Ep 4 Game Rules: Heads Up Duel! | GAMEBREAKER

WHAT IS THIS?

This post explains the rules of the game featured in Episode 4 of Gamebreaker.

These posts will be split into two sections:

Section 1 is the rules of the game as presented in the episode. This is for viewers who find reading rules helpful for game comprehension, or wanted to check a specific rule.

Section 2 is for people who want to try and play the game themselves with friends. It will include extra information on top of the rules explained in section 1, and suggestions to adapt the game outside of the competition format. Section 2 may contain spoilers for the episode.

SECTION 1: RULES FOR EPISODE

Game 4 of the competition is... Heads Up Duel!

Aim of the game: Players trade cards to curate their deck. Then, each player face off against one other opponent in a duel. The player in the duel who scores the most points wins their duel.

Pregame: Two standard card decks (52 cards: number cards from 2 to 10, and special cards Jack, Queen, King and Ace. There are four of each type of card) are shuffled together, and dealt into packs of 15 random cards. (14 cards won’t be in play).

Every player then selects a random pack, and receive 3 marbles.

Cards:

In Heads up duel, there are two types of cards:

• Number cards (2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)

• Special cards (Ace, King, Queen, Jack)

Number cards have a numeric value (eg. a 4 card is worth 4)

Special cards have no numeric value (0), but change the rules of a round when played!

(See special card rules below)

Note: Suits are irrelevant.

Trading and discussion round:

There will be 40 minutes for players to discuss strategy and trade cards with each other. There are no restrictions on card trades so long as both players agree. Players can also trade marbles.

The black market will open between 10 to 30 minutes, where players can buy booster packs of cards with their marbles (each pack contains 5 cards).Once the 40 minutes are up, trading is over, and players must immediately submit their entire deck to the Game Master.

Gamebreaker Advantage: During the discussion phase, players can spend half a token to receive 3 extra marbles.

Duel assignment:

Players submit any marbles they have remaining to the Games Master. Whoever submit the most marbles gets to pick who their opponent will be in their duel. Then, the player who submitted the next most marbles (so long as they weren’t already picked), chooses their opponent.

If there is a draw for marbles submitted, the player with the most GB tokens gets priority. If there is still a draw, and no agreements between players can be made, it will be decided at random.

The Game Master will decide the order of the duels.

Round of a duel:

Here is how a round of the duel works:

First is the showdown phase. To start a round of the duel, both duellists play one card from their hand, face down on the table.

Once both players are happy with their selection, they touch the GB marker to indicate they are ready to proceed.

Next is the advantage phase: the duellists cards are revealed. Duelists can now play as many cards as they like face up on the table.

HOWEVER, they can only play a number card that matches the number they played during the showdown phase.

When both players touch the GB marker simultaneously, the round will end.

The duellist who has the highest sum of numbers on the table, will win a point for that round.

The Game Master announces the updated point totals for the duel, then all cards on the table are discarded.

The next round then begins.

Special card rules:

Special cards affect the rules of the round they are played.

J: When a Jack is played, ALL cards on the table are instantly discarded (including that Jack).

Q: If you play a Queen, you can opt to play an additional number card from your hand that does not match the one you played during the showdown phase. If you do, discard the Queen.

K: Earns you one bonus point if it remains on the table when that round ends.

A: If an Ace is played, scoring rules are flipped from highest numeric sum to lowest numeric sum wins a point for that round. However, every time an Ace is played during a round, the scoring rules will flip again.

Results:

Rounds will continue to be played until one duellist runs out of cards in their hand. That round then becomes the last round of the duel, and when it ends, the duel is over.

The outcomes of the duel are as follows:

• If you score the most points in your duel, you earn a complete GB token.

• If you score the least points in your duel, you get a strike.

• If the duel ends in a point draw, both players get nothing.

Additionally, the player who scored the most points across all of the duels earns a bonus half a token!

SECTION 2: FOR PLAYING YOURSELF.

Game player count (Even number of players: 2,4,6,8…)

2 players: no trading or discussion, just a duel.

4 players: You can play the game the same as the episode. Optionally, you can do a tournament system with two semi-finals, then the winners compete to declare a winner.

6 players: as in episode.

8 players: Can play as in episode. Optionally, can do quarter finals, semifinals and finals.

Materials: Minimum 2 decks of cards (But many more is preferable!)

Optional: a marker (like the GB icon in the episode) for players to touch to indicate they are ready to proceed in the duel (you can just do verbal confirmation, but that’s less fun in my opinion.)

The game doesn’t require a Game Master if you don’t include the Joker. With no Game Master you will need to have enough packs in the black market for every player to buy whatever they want (or you can just remove the black market).

Alter the length of discussion/trading time based on your group, anywhere between 10 minutes and one hour.

If you are doing a tournament style version of this game, or you don’t have a black market (and therefore no marbles) you can decide the duel match ups at random BEFORE the trading/discussion phase. If this is the case, I’d make the discussion/trading phase shorter.

If you want to remove draws from the game (eg. tournament version), you can decide on a tie breaker scenario in the case of a draw. (For example, the player with the most cards remaining wins, OR remove bonus points from Kings.)

You can also opt to skip the trading/discussion phase too, but bear in mind that increases the odds a player automatically wins/loses based on how lucky they are with their starting deck.

If you want to include booster packs, here are the ones I used in the episode:

Booster packs:

Low Pack (1 marble) contains a 2,3,4,5 and a 6

High Pack (2 marbles) contains a 6, 7, 8, 9 and a 10.

Mystery Pack (2 marbles) draw 5 random cards from a regular deck.

Special Pack (4 marbles) contains a J,Q,K,A and a Joker (Tell the player who buys the deck what this card does in private. In the episode it did nothing, and as anticipated, the players made up a rule. Feel free to come up with your own rule for the Joker though.)

I recommend using a different deck of cards for each type of booster pack if possible (though that is a lot of cards!), so players have the opportunity to infer a players hand based on the backs of their cards.

Breaking the game (read at your own discretion, this did not happen in the episode,):

A good strategy is having a short, powerful deck, by gifting away all your cards, so you start the duel with the intention of winning only a couple points, and running out of cards to force the duel to end early. The danger with this strategy comes in your opponents special cards messing you up (eg. Jacks and Kings), so you must account for this when selecting your opponent/ making your deck.

This is incredibly strong for a pair of allies: One player gifts most of their cards to the other, so one player has a huge deck, while the other has a tiny but powerful deck, so both are in a good position (assuming they don’t play each other).

The game break: I would have allowed this to go to the extreme: one player gifts ALL their cards to their ally. Their ally starts with a broken card deck that will most likely automatically win regardless the opponent, while the other player starts the duel with no cards. As per the rules of the game, the duel has ended before it has even begun, as the first round does not start until both players play one card, therefore this duel is an automatic draw, effectively neutralizing the opponents hand.

Rule changes: For this reason, to avoid short or non-starting duels, you might want to add a minimum number of cards a player can begin a duel with.