Capture the King is a game designed by a fellow workshop group, and our design team, along with another, participated in play testing it today. Play involves four packs of cards and five players. A single Joker card is taken from the total of four decks and marked, becoming a special card (I’ll call it the King Card just for explanation’s sake). The King Card is inserted into the stack of decks and all of the cards are shuffled. After shuffling, players are dealt one card at a time until all the cards have been distributed. The King is designated as the player who holds the king card, and he publicly declares this by placing the King Card for all others to see.

The King then sets out three identical cards, face-up, to form the stack (identical cards share the same suit and pip count, for example three Aces of Spades are identical). Since there are four instances of each suit-pip combination, one other player has to have a single card that is identical to trio of cards the King has initially played. The player who holds this card at the beginning of play is called the Jester, although he does not make his identity known to the King or the other players. At this point, there are two teams: one being the King and his Jester; the other consisting of the three remaining players. As the name suggests, the latter team’s objective is to capture (or rather defeat) the King (and Jester) by discarding their cards before the opposing duo.

Play passes to the right after the king’s initial turn, where the next player attempts to make a discard by matching the number of cards the King played (three in the first play) but with cards of a single pip-value that are higher than the cards played by the car. So at this point, if the King has played three Fives of Hearts, the player with the fourth Five of Hearts becomes the Jester, and the player sitting to the king’s right (who could incidentally also be the Jester) must play three cards whose pip-value is six or higher. Players take turns trying to trump the last discard until all players pass (on account of not wanting or being able to trump), or the highest-value combination is played; in this game the Two is ranked the highest, then the Ace and all the way down to Three.

When no other players can make a move, the stack is removed from play and the last player to trump the stack sets out any number of cards with the same pip-value (for example, two Jacks). The play passes to the right, where the next player has to try to trump the first play of the new stack (to continue the example, the next player can trump by playing two Queens, Kings, Aces or Twos, but not any fewer or more than two). Play continues until the King and Jester are both out of cards (at which point the Jester reveals himself and declares victory) or the other three players have discarded their hands and declared themselves non-Jesters (and thus win the game for themselves).

We only had time to test the game once, but it is easy to see that this is a fun concept for a game. There were several issues however, some of which I raised to the designers. During card dealing, players became a bit bored while waiting for the 200+ cards to be dealt. I suggested that cards be split up in stacks of approximately 40, and each player shuffle his cards without looking at them. The cards should then be put together and then distributed crudely in small stacks of ten or so cards at a time, When the cards had all been dealt, each player could count his cards (without looking at their faces) and place any cards exceeding his share in the centre, where players who needed more cards could take them. There is certainly a need for the four decks of cards in the game, but given the bulk of physical cards in that quantity, it is important that the designers make the initial set-up as quick as possible, so as not to detract from the game experience.

Another issue I raised was that the game should have individual objectives for each player. For example, if a player won the game by being on the winning team three rounds, it would even out the slight imbalance created by the two-to-three makeup of the teams. Since all players would compete under the same conditions, it would make the game fair for all players. Furthermore, the game doesn’t take very long to play, so by introducing the need to win several rounds, the significance of winning, and thus the attention paid by players towards the game, would be greatly enhanced.

Capture the King looks like a promising game design. Its props are minimal and simple, and the game concept is very straightforward. But since the game takes a while to pick up, the designers need to ensure that they can convey the rules clearly to new players. It is quite clear that it is this aspect of the design that will make or break the game’s success, and I hope that our feedback can assist them in doing that.