Playing Card Pseudo-Deckbuilding Game

[Tinkerer]

Hello, fine peoples! I recently downloaded a deckbuilding game on my phone and it really got me hooked. When I looked up to see if there was any games anyone had made with that theme for playing cards, I didn't find much. So I made one up myself this morning.

 

I don't have a name for it, and I only tried it out once, so I dunno if it's fully balanced, but I thought I'd share it.

 

Need: 2 decks of playing cards

 

Object: Defeat all your opponent's armies

 

Setup: Both players shuffle their decks and set them in front of them. They take the top eight cards of their decks and lay them face-up on the table between the decks. Then each player draws 5 cards and a first player is determined.

 

Play: Each player takes 1 of the following actions:

- Draw 2 cards then return 2 cards from your hand to the bottom of the deck

- Declare an attack on an army (one of the face-up cards; see "Attacking")

- Play a Combo (see "Combo")

After 1 of these actions is taken, if you have less cards than your hand size limit, you draw back up to your hand size limit (default starting limit is 5), then it is the opponent's turn.

 

Attacking: The attacking player determines what army they wish to attack. Both players fan out their hands and the other player chooses a card out of them at random. Whichever player had the higher card wins (Ace beats all face cards but loses to everything else). If the attacker wins, the army is destroyed and the card is sent to the bottom of the deck. If the attacker loses or ties, nothing happens. Both players place the revealed cards on the bottom of the deck.

 

Combo: You can reveal a combo and place it on the bottom of your deck to do a certain action:

- Straight of Red Cards: automatically destroy 1 of your opponent's armies.

- Straight of Black Cards: increase your hand size limit by 1.

- 3-of-a-kind: you can choose to do either the Red Straight effect or the Black Straight effect.

- 4-of-a-kind: do both the Red Straight and Black Straight effects.

 

...and that's it! If you have any questions or further clarification is needed, feel free to ask! I'm still trying to fine-tune this game so if you see some obvious issue, don't hesitate to let me know. Cheers!

[Tinkerer]

Bump. So, I played the game and figured that the amount of armies has really no point in being set. Depending on the length of the game (8 armies was roughly 15 minutes), you can adjust how long you want to play. In the 3 times I've playtested it thus far, though, no one's gotten a 4-of-a-kind.