Alan's Card Games

Created: April 1, 2000
Last Edits: September 7, 2001
Stage: Playtested ?
Cards Created: 237
(3 sets, promos)
Status: Abandoned ?

Starcraft Card Game

Summary

A card game based on the classic Blizzard RTS game that more had more in common with tabletop gaming than card games.

Status

The game was attempted a few times at the Sonic Fan Club at school (of which Jim and I were the leaders), but never really played well. After some more attempts and rules revamps (see below), I lost interest and abandoned the project. As the game isn't really that viable, it remains abandoned.

Gameplay

The Starcraft game ("Alan's Starcraft Cards") was a card game that played more like a tabletop game. There were cards representing resources such as Vespene Geysers, units such as SCVs and Marines, buildings such as a Hatchery, the terrain that was being played on, and effects that were imparted onto units. The unit cards moved around the play area (their movement range being measured with a ruler) and did things like attack and mine resources.

The gameplay went through two phases. In the earlier version of the rules, all units and buildings were part of a single deck and could only be built when drawn and when the appropriate prerequisites were in place. A latter revision allowed searching for desired buildings and units.

The game had a large number of rules supplements.

Rules | Beginner Rules | Unit Air/Ground Classifications | Hero Classifications | Zerg Unit Building Requirements

Cards

There were nine types of cards: Seed, Terran, Protoss, Zerg, Unaligned, Powerup, Environment, Event, and Effect. The Terran, Protoss, Zerg, and Unaligned cards could be either units or buildings. Event cards also had an Upgrade subtype.

The game ended up having three card sets: Premere (which was the basic unit and building cards; 107 cards), Heroes (which added the various races' hero units; 85 cards), and Environment (which added more Environment cards; 38 cards). There were also two kinds of promo cards: Birthday (made for friends' birthdays) and regular Promo.

Future expansions that were planned included Brood Wars, Pokemon, and Sonic.

The cards themselves were fairly low-resolution with a hard-to-read font. This combined with the tedious gameplay made the game nigh unplayable.


A sample Seed card, the "Minerals Type I" resource, from the Premere set

A sample Terran card, the hero "Jim Raynor", from the Heroes expansion

A sample Zerg card, the Spanish "Drone" unit, from the Environment expansion

A sample Protoss card, the "Nexus" building, from the Premere set

A sample Unaligned card, the "Boogieman" unit, from the Birthday promos

A sample Powerup card, "Map Revealer", from the Heroes expansion

A sample Environment card, "Dirt", from the Environment expansion

A sample Event card, "Assimilate New World", from the Heroes expansion

A sample Upgrade Event card, "Upgrade Ship Plating", from the Heroes expansion

A sample Effect card, "Slow Down", from the Environment expansion

Site

The Starcraft Card Game had a website with card listings, a place to submit ideas for promo cards, and downloads of cards and rules.