Spelljack

I decided that during 2024, I'd make one game every month. I thought it appropriate to finish it off in the way it began. This month, I've created Spelljack, another extreme remix of Blackjack.

One of my previous blackjack remixes had magic-like powers granted to players pretty much at random. You only got to cast a spell in Magickjack when you drew the highest card value. When you cast the spell, its effect was determined randomly by a dice roll.

A big part of a spellcasting game like Magic: The Gathering (MTG) or Potion Explosion is the decision process providing players with an illusion of control over their own fate. For Spelljack, I've decided to give players more control over their resources.

Initially, I had the idea of a Blackjack-style game played with separate decks, which I hoped would mimic the deck building aspect of MTG.

The problem with that idea is that the cards don't indicate what spell they enable. A cheat sheet could work, with maybe 26 different effects with a value and suit assigned to some number of spell effects, but that seems unwieldy for players. It's hard enough to sort through 52 cards, much less to cross-reference a spell chart at the same time.

Spell list

Instead of trying to recreate the complexity of Magic: The Gathering with a deck of playing cards, I decided that 9 effects was plenty, and theoretically memorable with enough repetition.

• Diamonds: Tap or untap 1 card in your hand. A tapped card doesn't count toward your hand total.
• Clubs: Take 1 card from your hand and add it to one opponent's hand.
• Hearts: Swap any number of heart cards in your hand with an equal number of heart cards in 1 opponent's hand.
• Spades: You may sacrifice (move to the bottom of your draw deck) this card to move 1 card from 1 opponent's hand to the bottom of their draw deck.
• Queen: Off with their heads! Exile (place in a discard pile) 1 card from your own hand.
• King: The Mad King! Exile (place in a discard pile) 1 card from an opponent's hand.
• Jack: Swap all cards matching this card's colour with the same colour cards in 1 opponent's hand.
• Joker: Look at the top X cards of your draw deck, where X is the number of active players in the game.. Place the cards anywhere back in the deck.
• Ace: Add a +X counter to 1 opponent's hand, where X is the number of Aces in your current hand. Alternately, remove a counter from a card in your own hand.

Gameplay

Give 1 deck of standard playing cards to each player. Select 26 cards from your deck. This is your draw deck.

On your turn, take a card from your draw deck. Immediately upon drawing a card, you can cast its associated spell. Once a card's spell is used, the card is "mundane" and is worth its value (face cards count as 10 points).

The first player with a hand worth exactly 21 points (at the end of their turn) wins.

End game

Once any player's draw deck is depleted, the game is over. The player closest to 21 wins.

Lessons

Added spell options make for a more interesting game.

Building your own deck is a great way to feel ownership of your gaming experience.

Resource control is important, but also difficult to do simply. Limiting spells to trigger only when initially drawn is a simple way of limiting the player power, but it comes at the cost of some player agency.