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Microgame to Test, anyone willing?

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XerxesPraelor
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Joined: 08/31/2013

Just a small card game it would be nice to get playtested. Rules below.

The pieces for it include: 12 unique cards, 1 marker

The cards have different backs.

There is only 1 copy of each card.

There is a theme, but I'm worried people are being driven off by it, so I got rid of it here.

Brown: 1, 3, 11

Black: 2, 4, 8

Green: 5, 7

Silver: 6, 10

Gold: 9, 12

The game can be played with 2-3 players. X will be the number of players.

The game is made up out of X rounds. At the beginning of the first round, a start player is chosen, and after each round is done, the player who was second last round is the start player. Play goes clockwise: after the first player does his turn, the second player does his turn, and so on until the deck runs out.

Setup: Shuffle all the cards to form the deck. Place the marker aside. Choose a start player.

On your turn:

1. Look at the top card of the deck

2. Do exactly one of the following:

-Place the card

-Use the card's power

3. Check the Marker.

4. Check if the deck is empty. If so, go into the scoring phase.

Placing a Card

There are x piles, each of which begins the game empty. To place a card, put it face-down on the top of a pile.

If you place the card on a pile that after you place it has X more cards in it than another pile, take the marker.

Ex: In a 3-player game the piles right now have 3, 4, and 5 cards in them, respectively. Bob looks as the top card, which is the Skeleton. He can use its power or place it. He chooses to place it on the pile with 5 cards in it. Because the pile now has 6 cards in it, which is 3 bigger than the pile with 3 in it, he takes the marker. If he had placed it in the pile with 4 in it, he would not have to take the marker.

You may take the marker even if someone already has it!

Using a Card's Power

The power of each card depends on its color. After using a card's power, discard it face-up to the discard.

Brown - Discard two cards from different piles, which may be anywhere in the pile, to the discard face up.

Black - End the game, moving immediately to the scoring phase. You may only use this power if at least one black card has already been placed.

Green - Place the top two cards of the deck in different piles, without looking at their fronts.

Silver - Move one card from a pile to another pile, without looking at its front.

Gold - Look at 3 cards, without showing them to everyone else.

Scoring

Scoring happens at the end of every round. The scores for each round are added to one another to get the final score for the game.

The first player chooses a pile, without looking at the fronts of the cards in it. If the game has only 2 players, the second player gets the remaining pile. If the game is 3-player, the second player chooses one of the 2 remaining piles, and the third player gets the last one.

If you have the marker, you may not choose the pile with the most cards in it! You may still be forced into getting it, though.

The sum of the number on the cards in the pile you have is the number of points you have for that round.

The person with the most points after X rounds wins.

XerxesPraelor
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Joined: 08/31/2013
Noone interested? I'd be

Noone interested? I'd be happy to do what I can for whoever is willing.

Shoe
Shoe's picture
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Joined: 12/21/2012
I'd love to give it a shot.

I'd love to give it a shot. I find microgames pretty easy to playtest.

I'm curious what the flavor is. it seems like it might help clear things up a bit

Shoe
Shoe's picture
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Joined: 12/21/2012
First playtest, the first

First playtest, the first card flipped by the first player was the Black 2...the game ended without anything happening.

That seems bad (Granted, only a troll player would do that, but it still seems like a design loophole)

XerxesPraelor
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Joined: 08/31/2013
Re: Black

Since the first player gets to choose first, normally using the black power, especially at the beginning, is bad. Still, if the first player gets a brown one, it might be the right decision for the second player to use it. What do you think about making it so that the first black one has to be placed?

Edit: For flavor, I have two ideas. The current coloring comes from the second.

First: The five different colors are the five kinds of animals (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) and you're trying to collect the most valuable of each kind (something like that). The benefit of this one is that the reason you get points is clearer.

Second: The five colors correspond to (brutal races, undead, animals, constructs, and dragons). The benefit of this one is that the powers make a lot more sense and it's easier to come up with drastically different things. For amphibians, for example, I had to do (Caecilian, Chinese Giant Salamander, Poison Dart Frog), with the first two a little too uncommon for the general public.

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