My Muay Thai card game has been developing with some breakthroughs that I'm really excited about. What I have at the moment is a game played across 10 hands, and each hand is satisfyingly (to me) tactical.
But...10 discrete hands doesn't provide the overarching strategic element that the theme needs.
There is SOME strategy because:
There are various different ways to win (KO, blood stoppage, points after 10 hands)- this gives some potential for strategising, because you may wish to play tactics suboptimally in the light of these variables. But it's not really enough. The tactical imperatives of your hand still dominate effective play.
Then there was a BIT more strategy because:
I decided that some kind of continuity between hands might help. New rule = at the end of the hand, you can choose to keep unused cards for you next hand (the number of cards played in a hand can vary.) Now, you can hold good cards back to make use of them later, which has the potential for strategy...but doesn't yet provide much because there isn't a LOT of difference between using a great card to hit you now, or hit you later.
So then, a solution to this was:
Add more in terms of being able to combine cards for exponentially increasing effectiveness.
And that's as far as I've got really. A couple of other thoughts to be explored might be:
Increasingly the amount of chosen cards, as opposed to randomly drawn cards (previously an average hand consisted of 1-4 chosen cards with 9-6 drawn cards.)
Giving the chosen cards different 'prices'
Has anyone got other ideas for how 10 tactical hands can come together to form 1 strategic contest?
It's probably hard to give specific advice because I haven't provided much detail about the mechanics, but general concepts would also be useful - and nothing is inflexible at this stage anyway.
Cheers!
wob: you could be right. It just feels right for the theme that a player should be thinking in terms of game plans. However, since I DO want it to be small and light, that might not be a realistic aspiration. I take your point!
fri: Yes, the go-for-KO-gamble vs pace-yourself would be great to capture. I have to swallow my pride and ask what card cycling means, please? Sorry!
Thanks to both of you!