Shadespire with children. Advice appreciated!

[Sim]

When my children were born 6 and 4 years ago I switched from GW plastic addiction to Lego plastic addiction as this was easier to appreciate with the kids. I sold off everything GW and forgot it existed beyond black library books. 

Then shadespire dragged me back in. I haven't played with adults so have no great experience of the mechanics.

today we played our first three way game!

  

we only use the character cards as only the big child can read, and not fluently enough for the cards. This does limit the mechanics so I have built a lot more than the required scenery and expanded the board.

the kids can work out dice to roll, hexes to move etc. We stuck to one damage for each hit to extend the game, rather than varied by character. 

a point is awarded for each enemy killed and taking possession of the central objective (only made one so far).

Much fun had, a stormcast victory for the youngest who would cry if he lost. The eldest played as Khorne and ran away to hide at the end which was funny.

my question if there is any other game mechanics you think could be included, from shadespire or otherwise?

- I plan to make more objective points and perhaps give a risk style objective card to each player

- I have bought thunder and blood to expand the two main armies. Perhaps with additional character cards.

- I haven't used the gold side of the character cards yet, although poor Khorne suffers so I think they probably should. Especially since the little one insists on using the extra stormcast the GW manager gave him.

any thoughts greatly appreciated!

[Goblin-King]

heh - basically you are making a new game almost from scratch

The cards are a huge deal of what balances the warbands. Maybe make your own cards using just a set of icons and+/-/=?

+1 *white dice* ---> 1 extra dice in an attack
+2 *red heart* ---> heal 2 life
-1 *red heart* = +2 *white dice* = Loose 1 life, but roll 2 extra dice in an attack
*crit on a white dice* = -2 *Broken Heart* ---> If you roll a crit in an attack your target loose 2 life
*re-roll icon* 1 ---> Re-roll any one die.

I think if you invent ~10 icons for various effects/meanings you can make a great deal of simple yet interesting cards.
If I were to do this myself I would make icons for white and black dice (- white and black crit - and perhaps friendly and enemy heart.
That way you can differentiate when and against who the effect takes place.  

I also think the children will quickly enough learn the icons as long as you make sure they are used the same way every time.
That way you can also make the Khorne cards a tad stronger to compensate for their weaker power.
 

Let me know if this is an idea you want to go for and I can flesh out my ideas a bit more

[Sim]

1 hour ago, Goblin-King said:

heh - basically you are making a new game almost from scratch

The cards are a huge deal of what balances the warbands. Maybe make your own cards using just a set of icons and+/-/=?

+1 *white dice* ---> 1 extra dice in an attack
+2 *red heart* ---> heal 2 life
-1 *red heart* = +2 *white dice* = Loose 1 life, but roll 2 extra dice in an attack
*crit on a white dice* = -2 *Broken Heart* ---> If you roll a crit in an attack your target loose 2 life
*re-roll icon* 1 ---> Re-roll any one die.

I think if you invent ~10 icons for various effects/meanings you can make a great deal of simple yet interesting cards.
If I were to do this myself I would make icons for white and black dice (- white and black crit - and perhaps friendly and enemy heart.
That way you can differentiate when and against who the effect takes place.  

I also think the children will quickly enough learn the icons as long as you make sure they are used the same way every time.
That way you can also make the Khorne cards a tad stronger to compensate for their weaker power.
 

Let me know if this is an idea you want to go for and I can flesh out my ideas a bit more

I like your thinking! they can cope with chance cards in kids monopoly etc. And the idea of holding on to get out of jail free cards so that would certainly work.

If you are happy to spend time fleshing out the ideas I will be delighted to hear them! The idea is to slowly morph the game in to its true state as they get older so I would like to stick to the mechanics were possible, using cards and so on.

[Goblin-King]

First and foremost you need to decide (1) how cards are gonna be acquired and (2) how and when they are gonna be played.
Do you want reaction cards or are cards only played in the power phase?
These  are pretty important for how you are gonna design the actual cards.

But basically you use icons in combination with +, -, = and numbers.

= would mean IF something happens then something else also happens.
White Crit = Enemy Push 2 → IF you roll a crit in an attack you may move the enemy 2.

Ideas for icons:

White die → Attack die
Black die → Defense die
White Crit → A crit rolled on an attack die
Black Crit → A crit rolled on a defense die
Friendly heart → affects a friendly model
Enemy heart → affects an enemy model
Friendly Push → Move friendly model
Enemy Push → Move enemy model
Attack Success → If you successfully attack something
Defend Success → If you successfully defend from something
White reroll → Allows a white die to be rerolled once
Black reroll → Allows a black die to be rerolled once
Shardfall → allows you to place the shardfall blocked square token (not so generic, I know, but hey...)
Cleave → attack gains cleave
Guard → model goes on guard
Damage → Adds extra damage to a successful attack
Perhaps friendly and enemy fighter icons to help clarify?

There's a lot of possibilities to get you started here. All there is to it is to combine the icons and +/-/=/#
As most of the icons are in a black/white or friendly/version there's really not a whole lot. I would have no qualms creating even more icons as the need and ideas arise.
With half being so similar I'd say you could easily add another 10 icons.

Now I know this system won't be as clear cut as text, but it's a way to introduce cards to non-readers.