❖ Version History ❖

October – November, 2021
In the few weeks of October and November 2021, I had been spending a lot of time working with the play testers to navigate the dragon rules, as we discussed in our last journal entry.

During this process, I had been wrapping my brain around the idea of making a better prototype. This had started with the micro-card drawings I did in the late summer about a month earlier, but that prototype did not get finished due to the cards being too tiny. My next problem to face was that the next size up in card stock was going to cost us nearly twice as much to make the game…

But then something occurred to me. The cost of the farming cards could be reduced by half if the cards themselves could be printed on both sides. This would also save a ton of space on the inside of the box (in terms of contents)… but could the cards be made this way? Let’s take a look into what this would mean toward the design of Phoenix Farm:

Two Types of Card:
There are two types of cards that will appear in the game: Tool Cards, and Phoenix Cards. The Phoenix Cards require a Tool to be used in order for the Phoenix Card to progress forward. As such, a new Tool is needed for each phase of the Phoenix life.

Example:
Phoenix Ash + Broom (tool) = Phoenix Egg
then,
Phoenix Egg + Kiln (tool) = Phoenix Chick

All Phoenix Phases:
Ash -> Egg -> Chick -> Fledgeling -> Adult -> Elder

All Tool Needs:
Broom -> Kiln -> Grain -> Nest -> Brush

So, if we are going to have the Tools and the phases of the Phoenix appear on the same cards, how is that going to work? It would not be possible to see the Phoenix and the Tool at the same time if they appeared on the same card… so this couldn’t possibly work, as, they need to act independently from one another. But! There is something special about how Phoenix Farm already works that might be the solution to this problem.

You may have noticed from the list above that there are actually six phases of Phoenix, but there are only five types of Tools. Ash needs a Broom, Egg needs a Kiln, Chick needs a Grain, Fledgeling needs a Nest, and Adults need a Brush… but why is there no tool for the Elder Phoenix?

Well, it turns out that in our original design, there would never be a tool needed to take care of an Elder Phoenix. This happens because you never need to roll dice (or “farm”) to be there for your Phoenix at the last stage of its life. You simply skip your turn to spend that day with the Phoenix Elder, and this triggers it to return back to Phoenix Ash. (We always imagined this as “attending the Phoenix’s funeral”, or paying proper homage to its life before reincarnating).

Ironically, this detail of not needing a tool for the Phoenix Elder is the critical key to making our double sided cards possible. With there being no tool needed at the end phase, we can off-set the tools by one slot. This means that: the Tool Cards are hiding the next Phoenix Phase on their back side design, which is unlocked when the Tool is successfully used! So, rather than a “Broom” appearing on the same card as “Phoenix Ash”, the “Broom” Actually has the “Phoenix Egg” on the back. Once you successfully use it to ‘Sweep the Ash’, you then flip the card & replace the Ash with the Egg:

Card Design Information Needs:

Okay, so, sure. We can put the two types of card on the front/back of the same card stock… but is this even remotely enough space for the game information???

This is a good and important question.
Up until this idea came rolling along, the dice rolling information (all of the results from the D6) appeared on the back side of the tool cards. Even more importantly, the rewards from those dice outcomes were ALSO on the card backs. So is it possible for these cards to retain all of that information on only one side of the card design??

Well, Let’s think about how we can reduce this down as much as possible:

Phoenix Phase Needs:
1. Title
2. Tool Required
3. Transitions To -> Title

Tool Needs:
1. Title
2. Cost
3. Tends To -> Phoenix Phase
4. x6 Dice Outcomes
5. x4 Possible Rewards

Clearly, the needs of the Tool Text are far more severe than that of the Phoenix Phase. Luckily, we had already been on a good start with this reductive concept while we were making the smaller “Micro Cards”. During this phase of the design, we captured the idea of showing a tiny image of the dice to reduce out a ton of text.

As a bonus to these little dice logos, multiples of them could appear on the same line of text. As an even bigger bonus to this concept, every tool card has x3 outcomes on the dice that are unique to that card, and x3 outcomes on the dice that are identical on all of the tools. So, with a critical note to expand VERY CLEARLY on this rule in the Rule Book later on in the timeline, I decided to cut out the outcomes of rolling a 1, 2, or 3 on the dice from the rule text of the Tool Card.

Though it might be a bit of a tight squeeze to include the dice outcomes and the rewards on the same line of text, I thought it was going to be possible. I had already drafted this idea when making the last edition of the Dragon Bait (as discussed in our previous Design Journal), but now I was starting to think it could appear on all of these cards if done well.

After a lot of drafting, mock ups, and charting, we ended up with the two examples of this Broom Tool with the Phoenix Egg on the reverse side of the card shown in the featured images of this post. But… to get to another playable prototype to test this concept out, we were going to need to doodle out about another 50-60 cards….

So, I once again set out to cut up a wealth of card stock and get this ball rolling! Be sure to check back in for our next entry, where I discuss the experience of designing this new prototype!