Mastery

Mastery is my work-in-progress boxed card game with a focus on strategically engaging deckbuilding, familiar but transformed card game mechanics interwoven with exciting originals, and an immersive and innovative fantasy setting.

Having spent most of my life playing card games including Magic: the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Hearthstone, Digimon, Pokemon, and Legends of Runeterra among others, I am actively reconstructing my favorite mechanics and elements of these games through my unique perspective on card games. My lifelong experience and daily life on both sides of the counter at local game stores constantly probes me to consider the various elements that make a card game compelling.

The game's mechanics are centered around an original dynamic grid system that allows for engaging and strategic movement of cards and rewards careful decisions when choosing where to play cards. Both players construct a deck of unit, spell, and action cards among others to navigate to victory. The goal player experience is a strategically rewarding but approachable card game with all of the player favorite elements of TCGs perfectly tuned to be played out of a single box.

Deckbuilding is guided by two "Masters;" special characters represented with unique double-sided cards who have achieved complete "mastery" over an art or skill through their own fictional stories, reflected in their game abilities.

The "Master" cards represent important characters from my own fiction continuity that I have been writing in for an extended period of time. While it maintains many beloved elements of the high fantasy setting, my goal with Mastery and its fictional world is to represent cultures that are a part of my own identity and/or are often underrepresented in the fantasy sphere; most specifically Southeast Asian cultures, folklore, and histories, such as those of Indonesia and Thailand.

My passion and vision for Mastery exist in accordance with my love for card games at large. It remains a perfect passion project that both teaches me and allows me to apply lessons in game design as I pursue my vision for this love-song to my favorite genre.