Combat systems, in the most basic sense, are the translation of conflict or its development into tangible game actions. I don’t want to dwell too much on semantics but I would also stretch the definition of “combat” to include modes of engaging in non-combative competition like targeting a player with the robber in Settlers of Catan or using a “draw 2” in Uno. As a result, “combat systems” could encompass a variety of mechanics such as arming units, sending them off to battle, maneuvering them, calculating results of fights, etc. Given the widespread nature of combat and its ease of grokking, it shouldn’t be a surprise that game designers spend a lot of time tweaking every little detail until their combat system feels just right.

While these details are important, spending too much time tunnel-visioned into individual aspects will often cause designers to lose sight of the bigger picture. What those details amalgamate into and how players interact with that final product is just as, if not more, important. Although it’s tough to talk about combat systems generally because there are many details that are specific to each game, I’d like to invite you to take a step back with me to view combat systems more broadly and a bit more abstractly.

Picking Your Fights

Though the history of conflict, its consistent gamification, and the validity of non-combative game systems could be interesting topics all on their own, I want to focus on how combat manifests as part of card games. I’ll mostly be covering traditional creature battlers for the sake of brevity, but many of these talking points should be applicable and adaptable to other genres and practices.

Many games dictate that combat is a premier method of advancing the game state through presentation. For example, having entire phases of the game’s structure labeled after combat such as “battle phase”. Others might bring attention to combat through incentives; an example of this would be designing systems and cards around combat being the most efficient method of reaching victory. Many games do both to varying degrees. But why is it done so often and why does it generally work? I posit that there are two main reasons.

First is that it is easy to grok how important each combat event is. “The results of that battle turned the tide of the war” and other similar sentiments are extremely easy for most people to grasp.

Second is that combat events serve as natural climactic moments for games. In addition to gameplay implications, the tension of combat and potential surprises are often the most thrilling part of games.

I’ve long held the belief that card games are an excellent story-telling device — but not necessarily for a standard beginning, middle, and end type of story with plot points. Instead, their best narrative quality is emergent improvisation between the players. Games inherently have a communal nature where each player is affecting the outcome of the game. And it turns out that most games with combat systems have a great structure that coerces players into exciting moments of build-up, tension, and relief.

Selecting a Stage

This isn’t literature 101 or an improv class so I won’t be going too in depth on The Hero with a 1000 Faces, but I will be going over the concept of kishōtenketsu — a narrative structure found in many Chinese, Korean, and Japanese stories. While the exposition-rising action-climax-falling action-resolution structure (Freytag’s pyramid for you literature freaks) is more commonly known in the United States, kishōtenketsu generally fits the improvisational nature of games much better.

Introduction (ki): Introduce information like characters, settings, and motivation that are required to understand the overall plot.
Development (shō): Build upon established information usually leading to a reasonable and logical conclusion…
Twist (ten): An “unexpected” development. In this narrative structure, there can be an expectation of several twists each followed by a respective development. However, the most important and final twist is also the climax of the story.
Conclusion (ketsu): The ending of the story.

Most games slot into this framework and take advantage of it quite well. Many games have each player developing units or an army concurrently while they look for opportunities to pressure opponents through military might. Cards and systems like instants, traps, or the possibility of bluffs heighten tension and become perfect vessels for a twist. It’s also possible to use this framework to troubleshoot some pain points of a game. If a part of the game is disinteresting to a player, there might not be enough tension building (that they care about), maybe the “twists” don’t feel very exciting, or maybe it’s because a telegraphed climactic moment feels “unearned”.

With this broad overview developed, let’s examine things with a bit more granularity.

Mastering Motion Inputs

Combat systems are made up of a myriad of design decisions. How and when combat should occur, what stats should be on a card, what the results of combat should be, etc. Beyond these, combat also overlaps with other systems and mechanics as well; Mana resource systems tie into what actions can be performed, instants or traps can alter the outcome of combat, different card types might affect combat differently, and so on and so forth.

My point is that combat systems will intertwine with many core aspects of a game by intention or otherwise. The exact details and entanglements will vary from game-to-game, but I think there are a few general concepts that will carry over most games… Though more niche games will have to stretch their definitions a bit:

Timing: When does combat occur during the game’s structure? How suddenly a player can start a combat event absolutely determines how aggressive a game feels. This aspect can also be affected through player-driven actions… The existence of strategies and tactics that delay combat or lengthen the duration between combat also plays a huge part in how a combat system feels.

Freedom: How much of a commitment is engaging in combat? The trade-offs of starting a fight and potential backlash is a huge factor in determining the potential for twists and turnabouts. Particularly, the number of trade-offs built into a combat system for all involved parties has a fairly direct correlation with the feeling of “fairness”.

Calculations: What factors go into determining combat events and their results? How much are the results of these conflicts foreseeable? Strategies and tactics are a huge draw in most games and the complexity of resolving combat walks on a thin line between providing depth and obfuscating intrigue. Other aspects such as stats or combat-relevant effects can also meld into determining how complex the calculations in a combat system get.

Turnabout Potential: What avenues for twists and miracles exist to turnaround combat events? This has a few correlations with both giving players agency and adequately building tension. This is part granting players agency to have optimism and part servicing the gambling nature of our monkey brains. In some cases, giving players the ability to definitively shut down any potential of miracles caters towards a more competitive demographic.

Lead-in: What does the game and its designs do to prepare or incentivize players towards combat? While enough games have “DESTROY THE ENEMY COMPLETELY AND WITHOUT REMORSE” to start things off, how systems and designs signal players towards conflict is important for its overall feel. Is there a sense of desperation? Does it feel railroaded? How regularly does an opportunity present itself? And most importantly, how tantalizing is combat?

Follow-through: What are players doing after combat events occur? Specifically, what’s the average situation after a combat event? This can encapsulate situations such as the defender’s ability to strike back or rewards from successfully attacking/defending. Perhaps the ashes of war will promote the development of the next battle…?!

*Maplestory*, a game known for overwhelming and brutal combat in all respects

Having a strong understanding of these concepts will lead to a greater understanding of what experience the combat system is serving. At the very least, it should also give you an idea of whether the combat system is aligning with the intended design philosophy. There are too many ways to adjust details and create an exact feel and a lot of those solutions will be specific to that specific situation for me to create anything resembling a list or guidelines, but here are a few examples:

I want a combat system that feels aggressive and spontaneous but the current systems and card designs incentivize long, rigorous development periods. Those two things will be at odds. I might take this as a sign to look towards streamlining the “development phase”.
I want an aggressing player to feel risk but I made any and all attacks have no trade-off… I am not providing any risk for an aggressive player! Perhaps I can look at some metrics such as follow-through or freedom to give tools to defenders and let them hit back… Or maybe some additional restrictions can be placed on the aggressor to really make those engagements a commitment.
I want combat with simplicity… Overloading it with various types of calculations puts that desire at jeopardy.

Learning the Stances

Of the more mainstream card games, traditional creature battlers mostly take the cake. And among those games, I want to categorize the combat systems they have into three broad “narratives” as an exercise and to illustrate a method of viewing things through this framework.

Siege - Magic: The Gathering

Some combat systems feel more like sieging an enemy stronghold. Though it’s possible to have smaller-scale combat events, a unique aspect of siege combat systems is the grouping of several individual units during combat and having defending players assign blockers. Additionally, the development of units and game plans tend to be slower paced. Altogether, this usually means that combat is often treated as a long-term affair as each side takes part in a cycle of development, combat, and rebuilding. To my knowledge, this is one of the rarer forms of combat system narratives.

Timing: Generally, combat will occur in the middle of the turn. Players are often encouraged to take game actions before and after combat happens.
Freedom: Combat is usually pretty restricted with all units having to take their attacking or defending positions as part of their group.
Calculations: This can vary, though the larger-scale conflicts will necessarily make calculations more complex in short bursts.
Turnabout Potential: The turnabout potential is usually slanted towards the defending player. However, this doesn’t mean the aggressive player can’t turn it back on the defender.
Lead-in: Strategies are usually developed gradually. Tension tends to build slowly throughout the game and over the course of multiple combat events.
Follow-through: There is usually a development/rebuilding period that is significantly higher-stakes than the previous turns. This gradually ramps up over the course of a game.

Credit: *Magic: the Gathering Arena*//screenshot sourced from chaotic_iak (Reddit)

Showdown - Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon TCG

“Showdown” combat systems are characterized by containing all combat events to a specific phase and minimizing the ability to interfere with that combat. This usually means that there are very few non-telegraphed mechanics, effects, or cards that will change the outcome of combat... But that doesn’t mean there’s no risk of interaction! In fact, I’d say that most games with a showdown combat system do have some form of telegraphed interaction such as trap cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! Many showdown combat systems place so much of its emphasis on combat that there is usually no incentive for a “main step 2”. In fact, many of those games, like Pokémon or Texas Hold ‘Em, use “combat” to define the end of a turn!

Timing: Showdowns usually occur at the end of a turn or, at the very least, near the end.
Freedom: There are usually very clear rules for engagement and systems will usually exist to funnel units into exciting match-ups that highlight their individuality. I might argue that showdowns might be the most restrictive of the three “narratives”.
Calculations: A lot of calculations will end up occurring for matters outside of individual combat events… More emphasis is placed on the lead-in to set up successful showdowns.
Turnabout Potential: Among combat systems discussed in this blog, showdowns have the greatest turnabout potential. However, they tend to be telegraphed (sometimes in the form of a bluff) or have a degree of randomness.
Lead-in: Strategies are usually developed explosively fast. A bulk of game actions take place during the lead-in and jockeying for advantage starts much earlier than the actual “showdown”. As a result, there is a lot of escalation in tension very quickly.
Follow-through: Each player will probably have expended a fair amount of resources after combat. As a result, the following development/rebuilding period will usually be around the same stakes as before, though that’s not to say it’s impossible to raise the stakes.

Skirmish - Hearthstone, Many Recent Creature Battler TCGs

Many card games in recent years feature a singular large “main step” in which combat events can occur as one of many actions. This flexibility allows combat to be more free-form and gives each player the ability to weave in game plan development between combat events. This necessarily means that players are likely to adapt their combatants to the role of guerilla units and engage in consistent small-scale encounters. Among the three categories discussed here, this is the loosest narrative structure by far.

Timing: Combat can usually occur whenever during a turn.
Freedom: Skirmish combat systems have the greatest amount of freedom, especially in terms of sequencing and when their units are allowed to fight. Combat can start and stop at a whim and is very adaptable to the will of a player.
Calculations: The combat calculations in skirmish combat systems tend to be simpler to make way for the emergent strategies that pop up as a result of its freedom.
Turnabout Potential: These combat systems tend to have the least amount of turnabout potential per individual combat events. Instead, they try to focus the turnabout potential on retaliatory plays on later turns.
Lead-in: This can vary greatly but, generally, there’s less tension being built between each combat. Instead, tension tends to come from the results of combat and its implication on the game’s strategic landscape.
Follow-through: This is usually very adaptive based on each player’s inclinations and their responses to their opponents. Generally, any rebuilding period is very short.

I doubt that these games were designed to fit these arbitrary labels I’ve made up, but the reason I mention them is because they make immediately obvious what the draw of these combat systems are. Magic often gets the label of “feeling more tactical and complex” when a lot of casual play is far from that. It often feels more like a gradual tug-of-war. Yu-Gi-Oh! shows its manga and anime roots by regularly building up hype in its “showdowns”. And Hearthstone’s more casual nature shows up in its scrappier skirmish-based nature.

Mix-Ups

These three narratives don’t encapsulate every possible combat system. In fact, there are plenty of games that mix-and-match a lot of different aspects and build their own sort of appeal. One way to broaden the application of these labels is mixing them up!

Siege-Skirmish: MonsterCon

MonsterCon, just like Hearthstone, uses one large “Action Step” each turn and has its combat events be individual actions. However, the defending player is given quite a bit of agency via the ability to assign Blockers and cards having “defensive range” that is larger than their “attacking range”. As a result, the combat system can feel like using skirmishes to poke holes in the enemy’s defenses while the defending player is rebuking an incoming onslaught of attackers. This helps contextualize the results of combat by giving it a tighter relationship to each player’s individual strategies and tactics.

Showdown-Siege: Cross Blitz

Cross Blitz features a fairly large board and quite a bit of unit development. However, combat is a mandatory action for each player that ends their turn by sending all their units into battle. Additionally, each unit is confined to a lane with up to one other buddy; These lanes funnel units into clashing with opposing units in the same lane. All of this helps alleviate some of the “slowness” of siege games by mandating action but allows the showdown nature to gradually rise in scale throughout a game.

Skirmish-Showdown: Railgrind!!

Railgrind!! is an interesting case because so much of a turn revolves around “dashing” but a majority of its gameplay is skirmish-based. For context, Railgrind!! is a game about getting 30+ Style Points as soon as possible with actions alternating between players. “Dashing” is a game action that commonly awards the greatest amount of Style Points, but (1) it ends your turn and (2) if your opponent hasn’t dashed yet, it puts your opponent on a three-action-timer before their turn automatically ends. So the game often revolves around a game of chicken: Who is most efficient in setting up their most effective dashes, who loses the most by greeding too much and having to dash second, and who gains the most from having three actions an opponent can’t interfere with since they have already dashed?

Illustration of “Rewind Revert”
Credit: Kaydio

These three examples aren’t necessarily 50/50 splits of each narrative. But they do show how merging different strengths of the narratives can improve an existing strength, mitigate a weakness, or even create a new axis of engagement.

That Fuzzy Feeling

Before we get too far into it, I want to be clear that these categories are not an attempt to create and definitively label “genres” of combat systems. After all, games are complex and multi-faceted. A “siege game” like Magic isn’t particularly siege-like if each player is piloting balls-to-the-walls aggro decks with massive amounts of burn damage. If a match of Yu-Gi-Oh! has each player slowly building a board over time, it ends up being more of a “siege” than a “showdown”. Instead, I want to emphasize that understanding the average narrative of a game’s combat system (and its outliers and potential deviation) can give direction for design and inspire creativity.

Earlier, I gave examples along the line of “I want a combat system that feels aggressive and spontaneous”. If a combat system felt like a siege narrative, that should illuminate a lot of things that could be changed. Perhaps combat could use less restrictions. Maybe the follow-through on combat should incentivize hitting back rather than rebuilding. The desire for “spontaneous” could be a signal that moving towards a skirmish-like combat system would fit the project’s goals better.

When it comes to individual card designs or even archetype/factions, their relationship with the combat system’s narrative can be a springboard for creativity. Creating a “showdown design” in a siege or skirmish combat system game could be very novel. Understanding that different archetypes/factions want to encompass different narratives also creates a lot of diversity in play styles; Aggro decks representing skirmish and control decks representing siege are examples you’ll see very often. Knowing whether a new mechanic will facilitate or go against the average narrative is also an important measure of viable design space.

There are plenty of other combat-adjacent labels (and, of course, other descriptors) that a combat system could design towards. I mentioned “tug-of-war” as a simile to siege. Improvisational, scrappy, or brawl could be used as more nuanced descriptors for skirmishes. Maybe a combat system could be described as a military operation or we could get even more abstract by describing the combat system with terms like astral, techno, or medieval. As long as there are metrics that can be concretely described, they should be a useful signpost for creative endeavors and discussion.

Keep in mind that it's easy to go too far and start describing a combat system with esoteric phrases; just look at how ridiculous any discussion of genre or categorization gets with media like music or film. I’m sure “gorilla candlewick R&B” means something to someone, but it’s just garbled nonsense to the layman. I’d like to slightly reframe that perspective though: Discovering an aesthetic interpretation that is highly personal to yourself is invaluable for giving your “creative voice” a platform. Just remember that these narratives are ultimately an interpretation of a creative work. Others will come to their own conclusions and, even within yourself, interpretations will evolve and change over time.

Fighting game type tree from Core-A-Gaming’s “Every Fighting Game Type Explained”
Credit: Screenshot sourced from Ny0kazer (Reddit)

Knock Out!

I wrote mainly on bigger picture stuff, but all of this is certainly applicable to specific cards and mechanics as well. “Super cool big boss guy”, “a mechanic that can cause its user to lose if used recklessly”, “a trap that turns the tides of battle”, etc… These are all narrative experiences that elevate individual designs and having a strong understanding of their workings helps manifest them concretely. What qualities does something need to feel like a “super cool big boss buy”? What would make a mechanic dangerous to its user if used without reck? What is a way of flipping a battle on its head?

Ultimately, understanding the narratives that designs create and figuring out what they mean to you is invaluable for creating context. That context, whether it’s recognized subconsciously or otherwise, is similarly invaluable for evaluating the value of a design. Personally, the concept of this blog was one of the final puzzle pieces to get me from “designing to hopefully make something good” to “designing something to provide an experience” and, even beyond that, realizing what kind of experience(s) to start designing for. Hopefully, all this yapping helps you too.

Ciao,
blobspike

blogspike

Wrestling With Combat