Which should I buy (Army Builder or Card Vault)?
 

I am interested in using the authoring toolkit to create data files for a game called "Battleground: Fantasy Warfare", published by Your Move Games. (The rules are available on the Your Move Games website in .pdf form if you want to qualify for Sainthood by taking a look at them in order to better answer my question, www.yourmovegames.com ).

The game is played with Cards, which makes me think Card Vault might be appropriate; but it plays like a miniatures game (e.g., you move the cards around the tabletop as if they were units of miniatures), which makes me think that Army Builder might be appropriate.

Each card is a unit, and has an associated point cost. On the other hand, you can't purchase individual "figures", which I'm assuming Army Builder sort of expects, given that you can in games like Warhammer.

Can someone with familiarity with these products tell me which one I should buy?

Just based on your description, you would want card vault. Card Vault has the capability of tracking your inventory, and organizing it into a deck or in this case "army." That way, you know you are building from materials that you actually own.

Which should I buy (Army Builder or Card Vault)?
 

You posted this as we were releasing AB 3.1, so I've been up to my eyeballs for the past week. I've finally had time to research this a bit.

From what I can tell, there is no collectible aspect to this game. If that is true, then you would be better off using Army Builder. Use of Card Vault for a game like this should only be considered if the game has a collectible aspect where the player will want to keep an inventory of his collection.

The reason for this recommendation is that AB will be able to handle all the varied army construction rules that seem imminent as new armies are released for the game, as well as when new troops are released for existing armies to provide more options. At the present level of complexity, Card Vault can probably handle it (from what I can tell without spending a lot of time analyzing things), but I could easily see that diminishing over time.

AB has worked great over the years for games like Warmaster and Demon World, where the player purchases entire units at a time. Heroes can also be purchased in those games, but they are static (i.e. no customizations). From what I can tell, Battleground is similar. AB ought to support it quite well now, and into the future.

Hope this helps,
Rob

At 05:14 PM 11/30/2005, you wrote: