Door 16

Let's talk about hand management in games! This is door 16 of MechanXmas! 🎄 I guess almost every game with cards in them has some sort of hand management, because it matters a lot when and in what sequence or groupings you play cards. There are huge amounts of twists and unique ways designers can change this up though. For this post let's take a look at 📷 Photograph and 🎪 Scout! Both of these games have a very unique rule: you are not allowed to change the order of cards in your hand. 😯

📸 In Photograph (also released as 'Wind the film!') you have until sundown to take more and better pictures than your opponents. In the game you will draw cards into the front of your hands and play them only from the back of your hand. You can move a single card each turn towards the front though, by “winding the film”. You play cards into either ascending or descending sets for each color.

Each turn you also draw 1-3 cards from a central display, then you have to play the same amount of cards from the back of your hand. Generally you could draw fewer but more optimal cards, or more but less optimal cards, which could be worth the risk. If you do well you could get more points and reach objectives faster - or fail and get a penalty. A gap of more than 3 between card values makes an unsharp photo which is worth minus points.

🎪 In Scout you are trying to play consecutive cards from your hand to the table, but can only do so if your set is stronger than the one currently there. Sets are either more of the same number or an ascending or descending straight. Sets of more cards are always stronger, otherwise the bigger numbers decide. To get new cards you can "scout" by taking cards from the set on the table - the current owner of that set is rewarded with points though. As you get cards you can insert them into your hand as you see fit. A bonus twist is that cards have 2 numbers on them, so by flipping them upside down you could get a different number than what was in the set. You play a round until someone’s hand is empty or no one can beat the set anymore.

Both games are really clever! 🥰