I have a game in mind where the core idea is that each player combine 2 deck of 9 cards to create a new deck and play with those cards. The goal is to have high replayability by having different mix each game. It's a 2 player game, and there are 2 x 5 deck of cards available. Which means that out of 90 cards, only 36 will be used during a game.
So far, I have been thinking of designing a game around those 18 cards per player, but since small game require intensive reuse of their components and having multi use on those 18 cards is cool, but once they get put into play, they are out of the player's deck which seriously thin the deck and makes the game less playable.
So I thought, what if I could reuse those remaining 54 card for other purposes. Ideas I have so far:
- Use the back of the card as a counter like crop in San Juan. It prevents the need to add additional components like tokens and cubes.
- Expose only the bottom of the card. Create a column of cards where only the bottom part is exposed. It could represent for exemple a list of buildings the player can put in play. And this list is the same for all players. Throught the game, only the bottom part must remain exposed.
- Use as die. Have dice value on each card, flip a card and check only the value.
The possible problems are that it could get pretty confusing pretty fast and cards could easily get mixed up especially for new players. Maybe with some icons I could mark each group of card to prevent mix up. Players would get acustomed to see certain icons for certain functions.
Yes, 2 cards are remains face up. 16 cards compose your deck. 54 cards remains unused. There could also be another set of scenario/location cards which does not belong to any player. Think a bit like scenario cards in rune age. Or course, I can alway add more cards, but it's just an idea to keep the game small and production cost low if reusing those dead 54 cards could be an interesting solution.
Rapidly, It's again for a master of magic theme (civ + magic) with similarities to microcosm and impulse/glory to rome. The goal is to create some sort of tableau builder game, where 2 player face off with each other. Not sure of the new victory condition due to the recent changes.
You have a 9 cards for the race civilization (elves, orcs, etc), and you have 9 cards for your covenant of wizards (necromancers, arch mages, alchemist, etc.). 1 race and covenant card remain face up as a permanent ability or for reference data. Each player might have a dash board with tracks to keep track of army, creatures, merchant, adepts. Markers could be cards.
In the latest version, card cycles more and have between 3-4 usage. They each have a special action modifier like san juan. Possibly, a card will also be that action. An idea I want to use is if you have a "Fire Storm":warfare action card, you do the action and use the special ability on the card. Or you could research the card and place it in play so that from now on, all other warfare cards would get that permanent modifier. This is the tableau building aspect. So whort term benefits, vs long term benefits. Maybe you can discard any card to perform any action but get no benefits.
For the conflict resolution, maybe like microcosm, you could values of cards in your hand + any forces on the tracks above, reveal and sum the strength. Highest player wins. You would have a military and and influence strength. Giving you 2 path to victory. .
Also not sure if each card has a gold/mana value to be used to perform non-conflicting actions like building something. Like san yuan, you play a card to perfrom the action and discard a card to get the value. It depends if I want to grade an action strength. What is the difference between a strength 3 development action and str 8 dev action if it just consist of putting a single card in play?
The biggest problem is always the possibility space. So I want to have a bit of everything to increase the possibility space. Thus the idea of adding more card zones that could be affected.
This is vaguely the look and feel of my idea. The compactness of the idea seems to make it a pain to design.