Several players and interviewers asked me about plans for the future of Worldbreakers, so let’s talk about upcoming expansions and organized play! Reminder: The Kickstarter campaign is starting March 1. If you’re excited about the future as much as I am, make sure to back Worldbreakers on day 1, and tell your friends about the game!
Disclaimer: The following plans are all in early stages and might change as Worldbreakers development continues. I continuously collect feedback from the player community, so join our Discord channel to voice your opinion and make an impact.
First Expansion: The Khanate Eternal
Worldbreakers: Advent of the Khanate, the initial game release, is going to include 112 unique cards: 4 Worldbreakers, 12 signature cards, and 96 play cards (events, followers, and locations). The first expansion is tentatively named The Khanate Eternal. The initial card pool is already designed and is ready for playtesting. The Khanate Eternal will include two new Worldbreakers, their six signature cards, along with 96 additional play cards. In finest card game tradition, here is a teaser of some of the upcoming mechanics:
- Earth, Stars, Moon, and Void are joined by the Guild of Self, whose members have been converted by mythium, either accidentally or by choice. The guild’s main mechanic is conversion, which provides powerful bonuses, but followers can only be converted once.
- A cycle of cards that require standing from two different guilds. They offer effects that combine the best of both worlds. One example is Soothing Mausoleum, which temporarily neutralizes a follower:
- Followers with action abilities that offer alternatives to the regular actions that are available during your turn.
- Khutulun has learned from Polo’s Portraitist with a card that prevents players from developing sources.
- A set of Catalan mercenaries that can damage themselves for bonuses as they enter play.
- A Stars merchant that allows you to sneak locations into play at uncomfortable times for your opponent.
- Blobby (a placeholder name!), a follower that creates copies of itself.
Moving forward, I plan to release between two and three expansions per year. The goal is to introduce 4-6 Worldbreakers and their signature cards along with ~120 play cards annually. Furthermore, I will continue with the transparent model that Worldbreakers has been following. The Khanate Eternal (and all future content) will be available for playtest on Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia as soon as possible. You will have an opportunity to try the expansion and provide your feedback and playtest results throughout development.
Organized Play
I believe that organized play (OP) is a crucial part of building and maintaining a strong community for Worldbreakers. I plan to offer an OP program through local gaming stores which will revolve around seasons that will last two months each. Each season will have an exclusive prize kit, with prizes such as alternative art cards, playmats, deck boxes, and acrylic and metal tokens.
Each season will provide organization and prize distribution guidelines for both tournaments and a league structure (which will be ongoing over the two-month season). Stores and players will have the flexibility to choose whichever format they feel most comfortable with. Tournaments require a higher upfront investment in organization, cater to the competitive player base, and provide concentrated excitement and player investment. Leagues are relatively laid back and might be a better fit for more casual players.
A central component of each season will be the metagame changes. In the context of card games, the metagame is colloquially (and narrowly) refers to the set of decks or cards that players think are strongest. For example, a popular deck with a high win rate might be said to “dominate” the metagame. Players typically prefer a shifting metagame, where strategies evolve over time. Worldbreakers will achieve that through two mechanisms.
First, some seasons will focus on the Worldbreakers draft format. Since decks are built as part of the OP event, there is less concern of one dominant strategy. If any particular deck is stronger than the others, it will become weaker as both players draft it (each getting only a subset of the cards required) or as one player drafts it and their opponent drafts a counter.
For seasons that focus on constructed decks, I will include regular changes to the game rules. You might be familiar with banned lists, a common change where some cards cannot be played. While Worldbreakers might have a ban list, it will be transient: a card might get banned in one season and available in the next one. With that said, I hope to avoid bans as much as possible.
I am much more excited about broader changes. One fun experiment that we already playtested is allowing Worldbreakers to start with any standing, instead of their guild’s standing. This opened up several deck ideas that are harder to execute with the base rules, such as aggressive Void/X decks or combo Moon/X decks. Similar ideas will change players’ understanding and expectations from Worldbreakers, keeping the OP scene exciting!
I hope this gives you a taste of some of the future of Worldbreakers! I am excited to get more of the game, the story, and the cards out there. I am even more excited about further building the player community. You are an amazing source of support and feedback!
Regarding expansions, I think you should release roughly 80-100 unique cards/year
That way, you can test for balance carefully.
Also, one of the common mistake ECG designers make is to create unique ideas that
1) break the game
2)create verbose or wordy cards (and not many people want to read a whole wall of text on a card).
So keep that in mind
I agree! Balancing unique ideas, accessibility, and playability is definitely on my mind. I hope that opening playtesting to everyone (instead of just a select group of volunteers) would help.