Wallet Battles
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2B4waQbp8c
Player Count: 2-4
Play Time: 15-20 Minutes
Recommended Ages: 10+
Components: 18 Cards
Mechanic: Area Control
Description: Starting with a random hand of territories, grow your power by capturing neutral territories. Once you have built up your forces you can attack your opponents for dominance of the land. Use mercenaries to boost your attacks but be careful you don’t have too many when you have to pay for them at the end of the game. After the world has been conquered by the players score points based on your power in each territory.
Feedback
Creativity of Theme
Typical battle game with armies/mercenaries
Attacking other players to control lands.
Creativity of Mechanisms
Not a whole lot that intrigues me here. Weird weak kinda trick taking with a little bit of player interaction. The scoring at the end seems needlessly number-y.
Play a card with more swords than another card.
Mesh of Theme/Mechanism
You can attach this gameplay to a multitude of other theme settings.
Clarity of Rules
Very clear. Got a good idea for how to play just from the rules.
What if you can’t defeat any of the face up groups? Rules are incomplete.
Use of Form Factor
Not very much at all. They fit in the wallet, but extremely light on the multiuse of cards and some of the fun gamespace that 18 cards can bring.
Perceived Player Engagement
Aside from someone forcing you to do something like draft or let them look at your hand every now and then, you really can tune out on this game until it’s your turn and just react to what you see in front of you. Sure you can track who has what cards in their hand through looking at their hand, but it’s still kind of pointless because there’s no way to force someone to give you a certain card, or force a certain card to play. Just not enough with theme and gameplay to draw people in.
I don’t see an opportunity for players to make interesting choices.
Match with Button Shy Brand
Pretty blah theme as-is. No quirkiness or nostalgia grabs.
Neither the theme nor the mechanics offer anything interesting here.
WOW Factor
Nothing really impressive here
Concerns
I don’t see where players have interesting choices to make. I don’t like the “everyone masquerade a card to the left” – there’s little control.
Additional Comments
Could retheme it to be crazy aliens or battling toys in a kid’s toy chest to spice it up a bit, but sure the juice is worth the squeeze.
So few decisions. Attack and spy. Have better cards than the other players.