With the upcoming release of our third expansion, REDLINE: Payday, REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat will be expanding to a total of four factions.
Get excited! Our previous two factions, the Crimson Pact of Mars (CPM) and the United Nations of Earth (UNE) will be joined by the new Mercenary and Industrial factions. And each new faction adds new types of gameplay and exciting strategies to explore to the Solar War. We’ve already discussed some history on the design and development of the two new factions in a previous article you can read here if you missed it.
From REDLINE’s inception, a lot of design space in the game has been saved and set aside for our two new factions, as we waited for their time to be introduced. Popular strategies players love such as resource ramping and and graveyard interactions, not really utilized by the previous factions make up a key part of our new the mercs and industrial corporations.
With these big changes impacting how REDLINE will be played going forward, we felt now would be a good time to take a deep dive once again into what makes all four factions in REDLINE unique with their different strengths and areas of focus.
REDLINE FACTION WHEEL
Say hello to our new REDLINE faction wheel!
To help illustrate the strengths of each faction in REDLINE, we created the faction wheel above as a useful reference tool to help players clearly see the differences between every faction in the game. In addition the wheel acts as a useful guide for future design to help clarify where each faction’s core values lay.
Reading the wheel is a fairly simple process. As you can see, each of the four factions has its own corner which consists of two rings.
The outside ring lists the core attributes of each faction. These are the guiding principles, beliefs and motivations that each faction embraces and which explains how they operate, act, and behave to achieve their goals not only in battle but as an organization. The outer ring can help to explain each faction’s approach to capturing missions on the redline just as much as how they’d run them once under their control.
Meanwhile, the inner ring details each faction’s main game mechanics and abilities when playing. The inner ring gives examples of how each faction translates their principles into action. While not entirely comprehensive, the inner ring does highlight some of the bigger play patterns and strategies each faction has when playing.
That said, while the faction wheel is a guide to help show factions strengths, that does not mean it is entirely set in stone because REDLINE is an expandable card game that is constantly evolving and growing over time.
There may also be some instances when overlap between the rings is necessary for the good of the game. Scrapyard interactions are a good example of this. While raiding the scrapyard for battlefield salvage is listed as a Mercenary ability in the wheel, as it is a core ability of theirs, there are certain times other factions may also interact with with cards in the ‘yard, like efreet scrapyard does by allowing anyone to raid the junkyard for goodies. These exceptions are limited however and something we try not to do unless we feel needed. As Mercs haven’t existed until now, we wanted some interaction with the scrapyard for players in the meantime which is why efeet scrapyard exists.
Now that we have all that out of the way, let’s take a closer look at each faction in depth to explore what drives them to get out of bed every morning. We’ll be starting first with our new Payday factions and then revisiting the CPM and UNE.
INDUSTRIAL
Thanks to the leap in technology resulting from the development of space travel, the REDLINE universe is highly advanced. The common use of cold fusion reactors, advanced materials, aforementioned space travel and even efreets themselves would not be possible without an abundance of the rare earth metals that make them all possible. Because of the insatiable demand for these metals and society’s massive dependence on these new technologies, powerful industrial companies had risen to prominence by the late 2040s to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the biggest tech and defense industries of the day. Quick to adopt efreet technology to their own uses, industrial corporations have found them doubly useful for when they may need to defend themselves in those rare instances when conflict encroaches on their bottom line.
In REDLINE: Payday, our first look at the Industrial faction is seen through the lens of Drihl Co, a rapidly growing Earth based mining company. Though Drihl Co. is Earth based, mining operations for rare earth ores are quite common and asteroid based organizations will likely be the focus of future expansions to the new faction in addition to possible construction, manufacturing or agriculture companies.
CORE BELIEFS
The Industrial faction is all about gaining as much wealth as possible at any cost.
Gaining record profits is always their bottom line. These profits are often, though not necessarily achieved through a ruthless exploitation of the people and the environment in their way in order to make their shareholders happy. This means they often leave a trail of destruction in their wake from their mining operations or polluting factories that often skirt the bare minimum of legal codes when and where they exist. The corporate world has little room for individuality and instead favors the cold homogeneity and stabilizing nature of a dependable workforce. That is not to say the Industrial faction doesn’t have some redeeming qualities as they are more apt than the others to use whatever materials are on hand to get the job done. This resourcefulness to fail fast and fail often helps them to be a little more flexible when working to overcome obstacles in their way as the free market often rewards those who can be the first to solve problems when they arise as cheaply as possible. An industrial strength welding torch can cut just as easily through steel as it can an efreet’s armor for example.
FACTION ABILITIES
The most important ability at the disposal of the Industrial faction is their ability to generate ore. Ore is a new resource being introduced in REDLINE: Payday, that can be used by any faction in a pinch, but is the main secondary resource of the Industrial faction. Ore can be generated by the Industrial faction in a multitude of ways, but because their efreets are so busy extracting and exploiting deposits of these precious metals, they have little time to get out and perform reconnaissance during a fight and so recon is incredibly difficult for them to generate or use.
By itself, ore is useful because it can be scrapped to draw extra cards. However the Industrial faction can process and refine ore to power or improve many of their abilities as you will see below.
Behind ore, the other ability that defines the Industrial faction and their efreets is their adaptability to use many of their heavy tools in combat situations thanks to their fight mechanic. When fighting against industrial efreets be very careful as they will often run up and engage in physical combat using their drills and saws to tear into enemies if they are faster than them. That will leave a scar!
Fighting is quite scary as enemy efreets damaged by a swift punch or drill to the noggin will become off balanced or expended, which may turn off some of their special abilities. But, if an enemy is already expended before a punch is thrown they will also take a critical hit if the fighting attack hits, so watch out!
Another useful ability the Industrial faction can utilize is their ability to both gain extra resources while destroying those of their enemy. Cards like Unexpected Discovery provide Industrial players with the ability to accelerate their accumulation of resources which is useful since many of their cards have high deploy costs if they are to ever see action on the battlefield.
We are very aware that having the ability to ramp the deployment of a player’s resources while also being able to destroy the resources of other players is a slippery slope that can lead to some unfun play situations. This is why the Industrials’ ability to destroy resources is limited to non basic cards as shown by the card, Excavate below. If a non basic is destroyed, a basic will take its place to stop a player from going into deficit. For REDLINE, we always wanted to make sure the game had mechanisms to deal with potentially powerful resource cards now or in the future. Before the Industrial faction became playable, there was no real way to interact with them. And with the industrial efreets focus on destruction, it always made the most sense for them to be the ones to carry out the deed. Our intention is this ability will provide the needed check and balance for decks that may rely too heavily on non basic resources to stop them from ever becoming too powerful.
While the Industrial faction has some powerful abilities, they do come with certain liabilities. As mentioned, they have no good way to generate recon as they are too focused on mining for ore and so will have trouble using recon to help play the deploy cost of their tactics cards. Their focus on homogeneity means that out of the four factions, they have the least amount of unique heroic cards available to them as there is little room for individuality within their rigid corporate structure. Follow the employee handbook or else you’ll find yourself fired.
MERCENARY
Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war when you enlist to play as the Mercenary faction!
The Solar War is unique in human history in that for the first time, battles are fought across the vast distances of space which means battles can take place millions of miles away from each other and often do! No matter how powerful the CPM or UNE may be, they simply do not have the resources to fight across such immense distances and so both sides regularly employ the use of private mercenary companies to fill in the gaps in the line when the need arises. As an example, both the CPM and UNE relied heavily on mercenaries during the Battle of Neom in which the CPM contracted the Suns of Saturn to help bolster their forces while the UNE relied on many smaller groups, such as the Lunar Wolves to help take back the super city block by block.
REDLINE: Payday however follows the exploits of the Shamrock mercenary company in their campaign to expunge Drihl Co. from gutting large swaths the the Amazon River Basin for rare earth ores. However, the banner of the mercenary faction is large enough to encompass variations of the merc theme with the potential for pirates, militia, and even gangs to take to the battlefield. Thanks to the rapid proliferation of efreet technology since its introduction in 2051 many smaller groups have been able to get their hands on these advanced weapons for better and worse, so there are many possibilities to expand upon the new faction in the future.
CORE BELIEFS
The Mercenary faction in REDLINE is a blast to play because of their devil may care attitude towards everything. The life of a mercenary is lived very much in the here and now because there is no certainty they may be around in the future to enjoy their paychecks. Because of this opportunistic approach to life, they are more open to taking chances compared to other factions and so will often rely on their good luck to see them through the day. This haphazard outlook on life can often lead to unintended consequences and the resulting mayhem that ensues from it can make battles more interesting for sure! But make no mistake that without risk there is no reward and so mercs tend to be very greedy when seeking out the large payouts that can often make taking chances worth the cost. Merc companies also benefit from the unique skills and individuality of their members as their organizations often operate as a hodgepodge of fighters with different backgrounds to function.
FACTION ABILITIES
Playing as the mercenaries, it’s easy to embrace, and profit from, their opportunistic nature through the tracking down of bounties on the enemies you will face. Bounties are a new strategy card subtype introduced in REDLINE: Payday that offer up big rewards for the players who can track down and bring them in. Dead or alive. Well, mostly just dead.
Bounties usually operate in two different ways. When deployed they will usually cause debuffs, and a little unexpected mayhem in the process, on the card they are attached to which is fun. As long as the bounty isn’t attached to a unit you control that is. And secondly most bounties will offer a substantial reward to the player who can cash in on them when that unit is destroyed. To make things extra chaotic bounty cards don’t care who claims the open bounty. So once issued, its open season on the reward as the owner of the bounty, the owner of the wanted unit, or even another player if playing our multiplayer REDLINE Scramble format can take it for their own by destroying the wanted unit first!
However, when chasing down wanted bounties, our money is on the Mercenaries to finish the job as they will often have extra advantages to cash them in thanks to their unique bounty hunter ability that gives them extra bonuses when firing at or destroying bounties!
While bounties are a great way to throw a little mayhem into a game of REDLINE, the Mercenary faction has other ways to add some extra chaos as well. Many of their cards have random effects with variable outcomes that can have huge effects on the outcome of a turn. Some of these effects are determined by the roll of the dice which is why it may be a good idea to keep a lucky charm on hand to make sure lady luck is always on your side.
Adorning one of your efreets with some lucky nose art is one simple but effective way to make sure the dice are always rolling hot and in your favor when fighting for control of the redline.
Another way the Mercenaries can showcase their opportunistic tendencies is by relying heavily on battlefield salvage to keep their efreets running and in good order. Just because the UNE scrapped a decapitated Horus efreet doesn’t mean there still isn’t some usable armor plating or shape memory cables in there somewhere that can be put to good use for those willing to spend a little elbow grease and time!
Dublin is an excellent example of ways the Mercs can raid the scrapyard for needed weapons and even entire efreets to keep their forces in good working order. This General card gives the Mercenary faction a little extra scrappiness when compared to other factions as long as they are able to keep raiding the scrapyard for parts. This also means that as games go long and the scrapyards become larger with spent cards, a good Mercenary player will be able raid the pile to find exactly the card needed to put a game away or come from behind to claim total victory.
Finally, by their very nature, groups like mercenaries often operate as a collection of a individuals with varied backgrounds and skill sets. Because of this, the Merc faction, more than any other in REDLINE, celebrates the unique identies of its members and the special one of customizations they often piece together from the salvage they find.
In REDLINE, heroic cards like Beowulf represent unique individuals, weapons or locations that are limited to having only one copy in play at a time. Because you cannot play duplicates of these powerful cards, it can be counter productive at times to fill your decks with multiple copies of them and so usually are included a bit less than regular cards. This in turn also plays into the high risk and reward gameplay of the Mercs as being able to find your powerful heroic cards can make all the difference when playing, if you can draw them of course!
CRIMSON PACT OF MARS
For the CPM, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
As space based industries grew during the 2040 Mars rapidly became an industrial powerhouse thanks to its proximity to the wealth contained in the nearby asteroid belt. Many factories were built there to process the avalanche of ores pouring in from the nearby mining operations and with them, small colonies soon followed for the families of its workers from all the major nations. However, as the competition for the riches of space became more and more contested, the Russian and Chinese governments found themselves aligned against the US and its allies which soon erupted into the open conflict of the Solar War. Initially securing many small victoires, the Russia and Chinese governments were forced off the Earth after their disastrous loss at the Battle of Tycho Crater on the Moon which saw the US employ efreet technology for the first time. Forced to rebuild their society on the Martian landscape, the exiled forces came together to form the Crimson Pact of Mars at the Laika Conference in 2051.
CORE BELIEFS
If you like to grief your opponents and ruin their day by blowing up everything in your way, then the CPM is for you! As one of REDLINE’s initial factions the CPM is built around dealing damage and making things go boom. Thanks to the nationalization of the large Martian manufacturing base built over the last decade and a crash modernization program, the CPM was able to rebuild its military machine rapidly soon after its formation. When it comes to waging war, the CPM favors tactics that rely heavily on overwhelming firepower to blow through opposition but also value deceit and subterfuge to disrupt the best laid plans of their enemies. Rebuilding their shattered lives on Mars isn’t easy as the environment is harsh and unforgiving. But with thousands of years of sacrifice in their veins, the hardy people of the CPM rise to meet the challenge of living in a new world every day.
FACTION ABILITIES
One of the biggest appeals of playing as the CPM is being able to deal large amounts of damage to anything that gets in your way. They are able to do this by dealing direct damage to nearly any obstacle in their way with cards like detonation and others.
The ability to throw damage at nearly anything is quite powerful. But there is a limit to this as they can only deal damage. While some card games have cards with the ability to destroy enemy units in an instant, REDLINE purposely has no such card in print. The reason is we wanted to make sure the main focus of the game is centered around combat and being able to snuff your opponents efreets with a single card would be way too powerful and disruptive to the health and purpose of the game. Perhaps that may change in the future, unlikely, but for the moment, the closest players can come to that is by harnessing the destructive firepower of the CPM.
While blowing things up may be the flashiest part of playing as the CPM they have do have other tricks up the sleeves of their spacesuits. Scrapping their own cards and resources as a price to pay for bigger and better things is one way they can gain advantages over their enemies.
As an example, normally mines counters placed on missions will deal 1 damage to any enemy whenever they roll an odd number at that location. But with datalinked mines in play, you can scrap that mine and forgo its future use to deal 2 additional damage to any efreet unlucky enough to step on the wrong place. Ouch!
The CPM can also gain advantages by aggressively rushing their oppoents to try and secure every mission on the redline before their opponents can get up and running. They have a lot of cheap efreets that have a hard time holding their weight in the later game but can be deadly in the initial turns.
CPM General Anna Draga supports rush strategies like this that aim to overwhelm their opponents with quantity over quality. Once in play she can give a powerful boost to all your light efreets in the later parts of the game in hopes they will be strong enough to overcome the larger efreets your opponent will likely have in play at that time.
Though rare for the CPM commander, there are time when blunt force isn’t enough to carry the day. In these instances the CPM can also rely on their army of elite hackers to cause headaches for their enemies in combat.
Some CPM cards have the ability to “hack” the equipment cards of opponents and effectively turn them off by flipping them over and out of play until the next turn. Denying your opponent the use of a key piece of equipment when they need it the most is guaranteed to turn the odds in your favor!
The last key ability the CPM has is card discard. At the moment, their ability to force the discarding of cards is limited, but it is a trait we look to expand upon further in future expansions.
Forcing other players to discard plays well with their greater attributes of deceit and disruption and gives CPM players a way to deal with potential problems preemptively to save ammunition for other targets of opportunity.
UNITED NATIONS OF EARTH
A coalition made up of the United States and its allies, the UNE finds itself in the peculiar position of being the sole power left on Earth. After the expulsion of the Russian and Chinese governments early in the Solar War the UNE leaned hard on the remaining technological powers that made up BRIMEA (Brazil India Middle Eastern Alliance) to help supply them militarily in a final effort to crush the CPM. Afterall, it was BRIMEA scientists who first helped to develop efreet technology in an exchange with the United States for their research in faster than light propulsion. Still, the shock when the BRIMEA not only perfected what became known as the Bead Drive but also built a fleet of ark ships using it in secret before leaving Earth into the unknown areas of space was devastating. Now left with sole care for the billions of recently displaced people around the globe and without their taken for granted technological base, the UNE finds itself spread thin as it works to mitigate the greatest humanitarian disaster in human history while also fighting its largest war.
CORE BELIEFS
The UNE approaches every conflict with a steadfast determination to leverage its strengths against their enemies. Made of up professional soldiers from some of the most capable militaries in the world, the UNE centers its tactics around precision and total battlefield control. However, when the shooting starts, the forces of the UNE know they can rely on their allies as their strong unity and integration between forces is second to none. They are also the faction that has the easiest time occupying missions on the redline since so much of their active resources are spent safeguarding the abandoned populations around the globe.
FACTION ABILITIES
One of the key abilities the UNE is built around is the idea of precision.Though they may seem to have a lot of answers for a variety of situations, those answers are always narrow and to the point. Precise Strike is a good example of this as it only does one point of damage and only to efreets. It’s the perfect scalpel for when you need to do a small bit of efreet surgery.
Precision also applies when the shooting starts and so many UNE cards and abilities also grant accuracy bonuses to players to make sure shots land where they are supposed to.
The UNE’s spotter ability from Battle of Neom is a great example of this increased accuracy as it gives the unit firing a +1 accuracy bonus when receiving targeting help from a squadmate. In addition, spotter is a great mechanic as it shows how the UNE fights together as a team since it requires an efreet with the spotter ability to give up its shot during combat to pass it to a friend. Spotter won’t work with efreets fighting solo.
Another strength of the UNE that, again, ties into the accuracy theme, is their ability to manipulate card selection. In the heat of battle, being able to find the right card when you need it could make all the difference between a stunning victory or a crushing defeat!
One of the ways UNE players can manipulate their card selection is with their intel mechanic. Intel is deceptively powerful in that it allows players to look at the top cards of their arsenal and sort them in an order that best suites the conditions on the battlefield. Finding your next few turns will be nothing but drawn resource cards and you are already loaded with them? Just send them to the bottom of your arsenal and hope for something more useful next turn! Or, perhaps the Tigercat you really need to push on the final mission is buried three turns away. Stack it on top of your deck and get ready to launch your assault with it next turn instead!
Because the UNE fights as a coalition of professional armies, its pilots and efreets are some of the best in the Solar War. The quality of some of their weapons is hard to top as even without BRIMEA scientists to help with their tech, they still employ some of the most advanced weapons available.
Take the THR-35 Thrust for example. Don’t let its small size fool you as the Thrust is one of the most advanced light efreets currently deployed by any faction in the Solar War. Not only does it have one of the fastest speeds in the game which makes it hard to hit, but it can also boost to become even more elusive AND has stealth to avoid being targeted by pesky enemies. This UNE efreet is a world-beater.
The last major strength of the UNE lies in their ability to control and shape the battlefield in numerous ways. Because the UNE favors the long game, they have become experts at laying siege to their enemies while engaging in wars of attrition. They can slowly deplete their opponents resources through cards such as precision bombing that raze arsenals for three cards. And when your arsenal runs out of cards, you lose as you cant keep fighting without supplies!
Keep in mind that the CPM can also play this game by directing many of their direct damage cards to an opponent’s arsenal if they choose. However, the UNE doesn’t have that choice as all the damage they inflict with razing goes straight to the arsenal. Remember, powerful answers but limited in scope. That is the UNE way of war.
The UNE are also masters at manipulating the battlefield to their advantage. Many of their cards can either change what missions can be attacked on the redline, or make capturing those missions easier for them.
Although very expensive to play, Greezone is a powerful example of this that allows the UNE to outright take control of any mission at any time.
A NEW WAY TO PLAY
With the introduction of our two new factions, we are super excited for the near and long term future of REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat. As you can see, the introduction of the Industrial and Mercenary factions adds a lot of new abilities for players to explore and express themselves with. The result being, a much healthier and exciting play experience that we look to continue to grow as the game expands.
Be sure to check out and support our upcoming Kickstarter for REDLINE: Payday as we work to bring the new factions to life and to the battlefield for all to enjoy.
