It Don’t Matter If You’re Weiß or Schwarz
Playing cards. They are one of the most common and versatile components in any board game. In card games, which are a subset of board games, they are also the only component.
There are several reason cards are popular in games:
- They are versatile. You can easily arrange them in any order you like. You can randomise their order. You can sort them into separate piles.
- They are easy to handle. This is one of the reasons they are used so often in magic tricks. Sleight of hand is a huge part of magic and an essential skill for any magician.
- They are easy to produce. Essentially, they are just pieces of printed paper. No need for any other tools or moulds. Just a printer and you’re good to go.
- They can be labelled. You can include helpful icons on them, on either face. You can include text, which can be difficult to do so on other types of components.
- They can emulate almost any other game component. This is perhaps the biggest factor in their popularity. Cards can be used in place of stat sheets, dice, tiles, tokens, etc. Game makers are still coming up with new and creative ways to use cards.
52! = 8.0658175e+67
That is an astronomically large number. Specifically, it is 80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000. This number is the number of different combinations you can arrange a standard deck of 52 poker cards.
A number that large is very difficult to visualise, but let us try to understand it in terms of playing cards.
Take a standard deck of playing cards, and spend a minute or two shuffling it. Shuffle it any way you like. After you’re done, take a look at the order of the cards. There is a very good chance you’re looking at the only deck to have ever had this specific order of cards. Out of all the shuffled decks that have ever existed, you have arrived at one specific order that has never ever existed before in the history of shuffled playing cards.
This huge number of combinations, and only from 52 different cards. Imagine the number of combinations for the hundreds of other card games out there!
But I digress.
“Trust everybody, but always cut the cards.”
-Funley Peter Dunne
Like many of you, I grew up playing card games. Go Fish, Old Maid, Snap, and Cheat were some of the ones I played while I was very young.
When I was older, I was introduced to a duel-style card game that goes by the name of Weiss Schwarz. It was essentially a Magic clone, but appealed more to the “anime” crowd.
Weiss Schwarz introduced me to the many ways cards can be used in place of other game components. It is essentially a duel game, where you form your team of performers and pit them against another team. Both teams take turns battling and the team that runs out of time loses.
To understand the many things I learned about card mechanics, let us take a brief dive into the world of Weiss Schwarz.
“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the game.”
-Randy Pausch
- Cards can be positioned in a specific arrangement (a formation). Your Character cards are placed on Stage, where the red and blue spots are. The cards in Front or Center stage are your main performers on stage, and they attack the opponents’ cards directly opposite.
- Cards positioned this way act as tiles on a game board. Character cards in Back are the backstage crew that support the performers on Front or Center stage. The left Front character only benefits from the left Back character, the right Front from the right Back, and the Center character benefits from both Back characters.
- Cards can be placed in different orientations. Character cards on stage are turned sideways after they have attacked, to indicate they can no longer attack again. There are cards that can turn other cards sideways so they cannot attack in the first place. Cards can be placed face-up or face-down.
- Cards can be used to track progress. Cards placed in Level indicate your team’s level of performance. When you place the 7th card in the Clock, you put one of the 7 cards in Level and discard the rest. The higher the Level, the better cards you can play.
- Cards can be used to set the pace. Cards placed in Clock not only tracks your team’s experience (in conjunction with Level), but it also sets the pace of the game, as you lose when your Clock is fully filled (with 3 cards in Level and 7 cards in Clock). This is essentially your damage counter. The more cards in your Clock, the closer you are to losing.
- Cards can be used as resources. Cards placed in Stock indicate your available resources to play other cards. There are many ways to gain Stock in this game, one of which is attacking the opponent. Should I attack and risk losing my Character so that I can gain 1 Stock, or should I not attack and risk not having enough Stock for my next turn?
- Cards can be to track resources. Cards placed in Memory are out-of-play and can no longer be used. In this game, however, this can be used to your advantage by having Characters that scale their abilities with the number of cards in your Memory.
I have only listed 7 different ways the cards are used, but there are actually only 3 different types of cards in Weiss Schwarz.
Unlike other games, where Action cards belong in the Action deck, Character cards are placed only in front of you, Room cards are placed on the board, Event cards are flipped from the Event deck, in Weiss Schwarz, all 3 types can be placed in any of the 7 spots to serve different purposes.
Not to mention, there are still many more ways the cards are used that would be difficult to explain without teaching you how to play the game.
“Ooh, two at once? Not my style. Seriously.”
-Gambit, Gambit #5
That’s about all for now.
I will go into further detail about the different cards in Weiss Schwarz and the many creative and interesting card mechanics they use.
This will be the first of a few parts of articles about cards and card mechanics. Over the next few articles, I intend to go into more detail about some of the hundreds of different card mechanics out there.