Ooohhhh... new type of wild panels. I like it. But but but... There are 10 different Ferals panels: Fire-Water, Fire-Air, Fire-Earth, Fire-Space (since E is Earth and A is Air), W-A, W-E, W-S, A-E, A-S E-S (...or were you assuming that Fire could combine with, say Air and Ether but not Water or Earth?) That would obviously give you 10 possible Feral Aces. What about halvsies? For just the horizontal split cards, there are 10*9/2 = 45 different combinations*. Similarly, there would be 45 possible vertical halvsies, 45 halvsies per bend sinister, and 45 halvsies per bend dexter (i.e. slash and backslash diagonals). If you restrict the combinations to those where the two panels don't share an element, then you have 15 Feral/Feral halvsies of each orientation**. But if you could pair a Feral panel with a regular, such as Earth-Air over plain Air? That would add 10*5/2 = 25 additional halvsies of each orientation. (...or 10*3/2 = 15 Feral/Element halvsies where the two panels don't share an element.) I'll leave the calculation for the number of such quads to the interested reader. BUT WAIT... The mention of diagonal halvsies brings up a interesting point. The border of an Aquarius tile tile card can be cut into eighths to fit in the game, right? You could have any sequence of elements (or ferals) around the outside of a card. The current "aces" just have all eight side segments with the same element. Existing halvsies have four of one element (starting in the middle of one side) and then four of another. Alison's idea of diagonal halvsies would just be cards with four segements of one element starting at a corner and the four of another. With just five elements (no feral panels), you could have hundreds of different configurations. In fact the order of elements around the outside doesn't even necessarily fully describe each card. For instance let's say that we what is basically an existing quad card but with the upper-right element matching the lower-left and the upper-left matching the lower-right: FA AF You could say that the two (in this case) Airs aren't connected and neither are the two Fires. Or you arbitrarily rule that Air touches Air (counting for one panel) and Fire touches Fire. Or you could explicitly connect two of the diagonal panels together and separate the other two: FFFAAA FFFAAA FFFAAA FFFAAA FFAAAA FFFFAA AAAAFF AAFFFF AAAFFF AAAFFF AAAFFF AAAFFF This would allow two cards with the same order of elements around the edge but different play characteristics. This issue pops up any time two or more non-adjacent groups of half-edges have the same element. There are any number of ways of taking this idea to an obnoxious extreme. One of these days I'll write a computer program that outputs a web page that enumerates all possible Aquarius cards that satisfy various conditions. The only question becomes how complicated can you make legible artwork (such as for Feral panels) and how many cards you want in a deck. (Of course, I've always thought that there is too high a concentration of action cards in Aquarius, so adding more tile cards would dilute the actions.) Ok, maybe I'm getting a little esoteric. I'll stop for now. Ryan * 45 Feral/Feral Halvsies: F-W/F-A, F-W/F-E, F-W/F-S, F-W/W-A, F-W/W-E, F-W/W-S, F-W/A-E, F-W/A-S, F-W/E-S F-A/F-E, F-A/F-S, F-A/W-A, F-A/W-E, F-A/W-S, F-A/A-E, F-A/A-S, F-A/E-S F-E/F-S, F-E/W-A, F-E/W-E, F-E/W-S, F-E/A-E, F-E/A-S, F-E/E-S F-S/W-A, F-S/W-E, F-S/W-S, F-S/A-E, F-S/A-S, F-S/E-S W-A/W-E, W-A/W-S, W-A/A-E, W-A/A-S, W-A/E-S W-E/W-S, W-E/A-E, W-E/A-S, W-E/E-S W-S/A-E, W-S/A-S, W-S/E-S A-E/A-S, A-E/E-S A-S/E-S ** 15 Feral/Feral halvsies where the two halves don't share an element. F-W/A-E, F-W/A-S, F-W/E-S F-A/W-E, F-A/W-S, F-A/E-S F-E/W-A, F-E/W-S, F-E/A-S F-S/W-A, F-S/W-E, F-S/A-E W-A/E-S, W-E/A-S, W-S/A-E -------------- Original message ---------------------- From: Alison <alison@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Here's an interesting thought: limited wild cards. I.e. not-totally-wild, > just er... feral. Say, a full panel wild that was just Air and Fire > (picture groovy new art here) And of course, there are five of these new > full panel cards you could make (including what could be called "mud" for > extra fun). Okay, feral isn't as good as hybrid, lets call it feral-hybrid. > > Now, imagine double panel cards with two feral-hybrid panels on them. > Fire-Water on one half, say, and Earth-Air on the other half (five of these > possibilities, for each halfsies combination (vertical vs horizontal) for a > total of ten possible cards. Or, since we're making up a totally new kind > of card here anyway, do like I've always wanted to try and make them > diagonal split. Oops, there's still ten then, since you have to make the > diagonals go both ways, for balance. > > I like it. It's intriguing. I'm tempted to doodle up some art and make > some stickers and sacrifice a deck. >