Castle Combo: My Favorite Mechanism

[@OleAndreasN]

I love this game. When you take a card face down, you take one of the three cards in play. This can be a great way to block your opponent.

[@thedurdlefest2884]

Another game that uses the back of the cards well is Air, Land, & Sea: Spies, Lies, & Supplies. In it you are trying to capture 3 bases in a tug of war that matches the suit, but you can always use the back of the card as a weaker wild to enhance a different base.

[@blacksheep9950]

The Oink game Startups has a neat feature where the coins and card backs have little icons on them to remind you of the setup rules - 10 coins and 3 cards each, and discard 5 cards from the deck.

[@benzrecycler]

Nice! I have been playing this with my son on BGA and I love how engaging it is from your very first decision. The keys really let you manipulate the board when needed so although I rarely get a perfect card - I always feel I have a solid choice even if it is coins/keys or a discount for future turns. 😃

[@Michaelrsted]

Love these videos. But omg. That closet in the background leaning against the skew wall is driving me nuts. 😂😂😂

[@jameystegmaier]

It’s permanently attached to the wall, not leaning on it. Was like that when I bought the place. Can’t be changed.

[@Michaelrsted]

@@jameystegmaierhaha fair enough. But what is lurking in the darkness between it and the wall? 👻👻😁

[@twozsinapod]

I love this game! I've been playing it constantly on BGA. It's simple and easy to teach but offers a lot of interesting decisions.

[@Boardgameric]

I really like the mechanic of using the back of a card in a pinch. Forest Shuffle uses that same mechanic where you can use the back of a card in your hand to represent a tree sapling if you have no trees to play.

[@jameystegmaier]

That's a great point! I've done that a few times in Forest Shuffle--it's a nice backup option.

[@Boardgameric]

@@jameystegmaier I can honestly say, I never done it, because I'm just too hopeful I can find a tree. :D

[@Pobman]

I like how Vaalbara uses the back of the card to break ties if two or more players have played the same character in a round (each player has the same 12 character cards with a subset they can choose from every round, the character cards have numbers on to determine player order). It has the five player omens in a row, with each pair of symbols separated by a > e.g: @ > * > & > % > # In the above example, if player @ and player # had played the same character, player @ gets to go first.

[@jameystegmaier]

That's really clever!

[@HotSauceTurtle]

My favorite mechanic from this game is actually the messenger and how you can use it to hinder your opponent's draft and almost guarantee your own. In a 2p game if there's a card you want to draft next turn, you can draft your current turn in such a way that sends the messenger to the opposite row. That means for the opponent to deny you that card they would both have to expend a key and hate draft it. Normally you can spend a key to refresh the row but you can't both move the messenger and refresh the row at the same time. This allows players to make very calculated moves and plan a turn or two ahead based on messenger movement.

[@FlippinFunFlips]

Cool!