One of the distinctives of Redemption is that it has no true resource system outside of cards ready for play (usually in hand). We could argue for more nontraditional forms of resources (like initiative) but for now we will stick to traditional forms of resources.
Why a resource system?
Resource systems can give games a structure that restrains powerful cards, empowers weaker cards, gives stronger players a metric to keep track of for indepth gameplay. As you may know Redemption was born shortly after and inspired by Magic The Gathering and MTG has thrived on its resource system.
A quick overly simplistic explanation of MTGs resource system. Players are allowed to play out one land per turn, each land can produce one mana per round and thus generally in MTG players have access to 1,2,3,4… mana on consecutive terms if they do not run out of lands.
Because of this cards that cost one mana can be deployed faster, but they also tend to be weaker than cards that cost more mana. The more powerful cards, some that can cost over 7 mana will only see play in the final turns of the game in some matchups (if the game lasts long enough to play them at all)
This resource system gives a different flow for the game, with a more aggressive deck utilizing lower cost cards, trying to finish the game before the more defensive deck that has access to higher cost and more powerful cards.
When I take my turn in MTG I am also considering what my opponent can do in the next turn. If on my opponent’s next turn they can have access to 3 mana this informs what I can expect them to do. Because Redemption does not use resources the options of what cards I can expect opponent to play are much higher. If they have gold heroes they could have any number of gold or multicolor enhancements to use with it.
If we could add a resource system to some cards in Redemption it would allow some more powerful cards to be printed and provide more strategic depth to game play.
What would a resource system in redemption look like?
So I asked myself what a resource system could look like in Redemption. I had two primary ideas. Redemption could use resources in an implied system or an explicit system.
Implied Resource System
This system makes no changes to the rule book. Resources here are just cards we have in play. Cards that use implied would function like:
John creates and uses his tokens as a resource. If he gets to attack and leaves tokens in play without using them, next attack he will have more resources to use.
Baptism here uses any hero as a resource, tokens will be easiest, but not required.
- You could use all sorts of cards and locations for these implied resources.
- Hand
- Reserve
- Deck
- Discard
- Territory
- Battle
- Some examples
- Enhancement – You may discard x cards from the top of your deck to reduce an EC x/x CBI
- Enhancement – negate a card, you may banish 10 cards from your discard pile to end the battle.
- Hero – you may draw 2, or you may banish 5 cards from your reserve to draw 5 instead.
- Enhancement – Negate a card, you may reserve 5 nontoken characters to reserve an opponent’scard. CBI
An Implicit Resource system could be fun to add to some cards, in fact we have a few cards that already do use it. Lost Sheep uses heroes as a resource, or Esau who uses up an animal to empower himself. I think it would be fun to add more implicit resource cards to the game.
But my favorite system would be an explicit resource system:
Explicit Resource system
A resource system requires rules to be written.This is a drawback but the pros are that it is very simple and intuitive, and allows more flexibility.
Example – Prayer and Sin
- Rules
- A player can gain prayer or sin count when a card generates it for the player.
- A player can spend prayer/sin that they have generated.
- At the end of the turn all prayer/sin count is removed.
You can only have prayer count on your turn, and only have sin count while you are not the active player.
Simple prayer generation
Prayer spender, a simple CBI negate turns into a CBI battle winner if you can get 8 prayer.
A territory class prayer generator. (and sorry, not nativity, my bad – the editor)
Simple prayer generator can turn 2 animals into an extra 4 prayer generation.
Simple prayer spender.
Prayer generating good fort.
Sin Generator
Simple powerful Sin spender. 6 sin for a single target removal CBN.
Simple sin generator, sacrificing your humans for cards and sin.
Conclusion
I hope these examples demonstrate the value of implementing more resource system cards into the game (either implicit or explicit like Prayer/Sin). It must be noted that an explicit resource system would require more support than an implicit system, if only a handful of cards that reference prayer/sin get printed then they will fall out of use fast.
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