Talk:Capture the Card
Add topicbroken image link! please fix. - AK
Fixed - BS
2009 Game Award evaluation
First, it took me a while to understand the rules. After I got it I reformatted them to make it clear for others (I hope). I had to make some assumptions about ambiguities in the rules, as shown in italics; if they are wrong, please tell me.
I like the essential core of the game. It has a very different feel than other cards-as-board games like Gnostica or Zark City. It's a very gritty battle, with pieces running to grab their territory and running over the opponent as much as possible.
It does need several tweaks to bring it to its full potential, IMO:
- It develops too slowly. I recommend having it start with each player having 1 small and 1 medium piece on the board: they start by taking turns placing their pieces on the corners, and afterward they start hitting the draw pile.
- Since there are 2 players and 2 jokers, the players should start the game already owning 1 joker each, ready to play when needed. It's too unfair to let one player randomly get both jokers.
- I wonder whether a piece may run over an opponent twice in one turn. E.g. with 6 movement points I can move my medium piece onto your medium piece (reducing it to a small), then off, then back on again, killing it. This seems too strong a thing to do, especially to an opponent who just barely got a piece onto the board, so I unless told otherwise I will play that it's not allowed. One good way to implement that would be a rule like this: "When moving, a piece may not visit the same card twice in the same turn, nor return to the card it started on." This would add the advantage of the need for more careful planning of your moves.
- Rather than drawing a card and acting on it, it would probably be better to give each player a hand of, say, 3 cards, and during your turn you play one, carry out its actions, and draw a replacement. This would avoid much of the problem of drawing cards that you cannot use at that moment. If used, this rule change could have the player start with the joker and 2 randomly dealt cards as their starting hand.
I'll probably come back to this and try it with my suggested changes, to see if I like them.
Award evaluation: In its current form it's not worthy of the award, but it's worth having others look at, and an improved version may well be something many would like to play.