When I started building Arden Card, I began with the heroes and their card decks. Once the combat engine was working, I started running simulations and playing matches between the heroes to see how everything behaved.

At first the combat looked balanced. Each hero had a unique deck and a different playstyle. But when I started designing enemies and playing real encounters, I noticed something was off. The combat system was missing structure.

I discussed some of this briefly in my previous article: The Prototype - What I Got Wrong (and How I Fixed It). But designing the enemies revealed something more important about the game.

Enemies needed a purpose beyond simply dealing damage. Arden Card does not have an XP system. The player does not grind enemies to grow stronger. Instead, the player’s power comes from learning how the combat system works.

That led to a simple design principle: Enemies are designed to teach the player how to play.

TL;DR

Every enemy in Arden Card is designed to teach a specific combat skill. This lesson informs which cards the enemy uses and which targets the enemy prioritizes. The area boss then tests everything the player has learned.

• Elven Scout: Tempo Management
• Elven Brute: Stun Management
• Wild Ligra: Debuff Management
• Elven Captain (Area Boss): Skill Mastery

Card Decks

Hero Cards

With the addition of Card Decay, the card combat has a rhythm to it. Cards are drawn, played, executed, and then decay. This cycle repeats constantly throughout each match.

Each hero’s cards are designed to either increase the battle tempo or slow it down.

• The Artisan hero works slowly. As an engineer type, they build Constructs that deal significant damage to the enemy. Their playstyle requires these Constructs to survive long enough to produce value.
• The Smasher hero works quickly. As a brawler type, their cards cycle the fastest. Their playstyle is about managing risk because many cards cause recoil damage. The stronger they become, the greater the risk of self harm.
• The Guardian hero sits somewhere in the middle. As a tank type, they have a mix of fast and slow cards with moderate damage. They also have more healing tools, allowing them to survive long enough for slower engines to pay off.

Because each hero plays differently, enemy encounters need to test different aspects of the combat system.

Enemy Cards

There are two types of enemies in the game.

Normal Enemies

• 6 Total Cards
• 4 Identity Cards
• 2 Common Cards

Boss Enemies

• 9 Total Cards
• 6 Identity Cards
• 3 Common Cards

This structure allows enemies to have a clear identity while still sharing some common mechanics with the rest of the combat system.

Elven Scout: Tempo Management

The first enemy I designed was the Elven Scout, and the lesson here is tempo.

The Scout’s cards have extremely short cooldowns. Every card on the battlefield can execute every turn. Individually these cards do not deal large amounts of damage, but a full battlefield can quickly become dangerous.

This forces the player to make an important decision. Should they focus on destroying enemy cards or burning down the enemy’s HP?

Focusing on only one of these strategies can quickly lead to losing large amounts of HP. The player must learn how to balance tempo by deciding when to remove cards and when to attack the enemy directly.

Outside of the tutorial fight, this is designed to be the first real encounter in the game. It introduces the idea that managing the pace of combat is just as important as dealing damage.

Elven Brute: Stun Management

The Elven Brute is designed around the Stun mechanic.

Some cards in the game can stun the target, limiting the actions available to them during their turn. Stun has been one of the more challenging mechanics to balance. It cannot completely halt the player’s turn because dead turns are frustrating, but it also needs to feel meaningful.

The Brute uses heavy attacks with longer cooldowns that can stun the player. This encounter teaches the player how to manage stun windows. If the player times their own stuns correctly, they can interrupt the Brute’s strongest attacks and protect their HP. If they mismanage the timing, they risk being stunned themselves and left open to heavy damage.

The lesson here is understanding when stun effects matter and how to use them strategically.

Wild Ligra: Debuff Management

The Wild Ligra introduces sustained pressure through debuffs.

This enemy applies a poison effect that deals damage over time. Once poisoned, the player receives damage every turn for a set duration.

The important lesson here is prioritization. The player needs to identify and remove the card applying poison. If the poison effect stacks multiple times, the damage quickly becomes overwhelming and difficult to recover from.

This fight forces the player to think about which enemy cards must be removed immediately and which ones can remain on the battlefield.

Elven Captain: System Mastery

The Elven Captain is the Area 1 boss.

The purpose of the boss encounter is to test everything the player has learned from earlier fights. The Captain combines mechanics from the other enemies. They can stun the player, apply debuffs, and maintain battlefield pressure with fast attacks.

Players who ignore the Captain’s battlefield cards will most likely lose the fight. Success requires actively managing the battlefield while controlling the tempo of the match.

This fight also exposes a deeper tactical layer in the combat system. The battlefield only allows three cards at a time. If the player fills all three slots with cards that do not work well together, they must wait for those cards to decay before rebuilding a better engine.

This limitation also applies to enemies. For example, imagine the enemy has the following cards on the battlefield:

• Heavy Swipe - 16 DMG
• Strength Serum - Buffs Strength
• Intimidate - Destroys Enhancement Cards

This is a strong damage engine. But if the player removes Heavy Swipe, the enemy may replace it with another Enhancement card. At that point the enemy battlefield might contain only buffs and utility cards with no damage source.

The player can effectively disrupt the enemy’s engine by controlling which cards remain on the battlefield. This creates an additional strategic layer where the player is not only building their own engine but also shaping the enemy’s battlefield.

What’s Next?

These are only the first enemies I have designed for Arden Card. The full game will likely include around 12 to 15 enemies and four bosses.

Future areas will also introduce elite variants that combine different mechanics and playstyles. One of the interesting discoveries from building the prototype is that encounters feel much better when they test specific skills. Instead of random fights and abilities, each enemy encounter serves a specific purpose.

Every battle teaches something about the combat system. By the time players reach the boss, they already know how to win. The real challenge is executing the strategy correctly.

Up Next: TBD