After butting my head uselessly against a bird mobile project, birds playing instruments kids' idea, birds as fantasy classes (which I still think would be awesomeand you can't convince me otherwise- think cassowary as the tank- ) I settled on a bird card game as a realistic expression of a creative outlet.
Which is just to say I wanted to do something sciencey and colorful and with some potential merit down the road.
The card game's based heavily on Gwent's rows and 3 round system with habitats taking place of "unit" themed rows.
Each player has 3 habitat rows they place birds into: coastal, forest and urban. Different species have different icons that correspond to one or more of these rows (i.e. skimmers would be exclusively coastal while things like gulls are coastal/urban hybrids). Because environmental hazards can affect different rows, it's beneficial for players to try and spread out their hand as much as they can over several rows or not play all their coastal birds in a single round. This is a neat built in way to stress how specialized species (things LIKE skimmers and oystercatchers) get screwed by man-made and natural disasters- their entire population is confined to a single row and whatever happens to that row happens to all of them.
The goal is to end 2/3 rounds with more points on the board than your opponent.
Typically, apex predator birds (raptors) have more point totals than smaller birds but sometimes require costs to play (i.e. - you must have enough smaller birds in play to support a raptor coming down).
Some smaller birds are "gold cards" - these are either our focal species at GCBO or just neat species I want to highlight and have abilities that can add significant power (like the vulture's scavenge ability which can tack on points from a bird in the "graveyard" onto its own power).
Bird abilities are heavily rooted in their natural biology.
There will be an accompanying booklet to explain each card and their text.
Players start the game with a 8 card hand.
They draw 3 new cards between each round.
Their decks contain a mix of bird and hazard cards. Hazards are played against their opponent's rows and include things like "hurricanes," "water pollution," and "land development."
Here are the completed cards thus far and a little about them:
Great Egret:
This was one of the original art pieces from last year when I started testing styles. It's really the only one that held up (as I scrapped the herons and re-did the Spoonbills) and it needs a little work to be "updated" to the level of detail I settled on. I remember struggling so hard with that stupid fish, you have no idea. Getting the eye and the mouth right was such a pain - mess up just a little and an already stupid looking dead thing becomes even more derpy.
At 6 power this is a chunkier bird but it takes double damage from the Water Pollution hazard which will either do 2 or 3 base damage and so might or might not kill this card (I need to check my deck lists). It's a coastal only species (yeah, yeah, I know you see them bordering urban habitats but without water they're not going to show up in a suburb) so they can't be placed on another row to avoid the hazard.
Northern Mockingbird:
Another older card and the first gold I did. We talk a lot in SOAR about birdsong and mimicry and the Northern Mockingbird is so common here and so neat in its vocalizations that it needed some love. It's actually kind of overpowered for such a common birdo but that's OK. As one of the urban birds kids are likely to see, it deserves a feature. I want them to say, "Woah, what card IS that that just copied my Red-tailed Hawk's power?!" Northern Mockingbird kiddos. Northern fucking Mockingbird.
The copy-cat ability is a direct reference to their mimicking power. The booklet will explain how amazing these guys are in copying other calls they hear, the males especially stringing together these complex songs with notes from other birdsong.
Technically they are both urban AND forest birds but I'm still correctly designating habitats for some of the trickier ones.
I don't remember much about the process. Was a fairly easy card.
Great Horned Owl:
Speaking of easy...
I dreaded doing this. This was one where I knew I'd found THE pose it was just THE pose was a bitch. Or so I thought.
In reality, this took less time than either of the previous cards and turned out way better- ironic considering I don't find drawing owls easy and the Screech I'm working on now is killing me. But the GHO was cooperative enough that I really started to think this whole card game thing could work.
Like other raptors, this guy has some power to him. He's weighted the same as an Osprey which I think is fair but, unlike the Osprey, he's got a cost to playing. He will consume all other owls in play when he hits the board (so bye bye little Screech) - an accurate representation of the size and dietary habits of GHO which wouldn't hesitate to take smaller species of raptor when they can. The player has to decide when and where to use a card like this and to make sure they don't lose more power than they gain with an untimely play.
Roseate Spoonbill:
Re-do of an older card. I could've spent days detailing feathers but enough's a enough after a while-that's the beauty of a simpler style.
Gains +2 if played next to a White Ibis (which I still need to draw) because these two species are frequently found together and there's something to be said for flock safety. The effect is reciprocated for the Ibis, in case you care. #equalibisrights
Black Skimmer:
Ok THIS is where the inescapable challenge came in.
See, cards are vertical but birds like the skimmer, the oystercatcher, egrets, herons, pelicans- anything with a long beak really - have a hard time "fitting" in a small vertical space. It's the fucking bill. So when I saw this reference photo of a Skimmer I knew again this was THE pose - the best one I'd found so far. Unlike the owl though, this SUCKED. Figuring out how much to zoom in and how much of the neck should be out of the frame was a big struggle. I oscillated between having too much neck and drawing the world's swolest skimmer and having too little. I had to keep moving the eye. I had to shade black and white which I hate. I had to diversify my backgrounds with a color other than blue or green and I knew it had to be BRIGHT. (Thankfully, I got this part down on my second try- it just clicked).
I almost dropped this multiple times. It took the longest out of any card so far.
Another gold, and a GCBO focal species, the skimmer gains an additional +5 power if it comes into a gull-free and tern-free field. Skimmers are cautious, spooky nesters- things like gulls and terns can rout them off their colonies and disturb their breeding seasons.
Osprey:
With this, I hit my quota for challenging cards, can I have an easy one next please? I'm terrible at raptors, I really am. This took so much trial and error and was probably the most "painterly" of the bunch as I ended up completely painting over my lines at multiple times which isn't my preference at all. Things I learned: Osprey beaks are much shorter than I think they are. Raptors have pretty pronounced "eyebrows." Don't over-exaggerate the nostrils or you wind up with this massive crater in your bird's face. Yeah, at one point in time this guy looked pretty rough.
Vanilla card. We need some of those. Coastal species, big body at 8 power.
