The time is finally here! REDLINE: Siege, the first expansion for REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat has arrived, and boy, do we have a lot to share! In this week’s design article we’re going to share the story behind the development of our new expansion along with some cool new cards.
Before we do though, it’s only fitting we begin with an introduction of the team that helped to make REDLINEL Siege happen. It takes a lot of work to create a card game like REDLINE and we’re extremely lucky to have such a strong group of creative people to help make it happen.
Stephen Huda – Efreet designs and miniatures
For better or worse, people have a tendency to judge a book by its cover and with REDLINE I knew our mechs would be the cover that we’d be judged by. It was critical then for the game to have strong designs and we’ve been so lucky to have a true mech head like Stephen with us from the start. With experience working for companies such as Catalyst Game Labs and Iron Wind Metals, Stephen is a veteran mech designer who loves creating metal monsters. We’re extremely lucky and grateful to have him on the REDLINE team and its no exaggeration to say the game would not exist without the awesome efreets he has made to battle in its universe.
Charlie Norin – Graphic design
If Stephen’s efreets are the book cover REDLINE is judged by, Charlie’s work are the pages within. Extremely talented at what he does, (and he does a bit of everything) Charlie has worked super hard to make REDLINE look as visually appealing as it does. Responsible for our slick card frames, symbols, and logo, he has a knack for clean design that often keeps my wild ideas in check. In addition, as a programmer, he’s also created our online card generator which allows us to design, print and test new REDLINE cards with ease. Siege would still be a long ways off if not for the groundwork he’s created for the game and his forward thinking.
Jason Alt – Flavor text/lore
Jason Alt is a bit of a renaissance man when it comes to the world of content creation. I first became a fan of his years ago as one of the two main hosts of Brainstorm Brewery, the longest running Magic: The Gathering finance podcast around. In addition he also writes weekly articles for popular websites CoolStuffInc, mtgprice and manages content for EDHrec, the go to source for the popular Commander format in MTG. Somehow through this intensive workload he was able to help with worldbuilding for us by creating extra flavor text for cards in both the Core Set and Siege. His often humorous takes have helped to balance out some of the more serious quotes on the cards and I’m super grateful for his dedication to our tiny little game.
Ben Edwards – Editing
If I have a personal kryptonite its always been grammar. Try as I might, even the crutch of a word processor and spell checker isn’t enough to catch all the typos that creep into anything I write. As a REDLINE fan, Ben must have noticed this as he reached out during our initial Kickstarter to offer his services to help proofread our cards and rules for all my gramatical landmines. A gaming veteran, he’s also helped to edit and proofread material for the popular X-Wing Miniatures game and D&D Next. Ben has been super helpful not only for his appreciation of the oxford comma, but in helping to simplify and clarify the rules to make REDLINE easier for all to play.
Cameron Dueker – Siege Design and Team Lead
As for me, well, I am the knucklehead lucky enough to have had such tremendous help from the team above that I can focus solely on card design and playtesting. REDLINE: Siege had a lot of expectations to overcome, and I was extremely grateful to have a strong team to assist in meeting those challenges.
Siege The Day
The story for REDLINE: Siege begins with the very creation of REDLINE itself.
There are many different types of card games out on the market. From stand alone to collectable to living card games, the shelves of your FLGS are filled with all models of card games . Each has their own appeal and when we designed REDLINE we had to think hard about which kind we wanted to make. We knew REDLINE had the potential for growth and so a stand alone card game wouldn’t offer the space we wanted to build. And while its fun to collect the cards in a collectable card game it’s also expensive to do so and the randomness of opening packs is often seen as a deterrent to investing in a new game. That left an expandable card game as the only option left.
With an expandable card game players purchase a core base to begin playing with that serves as the foundation for everything they need going forward which is the purpose of our REDLINE Core Set. Once made, we could grow the game in chunks that players could choose to add to their collection. Or in this case, REDLINE: Siege and its two complete expansion decks. If players found a new expansion appealing they could pick it up or simply wait until a new one arrives that they like. It’s an easier way to keep up with a card game without constantly forcing players to sink money into random packs of new cards they may not even use.
Problem is, simply saying REDLINE was an expandable card didn’t make it so. We knew we had to physically grow the game for that claim to have any merit. And so once we funded the Core Set with our initial Kickstarter, we began to think about the best ways to expand when the time was right.
This was important for two reasons. We knew players had waited a long time to play REDLINE after our Kickstarter had funded and we didn’t want them to think the game wasn’t being supported. And secondly, while we aren’t beholden to any one type of expansion set, we knew the first one would set a precedent for what players would expect going forward. This idea of setting precedent even came down to the set name. Originally our idea was simply to name Siege something generic like REDLINE: Wave 1. Luckily in discussions with Charlie, he made it clear we’d be missing out on great lore and story telling opportunities if we didn’t include specific set names. With that in mind, we ultimately settled on Siege as our first expansion name for gameplay reasons you’ll see below.
The other pressing concern was to understand the goal of what our first expansion wanted to achieve. From the very first reveal of REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat our fans made it clear they were hungry for more cards and more deckbuilding opportunities. We too looked forward for the chance to expand on the CPM and UNE factions from the Core Set and open the game up to new strategies and lines of play. This became our main goal then as Siege design wasn’t meant to simply deepen the REDLINE card pool, but create new approaches to gameplay and provide players with new tools to explore them in conjunction with the cards in the Core Set.
Now that we had established our goals for Siege, to set a strong precedent for future expansions and expand deckbuilding option, we went to work on implementing them.
Generals
We knew the quickest way to broaden the game was by introducing new Generals to the fight. Each REDLINE deck is led by a General which determines which faction cards can be used in deck construction while also granting special abilities and synergies to build around. To establish an initial foundation, the REDLINE Core Set only came with 1 General for each faction, Gen. Brand for the UNE and Gen. Serova for the CPM, which limits deck construction to two main options.
To help open up the game quickly, both Siege expansion decks are built around the 2 included General cards in each deck, bringing the total in the game now to 6. While each deck works well enough with either in charge, there is also plenty of room to build out each General as players see fit. And with that said, let me introduce you to General Sam McClendon!
As you can see, Sam favors a defensive strategy as he looks to defeat his adversary through a siege of attrition and firebase counters! A master of the art of siegecraft, Gen. McClendon works best when able to capture terrain and dig in to protect his heavy artillery, which will slowly deplete enemies of the resources they need to wage war. If that terrain can be held of course!
Strategy Cards
While creating more General cards would go a long ways to opening up new deckbuilding strategies, we also looked to expand our selection of REDLINE card types for ways to give players more options to brew.
Luckily, we already had an idea on the back burner for a new card type with the introduction of strategy cards.
Originally designed for the Core Set, strategy cards were pulled in the middle of its design. As the Core Set was the introduction to REDLINE we wanted to make sure it was accessible in regards to gameplay and simplicity. Stuffing it full of new ideas suffocated the rest and as we were limited in how many cards we could actually print within it, we decided to cut strategies as a card type and simply save them for later. Now that we had space and room with Siege, we wanted to bring them back because they offer plenty of pivot points to build around. Like with Delaying Action.
When deployed to a players baseline, strategy cards bring static effects to the battlefield that persist from turn to turn. However like General cards, they each have an armor value that can be depleted either through mission capture damage or direct damage. Also like General cards, they can be repaired during a players deploy phase at the cost of 1 damage counter per resource spent. However when destroyed, they go straight to the scrapyard to rust and rot and decay.
Strategy cards bring powerful new abilities to a players arsenal but need to be protected to make an impact. The only question now is, what the heck is Rear Guard?
New Missions
One of REDLINEs bigger strengths we believe lies in its mission deck. The mission deck and the cards within represent the thin red line between players in a game and constitutes the “map” where their forces battle. Not only do missions provide an objective for players to fight over, but the randomness of the map created by the mission deck means each game of REDLINE plays differently and requires different strategies to win A redline of easily capturable missions would favor a blitzkrieg type approach to play where the player able to control all 5 the quickest has the best chance of winning. However, a redline of high value missions requires a buildup of strong forces capable enough to secure them and so will take time.
We definitely wanted to build upon what the mission cards bring to the game and as such, there was never a question we’d make more. If you ever play online shooters like Call of Duty or Apex Legends, you know how important the introduction of new maps are to keeping the game fresh and that’s exactly what we hope to do with the introduction of new mission cards like Fertile Field.
Each Siege expansion deck comes with an additional 2 mission cards players can add to their existing Core Set mission deck.
Siege Efreets
Probably the biggest thing players would want and expect in REDLINE is the inclusion of more efreets. Us too! We love all our efreet designs so much and work to treat them all as if they were the main characters of any other game. With that in mind, Stephen worked on creating 9 brand new efreet designs for our latest expansion and damn, do they look good!
We hope REDLINE players will have a lot of fun deploying these new efreets into battle and finding ways to harness their capabilities. Especially efreets like the new United Nations of Earth, PRT-10 Parrot, a heavy piece of self propelled walking artillery that can lay waste to enemy positions from afar.
The First Step
We’re so excited to see what REDLINE: Siege brings to the table. We spent a lot of time creating an expansion that not only plays well on its own, but also compliments the cards included in the REDLINE Core Set. REDLINE is still young and growing as a card game but as we add more cards over time we hope to see it mature and develop into something bigger and better than ever! The Siege expansion is just the first step of what we hope will be a long journey to come.
Thanks for reading and be sure to come back next week as we’ll dive into all the new Siege set mechanics and even more fun cards to spoil and reveal!