Q&A

A compilation of forums questions from Founding Mentors and Players that have been answered by key members of the Decipher team. You can see the first example of this type of thing below.

Questions for Tim Ellington, DecipherGameDesigner.

Q. Will discussion on these forums (such as in Cool Card Ideas) be able to influence how you guys move the game along in the interest of gameplay? (ex. if enough people want to see a certain card made, will you try and do something along those lines?)


A. One of the primary goals of Fight Klub™ is to get players involved as much as possible. We’d like to set a new standard in terms of being a “players’ game.” I can’t say for sure that any specific ideas will be implemented verbatim, but one of the reasons we started the discussion lists as early in the process as we have is to get as much feedback and as many ideas as possible. Of all the games I’ve worked on for Decipher, this one is the most player-driven product we’ve produced. In fact, the licensing and pre-launch “non-disclosure” issues have kept the process from being even more open. I know that once the game is launched and the curtain is finally opened that player involvement will increase substantially.

Q. Will you balance out the characters in each set? (I mean, will you use Luke, but also use his enemy (Vader)? It just seems like it wouldn’t be AS FUN to play with Luke without being able to squash Vader with him.

A. The nature of our licensing agreements is different in Fight Klub™ than previous licensed products. Because of this, even though we may have the license for a particular film, approvals from the different actors may or may not be done in a way that would allow them to be in the same set. Should we have the ability to do Luke at some point, we’d certainly try to have Vader in the same set, but that might not be possible. At the same time, if Luke does show up solo (no, not Han), that doesn’t mean Vader couldn’t show up in a later set.

Q. How frequently are you anticipating new mechanics? Like, how many sets will contain new cards using the same rules before a new keyword is introduced? (Looking at Lord of the Rings, I mean a BIG keyword thing, like “Controlling a Site”, not a little one, like “Artifact”; something that effects all future cards for the purposes of gameplay, and not just a new type of card).

A. I’m not sure. I already have a couple of mechanics that aren’t in the first two sets, simply because there aren’t enough card slots to hold them all. It’s a fine balance between keeping the game fresh and bombarding the game engine with new stuff. One of the primary design parameters for Fight Klub™ was to try and keep the overall game interface as “clean” as possible, and engineer the strategy into deck-building and in-game decision-making. At the same time, we’ve tried to give a taste of as many of the gameplay mechanics as possible in One and Two, just to set the table. An example of this shows up in the skirmish types. There are four skirmish types (Fate, Mental, Physical and Spiritual), any three of which appear on any given Fight card (unless it only has Clash text). Well, most of the time, anyway. There’s at least one card that beaks that mold by having two Physical skirmishes. This is a mechanic that really won’t be fully flushed out in the first couple of sets, but it’s teased in the initial release just to show players how much more there is to look forward to in the game. Then there’s a function we have tentatively dubbed “dominate,” that doesn’t show up in One or Two. Can’t talk about that yet.

Q. Will there always be a balance of Heroes and Villains? I mean, with 8 characters per set, 4 of each seems obvious. But what if you do comic books, and get Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine, Batman, Green Lantern, Dr. Doom, Braniac and Spawn? That’s 3 villains for 5 heroes. Surely it would make a difference (and odds are you’d go 5 villain 3 hero in the next one), but is it possible? Likewise, is there a chance of getting an “all-hero” set, followed by a comparable “all villain” set? Even if it would be no different than 2 consecutive sets of 50/50, it would let players who only play one side focus on a certain set first.


A. In all likelihood, a balance of 4 and 4 is probably what you will see. Without going into great (and boring) detail, some of the production elements of the game make a 4 and 4 lineup the most efficient. Might it ever change? Sure. But probably not in the foreseeable future.

Q. Character cards! How rare are they? I don’t want to have a pile of unused Mr. Blondes in my room, but I don’t want to open 3 kilos and only get 6 of the characters, because they are rare and I didn’t pull the other 2.


A. Hero and Villain cards are rare, so you shouldn’t have bunches of unused characters. However, there are some things to keep in mind. One is a fixed set (for several reasons – some of which will be covered in this Q&A), so you are guaranteed the full complement of Heroes and Villains with a single kilo purchase. To get a full play set of One, you will need 3 kilos, which will give you extras of the characters in One. We hope you will use these as marketing tools to give to new players, etc. No other cards in One are “rare,” so there will be no other “unusable” rare cards in your 3 kilo purchase. The “extra” characters are more a byproduct of fact that there is only one Hero or Villain in a deck than the rarity of the card. For sets Two and beyond, the characters are rare. There are 8 characters and you will get 30 rares in a 3 kilo purchase, so you shouldn’t get shorted on characters very often, but the random distribution of rares makes it a possibility. That’s one of the reasons we went with the 1-3-3 rule. If you don’t get a full set of rares in your 3 kilo purchase, it shouldn’t be too hard to trade for them, because other players won’t have the need to keep multiple copies for their best decks.

Q. Will fight cards tend to have special text, or will they just have skirmish values?

A. Yes. Some Fight cards have just the skirmish numbers, some have skirmish numbers and gametext. Some have skirmish numbers and the ability to activate Clash text. Some have skirmish numbers AND gametext and the ability to activate Clash text. We like to give you plenty of choices.

Q. With hold limits in this game, I’m worried that the game will be very, very dependent on the draw, with quick tactical thinking but less deeper strategy. Can you talk about how you see strategic depth playing out, from the deck building phase through the game?

A. That’s a heavy question. There are many way to approach deck building in Fight Klub™. Are you building your deck to maximize the gametext on your Hero or Villain? Are you trying to build a deck that enhances the same two skirmish “slots” each fight (right and center, right and left, etc.)? Are you trying to build a deck and highlights the same skirmish “types” each fight (physical, mental, etc.)? Did you pick a character that focuses on hand manipulation? Deck throughput? Energy generation? The energy a character generates each turn will dictate to some degree the selection of cards you have to choose from for your deck, but there are ways to earn energy “off the menu,” or convert energy, so any non-signature card can be used in a Hero or Villain deck as long as the card backs match. It’s true Fight Klub™ is designed to play with a quick pace. It has a 27-card draw deck and a 3-5 turn (9-15 Fight cards) span. But most of the strategy, I think, lies with the players’ ability to “see” the deck archetypes and the relationship between the card text and the energy flow, and how they work in tandem with the Fight cards. I think there are lots of in-game decisions, but success depends on your deck building skills. I’d put it this way. I think you can lose the game with poor decisions, but I think you win it with good deck building.

Q. I just have a quick question about the expansions that will be released at launch: is Two (and even Three) going to be introduced rather quickly into the game so that it isn’t somewhat stale at the get-go (everyone having the same cards from One)?

A. I’m pretty sure this has been answered on the boards somewhere, but just to have it here for the record, One and Two ship simultaneously, so there will be 200 unique cards to choose from right out of the gate.

Q. How will you be handling martial arts? (i.e., Will they be in the game at all; will they be restricted to certain characters; will they appear as Fight cards or another type?)


A. There really isn’t any special treatment of different fighting styles. While some of the images on some of the cards may depict certain styles, and we’ll try to capture the flavor of those styles with certain characters, the game is designed with a more general approach to character versus character fighting.

Q. Are ranged weapons making an appearance in the game? And if so, will there be any special rules for striking from a distance?


A. There may be ways to represent the effects of ranged weapons in the game, but since all fights occur through the Fight cards, there isn’t a sense of a graduated attack. But there may be a place for that type of effect in the future.

Q. How many signature cards do you expect each character to have?


A. Three. One will almost always be a Fight card, and the other two can be any combo of Effect, Condition, Instant or Gear.

Q. How will characters of vastly different power levels be handled? Could you have Gizmo take on a Jurassic Park T-Rex in a way that feels somewhat thematically possible? I’d guess yes, counterposing mental to physical values…but what is Decipher thinking about these kinds of asymmetrical matchups?


A. Well, when you break the fourth wall and allow for the fact that Superman and Mr. Blond may be pitted against one another, you have to have a certain suspension of disbelief to make that work. At the same time, if we just put “strength” numbers on cards and had characters slug it out, it wouldn’t make sense to have Gizmo and a T-rex even on the same numbering scale. That’s why the fights happen through the fight cards instead of a traditional character stats-based battle. Take Superman and Mr. Blond. If you take strength numbers, Superman should win every fight. But what about a Physical skirmish? Well, we give you the ability to come up with your own interpretation of that. It’s physical when Superman tosses a bus at Mr. Blond. But if Mr. Blond can avoid the bus and throw a chunk of kryptonite at Superman, that’s physical too. It doesn’t have to be brute strength. The skirmish categories were chosen because they don’t lend themselves to hard number comparisons for this very reason. But each Hero or Villain can certainly muster some degree of mental acuity, physical reaction, spiritual will and fate… well, that kinda speaks for itself. And the fact that there are three skirmishes on each Fight card helps get past the point of it being ONLY a battle of strength, or wits, or gumption.

Q. What do the three colors of energy represent? I know they will be different across characters and universes, but what are the unifying qualities of yellow, blue, green?


A. I’m glad someone asked this. It’s one of the things about Fight Klub’s design that I really like. The colors don’t mean anything in and of themselves. But the Hero or Villain gives the energy color meaning. Each character card will have the three energy colors labeled on the card, and that’s what they mean for that character. For example, let’s pick a character most people are familiar with. Batman. Batman’s card might have green energy labeled as Vengeance. Blue energy might be Technology. Yellow could be Justice. So when you have energy in your pool for Batman, that’s what it represents. On the cards you put in your Batman deck, whenever you have to Burn a green energy, it’s represented on the card by a green icon. Same thing for yellow energy, etc. That way, when you’re playing Batman, your green icon means something unique for Batman, but Dr. Evil’s green energy icon means something entirely different. It allows us to give the cards a flavor for each character, while at the same time allowing it to mean something else for another character. And it keeps things simple with only three icons, instead of a menu of skills, etc., like Star Trek CCG for instance. That way, when you make a Hero card in set 10, and that hero has skills that no one else in the game has, he can still use a card from set 1 because we didn’t make that skill “Vengeance.” We just made it green energy and put Vengeance on the Batman Hero card.

Q. What plans does Decipher have regarding organized tournament structures, championships, ratings, and other related issues? Will there be only player-run tournaments with a simple rating system (like previous games Decipher has done) or will there be frequent large events (100+ players, significant prizes, likely at cons or other large gatherings) in addition to small player-run tournaments?

A. I hate to pass the buck on this one, but that's not something I have an answer for. The organized play aspect of Fight Klub is something Kendrick Summers would have a better handle on. I do know that we want to have input from the players on how the tournament structure is developed.

Q. Multiple versions of a single character. There are many characters that change from Hero to Villain during their progress. With the limited amount of characters you will be printing, would you consider say printing a Villain version of Riddick in one set, and a Hero version in a later set, or as a promo?

A. Sure. In fact, we have a plan whereby we may only print one version of a character who might work in both decks. Although nothing is set in stone yet, we are working on a plan that would allow us to print cards with a split card back, so that they could be used in a Hero deck or Villain deck. But the rest of the cards in the deck would have to be Hero OR Villain, depending on the way you choose to use them. There won't be a split-back character in One or Two, but it's very possible you could see something like that in the future. That wouldn't prevent us from doing a Hero version and Villain version of the same character at some point in the future. But we would probably lean toward the split-back option, and save that second slot for a new character altogether.

Q. Will there be cards that allow to manipulate the order of the cards in the fight stack, before or after they are placed for a fight?

A. Yep.

Q. Does the separate card backs for Heroes and Villains mean no neutral cards usable by both? If there are no neutral cards, then how do you justify this from a flavor perspective? For example, I imagine that gear would generally make sense for both types (e.g., is a Magnum heroic or villainous?). If there are, does that mean we'll have our already small sets clogged up with duplicate versions of neutral cards, a la SWCCG (something I found perplexing at the time as a STCCG player)?

A. There are currently no plans for a neutral card back, and yes, there can be some amount of duplication to get basic game functions on both sides. There may be some options for the split-back card mentioned above, but it would not be used as a substitute for a neutral back. We're trying to minimize the blatant good/bad guy versions of the same cards, but some core functions make it necessary. As the card universe gets bigger, these duplicates will show up less often, and be less obvious. I like trying to provide the same "functionality" on a card without simply copying and pasting gametext. Fight Klub is designed to be a consumer-friendly product, and the 100-card set size is part of that program. Another reason we are shipping the first two sets at the same time is to increase the variation in the available card pools at the start.

Q. Could you reveal what's been decided for the Fight cards' naming conventions?

A. As you could see by the discussions on the boards, this has been a hard nut to crack. It not only has to be mechanically feasible, but it has to be sustainable. We've opted for a more generic naming style, which will be revealed when we are able to release some of the cards. This was done for a couple of reasons. One, Fight cards simply don't represent a "move" or "style" of fighting. They represent a broader sense of conflict between the two characters, so a naming style that included references to punches, kicks and other terms related to physical battles just didn't work so well. Two, with Fight cards being the centerpiece of the action in the game, there will be upwards of 20 or so Fight cards in each set, and that requires a naming convention that won't get repetitive or really absurd after the first 100 or so Fight cards.

Q. Will a stance be taken to ensure that this game isn't invaded by power creep? Obviously I don't want my favorite character to become obsolete and force me to play someone I don't like as much.

A. Power creep is always an issue on TCGs as you make more and more cards and you want them all to be exciting and give players new stuff to put into their decks. I think Fight Klub is built on a foundation to minimize Power creep, because of the nature of the game itself. In many games, for instance, Characters have a couple of "dials" to use for differentiation. Power numbers, defense numbers, etc. Fight Klub characters have several dials, including the numbers for Life, Hand, Hold, the amount of energy the generate, the color(s) of energy they generate, the type of center-skirmish bonus they get, the amount of center-skirmish bonus, the number of energy icons printed on the cards, the color(s) of that energy, individual gametext.... it's fairly extensive. So we have the ability to mix and match these dials without having to resort to pure escalation to differentiate them from one another. This dovetails into the Fight cards, which is one of the reasons characters fight "through" the Fight cards instead of just comparing fixed numbers on the characters themselves. When you take all the variables of the character, and add them to the three skirmish types, the number range of the skirmishes, the randomized placement of the skirmish types on the cards themselves, the gametext on the Fight cards and the ability to rotate some of them to use Clash text, there are so many variables you can see why we don't have to resort to pure escalation to provide new and different options for characters. This will help minimize power creep in Fight Klub.

Q. With the proposed ease in collecting full sets, will you be making rarer subsets for each expansion? Like foils or alternate image cards, or anything else that doesn't affect gameplay (because the card text remains the same as its normal version counterpart)?

A. We are currently working on some programs that will provide some special cards for Fight Klub. I don't know that we will do foil subsets, or alternate images as such, but we do have some options to spice up the collector aspect of the game. It's important to remember, however, that one of the basic premises of Fight Klub is to make it easy to collect and play. Any program we institute should have you getting any of the available goodies if you have purchased a "set-equivalent" amount of cards, which is the three-kilo purchase pattern. We're not trying to get a few customers to buy 10 kilos of a set to get a subset of cards. We want you to get 10 new players to buy three kilos, and have 10 players who are happy to have gotten pretty close to a full play set and a full collection with about a $100 price point.

Q. So we know all the different types of cards right now and how they're supposed to work, but I can't really imagine what the card texts and effects would be like. For example: - What would be a typical Life, Draw, and Hold of a character? - How would different types of instants affect the game? - What would be another example of a Clash card?

A. A Typical Life, Hand and Hold would be 8 Life, 6 Hand and 2 Hold. Here's an Instant that plays as a Score action: Spot a Condition. If you scored a Fight card this fight and opponent has no Conditions or Gear in play, score that Fight card as Double Damage. Here's a Condition: Enhance - Destroy this card: If you have The Drop, change the pairing of 2 unresolved Fight cards. Clash text? Here you go: This Fight is scored by the player who has the highest total when adding all printed skirmish numbers on all remaining unresolved Fight cards. If you have The Drop, your total for resolving this Fight is +1.

Q. Will characters (or at least some characters) be two sided or just one?

A. I doubt we will do two-sided cards in Fight Klub. One way we are able to keep the price point of getting full sets of Fight Klub at a minimum is getting maximum efficiencies in our production process. Two-sided cards are very expensive to make, and don't warrant the additional costs for the most part.

Q. In the rulebook you offer different definitions for keywords found on reward tabs. (Draw, Burn, Activate, Discard, one other). My question is that are these 5 keywords the only possible rewards you will find on reward tabs, or are there others? (ex. randomly look at (o) ONE card from hand).

A. Reward tabs currently have Add, Draw, Burn, Discard and Destroy. There may be others in the future. Space is a limiting factor on Reward tab text, so it will probably not be gametext-like functions, but other keywords similar in scope to the ones already listed.

Q. Will we be able to use some of the game's logos and pics on say, business cards? Some were throwing around the idea that we could use business cards with your door that has "FightDog invited me." I think it would be a great help if we could use that approach. My real question is, what, if any problems with that idea?

A. We are working on something like that to put in the hands of the Founding Mentors. Not quite done with the program, but we will certainly try and give you as many tools as possible to make Fight Klub successful!

Q. You said there will be 200 unique cards out of the gate, 100 from each set one and two. Also, one is a complete set with one kilo, does this mean we only get 100 cards + the drop when we buy one? Otherwise, what will the last 20 cards be?

A. I was wondering when someone would do the math on this. :-) One is indeed a fixed set of 100 cards. The additional 20 cards (10 for Heroes, 10 for Villains) in the first set will be duplicates of cards from One in order to make building your first deck a little easier. Since we want to give you every card in One in a single purchase, it will make deck building a bit generic if you buy a single kilo to sample the game. We will choose one Hero and one Villain and print some duplicates that work well for those characters so that your first decks play with a little more flavor and structure than just a random assortment of cards from each side. Buying a second or third kilo would then give you the ability to build more complete decks with all the Heroes and Villains. You will be able to build legal decks with any of the characters in One with a single kilo purchase, but one Hero and one Villain will be the benefactor of a few extra cards to give you a little more of a taste of what custom deck building will mean in the game.

Q. Shipping costs: If we order more than one kilo at a time, do we have to pay the same $5 shipping for each, or are we able to get a discounted rate because they're shipped together?

A. I don't know. I'm pretty focused on the product end of things, so I'm not sure what the answer is to that. That would probably be a better question for Kendrick on one of the other threads.

Q. Will there be a way to tell whether a card is good or evil without looking at the card back? Separate card templates for the two, a la Star Wars perhaps? For people who use deck sleeves, it would be convenient to have a quick way of checking to make sure a deck is legal, without having to remove the suspicious cards from their sleeves.

A. Good question. Yes, the Heroes and Villains have different treatments on the front of the cards to distinguish them from one another. Which leads to another question I meant to answer previously. Why the two card backs? Well... there's a lot that goes into a decision like this. Very early in the conceptual stage, we made the determination to do a good and evil breakdown in the game. I'll quote myself from an earlier post. "There are many reasons for having delineation between sides in a game. In this case, heroes and villains because that is a natural "story" breakdown in many of the properties we will be working with. Forgive me if I drop into "designer speak," for a moment, but that's the way I approach the issue._ Having that delineation provides a natural divider for gameplay. We can have Villains have a certain "gameplay feel," and a different feel for Heroes. It gives us a barrier that helps keep all the deck archetypes from blending together, since we don't have things such as affiliations, factions, or colors that you see in some other games. It's a wall that gives the designers a benchmark to work with._ So even though villains can play villains, and heroes can play heroes, we still keep some separation between deck types that keeps the game interesting."

With the division between good and bad established, there would be no universal "crossing of cards" between good to bad. Therefore, there was no real reason NOT to do two card backs, since the division was going to be enforced regardless. However, there are some good reasons for doing the two different backs. Some are purely aesthetic. Watch a play during rehearsal. Now watch the play with costumes, sets, music, heroes in white hats, villains in black hats. The same action and same lines are spoken in both, but the real play has enormously more entertainment value. Anything we do to help put "costumes" on the characters is a good thing when mixing an enormous number of characters in one universe. There are a number of stacks on the table where the card backs are shown all the time. We found it exciting to walk up to a game and see the kind of fight (hero vs. villain, villain vs. villain, hero vs. hero) reflected in a demonstrative way across the table.

Some reasons are more logistical. We have licenses from many studios. It's easy to make a system for one license because everything can be approved up front. But, property owners want to protect the "story" of their properties, and making this division helps us in licensing.

And some are just plain practical. If you're not using sleeves, it makes getting your 40 cards back together at the end of the game easier. When teaching the game, it's the single easiest way to show a new player the difference between two decks.

To wrap it up, we didn't "split" the cards up because we wanted two card backs. We made two card backs because we had always intended to split the gameplay into good and evil, and we liked the end product better with the different backs.

Q. Wait, maybe I'm missing something, but how is a two-sided card more expensive to make than a one-sided card with "Fight Klub" or whatever printed on the back?

A. When you print cards, you have to print the backs on one press run, and the fronts on another run. Fight Klub is designed to have all the sheets have the same "pattern" of backs (Hero and Villain) for every set, so we can print the backs in larger runs (keeps costs down). If we print a two-sided card, we would have to do a new "back" press run every time we did a different card, and that increases costs. And you guys know the economics of that. Increased production costs means increased price to the consumer.

Q. I hope non-FMs like myself will be able to get our hands on business cards as well. Doesn't seem fair that only the FMs should have it so good._

A. Not a question, but worth a comment. We want to encourage everyone to promote Fight Klub. Every player can be a mentor (if not a Founding Mentor). There will be tools for non-FMs to "spread the word."