Hello! This is our blog. We hope this page can offer players insight into Third Wheel Games and the development of our first game: Swash and Buckle! Third Wheel Games started as a passion project of Shannon, Ryan, and myself. The three of us love playing board games together and wanted to try designing our own. Many of our board game nights ended with us pitching drunken ideas to each other. We finally decided to get serious and tasked one another to design three individual board games without the use of alcohol. The parameters were as follows:
1. The game can be played with a standard 52 card deck
2. 5 minutes to teach, 20 minutes to play.
We made it clear to each other that the games didn’t have to be good. We wanted to each try our hand at game design from start to finish without the pressure of reinventing the wheel (no pun intended). They were all terrible. Maybe in a later post we can revisit those original games. Of the three games, Ryan’s game, originally named Stay Afloat, sparked the idea of what we now know as Swash and Buckle.
In this blog post, the three of us are going to describe a round of play as we playtest Swash and Buckle. As we continue to develop this game, we also hope to teach the readers how to play.
The objective of Swash and Buckle is to outlast rival pirates, survive storms, and earn clues that will lead you to both the buried treasure and victory. Each pirate’s ship contains a maximum of 7 cards. Each card has a suit, strength, and ability. The suits are Crew, Ship, and Supply. Strength of a card is valued from 1 to 3. Abilities are varied and explained in each card’s description. Both the cards’ abilities and the cumulative strength in each suit will help players survive the storms. For each storm a player survives, they earn a clue. The first player to 3 clues wins the game. In case of a tie, the game continues until a player wins by one.
Every game of Swash and Buckle starts with two shuffled decks in the middle of the table: the Port deck and the Event deck. Make sure to leave room next to the Port deck for a discard pile. Each player, 2-5, is then dealt 5 cards from the port deck face up. These five cards make up your pirate ship. Any cards in this play area are considered “on board.” Cards are then dealt, 2 cards per player, from the port deck to the middle of the table face up. For our game with three players, 6 cards are dealt face up. These cards are called “the Port.” The last player to be on a boat goes first and receives the “First Pick Token.”
At the end of our set up, our table looks as follows:
Ryan’s ship – Carpenter, Gunner, Steward, Life Preserver, Spanker Sail.
Jason’s ship – First Mate, Jerry, Life Preserver, Line, Line.
Shannon’s ship – Fisherman, Navigator, Gambling Quarters, Jib Sail, Quarter Deck.
The Port – Seaman, Steward, Lucky Plank, Main Sail, Spanker Sail, Gold.
A round of Swash and Buckle is split into 3 phases: Draft, Action, and Event. The game begins with two draft picks from the port, starting from the player with the “First Pick Token” and continuing clockwise. Ryan drafts Gold. Jason drafts Lucky Plank. Shannon drafts Main Sail. Ryan drafts Spanker Sail. Jason drafts Steward. Finally, Shannon drafts Seaman. Ryan’s Gold allows him to draw an extra card from the top of the deck after the Draft phase. He draws an Evil Book. He chooses to keep the Evil Book and discards his Life Preserver to stay at the maximum hand size of 7. This completes the Draft Phase of the game.
Each player gets 1 action per Action Phase starting with the player with the “First Pick Token” and continuing clockwise. Ryan starts the Action Phase of the game by using his Evil Book targeting Shannon. Shannon has to sacrifice a card of her choice. She sacrifices her Seaman. Jason uses his First Mate to copy his Jerry’s ability. Jerry reads, “May trade Jerry for an opponent’s card.” Jason trades his First Mate for Shannon’s Navigator. Shannon uses her Gambling Quarters to challenge Ryan to a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, best 2 out of 3. Ryan wins 2 to 1. Ryan steals Shannon’s First Mate. This completes the Action Phase.
The Event phase begins by revealing the top event card. The event is Mystic Whirlpool which reads, “Shuffle everyone’s cards together and deal them out evenly starting with the first pick player.”
New ships:
Ryan – Carpenter, First Mate, Fisherman, Lucky Plank, Spanker Sail, Evil Book, Line.
Jason – Navigator, Gambling Quarters, Jib Sail, Main Sail, Quarter Deck, Gold.
Shannon – Jerry, Steward, Steward, Life Preserver, Spanker Sail, Line.
Mystic Whirlpool is a fair weather event. During a fair weather event, no points are scored and another event is drawn. The next event is a storm called Typhoon. Players need 6 strength in ship. Shannon fails to survive and must suffer the consequences. Typhoon reads she must discard her highest ship card. She discards her Spanker Sail. Ryan uses his Lucky Plank to discard his Fisherman. He adds 3 strength to Ship and survives the storm. Both Ryan and Jason earn one clue token for surviving the storm. The First Pick Token is passed clockwise to Jason and the next round begins with the Draft phase.
This completes our first blog post. We know that this is pretty dry, but we wanted to give an overview of gameplay to be referred back to in future blog posts. Throughout our game we discussed several issues in our game’s design. We hope to address and fix these issues with future playtests and blog posts. Our next post will focus specifically on the Sails.
For now, this is your captain speaking, may your winds be fair and sails taught.
– Jason