Betrayal or Devotion: The Disciples at Easter

jKitz

      So over the past couple weeks I designed a single or co-operative card game. It's Easter theme'ed and I presented it to my Church yesterday. I'm pretty happy with how it plays as a solo-play game, allthough I have considered tinkering with some variants to make it more difficult and to vary the rules or set up to have multiple-players interacting with each other.

      The full rules are only a couple pages. Feel free to make your own hand-made deck with the 45 cards if you desire. If folks like it, maybe I'll take the game further.

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Betrayal or Devotion: The Disciples at Easter

Background:

An Easter Themed single or multi-player co-operative card game. The players are playing against the game trying to be one two disciples who acted well during the saga of the cross.

 

Victory Conditions:

• John: 2 Devotion cards and 4 Faith cards in play or
• Mary Magdelene: 2 Devotion cards and 4 Belief cards in play

 

Lose Conditions:

• Judas: 2 Betrayal cards in play or
• Peter: 3 Fear cards in play or
• Thomas: 4 Doubt cards in play

 

The Deck Basics:

Black Cards: Betrayal, Fear, Doubt. These are the sinful disciple cards.

Yellow Cards: Devotion, Faith, Belief. These are the righteous disciple cards.

White Cards: These are special cards players have in hand, and can play as an action. If one is revealed it is drawn into the players hand. Cards include Forgiveness, Redemption, Do you Love Me, Hands, Feet and Side. Saviour cards.

Tainted White Cards: Count as white cards for setup. Effects cannot be blocked.

 

Play Setup:

1. Separate the white cards and the disciple cards (black and yellow).
2. Layout 10 unrevealed disciple cards facedown to form the play area.
3. Draw 3 white cards into the player’s hand. Discard any tainted white cards.
4. Shuffle the remaining white cards and the remaining disciple cards together to form the draw deck.

 

Play:

1. Turn over an unrevealed card.
2. If it is a white card take the card into your hand.
3. If possible the player may use a white card that is in hand to stop the effects of a black card that has just been revealed. This may also move the card to the out-of-play area.
4. If not blocked, follow the effects of the revealed card.
5. If desired use the special power from 2 devotion cards.
6. Check if any of the win or lose conditions have been met.
7. If there are any empty spaces in the play-area fill them in with new cards.
8. Repeat

 

Additional Rules:

1. If all 10 cards in the play area are revealed and no win condition or lose condition has been met, add another row of 5 cards to the play area. (Repeat if all 15 are revealed.)

 

Cards and their special effects

 

Yellow Cards:

Faith (5 cards): no special effect

Belief (5 cards): no special effect

Devotion (4 cards): 2 Devotion cards may be sacrificed at any time to remove any black card. All three cards are moved into the out-of-play area. This does not stop the effect of a black card that has just been revealed, this action must take place after the black card’s effect is resolved.

Faith and Devotion (1 card): counts as both a Faith and a Devotion card.

Belief and Joy (1 card): when revealed you may remove a single Fear or Doubt card. Counts as a Belief card.

 

Black Cards:

Fear (5 cards): remove a Faith card from the play area. If no Faith card is revealed, discard any unrevealed card to the out-of-play area.

Doubt (5 cards): remove a Belief card from the play area. If no Belief card is currently revealed, take a doubt card from the out-of-play area and return it to the play area. (If there are also no doubt cards in the out-of-play area nothing happens).

Betrayal (3 cards): Remove a revealed devotion card from the play area. If there are no devotion cards in play copy the effect of either Fear or Doubt.

 

White Cards:

Forgiveness (3 cards): Counter and/or remove any black card

Redemption (2 cards): Return any yellow or white card from the out-of-play area to the play area or into your hand.

Do You Love Me (3 cards): Counter and/or remove a Fear card

Hands, Feet, Side (3 cards): Counter and/or remove a Doubt card

 

Tainted White Cards*:

Free will (2 cards): The next revealed disciple card can never be removed from play. If it has an effect it cannot be blocked. Place this under the next disciple card revealed with the effect text showing.

Confusion (1 card): Move three random revealed or unrevealed cards from the play area back into the draw deck. Reshuffle the draw deck. This may include the confusion card. Do not refill the vacant 3 places with new cards.

Habits (2 cards): Return 2 random out-of-play disciple cards to the play area. Reveal one of them immediately.

 

*Tainted White cards are considered white for the purposes of game set up. If one of the Tainted White cards is drawn into the starting hand, discard it. Do not draw another card.

A Tainted White card revealed during play takes effect immediately, nothing can counter them.

 

45 cards total

 

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I'm sharing a PDF of the above rules on the Downloads page.

DavidK

I enjoyed playing this game. It was a great learning experience and got you thinking about faith and character.

jKitz

I enjoyed playing this game. It was a great learning experience and got you thinking about faith and character.

Glad you liked it. I tried pretty hard to capture as much of the "spirit" of the Easter story as I could. The idea I hope people walk away with is that we all are sometimes a Judas, a Peter or a Thomas. And sometimes through Grace, we get to do better.