Puzzle Strike

[The Schaef]

So... Puzzle Strike

Like the deck-building card games spawned by Dominion, but with chips pulled from a bag instead of cards.  Kind of Dominion meets Puzzle Fighter.

Your bag of chips consists of some 1-money gems and three different chips belonging to one of a set of characters.  Each character has his own powers which add variety to the starting "deck" and allow for diverse strategies even among the same sets of chips to buy.

Instead of buying points into your "deck", you begin your turn with an "ante" of a 1-gem into a separate pile (this is not part of your "deck" and does not count as money to spend).  If you end your turn with ten or more total in gems, you're out.  As in, player elimination.  You can play chips, though, that "crash" gems to the player to your left.  This mechanic kind of simulates the video games where having gems fall into a pile, you clear them and gum up your opponent.

Learned it this morning, fun little game, would like to try it again with some other characters.

[Master KChief]

you mean puzzle fighter as in the game with street fighter and darkstalkers characters? does this game have capcom characters as well? the artwork looks very similiar.

[The Schaef]

There are no licensed characters in the game at all.  They are just anime-style spiky-haired fighters and dwarves and pandas and such.

But yes, like that Puzzle Fighter.

[SomeKittens]

What sort of combos are there?  I'd be curious to know how they're implemented in a board game.

[The Schaef]

The basic actions translated into chip form still resemble deck-building games greatly.

The most important chips in the game are the purple ones:
- Combine lets you merge two smaller-value gems from your gem pile into a single larger-value gem, because crashing a 3 is more likely to kill your opponent than crashing a 1.  4-value gems cannot be counter-crashed.  Combine also gives you +1 action
- Crash lets you push a gem to your left-hand opponent and gives you +1 money.  You can also play a crash in response to your right-hand opponent crashing you.  The crashing gems cancel out and one player or the other takes the remainder if one value is greater.
- Double-crash lets you push two gems to your LHO.  If you combo a 4, both gems cannot be counter-crashed, no matter the value of the second gem.

The regular chips in the game tend to be one of three colors: red, yellow and blue.  The red actions attack other players, usually by causing them to discard chips from hand or take 'wounds' (which are just worthless chips taking up space in the bag).  Blue chips tend to be defensive.  Yellow chips tend to be more general abilities, letting you draw more chips or take more actions or have more money to spend, or trash chips out of your "deck".

Several +action chips grant any additional action, but others only allow actions of the same color.  For example, some red chips have a +red-action, so you could chain attacks together, but not play this other chip that is just for extra money, or worse yet, you can't chain it to your Crash.

[SomeKittens]

What's the whole deal with the crash thing?  I saw some pictures, is it like Tetris?

[The Schaef]

Each turn an "ante" of 1 gem is added to your pile, and if you end your turn with 10 or more, you're out.  Like a Tetris screen filling up till you're dead.

Crashing a gem takes it out of my accumulated pile and moves it to yours.  Since gem values can be "Combined" into larger values, you don't necessarily just crash a 1, but up to 4, or even more with a Double Crash.  This is similar to vs games of Tetris, where if I complete a line, you get a couple random blocks on your side, but if I get a tetris, you get bombed with blocks.