Survival of the Fittest - Part 1

I've put together a deck for the "Survival of the Fittest" card game.

Basically, I grabbed some 150 card protector sleeves (often used for Magic The Gathering among other games) and printed out stand-ins for the card designs and placed them in the sleeves with some card for reinforcement.

The initial deck is 131 cards with 12 Sky creatures, 12 Jungle creatures, 12 desert creatures, 12 sea creatures and assorted other events, spells etc...

The first idea was to make a sort of advanced meld-making game where combinations of animals and territories gave points with the first to reach a certain value winning the game. Along the way you can kill the creatures of your opponent.

This concept didn't test well. Scoring a point for having a creature in each territory led to your opponent being reticent to kill a creature because you could just play another of the same color getting the point again.

With some pointers from my partner we came up with a different concept that could lead to the game being a little more interesting. We decided that having 4 cards face-down on the table representing each territory would make an interesting "deck" to draw from. The idea would be that the player would nominate a territory (eg. Sea) and that would represent the "deity" player using his/her power to focus energy along this path. Turning up a card relating to that territory will give him/her an advantage over that card. For example, if the card turned up was a "Tsunami" card affecting all sea life, the players sea creatures would be immune whereas the opponents' would be wiped out.

The idea would also be that the creatures turned up in this fashion would be potential conquests leading to points. The player can attack the central creature using one of his/her creature of the same color. A dice roll determines success or failure with experience counters helping to tip the odds. If a creature turned up is of the territory nominated by the player beforehand, this also gives advantages.

Having a win condition that the player must have a certain number of points AND at least one creature in each territory makes it a little more than just gaining points. I'm also thinking of keeping at least some elements of the meld-making mechanic - eg 3 of a kind in play (eg 3 hawks) = 2 points. It's just a matter of test-playing the ideas until something cohesive comes about.