Simple Numbers, Deep Decisions: Why Ancient Duel Uses Values from 1 to 6
Every number in Ancient Duel is small. Attack, Defense, Energy and Level all live on a compact scale built around one to six, and a unit's value never climbs above twelve or drops below one. That was a deliberate constraint, and the reason for it is less about arithmetic than about a problem I could not design my way around: the game has to work on a table, with printed cards, without an app helping anyone.
Why keep the numbers small
A card with 4 attack and 3 defense can be read without thinking about it. More usefully, a modifier of plus one is meaningful against that number. So is minus one. The gap between four and five decides fights, which means a small effect is never rounding error.
When the range is narrow, every point carries weight. You are never adding up a string of modifiers to find out what a unit currently is, because there are not enough digits involved for that to become work. This is a choice about where I wanted the effort to go, not a claim that larger scales are worse. Plenty of card games run into the hundreds and are excellent. Ancient Duel goes the other way because of what it also has to be.
Complexity does not have to live in the numbers
There is a difference between numerical complexity and decision complexity, and the two get treated as the same thing far too often.
An attack value of 4 is numerically trivial. The decision around it usually is not. Whether to attack with that unit depends on which target you pick, whether that target is in Attack or Defense position, what its defense actually is after everything currently affecting it, whether a Terrain Doctrine is bending the exchange, what your Commander is contributing, whether the face-down card beside the target is a set Tactic waiting for precisely this, how much Energy the attack costs and what else that Energy could buy, and what the board looks like afterwards if the exchange goes the way you expect.
None of that is arithmetic. All of it is judgement. Keeping the numbers small was a way of making sure the difficulty of a turn comes from reading the situation rather than from doing sums.
The physical game changes what a number has to do
A digital game can change a number on screen and consider the matter closed. The interface tracks state, players never see the bookkeeping, and a value could be 147 without costing anyone anything.
A physical game has no such luxury. Somebody has to be able to see the current state, change it, and still be reading it correctly six turns later. Ancient Duel had to work as a printed game and a Print & Play download, which means every value in the system needs a practical physical representation using things people already own.
A d6 turns out to be almost perfect for a scale built around one to six. It is the most common die in the world, it costs nothing, it is easy to read from across a table, and it sits comfortably on a card without covering it.
One thing needs saying plainly, because it is the single most common misunderstanding: the dice are never rolled. Nothing in Ancient Duel is randomised by a die. If a unit gains two attack, you do not roll to find out how much. The effect already told you. You pick up a d6, turn it to 2, and put it on the card. The die is a physical memory of a value the rules have already determined.
How dice track a unit
Buffs and debuffs are tracked differently, and the difference is not the colour of the die. It is where the die sits relative to the number it is talking about.
A buff sits beside the value
When an effect raises a stat, the die goes next to the affected number on the card: beside ATK if the buff is to attack, beside DEF if it is to defense. It shows the size of the bonus, not the result.
current value = printed value + die, up to a maximum of twelve.
A card printed with 4 attack that gains two shows a d6 set to 2 beside the printed 4. The unit is at 6, and both halves of that fact stay on the table: the 4 the card came with, and the 2 something else contributed. That matters, because the moment the aura leaves or the equip is destroyed it is a 4 again, and keeping the printed value visible keeps that fragility visible with it.
A debuff sits over the value
A weakened stat works the other way round. The die is placed on top of the printed number, covering it, and it shows the current value directly.
A card printed with 4 attack reduced to 2 has a die set to 2 sitting over the printed 4. You read 2, because 2 is what the unit is. There is nothing to subtract and no penalty to hold in your head, which matters because a wounded unit gets compared against attackers several times before the effect expires. Doing four minus two on every one of those comparisons is exactly the small repeated cost that makes a physical game feel like paperwork.
Why position and not colour
Green for a buff and red for a debuff is a nice touch, and the rulebook suggests it. It is not what the system runs on.
Most people do not own two colours of d6. If colour were carrying the meaning, a player with six identical white dice would be stuck: a 2 on a card could be a bonus or a penalty and there would be no way to tell. Because placement carries it instead, that player is fine. A die beside the number adds to it. A die over the number replaces it. Six white dice work exactly as well as a matched green and red set, and the colour becomes what it should be, a convenience that makes the board quicker to scan rather than the thing that makes it readable at all.
That is the same principle as the score sheet, and it runs through the whole component list: preferred components should make the game easier, never decide whether it works.
Twelve above, one below
No value goes above twelve or below one. Both limits come from the same place.
The highest printed value on a card is six, and a d6 shows at most six. Six plus six is twelve, so the ceiling is exactly what a single die can express on top of the strongest printed number. There is no situation that needs a second die stacked on the first, a two-digit token, or a note off to the side. The physical representation and the rule limit are the same shape.
The floor of one exists for the same reason from the other direction. A value never has to be shown as zero or as a negative, so a d6 can still express any weakened state a unit reaches. Nothing in the system requires a die face that does not exist.
Both limits are enforced the same way in the digital engine: every computed stat passes through a single clamp that will not return less than one or more than twelve. That matters more than it sounds, because it is the guarantee that the two versions of the game cannot drift apart. A unit that would read 14 online is a unit a table could not represent, and the moment those two disagree, one of them has stopped being Ancient Duel.
Energy and life, with ordinary dice
Energy has a maximum of twelve and refreshes every turn instead of accumulating. On each of your first two turns you have six, and from your third turn it grows by one, to seven, eight, nine, and onward to twelve. Whatever you did not spend last turn is gone.
A single d12 tracks that perfectly, and two d6 added together do the same job for anyone who does not own one. Energy of eight is a die showing 8, or a 6 and a 2 sitting next to each other. Neither is rolled. You set them to what you have and turn them down as you spend.
Life starts at 20 and is best tracked with a d20 spindown die, which is designed for exactly this: you rotate it one face at a time as the number changes rather than hunting for the value. It is the one component I would actually recommend buying, and it is still not required. Any way of writing down a number that starts at 20 and goes down works, which brings us to the part of the system I care about most.
Not everyone has a pile of dice
Here is the practical problem. A board can hold five units per side, each of which may be carrying modifiers, plus Energy and life for both players. Track all of that with dice and you can find yourself wanting fifteen or twenty of them.
I did not want the Print & Play philosophy to quietly become: download the cards, print them, then go and buy a bag of dice before you can play. That is not print and play. That is print, shop, and play.
So the game ships a score sheet, and it is not a lesser option or an accessory. It is a complete alternative that tracks exactly the same state with a pencil.
How the score sheet actually works
Each player gets a sheet with rows for life, Energy, and five unit slots. The whole system rests on one rule: write the new value to the right of the old one, and the last number written is the current one. You never erase anything. The row becomes a history, and the rightmost entry is the truth.
LP starts at 20. After every hit or heal you write the new total in the next box. At zero you have lost. The row reads as the whole arc of the duel: 20, 18, 15, 16, 9.
E is one row per turn, and each row has its maximum pre-printed: T1 (6), T2 (6), T3 (7), T4 (8), up to (12) where it stays. A detail worth catching is that T1 means your first turn, not the first turn of the game, so both players read their own row structure the same way. Within a row you write what is left after each spend, not what you spent. A row reading (7) 5 2 0 says you began the turn with seven, spent two, then three, then two. A new turn is a new row, and anything left in the old one is gone, which the layout makes visually obvious.
U1 through U5 are your five unit slots, matching the five positions on the board, including the middle one that only a Commander can occupy. Each row carries a single combined value in the form A/D. A unit with 3 attack and 4 defense is written 3/4. An empty slot is a dash. As things change you keep writing along the row, and the last mark is the current state.
The sheet's own example shows how much that row can say. U1 reading 3/4, then a dash, then 5/2, then 6/2 is the story of a unit that died, was replaced by a different unit, and then got buffed, all legible at a glance without a single erasure.
Temporary values go in parentheses
Anything that will expire is written in parentheses. A unit at 4/5 that takes a Kamikaze wound becomes (2/5). At the start of your turn you look at the parentheses on your sheet, check whether the effect has expired, and if it has, write the normal value back. The row would then read 4/5, (2/5), 4/5.
The parentheses are doing the job that a red die does in the other system: marking a value as borrowed rather than permanent, so you know it needs revisiting.
One-turn buffs are not written on the unit rows at all
This is the convention I am happiest with, and it is the one people expect least. Effects that last only until the end of your turn do not go on the U rows. The U rows record what persists between turns: equips, auras, Kamikaze wounds.
A buff lasting only the current turn goes on that turn's Energy row instead, written with a sign and a stat letter. U1 +2A means unit one has two extra attack. U3 -1D means unit three has one less defense. U2 +1/+1 covers both stats at once. Because that Energy row closes when your turn ends, those effects expire on their own. There is nothing to remember and nothing to undo. The bookkeeping cleans itself up because it was written somewhere that stops being current.
Continuous effects need a re-check
The one place the sheet asks for real attention is continuous effects. Commander auras, continuous Doctrines and equips change the values of other units, so when one of those cards enters or leaves play, several rows can change at once. The sheet tells you to re-check all your units and rewrite whatever moved. Deploy a Commander whose aura strengthens your infantry and three rows may need a new entry.
This is the honest cost of the paper version. The digital game recalculates that instantly and silently; on paper you do it yourself, and it is the moment most likely to produce a mistake. It is also the moment where writing across a row rather than erasing pays off, because the previous values are still there if you need to reconstruct what happened.
A worked example
Say U1 holds a unit printed 4 attack, 3 defense. The row currently reads 4/3.
An equip gives it two permanent attack. That persists between turns, so it belongs on the unit row: you write 6/3 to the right of the previous entry. With dice you would instead place a d6 set to 2 beside the printed attack value, and the unit reads as 4 plus 2.
Now a Tactic gives it one defense until the end of your turn. That does not go on the U row. It goes on the current turn's E row as U1 +1D, alongside whatever Energy figures are already there. Your unit is effectively 6/4 for this turn, but only the 6/3 is written where it will still matter tomorrow.
Your turn ends. The E row closes with it, the temporary defense goes with the row, and U1 still reads 6/3, which is correct without anyone having to remember to remove anything.
The sheet is a layout, not a dependency
The printed score sheet gives you the boxes, the pre-printed Energy maximums per turn, and the reminders at the top. That is worth having.
What it is not is a requirement. The structure is seven labels and some space: LP, E, and U1 through U5. If you printed your cards and ran out of sheets, or never printed sheets at all, you can draw those rows on any piece of paper in about fifteen seconds and keep playing. The convention of writing to the right, the parentheses for temporary values, and putting one-turn buffs on the Energy row all work exactly the same in a notebook. The only thing you lose is the pre-printed turn maximums, and those follow a sequence you will have memorised by your third game.
If a printed component becomes the thing standing between someone and a game they already downloaded, the design has failed at something more basic than balance.
Three interfaces, one game state
The important idea underneath all of this is that dice tracking, sheet tracking and the digital client are not three rule sets. They are three ways of displaying the same state.
Dice are the most visual. They sit on the card itself, they are read instantly, they involve almost no writing, and moving them is satisfying in a way paper is not. Their cost is that you need enough of them.
The sheet needs almost nothing: one page and a pencil per player. It centralises everything into one place you can scan, and it keeps a history that dice throw away the moment you turn them. Its cost is more writing and, on continuous effects, more attention.
The digital version does the same tracking automatically. That is the whole of its advantage. It does not change a rule, alter a value, or resolve anything differently. If a physical board has a unit printed 4 with a 2 beside it, the digital board shows the same unit at 6; if a die showing 2 is covering that printed 4, the digital board shows 2. The automation is a convenience layered over a system that was designed to work without it, which is deliberately the wrong way round from how most digital-first games get ported to the table.
Small ranges make modifiers matter
There is a design consequence to the compact scale that I did not fully appreciate until playtesting.
In a narrow range, a single point is a real event. Moving a unit from 3 to 4 attack can decide an exchange that was going to be lost. A minus one applied at the right moment changes what your opponent can safely attack into. You never need a card that grants a large bonus for the bonus to feel like it did something, because there is no headroom for a small change to disappear into.
Wide ranges absorb small changes; narrow ones expose them. That makes modest, conditional effects worth printing, which in turn is what lets so many cards in the game be about the relationship between units rather than about raw statistics.
It also keeps the cards readable. Attack, defense, Energy and Level all fit comfortably, effect text stays short because the numbers inside it are short, and a player can evaluate an unfamiliar card in a couple of seconds. That is true on screen and on cardstock, but the cardstock is the one that set the constraint.
The numbers are simple, the state is not
Picture a mid-game board. A unit printed at 4 attack with a green 2 on it. Energy at 8. Life at 14. Two cards face-down across the table. A Terrain Doctrine face-up that neither player established this turn.
Every one of those facts is trivial to represent. A die, a die, a die, two cards lying face-down, one card face-up. Anyone could set that board up correctly from a written description.
What none of that tells you is whether to attack. Whether to spend the Energy now or hold it for a response on your opponent's turn. Whether the face-down card is the Tactic that punishes exactly this attack, or nothing at all. Whether the unit is worth risking or worth protecting for two more turns. Whether contesting the terrain is worth what it costs you elsewhere.
The state is easy to see. What to do with it is not, and that gap is the entire point.
Where the difficulty belongs
A number printed on a card should be understood at a glance. A buff should be one die, set by hand, sitting on the card. A weakened unit should be readable without subtraction. Energy should fit on a single d12 or two ordinary d6. Life should fit on a d20, or on a row of a sheet, or on a line in a notebook. If you have no dice at all, the same state should still be trackable with a pencil, and if you have no printed sheet, you should be able to draw one.
That part of the game is meant to be easy, and I spent a disproportionate amount of time making sure it stayed easy.
What you attack, what you protect, what you sacrifice, where the Energy goes, when the Tactic fires, which ground is worth holding, what the other player is preparing, and how much risk is acceptable this turn: that is where the game is supposed to be hard. The numbers should be the easy part. The decisions are not.
Daniel Rusu
Creator & Developer of Ancient Duel