How to Play Towers (or a version of it) with a Standard 52 Card Deck

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

Hey all,

This is my first post so feel free to punt this to another board if this is the wrong place for it, but I asked in my intro post where to go with this and was told here would be a good place to start. I was wondering if anyone wanted to collaborate coming up with a way to play Towers using a real deck of cards. It would be fun if we could come up with a full set of Fan rules that hopefully we can share and play with each other and friends (hence the need for it to be played with a standard deck or some subset).

I don't have my book in front of me (I'm at work) but I figured I would start by listing everything I can remember from my first read (which I finished last night):

1. Towers is played with Cards, each player having some in hand (which count as reserves) and some on the play surface (the field into which they are deployed)
2. Troops (played cards) can battle each other and it is possible for them to be defeated and removed from the game
3. Troops can also be retreated back to hand after being played, and redeployed later to a different spot on the board
4. Relative positioning of troops matters, as well as numbers. It is possible for troops to be surrounded and cut off from retreat.
5. Towers can be played with any number of players, but is typically played with 2
6. Towers is played in three rounds, and any troops that are defeated cannot be used in future rounds. The winner is the one who takes two rounds
7. There are  several variants to the game, and it seems easy to tweak by changing what the glyphs on the cards mean
8. Towers is taught to noble children as a way to train them for war and it creates a common language for generals to use when discussing tactics

If anyone has anything else they remember feel free to add it to the post. Quotes from the book are definitely encouraged!

Some ideas I've had thinking about this

1. It might be nice for the game to be played with half a deck of cards each, one player with the black suits, and one the red suits
2. Perhaps each numeral (A,2,3,...,J,Q,K) should be a different kind of troop with a different ability, maybe different movement or attacking rules as in chess. If 13 is too finicky of a piece count to have, then maybe a subset of the deck can be used instead
3. I think one move per turn, meaning deploying, retreating with, moving, or attacking with a single card makes sense as a starting point,also making it like chess

This is just me spitballing and I have to run off to a meeting at work now so I'll leave it at that for now, but I look forward to hearing what other people think of this and any ideas all of you might have!

Happy Brainstorming

----- EDIT -----

As brainstorming has continued we have started a living rules document on Google Docs located here. Feel free to read over the rules as they stand, playtest, and give feedback! We get closer to an actual playable game every time someone comments so all thoughts are appreciated and there are no stupid questions. Cheers, and enjoy the game!

Edited January 6, 2025 by NotLiamRoss
Adding link to new Rules doc

[Elite01]

I would love to have a working version of towers but the rules are hard to pin down.

There was talk of terrain affecting combat, how is that determined? 
 

I also don’t have my books around but Kaladin knows how to play towers and tries to explain some rules to the parshmen during rythm of war so that would be good context. I’ll look it up later if no one beats me to it

[Qianweilian He/him]

16 minutes ago, Elite01 said:

There was talk of terrain affecting combat, how is that determined? 

Maybe there's a custom board like dnd or Warhammer

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

17 minutes ago, Elite01 said:

There was talk of terrain affecting combat, how is that determined? 

Yes! I remember that being mentioned. In my head terrain would be a type of card that maybe is immovable and is deployed before troops can be deployed at the start of the round

 

18 minutes ago, Elite01 said:

I also don’t have my books around but Kaladin knows how to play towers and tries to explain some rules to the parshmen during rythm of war so that would be good context. I’ll look it up later if no one beats me to it

This is a good resource as well! Anyone have their RoW handy?

2 minutes ago, Qianweilian said:

Maybe there's a custom board like dnd or Warhamme

This is definitely a possibility, but given that Adolin and Yawnagawn seem to be able to play anywhere and only mention a deck of cards (May even creates a deck by drawing on sheets of paper while they're in the bunker) I think it should be at least possible to play without a specialized board. Maybe playing with a board with static terrain could be a variant?

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

Here's a first pass at what each of the various cards in the deck would do in-game. Anyone have any thoughts on these? Anything obvious that I'm missing? I also think that while each player would play with half the deck, each player would only have a single Ace (1 shardbearer) to keep things balanced because that troop is pretty OP. I'll do a little write up of the rules in a bit here, but I think I've got a solid core of what it might look like just need some time to actually type it out and beautify it.

[Qianweilian He/him]

Does Roshar have Artillery? Also, maybe a maximum width of chasm for Shardbearer to move through

 

Maybe add archers that have friendly fire, but do a lot of damage

 

Add pike blocks, spearman, heavy vs light cavalry, soulcasters, siege towers, bridge crews to cross chasms, officers, lighteyed sword blocks, etc..

Edited December 20, 2024 by Qianweilian
Added yet another suggestion

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

2 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

Does Roshar have Artillery?

Artillery here would mean archers, you can imagine that everywhere that I've said artillery the word archer is in there instead

2 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

Also, maybe a maximum width of chasm for Shardbearer to move through

Since Chasms are also a card, I'd imagine the biggest they could get is a single card/space wide, maybe there would be some consideration for putting a limit, but I'd like to keep the rules as simple as possible  to start

2 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

Add pike blocks, spearman, heavy vs light cavalry, soulcasters, siege towers, bridge crews to cross chasms, officers, lighteyed sword blocks, etc..

Again yeah with infinite playing space and number of cards, I think these could all be added yes (perhaps as one of the variants discussed in W&T) but I'm imagining just the base game right now which I'm hoping to keep as simple as possible.

[Qianweilian He/him]

21 hours ago, NotLiamRoss said:

Anyone have their RoW handy

Actually it's OB, and it doesn't say if it actually it is towers.

pg 183

Quote

“The card game,” Kaladin said. “The squire can capture if supported by an allied card. So you were right.”

pg 184

Quote

“The king is one of the most powerful cards you can place,” Kaladin said, struggling to remember all the rules. “He can capture any other card except another king, and can’t be captured himself unless touched by three enemy cards of knight or better. Um … and he is immune to the Soulcaster.”

Quote

“If your king gets captured, you lose,” Kaladin said.

This is about all I can glean from that section

So we know the King is both the most powerful, but the most important. Basically a chess King and Queen combined. I'm guessing he's supposed to be a shardbearer.

And we know squires are some kind of support card, maybe good in swarms.

[Elite01]

Hmm so probably not towers then cause adolin doesn’t mention much about kings. 
 

also I have think the goal is to make the game playable with our decks of cards with 13 in suit but I wouldn’t be suprised if the Rosharian deck of cards had 10 in a suit instead. Which is why I like what @NotLiamRoss has so far with 1-10 being troops and 11-13 being terrain 

if 11-13 were more of a shared deck for terrain that would give you more options cause you would have 

12 terrains cards 

3 spade 

3 clubs 

3 hearts 

3 diamonds 

If we needed them. Could included rivers or snow.

other cards could be support staff like a healers tent, or “heavy infantry” with hammers that might be the best to counter shardbearers 

 

supply lines could also be included. If there is a shattered plains variant you could have bridge crews.

 

and when they added a third player did they still just use one deck of cards? Just curious

Edited December 21, 2024 by Elite01

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

Thanks for looking up the quotes! Lots of interesting stuff there

6 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

“The king is one of the most powerful cards you can place,” Kaladin said, struggling to remember all the rules. “He can capture any other card except another king, and can’t be captured himself unless touched by three enemy cards of knight or better. Um … and he is immune to the Soulcaster.”

Funny that this almost exactly matches the rules that I came up with off the top of my head for Shardbearers haha. If we assume this IS Towers then I think it makes sense to have a way to lose the entire match which is getting your Shardbearer/King captured. In terms of gameplay, I think it would be fairly unfun to be stuck in the losing position without your Shardbearer and staring down an opponent who still has theirs and still be forced to play out the rest of the match. Overall I think a good addition.

As for Knights, Squires, and Soulcasters, I think Soulcasters maybe would add a little too much complexity at this early stage of development, but it would be a good idea to add them in, especially since they are referenced in the text. I'll give a little think on them. I also think it would be easy to split out Infantry into Squires and Knights if we need to, but it seems a little fiddly if for now, we're trying to keep things grounded and simple. Alternatively for now we can just re-label Infantry as Squires and Cavalry as Knights to better match the text.

2 hours ago, Elite01 said:

also I have think the goal is to make the game playable with our decks of cards with 13 in suit but I wouldn’t be suprised if the Rosharian deck of cards had 10 in a suit instead. Which is why I like what @NotLiamRoss has so far with 1-10 being troops and 11-13 being terrain 

I'm glad you caught that! I definitely was thinking of a Rosharan deck so having 10 ranks of troops was maybe a fun little easter egg. Ranks 2-6 being dedicated to Infantry means each player's deck has 10 total infantry as well (5 different ranks*2 suits per color). The other troops you'd have 4 of (a noted number of power by Honor) except I think it makes sense to only have a single Shardbearer (but 1 is also a number of power and significance as per Honor)

2 hours ago, Elite01 said:

when they added a third player did they still just use one deck of cards? Just curious

I don't think it's mentioned, but thinking it through I think they must have. I'd expect Towers decks are as common as decks of playing cards are in our world, so they probably easily just rustled up another deck which May took half of for her to be able to join in.

Also open question, in your heads would Terrain be the same across all three rounds in a match? Or would the board fully reset between rounds allowing for a new battlefield each round?

[Dalluminum he/him]

9 hours ago, NotLiamRoss said:

Also open question, in your heads would Terrain be the same across all three rounds in a match? Or would the board fully reset between rounds allowing for a new battlefield each round?

I think terrain would be a lasting thing. I think of the three rounds as three skirmishes on the same battlefield, but I could see it both ways.

 

Also, as far as boards go, you'd still need something to mark the space sizes. What size of battlefield do you think would be standard? 10x10 to keep up the Roshar-ness? 8x8 like chess? Obviously this could be variable like Go board sizes, but what are you thinking for a standard size?

 

I love what you're doing here, this was my first thought when I read the mention in OB of a card game, and was pleasantly surprised it was such a big part of WaT (even if it's a different game). I love board/card games, and can't wait to try this one out once we get rules locked down!

 

[Qianweilian He/him]

How would you decide to set up terrain? Would there be certain templates, or does each player take a turn placing a terrain card?

[Dalluminum he/him]

1 hour ago, Qianweilian said:

How would you decide to set up terrain? Would there be certain templates, or does each player take a turn placing a terrain card?

I think templates for the training scenarios, but when actually playing you'd take a few setup turns playing terrain cards. Maybe don't play all of them to keep it fresh and interesting, instead having a "terrain deck" of some sort that you draw a set number of cards from and decide to place.

Then again, it seems to me that a key part of Towers is that you can't control everything, so maybe instead terrain will be completely randomized. Maybe that would work better as an alternate game mode though.

Thoughts?

 

EDIT:

On the subject of terrain, looking at the cards we have right now, chasms and mountains are only one card each. It seems to me mountains would have to take up multiple spaces, maybe putting the card on an intersection between squares? Lots of games have scale issues like this, and I'd rather this one gets resolved lol.

Edited December 22, 2024 by Dalluminum

[Elite01]

I think a 10x10 board just to stick to theme

For terrain I could see the 11-13 cards put in a pile, shuffled then the top card is revealed to indicate what kind of terrain? Like if the jack of spades is revealed that means there’s a chasm through the middle? Not 100% sure on it

 

you could have each player draw a terrain card and they are allowed to play it? So one could place a chasm and one could place high ground then troop deployment occurs.

[Dalluminum he/him]

3 minutes ago, Elite01 said:

you could have each player draw a terrain card and they are allowed to play it? So one could place a chasm and one could place high ground then troop deployment occurs.

I'd think maybe two or three rounds of this, but yeah, that's what I'm kind of thinking. Obviously we want to avoid the board getting too cluttered with terrain cards, but there needs to be enough to strategize around.

[Qianweilian He/him]

Also, cards in a standard 52 card deck are pretty big if you want to lay them out in a 10x10. Something like tiles would almost work better with some thin terrain cards to place down beneath them.

[Dalluminum he/him]

16 minutes ago, Qianweilian said:

Also, cards in a standard 52 card deck are pretty big if you want to lay them out in a 10x10.

I was thinking the same. Using bridge sized cards instead of poker sized could help, but it's still a problem. Another issue is that cards are not square. A square playmat would probably be more aesthetically pleasing... and maybe Vorin cards would be square for increased symmetry?

I don't know, I'm just throwing some ideas out there. Let's get some rules worked out, then we can worry about pieces. Obviously the goal is something functional with standard playing cards, but a custom deck of square cards could be fun.

Rules I'm unclear on:

1. Winning. How long does each round last? Is the winner of the last round the overall victor, or is it a best of three type of deal? Some of this is probably in text, but I don't have my copy with me.

2. Can troops be wounded and healed, or does being attacked always result in death? Do dead troops get discarded and shuffled into a deck later, or are they removed not just from your hand but from the game?

3. Deploying troops. Does each player have a command tent or something that they can deploy troops to? Is there some sort of regional control allowing deployment?

Again, I love this thread, and I'd love to hear your ideas.

Edited December 22, 2024 by Dalluminum

[Elite01]

1. If I remember right its best of three. Adolin teachs Gawx its better to lose an early round to have more troops to win later rounds

2. It sounds like once they are lost they are gone for the rest of the game.

[Qianweilian He/him]

Is it always best of three, or are there multiple set ups?

[DiePie]

Spoiler

On 12/21/2024 at 8:05 AM, Qianweilian said:

pg 183

Quote

“The card game,” Kaladin said. “The squire can capture if supported by an allied card. So you were right.”

pg 184

Quote

“The king is one of the most powerful cards you can place,” Kaladin said, struggling to remember all the rules. “He can capture any other card except another king, and can’t be captured himself unless touched by three enemy cards of knight or better. Um … and he is immune to the Soulcaster.”

Quote

“If your king gets captured, you lose,” Kaladin said.

This is about all I can glean from that section

These capture rules sound more like Stratego than Chess or some other card game.

It also reminds me of a lecture I watched on old American wargames (like from the summer of 1942), where instead of shooting at each other, soldiers in the wargame would "capture" territory by gaining a local 3:1 troop advantage (upped to 4:1 if the terrain you're taking is a hill). I would imagine occupying terrain would confer that as an advantage, along with movement blocks/advantages (perhaps if you are moving along a road you can move an extra tile/turn?)

 

19 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

Also, cards in a standard 52 card deck are pretty big if you want to lay them out in a 10x10. Something like tiles would almost work better with some thin terrain cards to place down beneath them.

Still on the topic of Stratego, that game has card holders that hold each card up vertically. In Stratego those also serve to prevent the other player from seeing your troop placements, so that would need to be worked around as well.

 

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

Oh my goodness! It's so exciting to come back after a weekend of holiday family fun to see so much activity on this thread!! I hoped there were other boardgame nerds like me in the fandom who would want to discuss this stuff, but I didn't think this post would get so much traction! I'll respond with my thoughts going through topic by topic

Terrain

20 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

How would you decide to set up terrain? Would there be certain templates, or does each player take a turn placing a terrain card?

I would imagine that before troop deployment begins, there is some terrain construction phase. Either just at the start of the first round if terrain is constant across a match, or at the beginning of each round if not. Absolutely this phase can be skipped and certain templates can be just put on the board to start (you can imagine a setup called the Shattered Plains with all Chasms in play and no mountains or high ground, training scenarios, layouts mimicking battles from history etc.), but I think in general this would be a phase of gameplay to play out the terrain with each player placing a card.

18 hours ago, Dalluminum said:

Maybe don't play all of them to keep it fresh and interesting, instead having a "terrain deck" of some sort that you draw a set number of cards from and decide to place.

18 hours ago, Elite01 said:

For terrain I could see the 11-13 cards put in a pile, shuffled then the top card is revealed to indicate what kind of terrain?
...
you could have each player draw a terrain card and they are allowed to play it?

I'm of two minds about how to incorporate terrain cards into decks. If we're playing where terrain is built up new inbetween each round, then I think we could almost have terrain just be randomly shuffled into each player's deck and drawn at the start of each round with their starting hand (I've got some ideas about hands and decks that I'll lay out after this post). Any terrain cards in your hand at the start of each round would get played at the start of the round before troops are deployed, then you would move to troop deployment and so on. This has an interesting balancing effect where the player who gets to play more terrain cards (and as such construct the most advantageous terrain for themselves) has fewer actual troops to deploy, but on the flip side, assuming 10 card starting hands (because of course hands are 10 cards) you could wind up having all 6 terrain cards and then only having 4 troops plus your Shardbearer/King to play with which might be unfun.

The other way I could see terrain playing out is as you said, putting all terrain cards in a separate deck (12 cards) and then having each player reveal and play some number of them at the start of round (or start of game). This has some nice features balance-wise such as each player having the same amount of terrain pulls each round/game and I'm maybe more leaning towards this right now. It also helps with clutter as it means we can limit the number of pulls per side (say 3 per side to start).

I'm open to either of these approaches, and of course both could also exist as variants (I have a feeling we're going to say this a lot in this thread :P)

Troop Death

18 hours ago, Dalluminum said:

Can troops be wounded and healed, or does being attacked always result in death? Do dead troops get discarded and shuffled into a deck later, or are they removed not just from your hand but from the game?

I think tracking which troops are wounded and which are full health is maybe a little bit too much overhead, especially if there can be up to 10 troops plus a shardbearer deployed at a time. The text refers to capturing and defeating troops but nothing about wounding them, so I think for now we say this is like chess, either a piece is in play (full health) or captured (dead). Adolin does explicitly state in the text that dead troops don't come back between rounds, which is what adds in the minigame of deciding when to retreat and save troops to fight another day.

This leads nicely into some thoughts I have about the role of retreating as a strategy. In my head, at the end of a round any troops which are left on the battlefield are simply shuffled into the deck and can be redrawn later, but any troops which remain in HAND at the end of a round (either because you retreated them, or never deployed them in the first place) should stay in hand, giving you a card advantage on the other player for future rounds. Any thoughts on this? Maybe it's abusable and unfun somehow but I think it could lead to a fun interplay of deciding what troops to deploy and when to retreat vs. pushing for a round win and getting closer to winning the match.

Winning Rounds and the Game Overall

18 hours ago, Dalluminum said:

Winning. How long does each round last? Is the winner of the last round the overall victor, or is it a best of three type of deal? Some of this is probably in text, but I don't have my copy with me.

I have thought about this as well. I think there are only three ways that a round can end (and a bonus 4th). Either:

1. Both players agree to a draw. I think that having this as a release valve for when the game has obviously ground to a halt is a good thing for the game (it's definitely a good thing in chess). All troops which are in play when a draw is declared get shuffled into the deck and need to be redrawn to be played later, so this adds some interest into deciding whether to agree to a draw or to break ranks as a rout and try to run all of your troops back to your hand, exposing your flanks to your opponent.
2. Only one player has troops left on the field. This is what constitutes "winning" a round. This makes the most natural sense to me because we can either get to this point because one person has retreated all of their forces deciding to fight another day, or they have been absolutely and definitively defeated. This can lead to some fun moments where a player knows they're losing the round, but they keep, say some Artillery out on high ground to try and pick off enemy troops while the rest retreat, or deciding to sacrifice some Cavalry in one brave last stand to create space for their infantry to get out of there, knowing the Cavalry will be lost, but expecting to take more of the enemy out on their way out. Could be fun.
3. The Shardbearer/King is captured. As stated in an earlier post this wouldn't end just the round, but also the match I think. This is supported by the text and I think makes the most from a game design perspective
4. A player forfeits. This is always an option in any board/card game. Somebody rolls up their mat and goes home. I expect this is probably the way that most final rounds would end in high level where a player knows they're in a losing position but doesn't want to be forced to play it out. This is also good for the game to have as an option.

Also to answer your question about the overall match victor, it's stated in the text (I don't have the quote but someone can grab it I'm sure) that it's best of three I'm pretty sure. So first to two round wins, or the match is an overall draw if there is one draw and a win a piece. Two draws and a win would go the way of the single round victor. We could have some provision for tie breaks that if the last round is decided to be a draw, it goes to the player with more troops deployed, but I think again we're getting a little weeds-y in making decisions like that.

40 minutes ago, Qianweilian said:

Is it always best of three, or are there multiple set ups?

Again there can always be variants, but I think for now the game should be designed around being Bo3.

The Game Board

On 12/21/2024 at 11:24 PM, Dalluminum said:

Also, as far as boards go, you'd still need something to mark the space sizes. What size of battlefield do you think would be standard? 10x10 to keep up the Roshar-ness? 8x8 like chess? Obviously this could be variable like Go board sizes, but what are you thinking for a standard size?

One thing that stood out to me about the game in text is that a board is never discussed (again they play it in a bunker with just a deck which May draws on regular paper) so I was thinking of designing the game with no board whatsoever, where the relative size of the cards to the play surface is what determines the scale of the battle and the edges of the play surface are the absolute edges of the battlefield. Some other boardgames work well with this restriction (I'm thinking of games like Warhammer and Carcassone) so I think it could work here. That also resolves the issues of needing to match card sizes to board squares, but it makes movement and attacking rules a little more finicky (what constitutes being "adjacent" to other pieces? when we say "in a straight line" is that in any direction? or just orthogonal to the cards orientation, etc.)

Either way my initial view for the game was that it can be played with exclusively a deck of playing cards (making it very portable!) so I'm leaning towards no board right now. I'll for sure listen to the arguments to have a board instead though if people have good ideas for how it improves the game or solves other issues.

20 hours ago, Dalluminum said:

On the subject of terrain, looking at the cards we have right now, chasms and mountains are only one card each. It seems to me mountains would have to take up multiple spaces, maybe putting the card on an intersection between squares? Lots of games have scale issues like this, and I'd rather this one gets resolved lol.

This is something that I've been thinking about as well. I had the thought that when a Mountain/Chasm is played maybe two more cards are drawn face down from either the terrain deck or the players deck and placed face down adjacent to the Mountain/Chasm card to make the feature slightly larger on the board. High Ground I think should just be a single card though as the current design I laid out for it makes it pretty strong, so I think only a single card should be able to occupy it. It makes for an interesting interplay between occupying it with Artillery to gain the offensive advantage, or with Infantry to shore up flanks and make lines easier to hold.

Overall this is awesome discussion! Lets keep the thread going!! I look forward to what people have to say. I also have ideas about how turns would actually play out, but I'm going to write them up separately to make sure my thoughts are all cohesive before laying them out. Let me know what you think of what I have posted here and lets keep brainstorming!!!

[Qianweilian He/him]

We could have two versions, a portable one with just a deck of cards, and a more compex one with large terrain features and a board

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

An open question: I think it's reasonable to have some idea of what direction a unit is facing (to make sense of flanking and attacking into the enemy rear). With Alethi playing cards that would have glyphs on them, I assume it would be easy enough to tell which way is forward, but with our playing cards there is no "up" direction for most faces. With this context would we assume that attacking from the sides constitutes flanking? Or would there be some other kind of way of determining what flanking means in this game's context. I'm open to hearing suggestions on this

[Elite01]

Hmm I’m not sure if there is a mechanical advantage to flanking. I am leaning towards the game being pretty simple. Technically you can flank in chess so maybe it just takes your opponent by surprise? 
or maybe some cards can only be captured by flanking? 
 

but as far as orientation goes our cards have long sides so it’s not to tough to tell if your card is facing an opponent head on or if it’s being attacked on the side

Edited December 23, 2024 by Elite01

[Dalluminum he/him]

On 12/23/2024 at 1:10 PM, NotLiamRoss said:

With this context would we assume that attacking from the sides constitutes flanking? Or would there be some other kind of way of determining what flanking means in this game's context.

Hmm, this is a good point. I hadn't thought about facing direction. If we want to keep it like chess (which is a heavy inspiration so far) it would matter, but it seems to matter in this game. I'm... really not sure what to do about this. Let's assume for now it doesn't matter, unless someone has a good idea to solve the problem! I think having the sides be more vulnerable could be interesting, but let me know your thoughts.

 

On 12/23/2024 at 9:37 AM, NotLiamRoss said:

Either way my initial view for the game was that it can be played with exclusively a deck of playing cards (making it very portable!) so I'm leaning towards no board right now.

I like your points here. No board does make movement tricky, but since we don't have distance limits, maybe it doesn't matter? I'll try to get some friends to do some playtesting and I'll get back to this.

I do think orthogonal movement should be required. Maybe throw in diagonals for 8-directional movement? Maybe you have the option to rotate troops 45 degrees so their directions are offset? I'm open to anything.

 

Still unclear on deployment. Is there just a side of the table you "control" where you can deploy/retreat cards? That would make sense with or without a board.

 

I like where the game stands right now. Seems we have a pretty good outline of the major gameplay elements. I'll probably draft a rulebook and get some playtesting in if I can. Keep it up, this is my current favorite thread!

 

EDIT:

Okay, I just started a quick rules write-up, but it seems to me we have no way of drawing more cards to your hand. Do you get "reinforced" at the beginning of each round (drawing a few cards)? Do you earn cards by defeating enemy troops?

If it's the first, with reinforcement every round, each person would have a 19-card deck (as the rules currently stand): 2-10 in two suits with one Ace (Shardbearer). They each draw a hand of 10 cards at the beginning of the game, leaving 9 cards in the deck. Maybe at the start of rounds two and three each player draws 3 (leaving three cards unplayed). This keeps things unknown right up to the end of the game, ensuring you never know exactly what's in the other's hand. This also makes the battles increasingly intense, raising the stakes each time, which I think I like. If three unplayed cards seems to be too many, drawing four would only leave one, so there's less chance of losing because you couldn't draw your Shardbearer.

If it's the second, with drawing cards as a bonus for defeating troops, there needs to be a way for the one losing cards to get more back. Maybe every two or three captures they get to draw a card?

 

Maybe (for a third option) the winner of the first round gets to draw three at the start of round two while the loser draws one, each drawing two in the case of a draw. Winner of round two would get to do the same (unless the same player won both rounds, in which case the game ends), maybe drawing four instead to raise the stakes a little.

 

Please, feel free to share your opinions!

Edited December 28, 2024 by Dalluminum