Warmachine Hexcalation: The Game That's Already Obsolete

A few years ago, I designed a game that we called "Hexcalation".  Naming credits go to Dave Mallery because he demands credit for it.  He also demands money and other things too, but those won't happen.  Hexcalation was designed as a hybrid between a standard collectible card game and a board game.  It took mechanics that I liked from other game systems and blended them with the additional level of strategy of a board game.

Hexcalation was initially set on a arbitrary fantasy world that drew some of it's inspiration from the old Confrontation miniatures system.  A few of us played a few games and enjoyed it, but it was a lot of work making the cards, cutting them out, and generally balancing out the game.

Advance the time line to a few months ago where I am sitting around thinking about Hexcalation and it's future.  I had thought about converting Hexcalation over to a different environment.  I never intended the game to be sold or anything, so it would all be public domain and have a very limited audience so hopefully no one would ever sue me.  I thought about utilizing the rich background of Warhammer 40k, more specifically the Horus Heresy era.  The problem there is that Games Workshop would be the one gaming company that would throw out a cease-and-desist order at the drop of a dime.


Then we started to play more and more Warmachine and the answer was obvious: convert Hexcalation to Warmachine/Hordes.  There's a ton of cool factions, cool casters, cool units, and it would make a great environment for my game that few people would ever play.

And then this happened:

What's that?  That is the name of Privateer Press's own strategic deck building game.  I believe it's going to be more like a Dominion-style of game than a CCG/TCG, but my morale was shattered.  It doesn't take much to shatter my morale.

But now, I'm re-inspired.  I want to move forward and work on this project again.  Who cares if PP is making their own card game?  I never intended to compete with any major company.  This was all for fun and the intellectual challenge of designing a game people enjoyed playing.

So with that said, here's a sneak preview of one of the first casters for the recently reinvigorated Warmachine: Hexcalation:

The first thing you'll probably say to yourself is "Wait.  Is that card a hexagon?"  Of course it is.  The game is called Hexcalation.  This card is a Warcaster/Warlock card and each deck has one of them.  Each caster belongs to a faction (in this case Khador, obviously), has a once-per-game Feat (just like the minis game), and has a FOCUS or FURY stat.  For comparison purposes, here's another Warcaster:

So let's look at what a Unit might look like:

Units also have a faction affiliation (in this case it's Cygnar).  Up in the upper left they have an Escalation Value, which is essentially how many resources you have to pay to put the card into play.  On the left side of the card, they have a movement rating, which is one way in which they interact with the board.  "Forest Survival" and "Mountain Survival" are keywords which provide generic rules that affect the card.  Units don't have feats but most of them do have additional rules that are listed under the keywords.  Then we have the 1/1 values which are Attack and Defense.

In the future, I will put out additional articles that cover the rules of the game, deck building, and playtesting results.  Any feedback is welcome.