This looks disturbingly similar to Battleground Fantasy Warfare by Your Move Games http://www.yourmovegames.com/battleground_index.html

I was going to say it looks almost exactly like Battleground. Even the stats look nearly the same.

Holy cow! I would love to hear Chad’s take on this from YMG. This is a blatant ripoff.

mmmh it doesn’t look “exactly” the same : YMG Battlegroung has a better look :oP

Well, wonder how this game works but I hope this will not arm YMG’s business : they have invested a lot of time, money and passion to create an original, inexpensive and interesting game (and they’ve received awards for that!)….

The visual likeness to Battlegrounds is crazy.

I agree with blkdymnd back in the early days of CCGs you could tell which games were being played just by glancing at the table - the cards were so different. I’d struggle to see the difference with a casual glance at this one alongside Battlegrounds.

So, I checked out their forum. It is very new with a single post concerning Shattered Sword. The want to address concerns of the game being to similar to “another game” on the market. It links to a description of the turn sequence and sample play. Now, I haven’t played either game so I’m in no position to judge how differently the two play. But, while I appreciate an effort made to design unique rules, I think the problem we are all having is the similarity in appearance.

The forum post says that after reading it, it will be apparent that the only similarities are that they are both top-down card games. I would put forth however, that there are still many ways to make a top-down card game look different. It is the use of repeated CG images and green stat bar along the bottom of a bright grass background that make them so similar.

(sorry about the double post…I ran out of time to edit)

Hey look, Battleground has a new supplement! Wait a minute…

blkdymnd wrote:

I was going to post a rebuttal to his claim, but after registering it seems you cannot reply to his posts yet… convenient..

Lets not look for alterior motives when there may be other reasons for the delay.

And until we have all the facts lets not toss around words like “stole” so casually.

Thanks

Blimey I couldnt believe this when I saw it… similar isnt the words I would use.

it will be interesting to see what comes of this….

well, the gesture is nice for sure, though it’s too bad it’s still pretty similar. Should take the heat off of them a bit. I respect them for a quick change though, they must have been busy today…

there were more similarities than just the looks, though the looks are the most severe.

Stat an hit points appearances are the second thing most similiar between them, especially the fact that he has a 3 tier wounding state of green yellow red just as BGFW has.

Command cards are another very indicative rip off. didn’t even try to hide the fact by renaming them.
(I do wonder what the point would be to spell cards if you have no wizards in your ranks…this option seems a little odd to add. if all armies have wizard without buying them then cards would make sense. but if wizards are purchased for the army, then you shouldn’t need the overcompensation of cards. they should just come with a set of abilities and mabey spell points with which to “use” those abilities.)

Control points are obviously a take from Command actions in BGFW. they are used to determine and change what your units do.
the only differences here are you get more control points in this game as that is the only way your units move each round and you don’t need to spend them on cards.

All distances measured by cards. Again a very VERY obvious take from BGFW. he measures movement in card lengths and ranges for missile fire in Card lengths. All things that were innovation of BGFW.

He was specific

I’ll add another similarity… moving a step in damage (in BG:FW, that means being damaged from green to yellow or yellow to red. And until a few hours earlier, that meant the exact same thing in SS) you lose a stat point in courage, you seem to do the same in Shattered Swords.

And the above points that Jtolman stated, measuring methods, command aspects, side deck of “effect” cards, and the obvious top down similarity. There have just been too many points in similarity between one and the other. Thats why I’ve been in an uproar about it today (and I promise I will not use the word steal in respect to Zac) :)

Now, I agree that the card redesign was warranted for sure. But the comments Mr. Mauro is making on his forum (that cannot be answered to by any but him) seem conceit when he feigns ignorance that there was another game out there that had cards “similar” to the ones he designed. I’m sorry, but with all of the similarities I just don’t buy it.

Zac, I respect your objectivity and wish I could show the same on this issue, but Mr. Mauro does owe the Battleground players an explanation and especially Chad, who I’m sure is aware of the issue by now, for trying to capitalize on someone elses hard work.

Well, it is starting to look like an angry mob forming. I for one am not ready to hang the guy out to dry yet.

Taking some time to think about it I have reached some conclusions. Where gameplay is concerned, one would expect that any card-based unit game would likely play similar to many element-based games, most frequently found in historicals. Since removing individual models isn’t an option, this is probably the best approach. in this respect the two games are as different from one another as most such games. If you take out the card format and took a look at the rules individually, imagining basing your own generic historical miniatures, I don’t think many would cry foul. A lot of gamers in fantasy aren’t used to this style of play however. I could list probably 50 element based historical games with as many similarities. So gameplay doesn’t bother me here.

I orriginally thought that this game was 3-d modeled cgi like Battleground from the limited small images. The creator has since said that they are hand-drawn and I believe him. The visual similarities persist however because i imagine that while hand-drawn, they are still computer-coloured and images duplicated (likely in photoshop or its equivalent). Again I have no problem with this.

While they will certainly carry common rank and file units (Dwarfs with axes, Dwarfs with crossbows, etc.), this is also to be expected, as most games do so as well. From the limited number of previews, there does not seem to be any attempt to copy the more unique units. Even if there were, this is also not uncommon (consider the number of miniature ranges featuring naked mohawk-sporting Dwarf beserkers).

For me, the only objectionable similarity is that of design. While possibly a move of desperation, I am nevertheless impressed with the alacrity shown at redesigning the cards. It must be a massive undertaking so close to printing to redesign all of the cards overnight. And with pre-orders taken, there may very well be print runs ruined already.

I would still encourage the creator to take the design further from Battlegrounds. Many simple changes would help differentiate the two at first glance. Possibilities include changing the ground from a bright green grass to a brown or grey toned wasteland, placing a border around the cards, listing the statistics along the side rather than the bottom of the cards, using different images, colours, and borders to delineate the statistics, etc. I would not ask that every card be redrawn. They are already unique models and a top-view is really the most logical choice for such a game. I would only like to see more of a redesign in the presentation.

Using the Magic analogy again, Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, and a host of other card games look almost identical if one were to interpret the rules based on the cards. They have only two stats - attack and defense - and a box for special rules. They are laid out with an image on top, special rules beneath, and attack/defense stats as two numbers listed side-by-side. It is the colourization used in the borders, the art on the back of the cards, and he fonts that are the only things that make them stand apart. But they do stand apart, even at first glance. Simple changes (at a not-so-simple time) would make them satisfactorily different for me.

Jeremy wrote:

Well, it is starting to look like an angry mob forming.

Well not quite yet but lets keep this civil everyone.

If you want to comment please do so but lets keep the anger and outrage to a minimum. There isn’t any reason to get personally involved in this issue. Let the game developers hash it out if they want/need to. There isn’t any need for people to be fighting battles for others.

google “Command Cards” and that argument goes away. many games use them.

There are a slew of card games all using card length as movement. This was not an innovation with BGFW. Wizkids uses it in all there games.

As for spell cards, they are just that. You have wizards attached to units and they cast spells. You have to pick and choose your spells for a particular battle, hence the need of spell cards. If you don’t like the art, fine. But there is more to a game than just art.

in SSFBCG there are commanders and wizards that effect game play in many ways. These are separate game pieces that can be moved in different ways throughout the course of battle.

Near as I can tell BGFW has 7 or 8 attributes it uses to determine the outcome of combat. SSFBCG only uses 4.

The argument that they “looked ” liked BGFW was valid and it looks like that has been and is being addressed. It was a poor design choice.

I think that Jeremy’s post hits the nail on the head

Let me agree with Zac, first of all, that we should keep this civil (at least for now). I’m contacting the owner of TOG to share my thoughts and to get his, and I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt wherever possible.

Yes, the card layout is pretty much identical (especially in the original incarnation). That can be addressed. Moreover, some “ripoff” mechanics, like measuring with long and short sides, are not completely unique to Battleground. I’m not going to yell at someone else for doing that unless I want Wizkids to start yelling at us.