Is the Rage deck the Omni-deck?

 As I blitz my way through the solitaire options  of Mysticana, I have been looking at the wider world of game systems. Specifically game systems designed to either build on or 'replace' a regular deck of cards.

And what immediately comes clear is that that is a vast topic. Someone, someone who is a better scholar than me, could devote a long running blog on just the subject of card-based game systems.

There are plenty variations on the standard deck of cards. The 52 card French deck probably is the global standard (Note that I don't feel confident to say that it is for sure) However, there are other regional variations that are still in use and production.  I've always assumed that was why the version of Euchre that I've been taught only uses 24 cards but I don't even know that for certain. 

But designers have been trying to intentionally come up with alternatives. There have been more than one deck than just adds another suit, for instance. But the real test is if you can play a game that you want to play with the alternative that you can't play with a regular 52-card deck.

It is interesting when a game system develops accidentally, even though I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case for the regular deck of cards.

Rage was published in 1983. It has six suits, ranked 0 to 15. It is basically the conventional deck blown up in every direction. And it's an Oh Hell variant that is also expanded, including special cards.

And when I first got into board gaming, I definitely saw it referenced a lot. And not because of the game itself but the possibilities it had as a gaming system.

Gamers listed 188 (and growing) different games that you could play with a Rage deck. That number is actually low since you can functionally play any game that uses a traditional deck of cards with a Rage deck. Game designers were known to buy Rage decks in bulk as prototype parts.

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/1907/games-playable-with-rage-deck-not-the-ccg-please-a

So I made sure to get a copy. And promptly did nothing with it.

The Rage deck has vast mechanical possibilities. For instance, I could easily play Lost Cities with a Rage deck, However, I would lose the vibrant pictures and the easy visual clarity of the handshake cards. Elements that aren't mechanically necessary but add to the enjoyment and engagement.

As I've discussed more than once, theming isn't just about making things pretty. Theming can create a visual shorthand that enhances the accessibility and engagement of a game. Theming can help you process a game easier. And the Rage deck is entirely abstract.

(Not that I'm knocking abstract. Sticheln is one of my favorite trick taking games and it is also entirely abstract. The sheer sadism of the game carries it without the need for theme)

Rage seems to have lost some of its luster. I haven't seen it discussed as a game library in one small box in a long time, although people do keep adding to the list. It also seems to be less available than it used to be but I doubt that that has anything to do with its role as a game system.

As I have become more DIY in my gaming in recent years, I wonder if I would do more with a Rage deck now. However, the game systems I have explored, like the Decktet or the Pairs deck or Mysticana, step farther away from the model of the standard deck of cards.

Game systems can be versatile tools. They can be powerful tools. Just look at the cultural impact of traditional playing cards. But they have their limits as well.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - a character driven study of memory and mortality

The themes of the Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab are mortality and memory. However, the hook is the character studies and relationships of the three main characters.

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In 1714, Adeline LaRue makes a deal with an ancient power that gives her conditional immortality but with the price that she cannot be remembered. Three hundred years later, having spent centuries as a ghost in history, she encounters a young man named Henry who can remember her. Because he has made a deal of his own, to be seen as whatever people need him to be.

And that meeting changes everything for Addie, Henry and Luc, the name Addie gives the ancient power who made the deals with both of them.

Not being able to be remembered isn't an uncommon conceit. Heck, the Silence from Doctor Who is an alien race where that's their hat. However Schwab goes into much greater detail than I have seen before in explaining how Addie's situation works.

She is unchanging. Not only does she not age, she cannot starve and immediately recovers from any injury. Mind you, she still experiences the injury and starvation. They just can't physically affect her. She also has a perfect memory, starting from the beginning of her deal. However, she cannot change anything. She cannot hurt someone or write anything down or even leave footprints. There are loopholes. She can steal and she can inspire and give ideas that will linger when memory does not.

Schwab does a good job making Addie sympathetic, even while making it clear that she can be very amoral and selfish. Of course, those are traits that she needs to function.

Henry is her opposite, his deal making him unforgettable. He also suffers from severe depression, which many reviews note is realistically displayed. While Addie is portrayed as a survivor, Henry is not. Like Addie, a large part of what makes him sympathetic is making his more difficult traits relatable.  

It takes a good chunk the book to reveal that Luc is actually one of the main characters. In many ways, he reads like an homage to Neil Gaiman's Morpheus. (I'm not sure if that is the compliment it once was) He is capable of great cruelty but his work also makes the world a richer place. And his relationship with Addie brings him for an impersonal force of nature to something not quite human.  

The characters and their connections are not healthy. However, they are compelling. And while none of them are entirely human anymore or ever, they are believable.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a fantasy that works by being grounded in human nature.

Cave of Djinns is an addictive introduction to Mysticana

If there is one thing that I have found as I’ve started exploring the Mysticana system, it’s that Button Shy is making a real effort to make sure there’s some variety.

Mysticana is a game system with a base 18-card deck with three suits that have a rock-paper-scissors dynamic. The hook is adding small expansions (usually six more cards) to make a distinct game. 

At some point, when I’ve played enough of the games, I’ve promised myself to give Mysticana as a concept a good write up.

(Transparency time: I wasn’t part of Cave of Djinns play test group but I was part of the group to look over the rules copy editor style. I didn’t contribute much, to be honest)

Cave of Djinns is a solitaire game with a real puzzle feel. And if you want to argue all solitaire games are really puzzles, well, Cave of Djinns is extra puzzley.

You add six double-sided Djinn cards to the game. Each one has an element/suit, a riddle and a reward along with a strange name and an eldritch illustration. You’ll shuffle them up and place them in a pyramid with space to play a card on all four sides of each Djinn.

Riddles are actually the conditions needed to capture the Djinn. They can be all low cards, all even cards, sequences with numbers and so on. Rewards are bonus actions that you may use if you capture a Djinn. Rewards include moving, removing or switching cards.

Shuffle the base deck up. Each turn, you draw and place two cards. And keep in mind that some of the spaces count for more than one Djinn. You capture a Djinn if you surround it on all four sides and the cards match of its rules. If at least one of the four cards is the suit/element the Djinn is weak to, you flip it over and cover the Djinn. If no card has the stronger suit, you use the top card of the deck. Which is actually a big deal because you only have eighteen cards to work with. 

After you capture a Djinn, you get to use its reward to rearrange the tableu. And if you potentially capture more than one, you have to choose the order you resolve them since the tableu might change enough that the second (or more) capture doesn’t take place.

Depending on the difficulty level, you win when you capture four, five or all six Djinn.

Cave of Djinns isn’t what I would have thought would be to my taste in games but I actually quite enjoyed it. A large part of that is because it just makes sense. Gameplay is very intuitive. You understand what you are trying to do.

At the same time, because many of the same spaces will have different requirements for different Djinn, the game doesn’t play itself. You are going to have to priorize and actively use the Djinn rewards to try and win. And the small size of the Mysticana deck is going mean the game is going to be tight.

Cave of the Djinn, if memory serves me correctly, was one of the earliest Mysticana games . (I know, the system is less than a year old) And I think it was a good choice to introduce people to the system. It’s easy to learn, has a good scaling of difficulty and shows off the potential versatility of the decks. And it’s a banger. I want to just keep playing it one more time.

My April Gaming

I learned a number of games in April. That included a couple Roll and Writes and a game online via Yucatá. But looking at the month, Mysticana was my real focus.

I learned:

Dice and Divination- Palm Reading

Hyperstar Run expansions (playtest)

Wayfarer

A Year In…

Mysticana - Wild Magic

Mysticana - Harbingers 

Mysticana - Cave of Djinns

Instinkt

Mysticana - Curse of Dragons

Magic Rabbit

Mysticana - Conjuror’s Tome

I have been interested in game systems for most of my time in the gaming hobby. Icehouse Pyramids, now Looney Pyramids, were a very early fascination. Frankly, I’m surprised it took me this long to really check out Mysticana. So many games, so little time.

I already thought that Mysticana was an interesting system but my opinion is definitely even higher now. Two words that I think highlight the game family’s strengths are accessible and intuitive. Knowing how to make good decisions doesn’t always click but knowing how to play the games does. 

I am also amazed at how many of the games are either solitaire or have solitaire options. That clearly was a major goal in its development plan. Which, to be fair, works well for me.

I try and always learn at least one Roll and Write a month. And Flip and Writes count. While Palm Reading and A Year In… count, the good one for April was the Wayfarer. Simple but a lot of choices in every game.

I still have some Mysticana to try and I’ll work on doing that in May. I am not expecting a crazy month for learning new games, but I didn’t expect April would be either.

My April PnP

April was a busier month for making Print and Play projects than I expected. Playtesting, as often has become the case, played a major role in it but not in quite the usual way.

I made:

Stunt Kites

Hyperstar Run

Hyperstar Run expansions (set one and playtest)

A Year In…

Tou Shi

Inkalam

The Prefect 

Mysticana - Cave of Djinns

Mysticana - Curse of Dragons

Mysticana - Element of Surprise

Mysticana - Harbingers

Mysticana - Wild Magic

Mysticana - Realmseekers

13 Sheep

Mysticana - Conjuror’s Tome (playtest)

I had thought I had already made a copy of the final version of Hyperstar Run but I couldn’t find it so I made a fresh copy. At that point, I decided to make copies of the final versions of the first two expansions. And some months, that would be my big build. (I’m not that ambitious a crafter)

However, since the other playtest I’d signed up for was a Mysticana game, I decided to make copies of all the solitaire or solitaire friendly Mysticana expansion/games. I actually was able to learn some of them before the playtest. Taken as a single group, Mysticana expansions was my actual big project. 

And beyond those two, playtesting influenced projects, I made enough other games that I would have considered a decent month.

The fascinating obscurity of Edward Page Mitchell

I recently reread H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (which, upon rereading is an amazingly cozy work) and decided to look up if it really was the first time machine story. (I knew it wasn’t the first time travel story)

I was vaguely aware that the Spanish writer Enrique Gaspar had written about time machines before Wells but I learned that American journalist Edward Page Mitchell is considered the first with ‘The Clock That Went Backwards’ in 1881.

And that was an interesting rabbit hole to go down.

Edward Page Mitchell (1852 - 1926) was a journalist who also wrote science fiction (and apparently horror and fantasy) He wrote about using science to make someone invisible and time machines before Wells did. He also wrote about faster-than-light travel.

And, from what I can tell, he was fascinatingly _not_ influential.

Almost all of his science fiction was published in the New York newspaper the Sun and anonymously at that. It would be around ninety years before it would be republished. It is not unreasonable to assume that Gaspar or Wells would have never read it.

In fact, it’s amazing that he was rediscovered at all.

After finding this out, I went and read ‘The Clock That Went Backwards’

First of all, I think calling the titular clock a time machine is a stretch. While there are discussions about science and how the 16th century clock maker knew secrets that later generations hadn’t figured out yet, there’s never any science explanation. It’s basically magic as far as the narrative is concerned.

Second, the story _does_ deal with paradox. When the narrator and his cousin go back in time, his cousin plays a key role in Dutch history and stays to become his own great, great , great, etc grand uncle. And it might be the earliest (certainly one of the earliest) examples of that. Man, he beat Heinlein’s ‘By His Bootstraps’ by over fifty years!

Third, it is very readable. I was prepared for purple prose but even the parts where the story is lecturing us (and one of the characters is a college professor so lectures fit in) are clear. Now, Wikipedia says that the story was written as a story for boys. It is more of an adventure story. Both of those elements could explain the more plain writing style. But I’ve read my share of pulp fiction and Mitchell does better than a lot of it. And I hate the argument that true art has to be confusing and difficult.

I don’t think you can argue that Mitchell was a secret major influence on science fiction. People would have needed access to his work for that to have been the case. But I do think you can argue that he should have been. If ‘The Clock That Went Backward’ is any example, he would have been huge if people could have read his work.

And, having had one good experience, I do want to read more of his work. It’s not a question of his place in history. It’s the quality of his writing.

The timer turns Magic Rabbit into a mad tea party

I first came across Magic Rabbit because it was one of the many games that was offered as a free Print and Play during the Covid lockdown. (I don’t think they are still available, sorry) I downloaded the files, looked over the rules and wasn’t sure if I was interested.

Well, the Covid lockdown pushed me deeper into solitaire and solitaire-friendly games. In the process, I expanded my ideas about gaming. When I found my old laminated sheets of Magic Rabbit tiles, I now asked myself why hadn’t I already tried it?

Magic Rabbit is a real time, cooperative game. There a nine numbered hat tiles, nine numbered rabbit tiles, and five pigeon cards. Oh, a magician tile but that’s just to orient the line. You’re also going to need a timer. 

Shuffle the rabbit tiles and lay them out face down in a line. Then shuffle the hats and lay them down face up on the rabbit tiles. Your mission, and if you’re playing the game, you chose to accept it, is to get the rabbits and hats in numeric order.

But the pigeon tiles are there to make life harder. Depending on the number of players, you place two to five pigeons on stacks. You can’t do nothing with stacks that have pigeons on them.

On your turn, you can a) look at a rabbit without revealing it to anyone else b) swap two hats or c) swap two stacks. After you may your move, you _may_ move a dove.

Again, if a dove is on a stack, you can’t do anything with that stack. You can’t even lift up the dove to check the hat number.

And you only have two minutes and thirty seconds to play the whole game. That’s what the timer is for. 

The physical game comes with three envelopes that contain increasingly challenging ways to play the game. I don’t have those since I’m playing the free PnP version but I don’t need them to appreciate the base game.

Magic Rabbit is a very simple game made up of very simple parts. It’s easy to understand what’s going on. However, when you add the complications of the timer and pigeons, it gets challenging. Especially the timer. Oh boy the timer.

Simple doesn’t mean easy, from either a design or a play standpoint. It’s easy to understand what your end goal is but trying to do that in under three minutes isn’t easy. It is manic and fun though. Magic Rabbit isn’t the first game I’ve seen with a timer. But you don’t need to an invent a new wheel to make a car go vrooooom. 

After I finishing making a copy and playing it, I learned that Magic Rabbit had been a Spiel des Jahres recommended game in 2022. That doesn’t surprise me. 

I have played some good real time games. Escape: The Curse of the Temple and Falling come to mind. And Magic Rabbit joins them. I

may not need two speed tile games but Magic Rabbit does a good job being the one I do want to play.

Toem celebrates the amateur photographer smart phones have made of all of us

Indie cozy games are a big part of our family’s video gaming. And Toem is one that everyone but the cat enjoyed and that’s probably just because she doesn’t have opposable thumbs.

Many indie cozy games have a strong emotional core, some serious feels after you dig a little. A Short Hike is built on Claire’s relationship with her mom and Lil Gator is about the title character’s relationship with his sister. Even Unpacking unpacks the story of the unseen protagonist.

Not Toem! You are just a cute little Arthur-like critter (you know, an aardvark that doesn’t resemble an aardvark in any way) who is going around taking photos and helping people. Wheeeee!

Seriously, the level of sweet, lowkey joy in Toem is pretty high.

While there is a goal, to find and photograph the titular phenomenon of the Toem, the game is really about exploring the black-and-white, hand drawn world of the game. 

Your photographer has been sent off into the world by their nana who has also given them their antique camera. You travel to each new area by bus. But you don’t buy bus tickets with money. No, you earn them by getting stamps from helping people out.

And it is a world of quirky, individualized inhabitants. All sorts of strange but always friendly creatures. Toem is not just a harmless world but an uplifting one. It’s a quirky world but one that makes you feel welcome.

Smart phones have made amateur photographers out of all of us. Toem is a celebration of that. Toem takes something that so many of us do all the time (photography), something that might already be a game in a way, and makes it own game out of it.

I don’t know the reality of The Invention of Morel

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares is a well regarded masterpiece and an important part of Latin American literature. So I feel incredibly provincial since I had never even heard of it until earlier this year. And I’ve finally read it and it was worth the read.

The Invention of Morel is a short work, really a novella. So I’d recommend going out and reading it because I cannot discuss it without spoiling it entirely.

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The Invention of Morel may be about an unreliable narrator alone on an island full of holograms but it might also be about an unreliable narrator alone on an island who is going completely mad. It definitely discuses the nature of what is real.

An unnamed political refugee fleeing from persecution manages to reach a mysterious island that allegedly has a disease that kills everyone who lands there. He discovers a complex that includes a huge building that is called a museum. Seriously, the description of this elaborate building is insane. It would be bizarre in a major city, let alone a deserted island. 

Then a group of vacationers suddenly appear in the museum. The unnamed refugee, who is terrified of being captured, hides from them in the marshlands, where he has to deal with dangerous tides and malnutrition. Despite his fear, he spies on the vacationers and develops an obsession with a beautiful woman named Faustine.

Eventually, the refugee figures out that the vacationers are just recordings, endlessly replaying the same week. A power cut had turned it off when he first arrived. More than that, we learned that the process of being recorded is lethal. The inventor Morel tricked his friends into coming to the island so he could spend an endless week with the woman he was in love with.

The refugee is able to splice himself into the recoding so he had spend eternity with a woman he has never actually known, dying in the process.

Wow. There is a lot to unpack.

First of all, the narrator is definitely unreliable. In fact, the footnotes from the fictional editors seem to be specifically designed to hammer home the inconsistencies in his journal. His obsession with Faustine is raw and uncomfortable. At the same time, he is under such extreme conditions that his instability makes him believable.

While I used the word hologram earlier, the recordings actually replicate people and objects for all five senses. Which opens up the question of what is real. The narrator wonders if the recordings think the thoughts that the originals had at the time, if they have their souls.

And there is the fact that the people who get recorded die. In fact, their deaths resemble radiation poisoning. Does the process kill them or do their lives get absorbed into the recordings?

Morel’s decision to commit suicide and murder almost all his friends is completely psychotic but the narrator sympathizes with him. The reader (and quite possibly Casares) might strongly question if the recordings are the same as the original but the narrator buys into the idea. For me, this was less about are the recordings being ‘real’ and more how these recordings affect someone who is crazy.

The Invention of Morel doesn’t give us its own answer for what is real or what makes up reality. One interpretation is that the recordings aren’t even real in story and the narrator is a raving lunatic. It does give us plenty of food for thought. I like being asked to think.