Players of miniatures game love to talk about topics like the finer point of balance. A subject that gets commonly overlooked is the simple art of designing an effective card or data entry that con quickly convey to the player necessary information. Today we're going to look at five different games, the approaches they take to making a card and some potential strengths and weaknesses. Before we start, it is important to understand that our collective knowledge of how to design a game and for aspects like layouts have improved by leaps and bounds over the past 2 decades, so some of the stronger designs will be the newer ones simply because they can apply the lessons learned.
Now, this part may seem elementary, but sometimes it's important to just get back to the most basic elements. How are you reading this article right now? You're starting on the left side of a line, reading to the right, then dropping down a line, going back to the left and starting all over. This is how you can expect your players to consume information, so, in turn, this is how you should sort it i.e. most relevant -> least relevant should generally follow this pattern. Also, if information is used sequentially, 1/2/3/4, it should be presented sequentially. Presenting information in a disconnected fashion, 4/1/3/2, makes it inherently harder to remember and find.
A lot of the stuff we're going to look at may seem small, but when taken as a whole, all of these small factors will add up to dramatically increase or decrease the learning curve for players.
NOTE: This is not a commentary on the quality of the game, but on how easy it is to access and retain the information needed to play it.
Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition
The first thing that strikes me as odd is the presence of the "Power" stat in the top left. Question for the audience: do you need list building information in gameplay? Of course not, the model is already on the table, you've already used that information and it will generally never be needed quickly in game. There's a debate on whether Power is needed at all since it's rarely used, but it definitely shouldn't be in such a prominent location. Another questionable decision is that, it proceeds to tell you what the unit composition is, list a bunch of weapons (several of which it never listed in the unit comp), then proceeds to tell you how you could get those weapons. A) why is this list building info so high up on the card and B) why is it separated by the weapon block? These are just general rhetorical questions for the audience to think about, but I'm of the mind (and we'll see this with basically all of the newest cards) that list-building information can just be dumped in a bin somewhere and information that relates to the same topic should be in the same place. So our three list building chunks are all separated from one another and prominently placed for reasons that are super unclear. Now, you might be wondering how much this Rhino costs especially if the whole power thing isn't used. Well, that's located in the back of the book that contains this entry...actually those points might have also been updated. If we're regularly changing points, why are we printing points or putting any list building into physical media? Why is there no app for this game or at least all of these squad options and points on a PDF that be easily updated so as not to have out of date information floating around for players to get confused by? I would also add that, I know I said you could put list building stuff in a bin, but I did say "a bin" singular and this is definitely "bins" plural given how many different places points and composition information can be located.
So our stat block is not the best here. For anyone who knows nothing about Warhammer as a game, what does WS and BS stand for? Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill are pretty obtuse terms for melee and ranged attacking and abbreviating them as WS and BS just takes an already obtuse term and likely makes it undecipherable for a new player. To make things that much more odd, we're also removing the attack stat from the weapons that you are attacking with. Draw an imaginary line for how many places your eyes have to go to find the information for just resolving a round of fighting with that rhino. The number of dice you have to roll is the third to last stat, except in this case it has a chart you have to reference. The number you need to roll on those dice is second in line and the strength value is fourth in line...then you have to consult the to-wound chart in the rulebook in order to know what that strength means for dice rolls and this isn't even using a weapon which will require you to go down to the weapon line in between these steps. It's like a drawing from a hypothermic 4 year old.
We also see references in the Airborne rule on the Fire Raptor card about Fly, but what is Fly? Does the Fire Raptor have Fly? It's not listed in any of it's...oh, neat, it's all the way on the bottom in between VEHICLE and FIRE RAPTOR ASSAULT GUNSHIP. The problem here is that the FLY keyword actually has some pretty relevant gameplay ramifications, but is sandwiched between two terms that mostly don't do anything unless you have a rule specifically referencing them. I'm super unclear on why FLY is a keyword and not a special rule, not the least because keywords are buried on the bottom of the card like this.
Here's another question for the audience: What is the difference between the Explodes rule on the Rhino and the Crash and Burn rule on the Fire Raptor? *Jeopardy music playing* ...times up, did you guess "the name of the ability and literally nothing else"? This is not quite as bad as the fact that there are about a dozen different Explodes rules that are all different, but have the exact same name. As a small gripe, don't things usually explode as part of the crash and burn process? Why don't both of them just have the Explodes (6+/6"/D3) rule...actually rewind and look back at that, why do you think I sequenced the parenthetical part in the manner that I did? Also, adding that parenthetical component means you have a way to get necessary information without having to read the entire god damn rule to figure out how it's different from every other Explodes rule in the game. This is the big indefensible part of this design because there's no reason to have multiple abilities doing the exact same thing (and there's more than 2 of these) and there's even less reason to have the exact same ability do different things without so much as a minor name change *head explodes* wait, my head didn't explode, I only rolled a 5...wait, crap, this version actually explodes on a 5! GAAAHHHHH!
Now I have a suspicion about some of this, so stick with me, here's an Age of Sigmar datasheet:
Now, look at this real quick. We don't a weird and clunky statline. Necessary stats are on the top left, like stats are clustered together, and the weapons have their stats presented in the order of the attack sequence. This came BEFORE the Warhammer 40k 8th edition entries above from the same company. My current running theory is that the original plan was to do something closer to this for 40k 8th, but due to Age of Sigmar's rollout being something of a dumpster fire, they panicked at the last second and they ended up keeping most of the legacy aspects of the old formatting for 40K.
Warmachine Mark 3
So, right off the bat, we see some similarities in terms of the statblock, but there are some key differences. 40k was inconsistent in terms of how it abbreviated stats, but Warmachine has a standardized three letter system. The only things that might throw someone off are MAT and RAT, but those stand for Melee Attack and Ranged Attack and just by saying that, you probably already know what both of those do. We also see that, like 40k, the first stat is model speed. The reason for that is pretty straightforward; moving is usually the first thing you'll do in a game. The second stat of strength is more questionable. In Warmachine, Strength is only used for power attacks and a small number of abilities, in fact, it's used so rarely that even seasoned players will have to look up this stat when it does come up. You'll also note, the only pieces of list building info are the point cost and field allowance, both of which are in bottom right corner i.e. the place you will look at the least.
Notice, the MAT and RAT are separated from the weapons, but not by a crazy degree. If you trace the eye for the attack sequence, it's just a simple chevron, could be better, but not the worst. A bigger issue can be things like weapon abilities on the back of the card. Weapon abilities can affect attack, damage and everything in between. I can't count the number of times I've had a newer player roll a critical and immediately flip the card to see if there's a critical effect. So, here, you do get some excessive card flip syndrome because the abilities are not all colocated with the stats. The real anomaly here is look at the DEF ARM in the top right. Now look at the health bar in the bottom left. The number one thing to use after the DEF and ARM stats is the healthbar, so why are they on opposite sides of the card? More game design rhetoricals: Should the health bar move up the DEF/ARM, the DEF/ARM down to the health bar, or should all of this be moved somewhere else entirely?
Here, we can also clearly see the Icon dilemma. Warmahcine started using Icons in Mark 2 for commonly used abilities. They rejiggered the icons for Mark 3, deleting some and adding some more, but look at the absolute mess on the front of the card here. We have 9 unique icons on this card and 16 total icons. To top it off, some are even pretty similar, such as an arrow and a different arrow, sparkles around a weapon and sparkles on their own. We also have black and white and color icons. What's the difference? There isn't one, but you could be forgiven for thinking there is. The dilemma, however, is that almost all of these icons, if they didn't exist, would be on the back of the card and take up at least one line of text. Is that worse than bloating the front of the card with a myriad of little icons that the player may or may not understand? Keywords can have the same issue. Both keywords and icons allow you to add greater complexity without a wall of text, but can lead to player confusion and flipping around the rulebook to see what everything is.
What's interesting here is that, Warmachine is the only all digital game we're looking at. The only way you could get the above card would be to print it off of their website or the Warroom 2 app. What's also noteworthy is, this is a mark 1 card:
It's not that different from the current Mark 3 cards. It's mostly just shuffling things around. It has some similar problems to the 40k card in that the legacy elements that have been retained are the weakest parts, but unlike 40k, Warmachine is all digital. The cards really need to be optimized more for the digital format and printable versions should basically just be reminder text and damage marking aids.
Malifaux 2E
So, here we're getting a little more modern. We're not going to deep dive this design as much, but there are a few things to look at. One really weird feature is that he model has a Wound stat right above the wound tracker. This seems super redundant and the only reason I can think of to do this is to print a specific stat for the number of hp a model has just to allow other models to interact with that stat. Malifaux is weird in that respect because you can attack or defend with anything (there's an attack that uses model Ht or height and I can think of at least one attack that goes against Wk or walk stats).
The big thing I really want to look at here is that all of the stats used for defense along with abilities and triggers for defending are on the front of the card. All of the attacks and tactical actions and all of the stats you need for those are on the back of the card. So, when a model is not activating, you can just leave the card face up. When a model is active, the only information you generally need from the front is the walk and charge stats and otherwise you can just keep the card flipped for the entire activation. It's functionally a mode-based organization that's quasi sorted by active and inactive modes. Much like a lot of Malifaux's cool ideas, it's really hard to tell if it's intentional or not, but it's an interesting take regardless.
Flames of War V4
This card is so well organized on multiple levels. So, let's just ask a series of questions: What armor do the designers think you'll be using the most? Least? What speed do you think is the most common to use? Least? What weapon do you think you'll use the most? What do you think the attack sequence is in Flames of War? You can answer every last one of those questions just based on how the information is sorted and presented on this card. I'd also point out, there's a lot of information density here. We have 3 different weapons, 4 different movement speeds, 3 different armor values, morale and skill along with 5 special abilities. Does this card feel excessively cluttered or busy?
Now, Battlefront is not a fan of showing point costs or organization which are located on the back of the card, so I'm not going to post an example of that, but it's really just a block that tells you what's in the unit, what the points are and if there are any options. However, the back of the card also has reminder text for all of your abilities. NOTE: It is reminder text, not the entire text of the ability. Star Wars: Legion also does this where the full rules are in the rulebook, but the card has a quick reminder to give you the basic information for an ability without making the card excessively cluttered. For general accessibility, there area lot of pluses to this approach. You can let players know generally what something does in very few words and space and they'll only need to crack open a rulebook if they have a specific interaction question.
This card design didn't come out of nowhere and early versions of Flames of War were far less intuitive. It's noteworthy here that, Battlefront went with a larger tarot card size as opposed to the playing card size of Warmachine or Malifaux, just mull around in your mind the reasons why. This design actually evolved from the Team Yankee game from the same company:
There are some key things that were changed when they went from Team Yankee to Flames of War V4, so try to spot exactly what on this Team Yankee card may be suboptimal and why.
X-Wing 2.0
At first glance, this looks like it breaks some principals we've discussed, but that might not be 100% true. Yes, the stats are on the bottom and the action bar is on the far right, but look at the overall visual design for a minute. If you were wondering how many of the Red attack dice you roll, you would look for the red number, but red is lightly used on this card, same for green for defense die, blue for shield tokens, etc. It's the stark black background and relatively unbusy (there's' almost certainly a better term for that) card that kind of allows it to cheat because your eye is going to be looking for specific things that are nowhere else on the card. For example, look at how much busier this 1.0 card is for luke:
It's using more space to convey less information. There's also another little piece of information that you may not notice just by looking at the card. In X-Wing, you're supposed to put shield tokens and charge tokens on the card. Where is the natural place to put those? In the 2.0 card, the stat bar and action bar are in an L-shape that will be out of the way if you place the tokens on the top left of the card. Also, those tokens are more immediate pieces of gameplay information than your statline or action bar. For Example:
It doesn't take up that much room for Luke with his 2 shields and 2 force, but someone like Tavson with 6 shields and 2 charge tokens is a different story.
You're probably wondering where the list-building information is. We clearly see a point cost and upgrade bar for 1.0 Luke, but 2.0 Luke has neither. X-Wing moved all list-building to their official app and also publish PDFs on their website with the same information. The developers have been consistently pushing out updates every 6 months for points and slots and not just simple up or down adjustments. Supernatural Reflexes went form a straight 12pts to a variable cost based on Pilot Initiative and the Hate upgrade got a variable cost based upon ship size.
There are some benefits and drawbacks to digital vs. physical. Warmachine has experienced some of the all digital problems:
1- Battery life. If you go digital to the point where it's used in game play and not just for list building battery life becomes a major consideration for large events.
2- Can I see your device. Asking to see a piece of cardboard is very different than asking to see an expensive electronic device that may contain sensitive information.
3-Technical difficulties. If you have multiple damaged jacks or beasts and you have a crash, even if it's unrelated to war room, you have a non-trivial gamestate problem.
X-Wing manages to get the flexibility out of the digital format without having these problems despite their app being trash because the app isn't used in game at all. It's exclusively used for list-building. This hybrid of digital-physical looks to be the best approach because you really are getting the best of both worlds and, even with a fairly imperfect execution, X-Wing is till getting a lot of flexibility without adversely effecting the gameplay experience.
Conclusion
So there's a lot to unpack here, but there's also some big lessons to learn. X-Wing has 100% been buoyed by it's high accessibility and shallow learning curve and we see that on display in their cards. Warmachine is known for gotchas and players forgetting they can do things and looking at the cards, we can definitely see why you'd lose track of what you have access too especially if that information is in a device instead of just on a card in front of you. 40K is known for being anti-simple and having convoluted interactions and we that in a card with a ton of WTF moments. Malifaux is known for being weird as hell and somewhat complicated and this is also reflected in the design. Meanwhile, Flames of War is just a simple system that works and isn't trying to do anything crazy.
Really small decisions about where to put a stat, what to name an ability and even what order to put things in can dramatically how players interact with your game.