You have 0 items in your cart. View Cart | Go to Checkout
Search for games:
Top Selling Games
RSS Feed
Make a VPG 10: Pieces - Cards & Tiles
Game Pieces – VPG Cards and Tiles
In our last installment, we took an extensive look at the die-cut counters used in many Victory Point Games products. In addition to counters, many games include cards – and at VPG we manufacture those by hand also. In this article, we will discuss the origins and use of cards in games, how VPG manufactures cards and the various templates that we use, the difference between a “card” and a “tile,” and some philosophical guidelines to follow when designing cards to include in your Victory Point Games product.
Why are Cards so Special?
“Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will.” Jawaharlal Nehru
People have long played with little pieces of cardboard or thin wood – all of which we would call ‘cards.’ This has been going on for hundreds of years all over the word, except for Africa (where card games never developed). In most board games that do not use cards, it is usually pretty clear from the start what kinds of things will happen, and players can plan their strategies from the outset by figuring out the various likely outcomes from different moves and probable occurrences.
In a pure card game, players generally only know the hand they’re dealt. Of course, they’ll see that other players have cards, too, but won’t know exactly which they are because all they’ll see of an opponent’s hand is the standard back design of the cards and not the cards’ faces. Experienced players will know what sort of situations those cards can engender, and use that knowledge to make good plays, avoid bad ones, and cope with a known ranges of outcomes.
Clearly, the key to the success of cards in games is that they provide players with incomplete information. This means that players must think intuitively, gauge the the likely cards their opponent might or might not be holding (insight) and not give away any information about their own cards prematurely (i.e., mastering a ‘poker face’). Players can also dissemble or give off false clues about their cards (bluffing), thus giving an advantage to those who develop good ‘card sense.’ Beyond intuition, a knowledge of probability also benefits a card player who can calculate the chances of finding sought-after cards in the deck during each draw or deal.
“A major attraction of card games is that they are, in general, neither wholly mindless, like most dice games, nor excessively cerebral, like Chess, but offer a reasonable balance of chance and skill.” David Parlett, A History of Card Games
At Victory Point Games, we publish ‘pure’ board games (that have no cards; e.g., Trenches of Valor), ‘pure’ card games (that have no board; e.g., Tenka), and many hybrid games that include a board, pieces and cards (e.g., Waterloo 20 or Caesar XL). When it comes to matters of war and strategy, the subject of many of the greatest books and games in history, this combination of board and card game elements (“hybrid component” based games) give a game’s designer considerable versatility in ‘telling that game’s story.’
Hybrid component game designs open up both the ‘design space’ available to that game’s inventor to invoke a variety of integrated game systems. These game systems can cleverly interact in interesting ways to invoke more player involvement. This greater ‘design space’ also provides the tools in the game designer’s toolbox that make it possible to convey data in a variety of clear, appropriate, and useful ways that benefit the player. And when so designed, hybrid component games tend to also open up the ‘possibility space’ of potential player interactions and hence create more avenues that a player can use to approach victory. That is, players can do more kinds of things, and in a greater variety of different ways, to solve that game’s puzzles.
“…in the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.”
Carl von Clausewitz made that remark about war and card games in his opus, On War. Please notice that he did not compare war to dice or roulette where it things are all a matter of random outcomes and strict mathematical probabilities. Instead, he compared war to cards because cards offer limited intelligence for each opponent, forcing them to think intuitively and ‘size each other up;’ card games allow for psychological maneuvers and making use of a clever ‘ruse de guerre’ on occasion, and offers a place for deduction, as well as fate and luck – thus making war a ‘game’ of skill as well as odds. When designing a game for VPG, particularly a wargame, the addition of some cards (while certainly not a design mandate) can greatly facilitate this aspect of the conflict being simulated.