I’ve been thinking about making a competitive joint-deck builder for around four players. In other words, a game in which players build a common deck while competing against each other. The good news: there does not seem to be one on the market! The bad news: there have been some discussions on the subject and it does have some real design challenges.
In my first stab at the concept, I had consecutive players playing the turn: the first player choose card options and the second player picked the actual card to be played. Each player had a secret card type they tried to include into the final deck as much as possible. In addition, players guessed what were the others’ secret card types.
The prototype had some promise. The turns were quick, but the control over what cards will be in the final deck was limited. If the main focus would be on guessing each players’ agenda, this would be ok-ish.
In the second stab, I wanted the turns to be meatier. The consecutive players played together against a common array of foes. Players still had their secret card type to aim for… but no guessing of other’s types this time. Instead, players’ final health was scored too: so there was some balancing between getting good cards versus getting matching cards.
While this again had some promise, the turns did take rather long. Also, the rather limited control over the final deck was still an issue. Anyways, this might be a feasible approach for 1-3 players.
The lessons learned so far? Since single players’ control over the cards in the final deck is limited, then scoring by matching card types might not be the way to go. And it might be that the player who chose the card to be included in the deck never gets to play the card, so the player should probably get some benefit of it even regardless of who plays it. I have a prototype coping with these aspects… will the third stab be the charm?
