Game Design #6: Tower Siege
Introduction: In this strategic card game, players compete not only against each other, but against the game itself. Each vies to be the first to work their way through the lines of defense to reach the Tower in the center, but beware! A final challenge awaits that may catch you by surprise.
Players: 2-4
Materials: One standard deck of playing cards.
Setting Up: Each player is dealt five cards. A game board is then set up on the playing surface: twelve cards are drawn and laid face-up in lines of three, forming a “plus” pattern with the remainder of the deck face-down in the middle. In this fashion there should be four lines of overlapping cards laid north, south, east, and west around the deck. These lines should be laid so that the ranks and suits of all cards are visible, but only the last card in each line–the head card–is fully exposed. The first player is designated and play proceeds to the left.
How to Play: Each player strives to be the first to traverse the card lines from head to foot and reach the center deck. On their turn, each player first draws cards as necessary to refill their hand to five. Then, they attempt to weaken the tower defenses by as much or as little as they are able or willing. If they succeed in reaching the center, they must complete one final assault before they may seize victory.
- Weakening the Tower Defenses: To weaken the Tower defenses, the player plays a card from their hand that pairs one of the head cards on one of the lines. The pair is removed to a discard pile and the next card in that line becomes the head card, immediately available to be paired and removed as normal. A player may make as many pairs as they are able on their turn.
- The Final Assault: If at any point on a player’s turn one of the the lines has been completely removed, this constitutes an open path to the Tower and the player may attempt the final assault. The player draws the top card from the deck and reveals it to all. If they are able to pair that card this turn, they win the game. If not, they are thrown back and the line they used to reach the center is refilled with three new cards. The card they drew remains visible for the remainder of the round–any other player who succeeds in reaching the Tower uses this card for their final assault. If no player has won by the end of the round, the card is discarded when the Tower is strengthened (see below).
Whenever the draw pile is depleted, shuffle and reuse the discard pile.
Strengthening the Tower: After each round in which each player has taken one turn, the tower defenses are bolstered. Draw four new cards and add one each to the end of each line, replacing the current head card. If applicable, discard the current final assault card. No new final assault card is drawn or shown until the next final assault attempt.
Winning the Game: Play continues until one player successfully completes the final assault. The first play to succeed at this wins the game.
Next: Designing “Tower Siege”
Coming Soon…
This is one of your better designs, IMO. Despite the very simple rules, there is a nice balance created between cooperation and competition. Having players fill their hands to five is a nice way to give players incentive to keep making progress. Having an undefended side renew it’s defenses on an unsuccessful assault also gives the attacker incentive, as well as add some opportunity for defensive play. I’m not sure what the point of keeping the same final assault card is, however. It makes the play for all remaning players in the round quite obvious - they win if they can, and try to slough off worthless cards if they cannot. This, plus the fact that the defenses are always strengthened at the same time causes the players who play early to have a serious disadvantage. I would recommend having a method to rotate the playing order. Interesting effort, though. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the feedback! I’m glad you like the idea, and I’m intrigued by your critique of the final assault card. I chose to keep the final assault card for one round because I felt the random draw was a bit too ruthless, a bit too arbitrary. I wanted to give the players some recourse against fighting their way to the center only to be thwarted by pure chance. What do you think? Would it be better to have, as you suggest, a rotating play order, or to remove the rule that holds the final assault card for one round altogether?
Rotating the first player seemed like a good idea to me at first, but you’d probably need something to track the start player for convenience. This isn’t a big deal, but when your only component requirement is a deck of cards, it’s kind of nice to keep to that. I also realized today that adding a card to each side every round means that two players are likely to have a much tougher time overcoming those four new cards every round on defense than four players. Perhaps you should just have a player draw and add a new card every round when their turn is done so that the defenses would scale appropriately. You could either have the side that would be added to rotate (clockwise, for instance) or they could automatically add to the weakest side (with the player choosing in case of a tie). I kind of like the second one since it at least has the potential to give someone a tactical choice.
The final assault card issue remains, but I think there is potentially an even bigger issue. The only way for players to get cards out of their hands is to match them with cards on the board (and vice versa). This means the game could actually be in a state where it is impossible for a player, or even all players, to win. A player who was dealt four deuces would know from the outset that he could not possibly win, since he could never remove the minimum of one tower defense plus match the final assault card. Worse, those four two’s could be distributed evenly among the four tower defenses, making the game impossible for anyone to win. Even having each of fours player hold one of each of a card in their hands means that that useless card will be stuck there for the remainder of the game. There needs to be a way for players to recycle useless cards so that statistical variances don’t derail the game.
I like to list all the issues before looking at solutions, because if you’re lucky you can find a solution that solves multiple issues. So, here are the issues as I see them:
1. Adding defenses and removing the final assault card before the same player’s turn each round disadvantages the same players each round, leading to an uneven playing field.
2. Cards in hand but not on the board (and vice versa) cannot be recycled.
3. Adding four defense cards per round may not scale properly with different numbers of players.
The trick, of course, is to try to fix these things without altering the core mechanic. Here are my suggestions:
1. At the beginning of the game, turn a card face up to be the final assault card. It will remain until the game is won or a new final assault card is triggered (see #3 below).
2. After each player has played and replenished his or her hand, he/she draws a card and adds it to the tower’s defenses on the side which has the least defense. Ties are broken at the discretion of the player.
3. In addition to being able to remove tower defenses by matching the value of a card, players may play *two* cards of the same suit to remove any exposed tower defense. Both of the cards (plus the chosen tower defense) are then discarded. Use of this option triggers a new assault card; the player discards the old assault card and replaces it with a new card from the top of the draw pile.
This is one way of dealing with the issues mentioned above that I believe adds a little to player control and increases options for hand management. The round beginning/end is effectively eliminated by spreading tower maintenance throughout the game. I hope these are helpful and provide some food for thought.
BTW, thanks for giving me something interesting to think about.
These are excellent suggestions! Thank you taking such an interest—it is gratifying to know my microgames are intriguing to game designers and enthusiasts like yourself. I particularly like the suggestion of the mechanic by which players add one card to the tower’s defenses after their turn. It achieves the same effect as the four-at-once method, and it scales neatly. I shall look at integrating these ideas into the design soon
I started playing this game yesterday, and it’s great fun–simple rules, no extra supplies, and an easy setup.
I like having the card drawn at each final assualt–since that card has to be paired, if the player knows he doesn’t have a matching card there’s no reason to attack. However, if any of the players could use the resulting breach they could cooperate in taking out the tower.
Leadpipe’s suggestion of using two cards to remove a head card is good. I’ve been using cards just below and above the head card, in essence surrounding the card to remove it. This only works for the defense cards; allowing it in the final assault might make it too easy to win.
This gives the players the chance to continue removing head cards even if all four cards are in the defense lines. This also gets cards out of the player’s hands–I’ve had cases where a player hasn’t been able to play a single card the entire game. To this end, I’ve also been allowing players to discard 1 or 2 cards if they can’t make an attack; the cards are replaced at the next turn and the logic is that these troops aren’t effective and it’s time to send in new ones.
For the strengthening phase, I’ve been doing this only if there’s been a successful attack–having warded off four attacks, the defenders are confident and see no need to do any reinforcing.
Along this line I’m also allowing failed strengthening attempts–if two of the same cards are placed consecutively, the second is discarded and (depending on the difficulty) either replaced with a new card or left empty. The card needs to be replaced during the initial build, but if left empty later can leave some handy gaps in the defenses.
Even with these changes, I’ve only managed to take the tower a few times. It’s challenging without being frustrating, and a bit addicting as well…
Terrific! I’m glad to know the game works, or is close enough it can be workable with minor modifications. I don’t get much chance to playtest these things (too busy!), so I am pleased to hear that a reader has taken the initiative and given it a try. Many thanks to Leadpipe for the astute and helpful suggestions!
Played this tonight with my wife, the variant being that two same-suit cards can add up to a defender to eliminate it, and two cards per hand can be discarded. Fortify (one card only) is the first step of each person’s turn, followed by draw, then play, and optionally discard. Discard pile is shuffled and re-used, and the tower guardian remains until the turn of the person who revealed him, at the beginning of their turn, the guardian is discarded.d
For adding up purposes, Jack is 11, Queen is 12, King is 13, and we counted Ace as 1. The wife got very frustrated with the inability to do anything when we had 3 nines showing as heads. It took us a half-hour but we did manage to take the tower. I thought it was a decent game length, she doesn’t want to play again.
For modifications, I think I would like to extend the hand to seven cards, and possibly eliminate the same-suit requirement for addition.
Thanks for a fun game!
*HUGS*
[…] David McD’s Tower Siege, I bet it’s going to be the next translated design to show up here. As for now I can only say it’s a really nice design, and even though I haven’t tried it yet I do smell some fun in it. […]