Monday Musings: 9 January 2012

It's my first post for the new year. Been a while since I last updated, been busy with the whole December schedule and all, but it's a new year and it's back to school.

First Day of school

This is the strange thing that I find about NUS. School started today, 9 January, but so did the module registration. Meaning we attend lectures before we register for them. While it's not a big problem for the postgraduate students, I just find the process a little strange.

Graduate Analysis II, attended the lecture and I don't think I will be reading this module, just reminds me of Graduate Analysis I, which is the worst score I've ever received for any module. At least the lecturer is a pretty good. We'll see about the other two modules that I hope to get into.

A new game for a new year!

In the past year, I did design a few games, none of which have really seen the light of day due to the need of specialised components. So, a month ago I decided to try my hand at designing a game using a standard deck of playing cards. After buying 7 Wonders, I decided to base the following game on it; much like how "Dai Di" is based on Uno.

So, it is a card drafting game with the winner being determined by a score. If you ever get a chance to try this game, do let me know how it plays out. I've yet to play test this game.

Equipment: Standard Deck of playing cards, jokers removed.

Number of players: 4

Set Up:

1) Deal the cards equally to the players. Each player should have a hand of 13 cards.

2) Players look at their hands and divide their cards into 2 stacks, one with 6 cards and another with 7 cards. This is not a random process.

Round 1:

1) This round will use the stack of 6 cards that the players have created. The stack with 7 cards will not be used this round.

2) Each player chooses a card from the stack of 6 cards, plays it facedown in front of him and passes the remaining 5 cards to the player to his left.

3) Each player now chooses a card from the stack of 5 cards (that was passed to him by the player to his right), plays it faceup in front of him and passes the remaining 4 cards to the player to his left.

4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 until there are no more cards left. The cards that should be played faceup are the 2nd and 5th (not 4th) cards chosen.

5) Now each player will force the player to his right to discard any one of his faceup cards. These discarded cards go facedown into a discard pile.

Round 2:

1) Each player now looks at his stack of 7 cards and chooses to discard one of them, facedown into the discard pile.

2) Repeat the procedure for Round 1, but each player now passes his cards to the player on his right and forces the player to his left to discard one of his faceup cards after the drafting portion of the game.

3) Each player should have 10 cards in front of him now, 8 facedown, 2 faceup.

Scoring:

1) Turn all cards faceup and group them according to their suit (diamonds, hearts, clubs and spades).

2) For each suit, count the number of cards there are belonging to that suit and square that number. Each player earns that many points.

3) For each completed set of cards each with a different suit, the player will also earn 19 points.

For example, if a player drafted 1 diamond, 2 heart, 3 club, and 4 spade cards, he will earn 49 points (1 + 4 + 9 + 16 + 19).

4) Now count the total face value of the cards; ace counting as 1 and the picture cards as 10. Now subtract this total from the previous total.

5) The player with the highest total now wins the game.