Design Blog 114: Improving traits – art spotlight
Alongside the new feature work we have underway, our art team is looking at improving the traits used by cards when you deploy them to the battlefield. Rather than me trying to explain what we’re doing here and why, I asked our concept artist, Becky, some questions:...
Design Blog 113: New versus old cards
Before we get to this week’s topic I wanted to make sure everyone reading these posts understands that this blog never forces the Combat Cards team into commitments. Sounds weird but what I mean is that as the team discusses and agrees on plans I make notes of...
The Well Played Games Warhammer Hobby Blog – March
Welcome to the first installment of the Well Played Games Warhammer Hobby Blog! When we're not busy making Combat Cards many of us enjoy dabbling in various elements of the Warhammer universe, so we figured we'd share what we've been up to with you all. Deke This...
Design Blog 112: The lore behind ranked mode
This week I thought I’d talk about lore, which for the purposes of this post is all the text in Combat Cards that doesn’t strictly pass on ‘game information’. Or to put it another way, lore, as the saying goes, is like pornography - you know it when you see it. Now...
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....