Chapter 68: Jiangyou's Board Game Experience (Part 1)
Lunch had just ended, and dinner was still several hours away. The strange-looking goats and the pheasants and rabbits the hunters had brought had just arrived in the kitchen. Andrei and the hunters were taking care of them, so Takuyou didn't need to worry about them for the time being.
So these few hours were the most leisurely time for Jiangyou. She happily played a few rounds of CARDS with the magician and servants, and transformed from a novice with only a limited knowledge into a confident player.
There's a huge difference between watching someone play card games and playing them yourself. Sitting before the magic map, holding a deck of exquisite cards, Jiangyou saw things he hadn't seen before while watching the game.
Players play leaf cards in a rotating order of east, south, west, and north. In the first round, the player in the east takes the first move, followed by the south, west, and north. In the second round, the player in the south takes the first move, followed by the west, north, east, and so on.
Jiangyou felt that this rule was somewhat similar to the Dongfeng Bureau and Banker rules in Mahjong. However, in this game, this rule itself was not related to the playing style, bets or odds, and seemed to be simply for establishing a fair order.
Players can leave the game at the end of each round to make substitutions, but players already on the field cannot swap positions—presumably to ensure that, during long, multi-player games, individual players don't constantly switch positions to secure their first turn. After all, in this kind of board game, some players excel at playing first, while others excel at playing second.
After the four players take their seats, they shuffle and gather the cards together, then draw cards. There are three decks, all shuffled and gathered separately. The first deck consists of character cards, which are drawn in seating order, followed by the initial point cards.
There are four types of point cards: physical attack and defense points, magic points, money points, and popularity points. Ten of each type are drawn separately. After drawing a card, it becomes the player's hand. In other words, if the first player draws 10 points of money, subsequent players can only try their luck with the remaining money points from 1 to 9.
The initial points plus the character card's own point attribute bonus are the player's starting points in the game. When the player places their character card and point card face down on the designated position on the magic map, the magic map will automatically add up the final data and provide it to the player.
Of course, the point cards you touch will not be displayed to the public, and the player can only see his own territory and values, as well as the identities of other players in his initial field of vision.
After arriving at the final points, the player needs to throw the drawn initial point card face down into the point card recycling area, and virtual point card phantoms will appear on the player's map. These phantom point cards can be consumed by the player in each round of action, or offset the losses of each round, or be used for event investment... Similarly, the player's action of swiping point cards on his own map is just a random tap in the void in the eyes of other players.
——From this perspective, if players want to fool other players, they can also randomly click at the void from time to time during their turns.
This was very different from the spectator perspective. In the spectator perspective, Takumi Yuu could see the entire battle map without restrictions, but at this moment, her front and left were shrouded in a gray mist, with only the character card in front of her shining.
"Interesting. So one of the ways to play this card is to guess the resources of each player." Jiang You pondered, "At the beginning, the resource points are hidden, but as players continue to act, everyone will gradually guess what kind of cards others have."
"Guessing each side's cards is only the first step." Because it was a teaching session, the magicians diligently taught Takumiyou how to play. "This is just a beginner's deck using forty point cards, so guessing the exact value is relatively easy. However, in a complex card deck, there are five or six decks of point cards alone, mixed together, making it difficult to calculate the exact value.
"However, in most cases, we don't need to know the specific points in the other players' hands. We only need to judge whether our opponents are rich or poor, strong or weak, aggressive or cautious. The initial points are just a natural starting point, and how to manage these capitals depends entirely on the player. Understanding the opponent's playing style and method is crucial."
After the initial card drawing and value determination, the official game begins. Each round, players will have three different action phases.
The first action phase is called the card distribution phase. Players can randomly draw a card from the face cards, pay the points required for the current round, or bear the corresponding penalty cost.
The second action phase is called Free Action, where players can choose to explore their own map grids or enter the grids of other adjacent players from their own map borders. However, when exploring their own grids, players can directly use their own character cards to trigger and advance events, while when exploring other players' grids, it is best to use flower characters.
"This is customary, of course, mainly because the player's own character card has a health bar." Eslan pointed to the blood-drop icons in the lower right corner of the character card. "If a character card is attacked by the enemy and loses the battle round, if it sustains an attack that exceeds the health bar limit, it will die, and the round will be completely lost. Flower characters are considered soldiers. If they die, they just need to be thrown into the graveyard—the waste card area. The loss is controllable.
"Assuming a skilled and daring individual with absolute confidence, in the late game, when the situation becomes clear, many players will choose to personally attack the enemy... Ah, there's also a situation where you don't have any flower characters, but your resources are so tight that if you don't attack and kill the enemy, you'll die. So, you have to fight, just in case you get a decisive kill."
In all attacks and confrontations, both players roll the dice to determine the points. Generally, the specific points are determined based on the attacker's strengths, and the calculation method is still the player's own points + the random roll. For example, if the attacker is a magician, the competition is based on magic points. In this case, the attacker's magic power is considered magic attack, and the defender's magic power is considered magic defense.
Jiang You understood that if the character's own strength was already sky-high and the gap between the enemy and the player was huge, then the dramatic effect of the random points could be weakened to nothing. However, if the strength of the two sides was similar, then the outcome could be completely determined by luck.
Merchants and priests are more special. The advantages of these two types of characters lie in money and popularity. Therefore, when they are the active attackers, the advantages are often determined based on the player's own choices.
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