YORKTON - The great thing about print and play games is that there are so many to discover – many which are even free to download.
Now not all PnP games will prove to be worth the paper you will use to print them on, but then again not every boxed game you buy warrants shelf space in the game room either.
But, when you can find a printable game that offers you more than most – well it reduces the risk of disappointment significantly.
That brings us to the Dice Deck from We Heart Games and designer Mike Berg.
This is a really simple idea when you think about it. The deck of cards you print are essentially 3d6 in each of white, red, and black.
The 54 cards print a nice size – a full poker card in size – so it makes sleeving using a standard card as backing easy. Since the cards fit nicely you only need to print the backs if you want, the poker card back works just as well here and saves six pages of ink consumption.
But, what makes this one worth a printing is that like a regular deck of cards there are a number of games which can be played with the Dice Deck.
So if you go to weheart.games/dicedeck/rules/ you will find the rules for 10-games – and where to download the card files. Since most have been released this year one might hope others will be forthcoming too.
The games include solitaire efforts such as ‘The Collector’ (rather familiar in approach to some standard solitaire games), and ‘Planetary Defence System’ (a solo deck-builder which are pretty popular these days).
Certainly ‘Planetary’ was one I had to ear mark for play as most deckbuilders are interesting based on the mechanic -- games such as the excellent Agent Decker and Card Capture or the two-player Crowns Rivals (also by Berg).
Berg has something going with ‘space-themes’ here also.
‘Astro Lander’ and ‘Threeport shipping’ are two player games which follow the space theme and both are good, solid offerings.
The two almost have a miniature game ‘feel’ and are far enough away from traditional games to be a treat.
There is a trick taker and a push-your-luck offering too.
Now not all of these games will win favour with all, but that can be said of card games, loving cribbage does not make you a lover of Kaiser, but with 10 games to try you get some significant ‘play time’ when you print this. An hour exploring each game and you have 10 hours of gaming, and even if one game makes your ‘let’s play again’ list you have a very reasonable cost deck of cards to use with that favoured game.
I’ll add here that this ‘system’ begs for expansion.
The first logical step would be to add three sevens and eights in each colour, for 18 more cards, or a 72-card expanded deck which would allow some expanded game creation options.
To feed the creation process a contest on a site like BoardGameGeek.com inviting creative sorts to build games for either 54 or 72 cards would likely add several games of interest to the catalogue of what is playable.
Overall though, the versatility of a deck of cards that offers multiple games to play makes it a game to recommend to PnP.
