I was toying around with variations for Junkyard Wars and one somehow morphed into the following completely independent card game -- one which seems to play very well with people I've tried it on.
Imagine gin rummy with cards with letters on them. 2-8 players can play, and they have hands of 8 letters which are visible to everyone. The goal is to form one of two words using the normal gin rummy routines. Depending on the difficulty of finding the letters (and the fact that in some cases double letters give the word away), some of the words are worth more points than others.
The catch? The hands are open (so you can see what they're holding). Furthermore, the ENTIRE word list (there's a deck of 70 words) can be consulted at any time by any player. As you get close to forming words, an astute opponent can figure out what you're trying to make if you're not careful ("that guy has two R's: which of the 70 words have two R's in them?") and start hoarding the stuff you need (forcing you to trade with him). But there are so many options even when you're one away that blocking everything (from the opponent's perspective) will prevent him from making his own words.
It's basically a Scrabble distribution, some digraph cards (I've mentioned these earlier), and a few Special Action Cards: Reverse (3+ players only), Reseat (rearrange the seating order randomly: 4+ players only), Reshuffle (the discard pile onto the draw pile), and Forced Trade (basically swap a letter with your opponent whether he likes it or not). I'm tempted to add a couple of Word Exchange cards which let you throw out one of your two words and get another (useful if an opponent has lucked out and managed to block you and you don't have Forced Trade in your hand).
It's a very interesting game, and a much more mass-market game than Junkyard Wars.
The goal is to get 300 points (lots of hard words, many easy words, etc.)
What do you think?
Finally -- where can I get a deck of prototype cards? I want to make a bunch of cards with letters ands on them.
ACG
