There is a new tabletop card game recently released in Taiwan called 烏鷺爭霸 (烏鷺 is an alternative name for Go in Chinese, and 爭霸 means fighting for the best).
If you can understand Chinese here is a video of Joanne_Missingham (黑嘉嘉) promoting this game.
This is basically a fast track 9x9 game where players instead of play stones directly, draw cards with multiple stones printed on them of various shapes (from the simple jump, extend, knight’s move, etc., to more complex ones), and play them accordingly all in one turn. Players would still need to learn the basic capturing rules and scoring rules to determine who wins at the end. And there are more “advanced modes” that slowly lead players into “regular Go”.
So what do you think about how well it combines cards and Go into one game? Or do I have to write more translations to understand different game modes as well?
There are three modes from the simplest 方圓, to the more advanced 坐隱 and 烏鷺 modes (they are all alternative names for Go).
The first 方圓 (square and circle, a very common name for Go representing its board and stones) is as described, players draw cards from their own deck, one at a time, and play the moves shown. If you cannot find a place to put the stones shown on the cards, you pass, and if both have played pass, the game is over. It has a little bit about shapes and more to do with luck.
In the second mode 坐隱 (sitting and meditating), players would be able to draw three cards from their decks and look at them before they pick one to play. It adds the relevant strategy of finding and evaluation different moves. It still rely on luck a little, but Go players would start to have huge advances compared to those who just play. You can still suffer from “bad luck”, but more or less has control. When you play one card, you draw another one, until all your cards cannot be played and pass.
The final mode 烏鷺 as the name suggested was originally the default mode, but from what I know, it was originally a bit “tabletop heavy”, thus later easier modes were added and adapted. It has a simplified TCG magic system and an “advanced cards” system (with more stones or more complex shapes on them) where you need to use “mana points” to use them. The way of accumulating mana points is by playing a stone directly on the board without using a card (forgo a turn of playing cards which can play multiple stones in one go). Thus for strong Go players, it would be easy to gather “mana strength” or even just play plainly using stone only (like a normal game) against their opponent using cards. It is basically for transitioning from card games to Go games.
When it was still in funding, it already sold out all the early access copies and expected to ship out the first 1000 sets this month (at the price of about 60 USD each with an early access discount of about 25%). It had options for international shipment during early access to US, Japan, HK, Malaysia, and Singapore I believe. And for other places, probably need to contact them for special international shipment package delivery individually.
(and yes, I don’t think it matters that much for translations for the set itself, most translation needed is probably the manual for people who don’t know the Go basic rules, capturing, scoring, etc. And we have those resources elsewhere already)
This is pretty cool! There is a similar thing called “no stress chess” where you draw cards that tell you which piece to move.
The one thing I don’t like is having to know how to end and count the game. I just feel like that’s where half the frustration and killjoy comes for most kids and beginners until they’ve been playing for a while, but I still like seeing fun variations and ways to introduce some chance elements.
I believe they originally planned to use some auto-filling using an app, but later on settled with using an app by Joanne’s online school to automatically determine the winner when both sides pass at the easiest mode.
And the harder modes are supposed to be used as a type of teaching tool, where stronger players would be able to play with weaker students just for fun, or parents practice with their kids even if they don’t fully know how to play. (the parents not the kids, most kids are way stronger than their parents after some classes). And the sets are sold combined with Joanne’s online classes as well, sort of increasing not just for the card games, but also more online students and publicity for her.
