[HN Gopher] Cuttle - a MTG like game using a standard 52 card deck
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Cuttle - a MTG like game using a standard 52 card deck
Author : 7thaccount
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-01-10 18:43 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pagat.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pagat.com)
| 7thaccount wrote:
| *I recently stumbled upon this, but haven't had the time to play
| yet. It seems like it would be fun.
|
| I've recently started learning card games that use a standard
| deck of playing cards and have been pleased with many of them.
| The advantage over trading card games is that it is MUCH cheaper
| and takes up a lot less space and it doesn't feel like I'm
| chasing an impossible goal.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| A number of years ago I was at a friend's house and he wanted
| to play Uno but he couldn't be cause his dog got into the deck
| and many of the cards were damaged.
|
| I noticed he had a couple of packs of playing cards on his
| coffee table and upon closer inspection, I realized that each
| card in Uno maps to a card in 52 card deck. A standard Uno deck
| has 108 cards, which is a standard 52-card deck plus the
| jokers.
|
| So we played Uno with his two decks of playing cards.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| That's interesting. I always assumed that UNO was a branded
| version of a very similar game we used to play as kids with a
| regular deck of cards (e.g. 7 is draw 2, Jack allows you to
| pick a color). The game is called Tschau Sepp and very
| commonly played in Switzerland. I just assumed other
| countries had their own version of it, and that UNO derived
| from it.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| Called mau mau in germany
| popcar2 wrote:
| My friend, you just rediscovered Crazy Eights:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eights
| madcaptenor wrote:
| In fact, Uno exists because one family liked playing Crazy
| Eights but got tired arguing about the rules, so they
| started writing the rules on the cards and eventually made
| new cards: https://www.museumofplay.org/toys/uno/
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I tried to embark on this a few years ago, thinking
| particularly for cases where space is at a premium (airports)
| or I don't want to worry about wrecking/losing game components
| (camping, the beach).
|
| Overall I didn't find a lot that I liked, particularly in the
| two-player space. Everything seemed to be either Rummy-family
| games around set collecting, or trick-taking games that might
| as well have been Hearts or Euchre.
|
| All that to say, if you've got a few favourites, please
| recommend!
| netbioserror wrote:
| For anyone who wants a more complex game proximate to this
| design, there's a small production called Reinforcements
| (https://reinforcementscg.myshopify.com/). Non-collectible,
| single box.
|
| You play a hand of up to 5 cards each turn: Adding cards to
| (concealed) stacked ranks of defending troops, attacking an
| opponent's ranks, using a card's ability. The suits have
| different defensive properties when arranged in a rank, and
| combine in interesting ways; there are also "ultimate" powers
| players can grab from the center by forming their ranks with
| particular arrangements of suits, which act as turtle-busters.
|
| Highly recommended, quite fun, probably plays best 1v1.
| Definitely a lot of small rules to absorb, so it's a more complex
| beast. But nowhere close to the complexity of Magic.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I'd never heard of reinforcements, but it looks awesome.
| Definitely will purchase.
| phasE89 wrote:
| I'd never heard of astroturfing, but it looks intruguing.
| Definitely suspicious.
| Bootvis wrote:
| They have 300 times and 1000 times the reputation you have.
| Maybe dail down the paranoia.
| phasE89 wrote:
| That doesn't mean anything lol. I have over 100k karma on
| Reddit, and I've rented the account several times for
| various astroturfing posts for small startups. You'd be
| surprised how common that is. (I'm not proud of that, it
| was 6+ years ago. I wouldn't do it today)
| slopeloaf wrote:
| This is for a simple card game man. Recommending board
| games is part of the culture of the hobby. It ain't that
| deep
| rpdillon wrote:
| > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing...If
| you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and
| we'll look at the data.
| imzadi wrote:
| If co-op games are more your speed, check out Regicide.
| stevage wrote:
| Thank you!! This looks awesome. Cannot wait to try.
|
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/307002/regicide
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| I am having some friends over next week for dinner and we'll
| probably play some games afterwards. There are a ton of other
| games listed on the site and I am sure there are some fun ones
| here!
| CAPSLOCKSSTUCK wrote:
| It looks interesting, but I always struggle to explain (and
| conversely when on the other side, to understand) the rules of
| card games to new players. Has anyone had success in bringing a
| game more complicated than Cards Against Humanity to their friend
| group? What did you find helpful?
| popcar2 wrote:
| If you're playing with a friend group that has zero experience
| with card/board games, you need to ease them into the hobby
| with a game that's quick to explain and get into. If anything
| takes more than 10 minutes to explain then people generally
| give up.
|
| I had success getting friends to play games like Codenames,
| Fauna, Mountains of Madness, and Mysterium. There's a website
| called BoardGameGeek that gives each game a "weight" rating
| signifying how complex it is. Anything under 2/5 complexity
| should be easy enough for anybody.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I've had really good success with Monopoly Deal. Even if you
| hate regular monopoly (like me), I highly recommend.
|
| Rules are very simple, yet the strategy is deeper. You
| essentially want to get 3 property sets, but there are all
| kinds of action cards that allow you to steal properties or
| sets, negate actions, charge people rent money...etc. Nobody
| gets upset either as a typical game takes like 10-20 minutes.
| You can play like 2-6 players iirc.
| stevage wrote:
| One of my favourite categories of game is the ones that can
| be taught in one minute, yet has interesting gameplay.
| Santorini, Quaridor and Orbito are all this category.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I think it is a function of building up the concepts.
|
| You might teach someone how to play Hearts which is pretty
| rules light. But once they understand that, other trick taking
| games already have a head start.
|
| Another approach is to start with something where the rules are
| things on the cards so you learn them as you go. Sushi Go would
| be a good example of something like this and pretty
| approachable to start out.
|
| Another good suggestion is something like No Thanks! Over time,
| people start to see that a new game doesn't have to be onerous.
| Slowly learning concepts like drafting and discards and tricks
| and whatever, makes it easy to introduce further games because
| it becomes "This is just like Game X but with new rule Y."
| da_chicken wrote:
| I've taught dozens of people to play Magic, although not in the
| past 10 years.
|
| First, if at all possible, teach only one person at a time.
| Teaching multiple people a new game all at once is incredibly
| difficult for _everyone_.
|
| Second, they need to understand the basic turn structure or
| play pattern if the game has one. If you can, print it out and
| use it as a play-aid.
|
| Third, play several games open-handed with pre-constructed
| decks. Do not introduce the deckbuilding aspects of the game
| right away. Make the decks simple and basic. Ideally, create
| one deck for each "faction" in the game.
|
| In Magic, Wizards made 30-card beginning decks in each of the
| five colors that were meant for teaching the game. This was 15
| years ago or more; I doubt they still do it since Arena exists.
| They were all common, so nothing complicated. They were like...
| $10 a set or something. So you'd do the above and play a couple
| of games with different colors and let the new player find one
| they like. Then, once they feel experienced and played a game
| close-handed or with only one of us playing close-handed, I'd
| ask them which two decks they liked the best, and I'd pick two
| others. Then we'd each shuffle the two chosen decks together
| and play again. And watching a person's mind expand into what
| the game really was during that game was _incredibly_
| satisfying. Ideally, at the end, I 'd just give them all five
| decks to keep.
| stevage wrote:
| > First, if at all possible, teach only one person at a time.
| Teaching multiple people a new game all at once is incredibly
| difficult for everyone.
|
| Interesting observation! I haven't had this experience at
| all. I've taught lots of board games to people, usually to
| multiple at once. The thing I find tricky is when you have
| some people who have played before and they keep interjecting
| with details that either aren't relevant yet, or I was
| planning to mention at a better time in the explanation.
|
| A group of all newbs is much easier.
| antasvara wrote:
| For those that are interested, there's an online version
| available: https://www.cuttle.cards/signup
| ajot wrote:
| This reminds me of Duel [0], which also intended to be an MTG-
| like with a 52 card deck.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20100107192618/http://airship.ho...
| nvarsj wrote:
| This is fascinating. It seems obvious that this game was the
| direct inspiration for MtG, as Richard Garfield was a huge card
| game fanatic, and the number of unique effects it has in common
| (wraths, bounce, etc.) that are so iconic in MtG.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| Richard Garfield had never heard of Cuttle until fairly
| recently
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/17cb47k/cuttle_...
|
| Magic's direct inspiration was Cosmic Encounter.
| nvarsj wrote:
| Interesting, there must be some cross overs going on back in
| the 70s. The mechanics are so similar to mtg.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| tap your opponents web server, they cannot untap it during their
| untap step
| specproc wrote:
| Back in the day, me and a buddy wanted to play Magic -- mainly to
| troll our friends -- but didn't have cards to hand.
|
| We took a pair of normal card decks, mapped some basic decks to
| the cards, and we did play. Good times.
| hinkley wrote:
| There's a local pub by my old house that has a considerable
| collection of board games so we got to sample a lot that we or
| friends didn't already own. It always amuses me when I figure out
| that a board or card game was obviously prototyped on a standard
| card deck. It didn't happen a lot but it did happen a few times.
|
| Four kinds of cards in 1-2 stacks? 10-13 cards of each kind? 2-4
| special cards that are identical? Hmm, I wonder how this game was
| invented...
|
| I do wish we would get back to games that were just played with a
| deck of cards though. More options for bored people at small
| gatherings.
| aloisdg wrote:
| Like Coup or The Crew
| butlike wrote:
| Couldn't you just translate the rules to a standard playing
| deck? Seems like a PITA, but if you dont want to go through
| that effort, the ruleset inventor should get compensated for
| their effort...
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| There are tons of them, mostly thanks to a renaissance in Japan
| starting maybe a decade ago but spreading elsewhere.
|
| Taylor's Trick Taking Table is a YouTube channel dedicated to
| them. The Portland Game Collective's Discord channel is the de
| facto English language home to the movement.
|
| Most of them are very small scale and artisanal but a few
| bigger publishers have also started doing more of them in the
| past year.
|
| The Tokyo Game Market has literally hundreds of new ones
| released every year but most don't have English and can only be
| bought in Japan.
|
| A few smaller companies like Tricky Imports and Newmill Games
| are importing them, though.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| There are quite a few made in niche communities but often not
| very discoverable, as they aren't commercially viable and
| marketed. One notable exception is The Emissary[1] which had a
| successful retail release as For Northwood![2]. Kni54ts[3] is
| often held up as another very good example of the genre, making
| very creative use of the deck, but you can find many more
| browsing through the links.
|
| [1]
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DB2YF46s0oVFUSIpR9vxoGIbhpT...
| [2] https://www.sideroomgames.com/product/for-northwood/ [3]
| https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2946002/wip-kni54ts-a-solo-...
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Looks fun, but all the special effects seem like they'd be hard
| to remember. I wonder if there's a simpler variation that
| requires fewer rules to remember.
| stevage wrote:
| Games like this become much easier with a quick reference
| printed out.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of card games that can be played with a regular
| deck of cards, and I play Cuttle with my kids somewhat regularly.
| It's a fast-paced game, but you do have to get over the initial
| learning curve of the effects. I find just printing out a piece
| of paper with a quick reference on it helps.
|
| As others have alluded to in the thread, teaching people the
| rules is a barrier. As I looked around for a professionally
| printed game, I found a game that was very much like Magic the
| Gathering, but also just a single box of cards called Mindbug.
|
| https://mindbug.me/
|
| Turns out it was designed by some folks that brought Richard
| Garfield in near the end of its design and he ended up having
| some say in the final product. I've played it a couple of times
| and each game is only played with a random subset of the cards,
| so the combinatorics create a lot of replay value.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Just a note for people who are fascinated by the idea of
| sometimes skipping proprietary games that require specialized,
| expensive, and often irreplaceable equipment: Other than pagat,
| and David Parlett's page (https://www.parlettgames.uk/), we can
| observe that the master has already given us two gifts.
|
| _New Tactical Games with Dice and Cards_ and _Dice Games
| Properly Explained_ by Reiner Knizia
|
| Two of the books I'd take to prison.
| m463 wrote:
| what a great website.
|
| I was recently taught a card game, and when I searched for it I
| could not find it anywhere. Now I can probably find it.
| erganemic wrote:
| I wish I knew more interesting games that could be played with a
| standard deck. My wife and I travel a lot and there's something I
| find deeply appealing about being able to walk into any gas
| station, corner shop, or airport store anywhere in the world and
| come out with a dependency-free way of entertaining yourself (or
| even making friends!), and I feel like I don't know enough games
| that take advantage of that.
|
| That being said, I do have a few standbys:
|
| Bullshit's a favorite for semi-large groups:
| https://www.pagat.com/beating/cheat.html
|
| Egyptian Ratscrew is my pick for 3-5 players (although I'd
| caution it against playing it in quiet public spaces):
| https://waste.org/~oliviax/cards/ratscrew.html
|
| Lastly, Duel 52 is a recent favorite for just my wife and I to
| play, and very much in the vein of Cuttle:
| http://juddmadden.com/duel52/
| Agree2468 wrote:
| My Ukrainian roommate taught me Durak, it's a good complement
| to ERS if the people you're with aren't as slap-happy as that
| game require.
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