💾 Archived View for matthewhall.xyz › gemlog › blank-white-cards.gmi captured on 2023-05-24 at 17:56:31. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Whenever a card's text directly contradicts these rules, the card takes precedence.
- Rule 101.1, Magic: The Gathering Comprehensive Rules
I wouldn't consider myself to be a board game aficionado, but I do enjoy learning about and playing all the wonderful new things that are becoming more popular thanks to the board game renaissance. I tend to be drawn towards card-based games rather than board games (though I am fond of Azul and Hive). Some examples of card games I enjoy are Sushi Go!, Love Letter, Mystic Vale, and Android: Netrunner. All of those games are great, but none of them have as good of a concept behind them as the subject of this post: 1000 Blank White Cards.
1000 Blank White Cards is a card game for at least two players, though you could theoretically play with any number of players you want. The game consists of:
At the start of the game, the deck is shuffled and all players are dealt a hand of five cards. A starting player is mutually decided upon.
At the start of a player's turn, they draw a card from the deck. Then they play a card from their hand to an area. The card's effects will apply to the owner of that area. If the card is played to the center area, the card's effects apply to all players. The game ends when a player goes to draw a card and there are no more cards left in the deck. The winner is the player at the end of the game with the most points.
A card consists of the following:
There are two main types of effects:
Those are all of the rules.
The entire point of 1000 Blank White Cards is that all of the cards are created by the players of the game. The point of the game is not actually to win, but to make some cards with strange rules and funny pictures, play a game with them, and have fun. The rules of the cards you create can be anything you want them to be. They could be as simple as giving you points, they could force other players to do handstands, or they could even make you resolve a card's effect by playing a different game entirely. The following are perfectly valid things a card can do in a game:
I just came up with all of those off the top of my head. I could come up with names for all of those and put them into a game.
Some people have problems with rule-changing games like Fluxx because the outcome is not easy to influence in your favour. To paraphrase Tom Scott, "whoever happens to have the right cards at the right time happens to be the winner". 1000 Blank White Cards sidesteps this issue by not making the game about winning, but about giving you direct control of the rules, allowing you to better enjoy the process.
If you now feel inspired to try the game, I highly recommend it. Go buy some blank index cards, get some writing utensils and friends, and go nuts!
To give you some more ideas of what you can do with this game, here are some cards I designed. Since these are only text descriptions of the card's effects, you won't be able to see the artwork. Feel free to steal them!
With or without nuts. +200 points.
+200 points. If you also have Fake Moustache, they have a combined value of 500 points.
+200 points. If you also have Fake Glasses, they have a combined value of 500 points.
+1024 ~~GB~~ points
+50 points for every card in this play area (excluding Botnet).
Play only to the center. -300 points to the last player to climb to safety.
+500 points IF there are at least five other cards in this play area, none of which are Jackie Chan. If Jackie Chan IS in this play area, -500 points instead.
Play only to the center. As long as this card is in play, turn the deck upside down and every player holds their hand backwards (so that every player but themselves can see it.)
Starting with the person who plays this card and continuing to the left, a player may confess something embarrassing about themselves. If they do, they draw 2 cards. After everyone has had a change to tell a story the most embarrasing story gets this card. +800 points.