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Mechanic Monday (Belated): Fantasy GM Squared's Front Office!

Is it a Mechanic Monday if it’s on a Thursday? You bet your ass it is!
It’s been a crazy busy week for me, what with work and the theatre company and [my dog] and my poor time management skills and my need to fill every hour with productivity and the smiling oppressive all-crinkling eye of Capitalism and
ANYWAY.  Gonna keep work, work, working away at Fantasy GM Squared (maybe I’ll just go with square cards to double-down on that title?) because it’s got the most legs, legs, legs, marketability.  I even made a Google Form to try and harvest data on just what it is that non-gamers most like about fantasy sports, and will try and spring that on people in the coming weeks.  But today, let’s talk about a mechanic, shall we? Here it is: The Front Office!

Front Office
When a Hero is at the Dedicate level, and the season ends, instead of rotating them again, flip the Hero card over and place it in your Guild’s Front Office.  For the remainder of the game, that Hero, now retired from adventuring, but still adding the wisdom of their experience to the leadership of the Guild, will offer a special ability that you can take advantage of.  The card’s special ability will indicate when in the season it can be used, and how many times, or if it is an ongoing persistent or end-of-game effect.

So this adds some long-term planning to the game.  And it incentivizes you to pick up or trade for players past their prime instead of endlessly returning to the youth well.  Ways I could tinker with this: Put a cap on number of FOH, and/or break the ability into multiple variations based on different slots (aka steal from Pixel Tactics and change the ability based on if the card is slotted into the Head Coach, Offensive Coordinator, Defensive Coordinator, etc).  I also anticipate a truly wild selection of powers, including scouting (being able to draft cards-as-yet-revealed), magic (delay or accelerate player aging), rule manipulation, stealing VP or draft picks, otherwise sabotaging other characters, equipping characters, re-rolling dice, better free agent stuff, straight victory points, etc.  So we’ll see.
Anyway today’s MM is short and it’s late but it’s HERE.  Thanks for reading, see you next week!

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