3 new ideas... 1 new game! ... Part 2: Trick Taking as a Movement Mechanism

 Continuing my 3-part post about 3 new game ideas I recently had...

Trick Taking as a Movement Mechanism

The 2nd idea I'll discuss was inspired by a comment on Twitter about trick taking being used as a movement mechanic. Here's the outline of a pretty simple game idea where you race through a web of terrains:

Give each player a matching deck, with cards like 1-6 in each of 4 or 5 suits. Use a board that's basically a square grid, where players start on the corners and race for the center space. Each round, the leader chooses a terrain (suit), then each player plays a card that moves their piece on that terrain. The winner of the trick (player who moved the most in the led terrain) gets to be the leader next round and pick the next next terrain type. If you can't (or don't want to?) follow suit, maybe you just move 1 space in the terrain that was led, or not at all. 

There could be effects on the cards (inversely proportional to card value, so low cards have stronger effects), and you get that even if you play off-suit.

I have not yet prototyped this, but I think I know just how I'd do it:

• I'd use a standard card deck for starters, so 4 suites, give each player A-6 in each suit.
• Make 44 square tiles with a card icon (spade/heart/diamond/club) on each side, randomly distributed but with each icon on each tile.
• Make 4 corner tiles, with 2 icons on each of 2 sides (nothing on the exterior sides)
• Have players race from their corner to the center space (and maybe back, depending on the theme) 

For a first draft, I'd probably have each player shuffle their personal deck an draw a hand of cards from it -- because holding 20 cards would be annoying. Maybe a hand of 6 or 7 cards would work?

... Actually, it might work to use a single deck (of 24 cards, A-6), deal out 6 to each player, then reshuffle after some number of rounds of play.

Randomly choose a start player, that player will lead a card, and move their pawn a number of spaces equal to the rank of that card. You'd have to use all your movement, going from one space to the next (adjacently) moving over icons matching the suit of the card played. With a grid of tiles the way I described above, each interface would have 2 icons (or possibly 1 icon twice), and you could move over an interface if either of those match the suit of your card. No backtracking would be allowed, and if you moved across a double-icon edge and still had more movement, I think that would be a dead end (stop there).

In addition to moving, you'd note or resolve the game text on the card you played.

Then each other player would play a card. In order to move, they'd need to follow suit, but maybe following suit wouldn't be required. When playing off suit (either because you had to, or you wanted to), I think you'd still get to do the game text on the card, but you wouldn't move at all. 

The goal of the game would be to get to the center of the board, or to a series of specific spaces (to the center and then back to your starting space, for example).

I don't know exactly how big a board would be needed, or if the format I described will really work out for the board, but at the very least this idea sounds like it would work alright!