I recently stumbled upon Air, Land, & Sea and was inspired by the elegance of the design. I've been in a classics phase of sorts lately, enamored with the aesthetics of traditional cards, chess, go, etc. Combining the two, I have made a spin-off of Air, Land, & Sea using traditional playing cards.
I had to do a little bit of tweaking with individual card mechanics to make them easy to memorize and thematically related to the individual cards & suits.
The game is as follows:
--Summary--
2 Players compete in a series of 8-card hands where they battle to control a majority of four "courts", each represented by a card suit. On a player's turn, he or she may play a card from their hand face-up on their side of the corresponding court, play a card face-down to their side of any court, or may forfeit the round to cut their losses. The number of cards in-hand when a player forfeits or looses the round determines the number of points the opponent receives (see player 1 & 2 reminder cards). The first player to accumulate 15 points wins. With each new round, turn order reverses and the arrangement of the courts rotates.
--Cards--
The 4 of each suit are placed in landscape orientation in a line between the players in the following order (from left to right in the perspective of the first dealer): Spades, Diamonds, Clubs, Hearts
Separate the face cards, aces, 6, and 7 of each suit into a deck. These are the cards that will be dealt to each player and used in-play. The remaining cards are not necessary, but can be split into red & black suits and used to keep score.
The cards used in-play function as follows:
Each card has a Power stat, which is used to control the court that it is placed in. Whichever player's side has more total Power in a court has control over that court. If both players have equal total Power in a court, that court is tied, and is worth half for each player. A player must control a minimum of 2.5 courts to win a round. J=1, Q=2, K=3, A=4, 6=6, 7=7, face-down cards = 2. Face-down cards also have no abilities, even if they would otherwise.
Face cards and aces have special abilities corresponding to their rank and suit. When played, the player must select whether to use its rank-associated ability or its suit-associated ability by playing it either in portrait orientation (rank) or landscape orientation (suit). The abilities are as follows:
-Spades make it so that only the highest Power card in their court is counted
-Diamonds can be exchanged with a card from any court on either side
-Clubs set the power of all cards in their court to 1
-Hearts pull a card from any other court on either side to their court (the card does not switch sides, though)
-Jacks can flip over a card on either side of any court
-Queens allow their controller to play cards of their suit into adjacent courts
-Kings grant a +1 Power bonus to all cards on their side of their court, and of adjacent courts (this effect applies *after* the power-setting effect of Clubs)
-Aces lock down a court such that neither player can play cards from-hand into that court (cards can still be moved by means of special abilities).
Whenever a card is played into a court, it should slightly overlap the card before it. Only the top card on either side of any court is a valid target for being moved or flipped by special abilities.
