REDLINE: Battle of Neom is a deep set full of powerful new cards for REDLINE players to use and build around. And now that the expansion has fully funded on Kickstarter, we wanted to take some time to do a deep dive into some of the design history behind a few of the cards in our upcoming 2nd expansion.
As you will see, the cards in the Battle of Neom add a lot to the game and do exciting things. But it wasn’t always easy to make them that way.
EF-38 Shibing
With this card, I mainly want to focus on the development history behind the casualty mechanic though I will touch on the Shibing as well in just a minute.
Casualty by itself is a rather simple ability. When a card with the ability goes to the scrapyard it triggers a special one time bonus effect for the player who owns it.
When designing a new set, one of the first things we do is fabricate the new mechanics that will feature in it and then use that as a starting point for what comes next with regards to setting, story, tone, decks, etc. However with Battle of Neom, a lot of this happened simultaneously as the ideas for the expansion came together and reinforced each other all at once.
Death trigger mechanics like casualty are popular and included in some way on most card games already. And truth be told, it was one we had wanted to include in REDLINE for some time, almost since day one. Though it isn’t the most exciting mechanic so we knew when we added it to REDLINE, it had to make perfect sense. It had to the right fit. That fit came with Neom.
Once we knew Neom would be a set based around urban warfare and a pitched battle between the CPM and UNE, the casualty mechanic called shotgun right away and came along for the ride. It did a great job representing the high losses and attrition the CPM would be facing during the fight and as the CPM had a small sacrifice theme already, having cards that granted the player extra bonuses upon death would help make those strategies more powerful. The hardest part of creating the mechanic was simply naming what it would be.
As for the EF-38 Shibing we wanted to play around with the idea of a light scout that generated recon for the player, but without using the scouting ability which is how most efreets generate recon already, one at at time, every time they attack. The Shibing is interesting in that it creates double the recon of most units, if it dies of course, and can be a useful tool for players who want to jump ahead early in recon or get a nice boost of later in the game or in combat situations.
Originally this little efreet generated three recon upon death but that was much too greedy of a design and scared us as it was a very powerful combo with Anna Draga as your general. We changed the casualty payoff to two recon so it still created value and could be a potential combo piece down the road without causing too many future headaches.
As for the name, Shibing means “soldier” in Chinese.
XEF-53 Hellion
The XEF-53 Hellion was actually one of the last cards to be added to REDLINE: Battle of Neom, but has an interesting story behind it’s creation and inclusion.
Normally when we design efreets, our head designer Stephen Huda, will create a handful of cool looking designs and we build cards around them unless something specific is needed gameplay wise like the walking artillery piece that is the UNE PRT-10 Parrot.
Thanks to Stephen’s work, we already had our new batch of CPM Neom efreets ready to go. Except one. We usually like to add a legendary efreet to each set to represent a special version of an existing design but had not decided what that should be yet. Then one day Stephen shared a special project he had been working on at home and I quickly got excited.
Staring at me on Facebook messenger was this monstrous looking beautiful piece of mech engineering he had designed and 3d printed on his free time. It’s hunched over appearance reminded me of a T-Rex and I knew this was the legendary efreet I was waiting to add to Battle of Neom. Who could say no to this wicked looking mech?
As a special one of prototype designed by the CPM and thrown into the Battle of Neom by General Koskof, I knew this hulking beast had to have a scary card to do the awesome looking design justice. So we pushed its stats as far as we felt comfortable. Four damage right outta the box with a healthy speed for evasion meant that as soon as this efreet hit the table, players had to account for it at all times.
These scary stats are balanced by the fact the card is legendary, which means a player can only have one in play at a time and its lack of upgrade slots means adding any extra equipment to it will be difficult and expensive. Its casualty bonus is actually a penalty as it puts six cards from its owners deck straight into the scrapyard. At the end of a game this could outright kill the owner if their deck is running low on cards and they run out. Playing too aggressively with this powerful efreet can come back at you if not careful so make sure to protect it while in play!
Despite those significant drawbacks, the Hellion is a tremendous value and a card we expect many CPM players will want to run in their decks for when sheer brute force is required.
Neom Harbor Spaceport
I’ll be using Neom Harbor Spaceport as the poster child here for one of the most exciting new additions from Battle of Neom. The scorched earth mechanic.
When we had the idea to create a set that takes place entirely in an urban combat scenario, we really wanted to find mechanics to help convey that environment. Sadly, history is full of battles that involve urban combat so we had plenty of situations to draw ideas from. One of the main aspects of warfare in an urban environment is the destruction of that environment as combat erodes and destroys the city over time. That made us wonder if we could incorporate a way for mission cards to take damage also and have them follow suit. REDLINE is semi unique as card games go because it features a “map” made entirely of cards and that allows us to actually create locations in a battle for players to fight over.
And therefore locations that can take damage.
Also, most REDLINE cards can take damage already, like efreets, Generals and strategy cards so letting mission cards get in on the fun wouldn’t be a big deal. The real problem came in designing how they would take damage and what would happen if they were ever destroyed.
Again we looked to history and it was clear to see that in most circumstances, the destruction cities take when combat happens there is in the form of colleterial damage. So we incorporated that idea into how games of REDLINE play out. Engagements in REDLINE happen when opposing players meet at one of the five mission cards in play during a game. They exchange rounds of fire until one side is left standing or the other retreats. Usually a missed shot means nothing during these engagements, but when fighting at a location with the scorched earth mechanic, those wayward shots have to land somewhere, and in this case they will cause damage to that mission.
We really liked this idea because it added no extra steps to combat as missed shots happen naturally all the time when playing. It also made combat more exciting and a lot more fun, as you knew every roll of the dice when making an attack something was going to happen to affect the outcome of game.
In addition, as all missions have already have a capture cost that represents how difficult they are to control, this could also be used as hit points to determine how resilient a mission was to taking damage. So far, so good.
The real challenge was trying to figure out what would happen once a mission took enough damage to be destroyed. We thought about removing that card from play or just replacing it with a new card from the mission deck. But this didn’t play well, as there were little consequences to destroying missions with scorched earth. A big part of what makes urban warfare so miserable is having to live and fight in the destroyed ruins of your own creation. You made the bed, now you have to sleep in it basically.
What we ultimately decided on was flipping the mission card to have it enter a new state. A state of rubble. When a scorched earth mission takes damage equal to its capture cost, it will flip and become useless rubble. No more special abilities. No more recon generation. Whatever the mission card added to the game before has now been wasted and is of little value to either player beyond simply holding it. Each flipped mission card has a capture cost of five and can no longer take damage. Yes, you will still need to fight for control of the rubble if you want to win the game, but its land that has no outside value anymore. It is simply ground to be taken.
This ended up playing so well for a number of reasons! First of all, it really captured the feel and wasteful loss of urban combat. Second, it opened up interesting new lines of play for if your opponent happened to control a card like Neom Harbor Spaceport and you wanted to stop them from drawing extra cards every turn, you no longer have to capture it yourself, all you need do is attack and destroy the mission to deny them the bonus. And you if you ever do capture it yourself. And finally, it made every match feel unique as the city of Neom will become battered and bruised while playing and drastically change the ground situation depending on how the game unfolds.
Some games Neom may come off relatively unscratched. While others may see players raze it to the ground.
The mechanic was such a home run we created a new REDLINE format called Scenario Play where players battle over a set lineup of mission cards. In this case, each of the Battle of Neom missions so players can recreate the Battle of Neom on their own and fight in an environment where scorched earth mechanic can really shine and make for some crazy fun games!
In the future, we’d like to add even ore scenario’s for players to enjoy, but also customize decks and forces to fight in each situation.
UNE Engineers
As we developed scorched earth there was one major change made we made to it that is reflected with the card, UNE engineers.
At the beginning of design, damage done to missions through scorched earth could be repaired just like any other REDLINE card. When damaged, missions could be repaired during a player’s deploy phase. UNE engineers originally had such an ability as it could be expended to remove extra damage from scorched earth missions you controlled.
The issue was, repairing missions was incredibly counter productive.
It made it hard for missions to ever be destroyed if damage could be removed and it made damaged missions not matter very much since all damage was in reality temporary. If not repaired this turn, you could always attend to it the next. This diverted players attention and made damage feel like a temporary nuisance with little impact For a time, being able to repair mission damage almost killed the scorched earth mechanic as a whole. We knew it was a cool idea, but it wasn’t coming across well during playtesting.
It wasn’t until we removed the ability to repair it that everything began to click. Once mission damage became permanent, you suddenly cared a lot more if missions took damage, as destroyed missions were not coming back. This felt more in line with how we wanted scored earth to feel when used as something impactful and was damaging if it got out of hand.
Plus, rushing into to try and repair damaged buildings n the middle of an efreet combat zone didn’t make much sense thematically either. So we changed the UNE engineers card from being able to repair damage to simply preventing it. An ability that was still useful but one that could not prevent the inevitable. It also ended up being a nice reverse of the card, CPM engineers which allows players to add extra damage to Neom missions.
Zusko
Like the casualty mechanic Zusko was a card we had wanted to print since the earliest days of the REDLINE: Core Set. The idea was pretty simple, we just wanted to make a bad ass looking CPM ace who gave off the strong and silent type of vibe but also was someone you wouldn’t want to cross paths with in a dark alley. Or anywhere really.
Like a lot of ideas we had during the early days of REDLINE design, Zusko was cut due to space limitations and so had to wait for his turn to see print. But as we began to craft the story of what happened during the Battle of Neom we saw a space where he might fit in.
With the addition of the XEF-53 Hellion as a special prototype efreet being field tested during the Battle of Neom, we saw the chance to sneak a special pilot behind the controls who could get the most out of the machine.
Zusko was called back into active duty.
Most of our efreet pilots are designed in a way where they gain special abilities if a player can put them in the cockpit of their preferred type of efreet. Some may excel behind the control of a nimble light efreet while other prefer to fight using neutral ones.
Zusko, being the consummate professional he is, really has no preference and so will do well in any type of efreet you equip him to. His ambush ability is a nice way to give light efreets some extra punch while he can generate recon in a medium which is something the weight class doesn’t usually do. But he does the most damage piloting a heavy efreet and is going to take an enemy down with him if he is ever killed in combat.
Zusko was a really fun card to create and I’m excited he finally has a chance to see play with the upcoming release of Battle of Neom. We’re sure he’ll see plenty of use as he is always ready no matter what situation you use him in.
Just the Beginning
We’re super excited with what REDLINE: Battle of Neom brings to the gaming table. The set is full of a lot of new ideas and great cards we hope our players will enjoy not only playing with, but also building around.
Next week, we’ll be back to focus on some of those new cards that have the potential to form new deck archetypes or reinforce existing ones that players may enjoy already.
Until then, be sure to check out the progress of our Kickstarter campaign for REDLINE: Battle of Neom to learn more about it and be one of the first to get your hands on the new set with your support!
