“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
French writer, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr – 1849
Back when we, Saving Throw Studios, created REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat back in the early pre-pandemic months of 2020 we worked very hard to do our very best to make a very cool card game about robots that we thought would be fun to play. That was it.
Fast forward just a teeny tiny bit all the way to 2023 and REDLINE is growing with 2 expansions in addition to our Core Set for our players to battle with. Between them all, REDLINE currently has a card pool of over 175 cards and 14 different game mechanics to defeat your opponents with. All this thanks to 3 successful Kickstarter campaigns that allowed us the opportunity to make something we love with the support of our player base.
Oh, and we can’t forget about our burgeoning line of REDLINE efreet miniatures! They’re awesome!
That’s not to say everything has been accomplished easily or without tribulations. As REDLINE has taken its initial baby steps we’ve received a lot of feedback from our players on how to make the game even better. This is feedback that actually combined and aligned with a lot of our own internal thoughts that had grown over further development since we first launched.
This left us with some important questions to consider as we look to grow even further in 2023.
Was REDLINE a great game that was fun to play? Of course, it’s a blast.
But was it the best version of itself that it could be? After careful thought, we had to admit, no. 20/20 hindsight pulls no punches and the last 3 years had identified multiple ways to improve the overall experience when playing REDLINE.
Being aware there were ways we could improve REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat, a new pair of questions arose.
Should we take the steps needed to improve the game? Or, should we keep it “as is” in our self identified semi-flawed state and just keep moving along? Basically, the equivalent of ignoring the check engine light of your car’s dashboard since it still drives well.
As an expandable card game, REDLINE, like all other expandable card games, was designed to embrace change. By default, expandable card games grow and evolve over time as new expansions regularly introduce new mechanics and rules which leads to new cards and ultimately new ways to play.
With this core element of the genre taken to heart, we ultimately decided the best course of action for REDLINE’s current and future state was to pop the hood and take the game in for a full fledged tune up by introducing a number of tweaks to address a few of the rougher running aspects within the game.
Tweaks that we’d like to share with you today as we introduce our first look at what we are calling our, REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat relaunch!
REDLINE RELAUNCH
Relaunch can be a scary word to some, so right away we do want to make clear that the goal of our relaunch isn’t to radically change how REDLINE is played or how any of the cards function. Most of the changes we’re sharing were made to simply clean the game up by making it easier to play and understand.
To get a complete grasp of every new change made for our REDLINE relaunch right away , feel free to look over our updated rules here. As you’ll see, our updated version of REDLINE is nearly identical to the previous, to the point where the two versions are nearly indistinguishable.
However there are some key changes we made which we do want to highlight. So in today’s update we’ll be looking over the key changes we made to our REDLINE cards with future updates digging into rules changes and new play formats.
Card Updates
Do you notice anything different about the cards below?
Before we get into details we first have some explaining to do.
When first creating the cards for REDLINE we were very conscious of leaving as much room for text in the cards as possible with the needs of potential expansions in mind. A big fear was creating the cards and card text in such a way that it would limit how many words could fit on a REDLINE card, and in so doing limit our ability to make the cards we wanted down the road.
We can only fit so much text onto a single card afterall.
For example, General Gregory Yun from REDLINE Siege is a big offender. His rules text really pushes the amount of words we could fit onto a single card. His Sapper ability is quite wordy and getting everything to fit was rather tricky when we first made him.
There were many other cases of card designs we had made that had to be altered in how they worked because of the space limitations we had to work with in the frames. Sometimes the rules as written wouldn’t fit or the way we made them fit wouldn’t work as we wanted.
Because of this, a lot of rules within the game were implied, as a way to simply save space when designing cards. The problem is this can lead to game situations when things are unclear and can make the game a bit more difficult to learn when starting out for new players. Compounding the problem, we chose a default text size on the cards that would let us squeeze in extra words but was hard to read for many players.
Knowing the cards had room to improve we went back to the drawing board to find ways to make them better without making any drastic changes.
And that is important as we want to stress that even with the new changes made, every existing REDLINE card is still perfectly playable and usable going forward.
As you’ll see, the changes we made are entirely designed around ease of use. Older REDLINE cards can still be played with just as they were before and with no issues.
However, starting with our 2nd expansion, REDLINE: Battle of Neom, all REDLINE cards will be printed using the new standard.
Card Breakdowns
Though the changes are subtle, we think our new card standard really makes a big difference with how they are enjoyed.
You may have noticed the rules text on the new cards is slightly bigger to make them easier to read. Many REDLINE cards do not use the full text space so instead of punishing them for the sins of the wordier ones, the new larger text makes better use of the card space itself. Even better, our text size is now adjustable so if we ever need to, we can still make more complicated, wordier cards.
For REALLY complicated cards, we have also eliminated the flavor text box as its own separate space. Flavor text is not going anywhere, but if we ever need, we can dip into the bottom part of the card to write extra rules where we could not before as the old flavor text box was a hard barrier that got in the way.
Another big change that is easy to see is the inclusion of symbols in our card text.
Symbols are a great way to convey a lot of information quickly that saves precious word space at the same time. They’re win-win!
So we’ve added new symbols to represent frequently used terminology in REDLINE. Going forward cards will use symbols in place of damage, recon, and resources.
Very cool you say. But what about symbols for other frequently used terms such as expending, speed or armor?
We thought about trying those terms and incorporating even more to really lean heavily into using symbols but too many cards ended up looking like some kind of Egyptian hieroglyphics or as if they were written in the wing dings font. It was too much. We wanted to be careful to find a proper balance where the symbols were useful aids to assist players and not impediments that got in the way. So we have stuck with damage, recon and resource symbols only.
That’s not to say we can’t or won’t add extra symbols to the game in the future. Expandable card game after all… But for now, we’re quite happy with how they look and how they read on the cards.
Another change eagle eyed REDLINE players may have noticed on some of the new cards we’ve shared here, is a slight change in wording. These changes will be covered in more depth next week as we dive into some of the new rules tweaks. But again, if you don’t want to wait till next week, the full rules update with the terminology changes can be found here.
And lastly, we have added set symbols to all of our cards!
When we first made REDLINE, we had no idea what the future would hold so though we had designed for future expansions in mind, if the game was successful, we were still very much living in the moment. As such, the cards we made didn’t show any set identity.
As the game has grown and the card pool has increased we realized it would be a good idea for players to be able to differentiate and identify exactly which cards came from which set. So we have added set symbols that can be found on the bottom right hand corner of each REDLINE card.
The Future Is Now
We hope you are as excited as we are about the changes we’ve made to REDLINE with our little relaunch. Though the new card standard is a welcome change, any players with older REDLINE cards can still battle with them with no issue and that is so important to us.
As the game keeps growing, all future expansions will be using the new standard, which again, begins now with the cards in the upcoming release of Battle of Neom. The REDLINE Core Set and Siege expansion will also include these changes when the time is right for them to see a reprint.
Next week, we will dive deeper into the new rule tweaks as part of our REDLINE relaunch. As you’ll see, like the changes made to the cards, many of the rules tweaks are subtle and are made only to increase the ease of play.
“Without proper self evaulation, failure is inevitable.”
John Wooden – 10x NCAA men’s basketball coach champion