I want to share a game that me and a classmate came up. This game takes inspiration from classic board games such as: Risk, Chess, etc. The goal is to take control of the board and devalue the other player’s card. I will list the “final” ruleset at the end of the post if you wish to follow along.
Core Mechanics as listed on BoardGameGeek:
- Memory
- Map Reduction
- Predictive Bid
Playtest 1:
Obviously we started with nothing, and so we looked towards common themes and came up with a basic ruleset so that we could get a game going.
- Split a deck in half based on the color of the cards (Black, Red).
- Each card has a value associated with it (1, 2, 3… 12, 13). For example, a Jack is 11.
- Place cards on a chessboard. When there are no more spaces or when both players run out of cards, the player with the highest total value of cards wins.
- When a card with an opposing color is placed, all surrounding cards that have a different color reduce in value.
- When the value of a card is less than 0, the card “dies” and is no longer playable.
The session using this ruleset was short as we definitely saw a fair amount of flaws within the rules which caused us to scramble. There were too many moving parts and no strategy could be formed. This iteration mainly focused on the start and end of the game. We made up new rules so that the game progressed smoothly, but despite our efforts, some rules had to change.
Playtest 2:
I solidified some of the old mechanics in the rules and made it clear as to how a card would devalue. I also added a new mechanic to the ruleset to give more depth to the game. Added onto the rules above,
- Players start out with half a deck of cards all in one color in their hand.
- Different colored cards that are placed adjacent to each other may only devalue up to one different colored card.
- The card that is getting devalued must be within one of the cardinal directions (North, South, East, West).
- The player must replace the card that is getting devalued with a card from their hand. If unable to replace the card, the player loses the remaining value.
- A player may combine adjacent cards if they have a replacement card in their hand.
- Players roll a six-sided dice to see who goes first.
- Players may choose between combining or placing a card down.
A lot of these changes were made to balance out the devaluing mechanic as the player going second appeared to have an advantage. After we finished, we realized that we did not utilize the add mechanic at all, so I took that out to simplify the game. I narrowed down the devaluing mechanic so that a player could only target one card, because the game would finish to quickly and that it would be hard to keep track of what was getting devalued. Other rule changes were to make sure that players knew how to start the game.
Playtest 3:
With most of the mechanics set in place, all that was remaining was to smooth out gameplay and fix some kinks. These rules were changed/added onto the rules above,
- The board played on is a 6x6 board.
- You can no longer add cards together.
To clarify, I added the white spaces on the chess board to signify that those spaces were out of bounds. In this iteration, we made changes to the size of the board as games would go on for too long. I think future upgrades would be to vary which board players could play on, but for now this is it.
Final Ruleset:
- Split a deck in half based on the color of the cards (Black, Red).
- Each card has a value associated with it (1, 2, 3… 12, 13). For example, a Jack is 11.
- When the value of a card is less than 0, the card “dies” and is no longer playable.
- Players start out with half a deck of cards all in one color in their hand.
- Different colored cards that are placed adjacent to each other may only devalue up to one different colored card.
- The card that is getting devalued must be within one of the cardinal directions (North, South, East, West).
- The player must replace the card that is getting devalued with a card from their hand. If unable to replace the card, the player loses the remaining value.
- Players roll a six-sided dice to see who goes first.
Final Thoughts:
I think I created a fairly straightforward game that has on average 10 min game times. Some strategies that I have found was to control a corner of the board and protect your bigger cards. Another strategy was to control the board rather than attack your opponent. Hope you guys enjoy!
