Designer Diary 6: Secret Strategies
When designing The Mandalorian™: Adventures, one of our goals was to create a game that could be enjoyed by new players as well as serious hobby gamers. If you’re reading this article, you’re likely one of these people.
There is a danger in trying to appeal to both casual and serious gamers, but I think we accomplished it by having some complexity hidden in the guide deck and secret envelopes (read the full article on that here).
Today, I want to pull back the curtain and show 3 unlockable components that add depth and strategy to the game. Each of these juicy bits give tasty choices for the serious gamer.
Be warned, this designer journal CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS of hidden content in the game. If you want to go into the game blind, I suggest skipping this article.
Tactical Skill Cards
After your first game, you will unlock a brand new type of skill card: Tactical Skills. These cards do not have a strength number and instead have the tactical icon on them.
When you play a tactical card on an action, you do not get to use the action’s ability (because the card has no strength). Instead, you only use the skill card’s ability (assuming you play it on the matching action type).
The extra advantage of tactical skill cards is that during the event step, you will treat this pile as if it had exactly 5 strength. This means that you need to resolve an event card for this action pile, but you avoid the crisis (see event step rules designer journal #3).
Clever gamers may realize the implications of this: playing a tactical card on an empty action pile isn’t great (because it will cause an event), but if the pile is already at 4 strength this is fantastic (because it avoids the crisis).
Some crises are especially painful and might even make you lose the game. If you’re in a bind, you can play a tactical card on a pile NOT matching the ability. You won’t get to use the card’s ability, but you avoid the crisis.
Wild Skill Cards
After your second game, you unlock another type of skill card: wild skill cards. These card abilities can be used when played on any action slot.
Wild skill cards often play into each character’s specific skill set. For example, IG-11 has many cards that damage himself, and he can then turn this damage into strength. Likewise, Burg often wants enemies to be in his space, and his basic wild card reinforces this.
You may have noticed that The Mandalorian wild card lets you disable an enemy. To do this, you place a disrupt token on the enemy facedown. This enemy cannot move, attack, or use it’s abilities. The next time the enemy would move or attack, the token is removed. Not only is this very thematic for the “Gauntlet Whipcord,” but remember that you can use this ability when played on ANY action pile. There are many wacky ways you can use this, but I’ll let you discover those on your own.
Advanced Character Cards
After your fifth game, you receive my favorite unlock: advanced character cards. You may have noticed that the basic character cards seem suspiciously empty – just a name and health value. All that empty space is soon put to good use with advanced character cards.
Once unlocked, these cards replace your basic character cards. Each advanced character card gives you a powerful once-per-game ability that can swing the tide of battle.
These abilities are very thematic and fit each character’s specialty. My favorite is IG-11’s Self-Destruct ability. I love it so much that it’s been REALLY hard to keep this secret!
Normally, when a character is defeated all players lose the game. This is especially problematic for IG-11 because he has many abilities that damage himself. Luckily, it is against IG-11’s programming to be captured, so he can self-destruct. When this happens, he deals 3 damage to each enemy in his space and is then disabled. This will eliminate him from the game without failing the mission.
These are just SOME of the surprises you’ll find hidden in your game. This journal focused on some of the tools players receive, but the enemies, events, and missions all receive new twists, challenges and wrinkles.
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