- v5.7
- iteration notes:
- renaming things to be less confusing
- reworking OP abilities/combos
- Scrap is renamed to Bits
- Dismantle is renamed to Break/Broken
- Lance nerfed, now reads: “[[Triggered]] when this attacks and has an adjacent friendly scrapbot: ➕🚀”
- Torch nerfed, now reads: “<<Activate>> 🗑 a card from your hand or discard pile. gain ⚙ or 🔋 equal to its market cost, then 🛠 this”
- Inspire reworked, now reads: “<<Activate>> 🃏🃏🃏 then choose and discard 2 cards”
- v5.6
- iteration notes:
- the “roomba rush” strat (discovered by play testers at Protospiel) proved to be too strong (and boring), nerfed servoid to be 2E:1A but no longer dismantles after attacking.
- testing cutting down lanes from 5 to 4. it was too easy to just avoid anything your opponent put down by building in a far off lane resulting in little interaction between bots. play testers also noted that they felt bad they couldn’t fill up their lanes. Four lanes definitely makes the game feel tighter. this along with the change to servoid allows for much more bot-on-bot interaction.
- too many keywords overwhelming players, trimming that down to hone in on the effects players gravitate to the most. cutting down on card text by introducing iconography (emojis for now)
- shutdown buffed. shutdown scrapbots cannot block, meaning a shutdown bot is no longer defending its lane. this was an on-the-spot rule change suggested by a play tester that really worked well with 4 lanes and made shutdown a powerful and relevant ability.
- servoid. energy cost increased from 1 to 2. no longer dismantles after attacking
- reduced number of lanes from 5 to 4
- keyword abilities reduced from 25 to 15 (5 per faction to 3 per faction). reworked several abilities and a few stat lines
- shutdown now reads: flip a Scrapbot face-down to indicate it is Shutdown. A Shutdown Scrapbot is unable to attack, block, or activate/trigger abilities
- v5.5
- iteration notes: The market was definitely overwhelming, cutting it down to 8 feels much more manageable. The hand size reduction slows down the early game a bit, forcing more interaction with low/mid-tier market cards to ramp up to the expensive cards.
- market size reduced from 10 to 8
- hand size reduced from 5 to 4
- v5.4
- iteration notes: dropped research and randomizer. rules cleanup.
- v5.3
- iteration notes: drastically cut down the size of the main deck to just 60 cards. added a rough “faction identity” centered around keyword themes
- v5.2
- iteration notes: added researcher and randomizer to starter decks
- v5.1
- iteration notes: tried out a version which changed the way Overdrive worked to remove the extra step during the draw phase. the idea was to instead just have the cards be playable. also added some different types of Wounds besides Overdrive. was an interesting experiment but was easily broken by playtesters. reverted for now, to be revisited
- v5.0
- iteration notes: quite a departure from previous iterations, this version aims to simplify things a bit while also creating a wider decision space
- removed the Resource card type
- renamed Weapons to Gadgets to better reflect their new purpose
- Gadgets now do all sorts of interesting things instead of just being another source of damage
- Brought back the concept of “installing”, but this time its optional. Installing a gadget onto a scrapbot will allow a player to buff their bots and create powerful combos, at the cost of tying up a valuable source of energy
- removed factions and instead went wide with 50(!) new keyword effects
- v4.6
- iteration notes: v4.6 feels like things are moving in the right direction.
- widen Market to 10 cards, playtesting and research revealing that the Market being so small was a real pain point.
- lane effects, added effects to each lane (center lane +20 damage, sidecar lanes move scrapbot, flank lanes reduced energy costs)
- buffed CyberSpartan (lower Energy costs for attacks and STIM triggers from any attack or weapon)
- buffed Skittercorp (damage nerfed slightly but excavate values greatly increased)
- Force Shield was badly designed, replaced with Malware
- v4.4
- iteration notes: v4.x series testing pretty well. 4.4 introduces a new card to the starter deck, Servoid. Servoids and Med Packs are now always available from the Market (supplies limited).
- Med Pack reworked to be more powerful but single-use only.
- weapons nerfed, fewer weapons overall and added a new rule, only one weapon fired per lane per turn
- Force shield introduced to replace Med Pack's slot in the Scrap Deck
- v4.1
- iteration notes: Components renamed to Weapons (and some reworked to be more weapon-y). Skittercorp faction ability changed to Excavate
- v4.0x
- iteration notes: played around with reworking components to just be "energy" cards. wasn't feeling it. reverted changes.
- v4
- iteration notes: v4 seeks to improve on the flaws of v3.x by making more sweeping design changes.
- widens lanes from 3 to 5. offering greater tactical choices
- introduces 3 factions with unique inter-faction dependent special abilities
- v3.6
- iteration notes: v3 feeling much better than previous versions and playtesting well. various tweaks and changes based on feedback. v3.6 felt like the first "stable" version of the game.
- v3
- iteration notes: v1/v2 both suffered from the same problem, the "installation" mechanic pulled too many cards out of the player's decks which felt very clunky for a deck-building game. v3 removes the installation mechanic and replaces it by introducing a second currency: Energy, which is used to power Scrapbot attacks.
- add Energy as a currency, components reworked to be Energy providers. scrapbot attacks reworked to require energy
- v2
- iteration notes: v1 had some interesting ideas but having only the single card type felt limiting
- add Components as a new card type, components get installed to Scrapbots
- add Tactics as a new card type, tactics give strong special effects
- add the Wound mechanic, which serves as a new victory condition as well as a come-back mechanic
- v1
- Scrapbots only card type
- Scrap only currency type
- Scrapbots "installed" (stacked under) to Build Scrapbots in lanes
- Win by dealing 3 undefended attacks