Strategos is the game I dreamt of as a child. It is a card based strategy game which has elements of deck building, card collecting and tactical turn based gameplay. This game turned out to be a success with adults as well as younger audiences which was a vast improvement on my expectations.  

How did i go about building it?

I assumed an initial primary rulebook and from there went about play testing with multiple groups of people, strangers and friends. I kept reworking stats for each card and then went deeper into divisions and subdivisions and classes etc. Simultaneously I also read up a lot of dev diaries and game mechanics which were relevant to me and my game.

Once I was done with the core game I went about designing the cards themselves. I had an almost unending supply of inspiration from the different and beautifully designed card games around the world. Even games like Gwent and Hearthstone added their flavor to the mix.

The board is something I'm still not satisfied with. For now the board has 4 different terrain tiles which are purely aesthetic. I wanted it to have different effects in game but have found it tedious for players to maintain such varying amount of information per card. The tile based system for the board keep the scope of the game dynamic wherein you could use either all the 252 tile pieces in game or less. I added this as i wanted the game to be more responsive well as much as an analogue game can be. I have been considering a solid sheet map where the map rolls up in a single sheet and will be testing prototypes in a while for sure.  

Throughout this journey I took a lot in from my Faculty, my peers and also the 126 other play testers who were either strangers or friends that I met so randomly. I found it exciting to find others excited by my ideas especially since this is my first time building an anologue game. I will continue to develop this idea and i hope to add more here soon so that you guys can be excited too :)