You are a commissar in the People's Glorious Republic of Planistan (PGRP). Your goal is to become a Socialist Hero of Labor. But so, too, is it the goal of your comrades. But beware, for if one fails, all fail. You must work together to complete the objectives of the Five Year Plans, but you must be the greatest producer of them all!
The concept behind the game is based upon the Soviet Five Year Plans along with the concept of Socialist Heroes of Labor (Stakhnovite Movement). Combining the theme of Communism with Deck Building the mechanic I am striving towards is communal deck and communal hand.
I don't have a lot of the game planned out yet, but the basic idea is:
1) Each player represents a commissar of something (agriculture, mining, communication, power/electricity), and has a set goal to achieve.
2) The group must all succeed, if one player fails, they all fail.
3) Players will be building one deck as a common resource pool, not their own individual deck.
4) Players will draw a hand of 5 cards (i'm guessing, again, no clear absolutes at this stage), and depending on the number of players will be placing a card or two face up in a tableau for all players to use as their "hand". Any cards that aren't played will be drawn from the top of the deck to make up for the shortfall:
2 players: Each player plays 2 cards from their hand. Then 1 card is drawn from top of the deck and placed as the fifth card in the collective hand.
3 players: Each play 1 card. Draw 2 cards from top to the collective hand.
4 players: Play 1, draw 1.
5 players: Play 1, draw 0.
Players then utilize the collective hand/tableau to purchase cards from the options in front of them.
5) The starting deck will represent "labor power" in the form of a hammer or sickle.
Sickles will allow you to collect wheat, which lets you feed your populace, and gain more labor power.
Hammers will let you do other sorts of labor: Mining, Forestry, Railway Construction, Building Machinery (and improve efficiency: a tractor will give more sickles than a base sickle card, for example).
Some cards are mere resources used to achieve your goals (Pig Iron, Steel, Energy).
6) There will be a "tech tree" of decks, where players continue from plan to plan (these could be played in a multi-session game play, or having a base setup for each "plan" with different decks in play). The better you do in the first plan, the more capabilities you'll have in the second.
7) If you as a commissar want to "score" points for your goals, you must remove the associated card you want and place it on your goal, but remember, this will hinder the ability to achieve more later.
8) Players will receive more points for completing objectives beyond the basic quota. This is where the concept of "socialist competition" comes in. You will get "medals" (little stars with numbers on them) indicating how much of a hero to the workers you are.
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As you play, different plans will have different focus (based on some historical Soviet context). Plan 2 would have a more war machine economy (based on fighting WWII), for example, while plan 1 would be to get heavy industry up and running. Plan 3 might be a focus on energy and agriculture. Plan 4 might be consumer economy. These are all just quick examples, of course.
One thing I'm pondering is using something similar to what the North Koreans do in their system and that is have a brush (not just hammer/sickle) to represent the intelligentsia. Primarily, I imagine, this would be used to produce propaganda, but could also be used to drive technological research as well.
I think this has potential, as I've never seen a deck building game based around a common pool of resources, and it meshes will with the theme, and has some historicity to it, as well.
I'm also pondering using guns as a base sort of weapon, which allows you to seize the "means of production" in the first year plan, or preplan or something.
Thoughts?
