Allegiance: War of Factions - Unique Aspects of Allegiance

Unique Aspects of Allegiance

Allegiance uses a number of concepts and gameplay mechanics that make it quite different from other collectable and trading card games on the market. These include:

• Multiple Decks - Each player has three decks: a Personality Deck (which also contains Events, Items, and Invocations), a Structure Deck, and a Wanderer Deck. When a player is asked to draw a card, the card may be drawn from either the Personality or Structure Deck, letting the player choose the type of card that will be most beneficial to the game. The Wanderer Deck is not drawn from except during the Wanderer Phase, and that card is immediately put into play.

• Limited Resources - The resources in the game, called Influence tokens, are physical items that are limited to 12 per player (4 gold Economic Influence, 4 blue Religious Influence, and 4 black Political Influence). All tokens that are played go into a shared City Influence Pool, and whenever resources are generated tokens are taken from this shared pool. If no tokens of a specific type exist in the pool, then the resource is temporarily not available.

• Trading and Negotiations - The Allegiance rules specify that deals and trades may take place in the game provided that the terms are made public. This often includes non-aggression pacts, the lending of troops, or resource exchanges. Additionally, if all players agree beforehand, cards in play may be traded during the City Maintenance Phase.

• All Players Can Lose - If Wanderers are not occasionally hunted and removed from play, they can overrun the city and cause all players to lose.

• Action-Based Play - In addition to the use of turns, players may only take a single action at a time. This means that unlike many other CCGs, a player may not gather resources and play a card immediately afterwards. This, combined with the limited resources in the game, forces players to consider each move carefully. Additionally, this means that there are very few actions that interrupt play or cancel opponent's actions (such as "counter-spells" that exist in other games).

• Beginning Resources - Each player begins with all 12 of the influence tokens that are being contributed to the game, and can use those tokens to purchase and play structures from the Structure Deck. This allows players to make sure that sufficient resources or defensive structures are present before the game even starts.

• Use of rounds instead of turns - This mechanic is not unique to Allegiance, but shows up very rarely in CCGs. Other instances include such games as Doomtown, Legend of the Burning Sands, Battlestar Galactica CCG.

Additionally, the game was designed for multi-player play, a rarity in the CCG world. Games also last an average of an hour to an hour and a half, which is more similar to a board game than other CCGs.