Card Game: Variant Rules

Some optional rules I’ve thought up for my card game:

Personal Decks: Each player may have their own 52 card deck and supply 2 land cards from it. After shuffling they may use only half their initial deck. Or the entire deck may be used for longer games.

A different number of land cards can be played.

Players can have larger or smaller hands.

Mulligan: Players can show their starting hand to their opponent and discard it, reshuffle their draw pile and draw a new hand.

Reassign: On their turn, instead of attacking a player can choose to discard their general and replace it with a card from their hand. They draw a card as normal but may not attack.

Face cards can be used to stack. Either their suits can be used to bridge combinations (where they’ll have an effective value of 0). Or their battle value can be used making them no different from numbered cards with regards to stacking.

Play with jokers. They cannot be played as castles or general. If played as an army at the end of a battle – before the results are calculated - they can be replaced by any other card in your hand and discarded. If revealed as land they can be replaced by any card in the attacker’s hand – who then draws a card - and discarded to the defender’s pile.

Multiplayer: Rival Powers format: Each player has their own deck and take turns “invading” the neutral land cards. Use 2 land cards for every player (three players fight over six lands. Four eight. And so on, ensuring everyone has at least a few turns,). Other players, starting clockwise from the invading player can elect to remain neutral or protect that land. Play proceeds as normal until the standard victory conditions are met. The only difference being that players will drop out of the game when they can no longer play any cards but the game continues until there's only one left in order for an Attrition win.


Multiplayer: Rebellion format. Set up as per the above scenario but here one player is in charge of defending all the land cards. The other players take turns attacking and trying to take the land cards from their protector. They win when the attackers succeed in claiming all the land and they lose when either the protector controls all the land or runs out of cards with the land cards still divided (which should happen well before any attackers run out of cards but in the event they do, then they simply stop taking their turn and play continues otherwise.)

Feel free to suggest your own in the comments.