Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

Members of TechFire have created a card game version of Aerial Assist, and it's getting published!
In Aerial Assault, you can simulate an entire season of FRC in a table-top card game. You build your robot, train your drivers, and play matches! The basic game is for four players, but with the expansion pack you can have six, for a more realistic game.
Besides being really fun, it's a great outreach tool- you can introduce a stranger to FRC while playing a game.

In order to get this to happen, we need your support by pre-ordering the game on our Kickstarter.
There are several levels of support, but at the team level, your robot can become part of the game! And at the highest level of support, you get 10 copies of the expanded pack at a reduced price, which you can sell at a profit for your team.
Help us make this happen- if the game is successful, we'll make a game each year.
Go to bit.ly/aerialassaultks to check it out!

If you have any questions, contact us at RobotCardGame@gmail.com

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

I got to see the game setup in-person at Battle of Baltimore. It looks to be a pretty fun game, similar to how the game series Sid Meier's Civilization games would work if they were a card game and each side had its turn concurrent to the opponents.

The way the game works is very similar to how a few teams I know kick off their strategy sessions - 6 robots are placed on a field and move/interact using a limited amount of resources. Thus it may be a good segway to investigate new strategems which help a robot focus on a certain aspect of the game over the others.

It should be a blast to play in the evenings at competition.

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

Thank you for your great comment. Your support for our game is really appreciated. We look foreword to creating a new game every year, hopefully that will be out before Champs of that season. What would your team most likely use the game for?

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

What I really liked about what I saw is that there are multiple types of implementations of multiple subsystems for building during the season. Then, during the game play, there are multiple types of movements during the game.

For young teams, the relative 'cost' of the subsystem cards in the 'build season' phase of the game should give them an idea of level of effort with respect to finite resources. The game play phase will then give them an idea of level of reward in a multi-robot environment. This might help them realize that the more important decisions they have to make as a team are about what to focus on rather than what the coolest mechanism is.

For my team in particular, the organization of the game play phase actually parallels how we've organized our scouting (accidentally...) in the last few years. "Who is the best at X" -- rather than focusing on individual robots, it's usually easier (and more fun) for our scouts to pay attention to specific movements on the field which would lead a team to being the best at 'X'. We then try to get the top 5 of each of our categories, find overlap and choose accordingly.

So the card game, even if it isn't a perfect mirror to the season, provides another fun and engaging way to get students (and stubborn mentors...) trained on an effective way to strategize and scout for a game.

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

Great observation about the similarity of CIV to Aerial Assault.

http://bit.ly/aerialassaultks

As one of the designers on Aerial Assault and a big long time fan of Sid Meier's Civilization games (since the original CIV), I wish I could take credit for the build phase of the game. But it was actually during play testing the game with the #225 teams that the team came up with having each part of the robot taking X number of weeks to build. Players wanted full control over that part of game and came up with a great solution.

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

This sounds like a really awesome concept.

Can you give an idea of how much time this game takes to play through a round?

Will there be duplicate cards for different robot mechanisms (eg for some reason everyone in my game suddenly thinks that Toro Pickup is the best)?

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

Awesome looking game! Time to convince my family we need to pledge...

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

We've kept the play time down to about 30 minutes for a 4 player game that includes build seasoning, driver training and 1 match. We figured this would be fun activity to blow off some steam between doing some heavy thinking and building activities in the shop.

The game was designed by First Robotics teammates so they insisted that each player can build their robot how they would want to build it so yes we have 4 duplicates of each robot component (+2 in the deluxe version). 4 Serve Drives, 4 Tank Drives, 4 Claw and punch shooter, 4 catapult shooter, etc.

Here's the link again to the Kickstarter. Only 10 days left so please help!

http://bit.ly/aerialassaultks

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

Here's a couple of cool articles and reviews about Aerial Assault:

Board Game Geek:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/...ame-worth-look

Geek Dad's Review
http://geekdad.com/2014/09/aerial-assault/

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

We're looking for photos of your robot to put into the card game.

Please email photos to Robotcardgame@gmail.com.

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

As the Kickstarter closes in roughly 2 days, I wanted to resurface this thread.

Gracie and Katie have put a lot of work into designing the card game, and the team would sincerely appreciate everyone's support to make sure the project gets funded!

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

Why did you choose the name?

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

Just backed, congrats on reaching your pledge goal! :)

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

Woo! Just got the email. Congrats on full funding! I look forward to dueling someday :cool:

Re: Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game
 

Hey, We're still looking for robot photos for the cards, so if you want your team to be in the game just email photos of your robot to robotcardgame@gmail.com and we'll use them if we can. Thanks!

Also, on the name:
My father kept calling the FRC game "aerial assault" at the beginning of the season, so when we didn't get a clear OK from FIRST to use the name, we put that in as filler. After a few meeting about the name, we decided just to keep it.