Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] Discard and Draw in Zark City

  • FromCarl Worth <cworth@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateWed, 27 Feb 2008 07:28:56 -0800
On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:27:14 -0800, "Tom Phoenix" wrote:
> The description of Draw, on the PDF, says, "Discard any cards you
> don't want, then draw three cards. You can never hold more than six
> cards."

I read that as "then draw *up to* three cards" (so that the your hand
has no more than six). I think the "never" is clear enough that you
can't draw extra and then discard down to six. Andy, if you revise the
PDF, adding "up to" might help, (assuming I've got the intent right).

> How many cards, if any, must be discarded before drawing? May a player
> with five cards choose to discard one and draw only two new cards, for
> example, or does that player discard one, then draw three and discard
> one of those? May a player ever discard zero cards before drawing?

We played with discarding zero, and drawing only one or two when our
hands were near full and we didn't want to discard enough to be able
to draw six.

Meanwhile, I taught the game to my sons the other night. The
11-year-old and 8-year-old picked it up very quickly, and liked
it. The 5-year-old probably would have too, but he chose to play on my
wife's team, so I didn't get to see how well he would have done on his
own.

I do like how simple the rules are. I think it's even easier to teach
than Treehouse for example. (The actions are much less "fiddly"---with
Treehouse there's all of the extended clarifications required like:
"Dig only works on flat pieces, can only go in the direction its
facing, can come up under a flat piece and turn it upright, ..."). I
taught Zark City without any printed player guide handy, which is
something I wouldn't do with Treehouse, for example.

-Carl

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