The concept behind the cards was simple. You deal out the cards between the players and each player takes it in turns to call out an ability from the card at the top of his hand (say, "Strength 10"). The other players have to compare the card at the top of their hand with this. The card with the highest score in that abililty "wins" and the others "die", being cast aside. The game ends when there is only one player left with any cards.
My best friend at the time had two brothers, and the four of us spent an inordinate amount of time playing Citadel Combat Cards. I'm not sure where we got the decks from, but we had 5 - Monsters, Chaos, Warriors, Space War, and Goblinoids - which we mixed together in one super-deck; it felt like games could go on for hours (especially if you played it like Top Trumps, where the winning card "captures" the losing cards each turn, allowing them to be re-used).
It turns out that somebody has posted slideshows of all the decks on youtube: Chaos, Goblinoids, Monsters, Dwarfs, Warriors, and Space War. Looking at them, it seems there was an entire subset of rules that we never used - underneath each picture you see sigils containing things like a bow and arrow, an explosion, fangs, and so on. Presumably these had some sort of meaning which we piledrived away.
The thing I most notice about the cards now is the names. There's a real charm in things like "Gutlagg the Ogre Shaman", "Zoat the Forest Guardian", "Klaus Half-man, Mutant Thug", "Drakarth the Ravening: Mutant Spawn of Chaos", "Narx the Whiner, Goblin Musician", and "Fungus the Snotling Brave". When did Games Workship and Citadel Miniatures products get so bland?
I started a long hiatus from gaming right about the time GW started to come into their own, so I missed all this, but I remember those ads from early issues of White Dwarf. I think the ads were often more inspirational than the rest of the magazine (which, lets face it, was mostly ads anyway). The character names just oozed with possibilities.
ReplyDeleteYes, there were some extra rules involving the icons, but everyone I knew just played Top Trumps with the cards.
ReplyDeleteWhen did Games Workship and Citadel Miniatures products get so bland?
ReplyDeleteI'd argue it's part of an overall blandification of geek culture which is possibly related to the culture going (relatively) mainstream (and the ensuing dollar$ that suddenly became at stake--people get less goofy and adventurous when there's money to be lost).