Thought I'd put a post here for rules discussion of this - I designed it very quickly as a minigame for LIFE, but thought it would be good to make a post to get people's thoughts on the mechanics.
THE BASIC RULESThe basic version of the game that I've come up with has three cards - the Ice Walker, the Warrior, and the Hugrut. Each player has a hand of nine cards, and they take it in turns to play one at a time until each player has five on the table.
At the end of the game, each Ice Walker is worth three points.
Each warrior is worth one point, but also "kills" one enemy ice walker.
Each hugrut is also worth one point, but "protects" one of your ice walkers.
EXAMPLEPLAYER 1 | I | I | I | H | H |
PLAYER 2 | I | H | W | W | W |
So player 1 has initially 11 points (3x3 + 2x1) whereas player 2 has just 7 (1x3 + 4x1).
Player 2's warriors can potentially "kill" 3 ice walkers, which would bring P1 down to just 2 points on the table. However, P1 has played 2 Hugrut, thus "protecting" two of their three Ice Walkers. As such, only one is killed.
The final score is thus P1 winning with 8 points (2x3 + 2x1) to P2's seven (1x3 + 4x1).
Now, I've only been playing against a computer opponent that doesn't even have an AI (or a hand - it just approximates the gameplay experience by randomly picking cards and putting them down). However, I think the following things are roughly true:
- There's a rock-paper-scissors effect - strategies heavy on Ice Walkers can be beaten by those heavy on warriors, those heavy on warriors will be beaten by those that use Hugrut with Ice Walkers, but Hugrut and Ice Walkers together will be beaten by having more ice walkers to score more points.
- Going second should be heavily favoured - reacting to each card your opponent puts down gives you considerably more information and less guesswork.
- There's a mix of skill and luck; you need to know how to play, but at the same time it can be extremely difficult to win with a bad hand.