In this post, I will detail how Castle Walls, a playing card game invented by myself, is meant to be played. The idea for this game has been lying around unattended for years, and during and before that time the game's rules have been cemented and uncemented and cemented again. This was done mostly by actually playing the game with friends and family. The rules are about to be set in stone.
The Game
Castle Walls is a card game - similar to certain anime card games, which you've probably played before - where you battle with your opponent to make them run out of Life Cards, at which point you've won.
The game is kind of basic, and relies on luck, but also gets quite nuanced and advanced, starting to be about reading your opponent more than mere luckiness. Even card-counting has a bit of a strategy to it in this game. If you can count cards, don't be afraid to do it in Castle Walls, especially if it's being played competitively.
At the time of this writing, Castle Walls is only designed to be played between 2 players, 1 VS 1.
How to Set Up Castle Walls
To play Castle Walls, you will need a standard deck of playing cards. The ones that have four suits and a bunch of numbers. You know what playing cards are, I will spare you the explanation. That makes this game cost only about $6 to play.
All playing cards - other than weird spares that aren't even a part of playing cards - will be used. All 54 of them. You do not remove either one of The Jokers. The Joker is actually part of a major situational strategic play, which can potentially happen during a playthrough.
Dealing the Cards
This may sound like Captain Obvious, but you need to shuffle the deck first. Believe me, not every game I ever make is necessarily going to do shuffling at the start. Hindbodes will find a way.
There are two places per player where cards go when the dealer is dealing. One is the player's stack of Life Cards, and the other is the player's hand.
First, the dealer puts one card face down in the opponent's life card pile. Then, the dealer does the same for their own life card pile. This repeats until both piles have exactly 6 cards each. Nobody is meant to see which cards they are while the dealing is done. The Life Cards are to be placed in neat stacks.
One of the most important points about the life card pile - and something that everybody eventually notices - is that it effectively removes cards from the playthrough, selecting which cards you don't play with randomly and secretly. In this effect, you don't know how many Jokers are in the game of Castle Walls that you're playing until well into the game. Unless you luckily draw both of them on turn one. Such draws are rare, but they can happen. All face-down life cards remain a secret to both players until they are taken off the stack by combat.
Second, the hands are dealt. Pretty simple, really. The first card goes to the hand of the person who is not the dealer. Like the previous stage, each player gets one card for their hand in turns. So the other player gets one card, then the dealer gets one card, then the cycle repeats. Once both players have three cards for their hand, the rest of the deck is placed face down to the middle-left or middle-right of the playing field, and the game is nearly ready.
When The Game is About to Start
Before the game begins, the players must decide who has their turn first. This can be done with either a round of Paper Scissors Rock, a coin flip, or simply what both players agree on. Then, the game begins.
The Hierarchy of Cards
The level of a card in Castle Walls is very important. Put basically, from highest to lowest, the cards in a list of power levels are:
- Ace
- King
- Queen
- Jack
- 10
- 9
- 8
- 7
- 6
- 5
- 4
- 3
- 2
The Anatomy of The Game's First Turn
Castle Walls is about using cards on the field to "attack" your opponent's field cards, and ultimately your opponent's Life Cards. However, on the first turn of Castle Walls, you can not attack.
Other than the inability to attack, the first turn is very much identical to all other turns. So I will go over the anatomy of all following turns now.
The Anatomy of The Game's Second and All Following Turns
Every turn of Castle Walls, you must draw one card from the deck in the middle, exactly at the start of your turn. If the deck has run out, simply flip the entire graveyard and use that as the new deck. You do not shuffle the deck when you do this. Meta strategies - based on card counting - could certainly emerge from this mechanic. As the creator, I welcome that.
After you draw a card, you may choose to play a card face-up, or face-down. If you already have a card face down, you can place one face-up card on top of it, maximum. There are three places on the field, side-by-side, where you are allowed to place a card. You may not go any further than the three slot limit, meaning at the absolute most your field card count is a total of six (three cards face-down, and one face-up card sitting on top of each face-down card), and having six cards on the field this way is extremely unlikely during regular play.
You are not required to play anything or attack on your turn, you are only required to draw a card and discard any excess cards as ruled by the End Phase.
You are not allowed to place The Joker on the field like the other cards. The Joker is a rare card that has special innate abilities in this game. The nature of that play will be covered later in this article.
On your turn, after you draw a card, you are in what is called the Main Phase. You can only enter the Main Phase once per turn, and only after the instant that you've drawn your card.
In the Main Phase, there are things you can do, and things you can't do.
Things you can do in the Main Phase:
- Play one face-up card OR play one face-down card.
- Use the special straight discard (will be detailed later).
- Use The Joker, if appropriate (will be detailed later).
- Flip one or more of your face-down cards face-up, if there
is no card above it. A face-down card can't be flipped if it was put face-down during this same turn.
During the Main Phase, you can not attack with a card.
When you want to attack with a card, you may enter the Battle Phase.
In the Battle Phase, you can attack with as many of your face-up cards as you choose, but each of them can only attack once per turn. Once you are in the Battle Phase, you can not return to the Main Phase until you've drawn a card on your next turn. Naturally, face-down cards are not able to attack. Any face-down cards you want to attack with must be flipped face-up first, during the Main Phase. This means you can not flip a card face-up right after attacking.
When your turn is ending, and you've already had your Draw Phase, Main Phase and/or Battle Phase, you observe an End Phase. The only purpose of the End Phase is to siphon off any excess cards that the turn player has. If you have more than six cards in your hand during the End Phase, all you have to do during the End Phase is remove cards from your hand and put them in the graveyard until you have exactly six cards in your hand.
Attacking Basics
When you attack with a card, you "nudge" it in the direction of your opponent if the opponent has no cards on the field, or pick it up and point it at the targeted card on the field they do have.
An attack can resolve in many different ways. In this section, we will be focusing on attacks to opposing Life Cards and on what happens when a card attacks another face-up card. All cards that attack are, naturally, face-up. The game would be impossible to balance well otherwise. However, cards that receive an attack may or may not be face down. Face-down cards act as Walls or Traps. See the respective sections for more info on them.
If you attack when your opponent has no cards on the field, it will make your opponent's number of Life Cards decrease by 1. Multiple attacks (logical maximum of 3) can do this in a turn, as long as there are enough offending and unspent cards with which to launch said attacks. For example, if your opponent has no cards on the field when your turn starts and you have three cards on the field at the end of the Main Phase, you have the ability to attack your opponent's Life Cards up to three times.
When a life card is attacked, it is removed from the original pile and placed face-up on a newer, face-up pile. This shows how close your opponent is to losing, and it additionally and importantly reveals which cards were removed from play when the game started. As the game goes on, it gradually becomes more and more clear what sort of cards were absent. Sometimes you will find one or both of the Jokers in the Life Card piles before the game is over.
However, if the opponent has cards on the field, the attack becomes more complex in nature, and has more rules to adhere to. For this section, it will only be face-up cards in a battle that I cover.
One: if a card attacks a face-up card of equal or lower power value, the attacked card is destroyed, and sent to a face-up pile called The Graveyard. The Graveyard is located beside the main deck.
Two: A card can not attack a face-up card that has a higher power value on it.
Attacking Walls
When you attack a face-down card, you don't typically know what will happen. It could be this, or it could be a Trap.
A Wall happens when your card attacks a face-down card (which is then flipped face-up), and the flipped card happens to be of a power equal to or greater than that of the card that attacked it.
When a card on the field attacks a wall, neither card is sent to the graveyard. The turn of whoever attacked will automatically end.
An Ace is the most powerful attacker in the game, and the only thing that can wall an Ace in Castle Walls is another, face-down Ace. This can lead to some scary aggressive strategies. A face-down ace that gets attacked can ultimately, on the next turn, strike back at anything that hits it. If you attack a face-down Ace with your own Ace, you can expect to lose your Ace next turn.
Cards of the power 2 are special because no matter what they attack, if it's face-down it will wall the attacking player. This ends the turn of whoever attacked using the power 2 card, but this play can directly lead to a strategic advantage.
Attacking Traps
When you attack a face-down card, you don't typically know what will happen. It could be this, or it could be a Wall.
A Trap happens when your card attacks a face-down card (which is then flipped face-up), and the flipped card happens to be of a power lower than that of the card that attacked it.
When a trap is flipped, the suit of the card determines where your turn goes next in a fork in the road. The difference here is whether your card attacked a red suit (Diamonds or Hearts) or a black suit (Clubs or Spades). Traps intend to destroy one card on the opposing side of the field, once attacked by that opposing side.
If a trap is activated and it is a red suit, it will immediately and automatically go to the graveyard, while the card that attacked it goes to the graveyard immediately after it.
If a Trap is activated and it is a black suit, the owner of the trap must choose one opposing card on the field that is not the attacker, if there is one, and send that to the graveyard right after sending the Trap to the graveyard.
Special Technique #1: Discarding a Four Straight
During your Main Phase, if you have a consecutive straight in your
hand of four cards, you can send all of them to the graveyard to target
and destroy one card on your opponent's side of the field, unless it is
one of those face-down cards that has a face-up card above it. Any one
face-up card can still be sent to the graveyard by this technique. When your straight goes to the graveyard, your straight goes first - before the card it's targeting, in order from highest to lowest power.
Special Technique #2: Discarding The Joker
During your Main Phase, if you have more Life Cards removed from your life card pile than your opponent does, you can discard one Joker from your hand to the graveyard. After this, you must take every single one of your opponent's field cards and add them to your own hand. Then your turn continues as normal.
Final Thoughts
That is pretty much the entirety of the rules for Castle Walls. It is a simple game compared to say, 500 or what-have-you, but it can take a while to explain and has as-of-yet uncharted potential depths. I took a lot of inspiration from a trading card game, but I also did everything I could to make it something of my own creation. No plagiarism is to be found here, unless of course somebody tries to plagiarize me again. Lots of people like to plagiarize me, it's a historic feature of being Hindbodes.