Week 9: Samurai Sword

In my last post, I want to introduce “Samurai Sword.”

It is an extend version of BANG! with a same designer.

In this game, the victory does not concern the death or life of somebody.

Instead, it uses cherry blossoms as Honor Points to count the scores.

The team with the highest scores multiplied by the team bonus wins the game.

A weapon card, as a BANG! card, has its specific attack difficulty, as distance, and the number of wounds.

Once a player makes another lost his last resilience point, as life point, he must give one honor point to the player.

There are other cards can dodge the attack, as Missed!, harm all players, heal the player and make others draw 1 card, draw 3 cards and others for 1, discard 1 honor point, or increase the harm you make, the difficulty of attack, or the weapon cards can be played in 1 turn as equipment.

The jail cards are eliminated.

If a player has no cards in hand or defeated (loses all resilience points), then he is “Harmless”, which means he would not be affected by any cards.

Each turn the player recovers his resilience points if he is defeated.

In the end of his turn, his cards in hand cannot be more than 7.

Each time the stack runs out, every player must discard one honor point.

Once any player has no honor points, the game ends immediately.

Words: 241

The source of the information:

http://www.dvgiochi.net/samuraisword/samurai_sword-rules.pdf

Week 8: BANG!

Most people know “Legends of the Three Kingdoms” (三國殺), but do you know that this game is totally adapted from another game called “BANG!”?

BANG! is a card game about killing others continually.

The Sheriff and the Deputies want to kill all Outlaws and the Renegade.

The Outlaws want to kill the Sheriff, and they may win even they are all dead.

The Renegade want to kill all the other players and the Sheriff must be the last one killed or the Outlaws would win.

Before the game begins, each player would be dealt 1 role card.

Only the Sheriff can and must show his role card.

Then each player would be dealt 2 character cards.

He must choose 1 as his character and reveal the other one and use the bullets on the back to count his life points.

There are various playing cards.

The most 2 of them are BANG! and MISSED!.

A BANG! can be used to attack a player beside him( distance of 1) and that player would lost 1 life points if he does not play a MISSED!.

The other cards may heal players, block others’ action, attack all the other players, change the attack ability or the distance limit of BANG! as weapons, change the distance counted between players as horses, etc.

Each turn the player draws 2 cards and uses the cards in hand as his will.

However, he cannot use 2 or more BANG! in one turn without special concessions.

In the end of the turn, the number of his playing card “in” hand cannot be bigger than the number of his life points current.

LTK is very similar to BANG! but with some different rules and great quantity of character.
LTK is often compared with The Message, because they are both popular in Asia and have some similarities.

Both of them include various character abilities, guessing others’ identities, and killing others.

One of the notable differences is that one is always killing others and killed by others in LTK while one often killing himself and is easy to protect himself by not receiving message and the victory condition is not often someone’s death in The Message.

Words: 369

The source of the information:

http://www.charleston.k12.il.us/cms/Teachers/TeamRed/games/Bang.PDF

Week 7: The Message

I would like to introduce “The Message,” the BEST game ever.

It is a card game adapted from the spy film of the same name.

It is about transmitting messages, hiding, suspecting, cooperation, and mind games.

In one’s turn, he must draws 2 cards and chooses 1 of all his cards as a message to issue.

He also can use the character’s abilities or the cards as effect cards any time he want during his turn if he can.

There are three forces in the game.

The blue team is FRS, the military intelligence agency, and the whole team wins once a member collects 3 blue messages.

The red team is KDR, the revolutionary army, and the whole team wins once a member collects 3 red messages.

The green team is MOF, the passersby, and each member wins alone once he completes his special secret mission.

A player also declare the victory if he is the only one alive and there has not any other player done.

Each character has different abilities.

The red abilities act automatically.

The blue abilities can be decided to be used or not, and other players can react to it.

(There are yellow abilities which can be used only once in the newest version.)

The characters with “潛伏” must be face down in the beginning, and some characters’ abilities would turn over the character card.

“Most” characters has their own secret mission.

The other cards are simultaneously message cards and effect cards.

There are three colors of the messages: blue, red, and black.

A character dies once he collects 3 black messages.

Each message has its specific transmitting way.

A CM, confidential message, and an EM, exposed message, should be transmitted counterclockwise.

An OM, oriented message, should be transmitted to another character at will.

While transmitting, CMs and OMs should be face down and EM should be face up.

The other players should decide to gain it or not when the message is transmitted to them.

If a player refuses, he should transmit it to the right-hand player while it is a CM or an EM or transmit it back to the message issuer while it is an OM.

The message issuer must gain the message while it is transmit back to him.

Before the game begins, all players get 2 character cards randomly and secretly and choose 1 as their character.

Then each player would get 1 identity card randomly and secretly.

The pith of this game is that all players do not know each other’s identity in the beginning.

You should guess who your companions and enemies are through their every action.

The process of finding others’ identities and thinking how to give or gain the messages or complete the secret mission is extremely exciting and fun.

I repeat: it is the BEST game ever!

Words: 475

The source of the information:

http://www.cncgcg.com/fs/rules/rule.html

http://files.geekdo.com/geekfile_download.php?filetype=application%2Fpdf&filename=The+Message+-+rewritten+English+rules.pdf&filecode=ovfpdrdivm&validationcode=459feb8b78eebef742835e9f4838c03c

Week 6: Love Letter

Many people may hunger for a boyfriend or a girlfriend after Singles’ Day, and the game of this week, Love Letter, is exactly about love, as its name.

This game is very plain and easy to play and you can enjoy the fun even in your first play.

All objects this game includes are only 16 cards and some tiny red cubes.

There are two main editions of the game.

One is the Tempest Edition, and the other is the Kanai Factory Edition, which I chose to introduce.

2 to 4 players play as the young men who adore the princess.

However, the princess is always in the castle which you cannot enter.

All you can do is send love letters and pass it on to the person closest to the princess.

Before the game begins, remove the card on the top from the game and each player draws 1 card from the stack.

In one’s turn, he draws 1 card and chooses 1 of his two cards to do its action.

There are 8 different characters with the number 1 to 8.

The bigger the number, the closer to the princess the character is.

A soldier exposes 1 player’s letter if he guesses his character (cannot be used on another solder).

A clown tricks others and peek 1 player’s card.

A knight delivers a fight to 1 player and makes the player with the smaller number card out of the round.

A priestess protects the player from any other player’s action till his next turn.

A wizard makes himself or 1 player discard his card in hand and draw another card in magic.

The general forces 1 player to exchange his card with him.

The minister hates the wizards, the general, and the princess.

Once any player holds the minister and one of these three characters at the same time, he is out of the round.

The princess is shy, so she directly refuses the player discard her and he is out of the round.

If the stack is run out, the player with the card with the biggest number in hand win the round and get 1 cube as the symbol of his passion.

If there is only 1 player left in the round, then he wins the round at once, too.

The first player holds 4 cubes win the game.

It is a kind of luck and mind game.

Because of the simplicity, there are many people make their own Love Letter games in various themes.

words: 419

the source of the information :

http://www.alderac.com/loveletter/files/2013/08/LL_Kanai_Rulesheet.pdf

Week 5: Saboteur

This week’s game is “Saboteur”.

This game is about a group of dwarves, including miners searching gold in the mountain and some saboteurs keeping them from the gold.

Every player draws a dwarf card to be a gold-digger or a saboteur when each round begins.

The players may use path cards to make paths from the start card to the goal cards or action cards to break other players’ tools to forbid them to dig paths, repair tools, remove path cards, or look the reverse side of the goal cards.

The round ends when all players run out of cards or the treasure card is found.

If the treasure card is found, all gold-diggers win the round and get a gold nugget card for each gold-digger.

If it’s not found, the saboteurs win and get a number of gold nuggets corresponding to the number of saboteurs.

After the third round, the player has the most gold nugget win the game.

 

The most interesting part of the game is that no players know the others to be gold-diggers or saboteurs.

If a saboteur act in a high profile like breaking an important path card or place a path card in a wrong way, the other players may know his identity and break his tools at once.

Everyone should guess who their companions are and who the enemies are and think twice before the action.

words :233

the source of the information :

http://zmangames.com/rulebooks/Saboteur.pdf

Week 4: Dixit

This week’s game I’m going to introduce is “Dixit”.

 

The word “dixit” is “speak” in Latin, so the game is about “speaking”.

There are a pile of cards with pictures with fantastic combination of various elements, somewhat like works in post-modern art.

All players draw 6 cards and decide the order to be the “storyteller” by turns.

The storyteller chooses one of his cards and tells a “story”.

The story may be a word, words, a sentence, a story, or whatever he wants.

Then the other players choose the most corresponding card from their own cards.

The storyteller collects the cards from all players, shuffles them, and reveals them.

The other players must and guess which card is the storyteller’s and then point them simultaneously.

 

If all the other players or no players find the correct card, all players except the storyteller get 2 points because his story is too easy or too hard to understand.

Otherwise, the storyteller and all players find the correct card get 3 points.

Besides, if your own card fools other players, you get 1 point for 1 player.

words:184

the source of the pictures:

http://cogsthebrainshop.ie/product/dixit/

http://kapitiboardgamers.wordpress.com/reviews/dixit/

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/935205/separate-odyssey-dixit-2-and-3

Week 3: Carcassonne

(I found that my last post is pretty boring, so I would try to make my post shorter this week=P)

This time, I would like to introduce “Carcassonne”!

It is a tile-laying game with 72 tiles.

It allows 2~5 players to play.

Each player has 8 followers, and one of them should be placed on the scoring track as a scoring marker.

There may be cities, fields, roads, and cloister on the land tiles.

All of the tiles should be face down except the starting tile.

Each turn the player has to draw a tile and place it adjacent to one tile already placed at least.

All segments on the tile must match the corresponding segments around the tile.

After placing, the player may place 1 follower on the tile he just placed.

The followers would play knights, thieves, farmers (should lie down), and monks when they are in the cities, on the roads, on the fields, and in the cloister.

Followers may earn you points.

Each tile represents 1 point for knights and thieves when counting how large the cities are or how long the roads are.

A tile with a cloister and the 8 tiles around earn the monk in it 1 point separately.

Each pennant in the city earns knights 1 point.

A complete city doubles the points the knights earn.

Once a city or a road complete or there are 8 tiles around a cloister, all of the follower on them earn their points and should be taken back.

Farmers earn 3 points for each complete city around the field he lie on in the end of the game.

Most interesting, you "cannot" place a follower on the segment if there is one or more followers on it already.

When scoring, the “most” followers own all the points of the segment.

Sounds strange?

Le'ts watch the following video and you will understand.

words:316

the source of the pictures:
https://www.funagain.com/control/product?product_id=011110
http://www.bendevane.com/VTA2013/dennisf/2013/01/30/board-game-analysis-carcassonne/
http://crystalscozykitchen.blogspot.tw/2011/03/boardgames-how-to-play-carcassonne.html