Band Battle: Putting your bands to work

Once the player is ready, they’ll put their artists to work at a Concert Venue. The Gameplay of Gaia is battling your Band against an opponent's Band, these opponents will either be other players, or AI controlled. Each Band is composed of a number of Artists ranging from 1-6. We're nt sure on the exacct numbers just yet, but this can help you get an idea.

Each band is aligned up against each other, artist by artist (you don't always need the same sized band to compete against each other), who then take turns exchanging sick beats and melodies with each other to Hype up the crowd. The winner is which band walks away from the gig with the majority of the crowd on their side.

Phase 1: Gathering a Crowd

Every Artist has a Follower Count stat on their card. A Crowd is gathered from the combined Follower Counts of both bands combined together, along with a small additional neutral fans. The range of neutral fans added depends on the initial size of the Crowd, after both bands' fans are added. (IE if the initial Crowd size is 200-300 then we'll roll somewhere between 10-30, whereas with a 1200 size crowd we'd add anywhere from 30-120.)

This is mostly to dilute the Follower Count's influence a little bit so that it isn't just a non-interactive win stat.

There may be additional modifiers on gathering a Crowd, such as buzz from a Radio Station or other factors

Phase 2: Opening Riff

Once the Crowd is gathered and ready to hear some sick jamz to Hype them up, it's time to actually play for them! Hype is visually represented as a bar that starts in the middle, but in the backend we're keeping track of how much Hype each band has generated over the course of all the rounds.

Every Artist in your Band has 3 Skills associated with them as an innate part of the card. Each round one of these Skill Cards is dealt randomly into your hand, one per each Artist in the band. Each Skill Card also keeps track of what Artist it is associated with.

Skill Cards all have a Beat cost associated with them, and each Band has 3 Beats to use per round of combat. Skill Cards range in cost from 0-3 Beats to use, often depending on how strong the effect of the Skill Card is. You do not have to play the cards in your hand if you don't wish to and 'pass' the turn instead. However, Beats are use them or lose them per round; excess Beats do not carry over to the next round if you did not use them.

There's also bonuses for playing multiple Skill Cards in a turn. For each Skill Card played in a round (after your first), you get a +1 Hype Bonus if that Skill Card is from a different Instrument than the previous Skill Card, and another +1 Hype Bonus if that Skill Card is from the same Genre as the previous Skill Card. The Genera bonus scales up by 1 for each consecutive card played in that Genre in a given round. So you want a Band that has diverse Instruments, but singular in Genre. The exact amount +1 is we'll handle on the back end so don't worry about how much exactly that is, its just to illustrate the general principal.

Once you have your hand of cards, which Band acts first is decided by a coin flip and you play from there. Skill Cards are played and fully resolved before control switches to the opposing Band for them to play their Card. The round is over when both Bands have no remaining Skill Cards in their hand, or both Bands pass their turns consecutively.

At the end of each round, players can choose to reserve one and only one remaining Skill Card in their hand to carry over between rounds provided that they have not played all of the cards in their hand this turn. The rest are discarded and not seen again this band battle.

Phase 3: The Bridge

The next round proceeds exactly like the previous one did. The player that went first in the previous round goes first in this round.

As a note, some Skill Cards will have additional effects if they're played during a specific round of play.

Example:

The Skill Card "Bridge Rhythm" gives additional Hype only when played during The Bridge.

Phase 4: Finale

The next round proceeds exactly like the previous one did. The player that went first in the previous round goes first in this round.

This is the last chance for players to take active actions in this battle.

As another note: used Skill Cards are not added back into the pool of usable / drawable Skill Cards for that Artist. You only see each skill once (unless you have 2 or 3 of any given skill in that Artist's Skills).

Phase 5: Encore!

Let's end with a bang! The Encore is a special round that doesn't take normal Skills into account.

Instead, the Encore round is only participated in by Artists who have an Encore! Special Ability. These abilities have an Encore Skill Card associated with them that is automatically played upon reaching this stage, Encore Skill Cards do not have a Beat cost associated with them. If a Band has multiple Artists with Encore! Special Abilities, then an option is presented to the player as to which one of them they would like to use but only one may be played.

Only one Encore! Skill Card is played for each Band, and Bands lacking an Encore! Special Ability simply passes this round without taking action.

Phase 6: The Tally

At this point, the Hype bar has been going up and down and visually will give a rough indication of which Band was the most successful during the 4 rounds of play. But that's not the whole story.

In the backend we've been keeping track of each Band's Total Hype gathered, which is then added together. But how does the Crowd we gathered at the start of this come into it?

We take the Total Hype and multiply it by the percentage of the Crowd that Band attracted. This provides a Crowd Bonus that is then added back to the Total Hype to give us our Grand Totals for each Band.

Phase 7: And the Winner is...

The battle is won by the Band with the highest Grand Total after a moment of tension building! Rewards are distributed, XP earned, and both players go on their merry way to more rounds of awesome music!