Hand Management

GAME SYSTEM

This entry is to allow for discussion/rating of the game system as a whole. It is not for a specific product or release. Versions will appear on the individual item pages.

From the official website: In the Magic game, you play the role of a planeswalker—a powerful wizard who fights other planeswalkers for glory, knowledge, and conquest. Your deck of cards represents all the weapons in your arsenal. It contains the spells you know and the creatures you can summon to fight for you.

This is the grandfather of the collectible card game (or CCG) genre. Cards are categorized as common, uncommon, rare, and mythic rare. Players collect cards and build decks out of their collection.

Players build a deck of cards and duel against an opponent's deck. Players are wizards attempting to reduce their opponent's life total to zero. The first player to reduce his opponent's life to zero (or meet another set win condition) wins the game.

An important part of the game is deck construction, which is done prior to the actual game by selecting what cards are included in a particular deck. There are nearly 20,000 different cards from which to build your deck!

Cards can be lands, which usually generate mana of various colors, or spells, which require a certain amount of mana to be used. Some cards (creatures, artifacts, and enchantments) stay on the board and continue to affect the game, while others have a one-time effect.

Players randomly draw spells to see what they get and can play each turn. Although this limits your choices, there is a lot of strategy in how you play those spells. A robust list of game mechanics, including intricate rules for reactive card play called "the stack," provide for rich tactics and tough choices each turn.

Though traditionally a two-player duel, there are several casual and tournament formats to Magic that allow more players to play.

Arboretum is a strategy card game for 2-4 players, aged 10 and up, that combines set collection, tile-laying and hand management while playing in about 25 minutes. Players try to have the most points at the end of the game by creating beautiful garden paths for their visitors.

The deck has 80 cards in ten different colors, with each color featuring a different species of tree; each color has cards numbered 1 through 8, and the number of colors used depends on the number of players. Players start with a hand of seven cards. On each turn, a player draws two cards (from the deck or one or more of the discard piles), lays a card on the table as part of her arboretum, then discards a card to her personal discard pile.

When the deck is exhausted, players compare the cards that remain in their hands to determine who can score each color. For each color, the player with the highest value of cards in hand of that color scores for a path of trees in her arboretum that begins and ends with that color; a path is a orthogonally adjacent chain of cards with increasing values. For each card in a path that scores, the player earns one point; if the path consists solely of trees of the color being scored, the player scores two points per card. If a player doesn't have the most value for a color, she scores zero points for a path that begins and ends with that color. Whoever has the most points wins.

In the game Reef, players take on the role of the reef itself, alternating turns in which they carefully select the colors and patterns in which to grow and expand — the more beautiful the reef, the more points they score!

Reef is suited for players aged 8 and up. While it could take thousands of years for a coral reef to grow, a game of Reef should take only 30-45 minutes.

Tichu took much of its rules and mechanics from Zheng Fen. It is a partnership climbing card game, and the object of play is to rid yourself of your hand, preferably while scoring points in the process.

The deck is a standard 52-card pack with four special cards added: dog, phoenix, dragon and Mah Jong (1). When it's your turn, you may either beat the current top card combination — single card, pair of cards, sequence of pairs, full house, etc. — or pass. If play passes all the way back to the player who laid the top cards, he wins the trick, clears the cards, and can lead the next one. The card led determines the only combination of cards that can be played on that trick, so if a single card is led, then only single cards are played; if a straight of seven cards is led, then only straights of seven cards can be played, etc.

The last player out in a round gives all the cards he won to the player who exited first, and the last player's unplayed cards are handed to the opposite team. Fives, tens and Kings are worth 5, 10 and 10 points, with each hand worth one hundred points without bonuses — but the bonuses are what drive the game. At the start of a round, each player can call "Tichu" prior to her playing any card. This indicates that she thinks that she can empty her hand first this round; if she does so, her team scores 100 points, and if not, it loses 100 points. Cards are dealt at the start of a round in a group of eight and a group of six; a player can call "Grand Tichu" after looking at only her first eight cards for a ±200 point bonus. If both players on a team exit a round prior to either player on the opposite team, then no points are scored for cards and the winning team earns 200 points (with Tichu/Grand Tichu bonuses and penalties being applied as normal).

The first team to 1,000 points wins.

The theme of the game is an eating contest in a Taiwanese Snackbar.

"In this competition you will eat more than you can imagine as your competitors continually challenge you to shove even more in. Play your cards cleverly or the servers will serve you food until you fall from your seat. Let the competitors be the ones to fill up until they drop and the snack bar throne will be yours!"

The players add "dish"-cards or special cards to a common "order"-pile until one of them can´t (or won´t) add any more cards. Then that player has to "eat" the whole order by drawing the appropriate amount of cards from a draw pile. If he draws one (or more) of the "No More!"-cards, he accrues negative points and the round ends.
The played cards are then set aside and new "No More"-cards are shuffled into the (now smaller) draw pile, making for an ever more tense experience as the contest goes into the later stages.
When one player has collected 3 negative points the game ends and the player with the smallest amount of negative points wins the game.