Thank you to our amazing friend Amelie for being a guest this episode! Watch the video on Youtube. Below is a description of our co-op pirate tower defense game, Hit The Deck.
THE ELEVATOR PITCH
Hit the Deck is a co-operative tower defense game set on a pirate ship besieged by surfers! Players must use their actions intelligently to protect the ship’s defences and gamble their gold wisely to improve their chances next round.
THE LOOK
This is a game with a dual-sided illustration style; surfer components are brightly coloured, with graphic prints and an over-exposed, bleached-out palette; pirate components are darker, in a brown palette with a stained and weathered feel.
The major components of the game are the Ocean board and the Ship, which connect together to form the play board.
The Ocean is a gridded board with 7 rows, each row broken into irregular segments representing wave currents. Each segment is large enough to hold at least one Surfer standee.
The Ship is a very simple, rough scale model of the starboard side of a ship, in plastic or paperboard. There are 7 “spaces” on board the deck, lining up with the 7 Ocean rows, and in four of these spaces there is a segment of the hull which has space to stack wooden “hit point” tokens. The remaining three spaces have cannons represented on the side of the Ship. At the centre of the deck is the Treasure Chest with space to store all the Doubloons.
Other components (explained further below) include:
- 18 Surfer Standees and 18 clip-on “hats” for the surfers.
- The Surfer Deck, made up of a selection of enemy types with different hit points and abilities.
- 24 Doubloon tokens.
- The Action Market board, with 4 spaces for cards and a space for the Action Deck.
- The Action Deck.
- 8+ Crew Role cards with individual crew members’ abilities and starting Doubloons.
- The Parrot card.
- The Wave Dice – six 6-sided dice, each with two blank sides, two 1-pip sides, a 2-pip side and a 3-pip side.
- The Start Player token (a Jolly Roger).
THE AIM
Working together, players need to hold off the waves of attacking surfers by buying and using actions on their turn. Surfer enemies are continually added to the board and deal damage to the ship’s “hit points”. If the crew can survive a number of rounds without any part of the ship’s hull being breached, they win.
SET UP
Each player chooses a Crew Role card and places it in front of them. This tells them their special “free action” ability and the starting number of Doubloons they receive, which they now take from the supply.
The Ocean board and Ship are set up in the middle of the table, with the Action Market alongside. The Action Market board has 4 spaces, marked with increasing Doubloon “costs” rising from 1 to 3 Doubloons. The Action Deck is shuffled and placed face down on the Action Market board, and four cards are dealt out to the market spaces.
The Surfer Deck is shuffled and the Surfer standees (and their hats) placed within reach. To begin the game, 4 Surfer standees are placed at the far edge of the board. For each of these 4 Surfers a card is drawn from the Surfer deck which determines its “type”. Hats are placed on the Surfers according to the cards, helping to distinguish them. The “type” of surfer determines its starting health, movement speed, and any special abilities (see Appendix). The space they begin in is also assigned on their card – if two Surfers would need to share a space, the first moves one space inward (towards the Ship).
The Start player takes the Jolly Roger, and the player to their right takes the Parrot card.
TURNS
On a player’s turn, they may use as many Actions as they can afford. They may use their “free action” once at any point during the turn, and may spend Doubloons according to the Market price to use basic Action cards visible in the Market. An Action may be used multiple times as long as the player can pay its cost, and the action is possible (e.g. not using a token type that is exhausted).
Basic Action options include:
- Repel boarders: move a Surfer who is adjacent to the ship’s Hull one space backward
- Fire a cannon: deal damage to the nearest Surfer in a chosen row (one which contains a cannon).
- Repair: return one lost Hit Point token to a space on the Hull.
Individual “free actions” depend on the player’s pirate role, e.g. Bombardier, Lookout, Helmsman, Cook, etc. These are explained more in the appendix.
Any time a Surfer’s health hits zero, they are removed from the board.
At the end of a player’s turn, several “turn upkeep” actions take place:
- Staking: the active player chooses a number of their remaining Doubloons (if any) to add to the central chest, for Gambling at the end of the round.
- Surfers advance: every Surfer on the board moves one space.
- Hull damage: any Surfers who are within their attack range do their Damage rating to the hull (hit point tokens are removed from the row occupied by that Surfer).
- Surfer reinforcements: a Wave Die is rolled and the resulting number of new Surfers added to the board, with new cards drawn and hats added to show their type & stats
Action market refreshes – the first/cheapest card in the Action Market is removed, all cards shift one space and a new card is added at the last/most expensive space.
The Parrot card: this card denotes a player as the current “captain”, and has two abilities:
- If the Captain gives a player an instruction on their turn and that player follows the instruction, they receive an additional Doubloon when they Stake at the end of their turn.
- On the Captain’s turn, they may copy (“parrot”) any single action taken by another player this round for free.
When each player has taken a turn, the round finishes. “Round upkeep” then happens:
- The Jolly Roger token and Parrot card are passed one space to the left.
- The Action Market is cleared and refreshed.
Finally, the Gamble takes place. Players decide collectively whether they will Gamble the Doubloons in the chest, or “hit the deck” (not Gamble). This Gamble represents a “double or nothing” chance to increase their treasure, weighted with the risk of a large ocean wave which could wash their gold away. When the decision is made to Gamble, a number of Wave Dice is rolled equal to the current number of Surfers on the board. If the total exceeds the current Hit Points of the ship’s hull, then all the shared treasure is lost (players keep their private Doubloons). If the total does not exceed the Ship’s hit points, then the shared treasure is doubled and shared equally among all players at the start of the following round.
SUMMARY
Rounds continue as above. Players make choices about where to focus their Actions and whether to bank on increasing their Doubloons. Each round has a new Start Player and a new Captain. If any of the four sections of the Hull hits zero “hit points”, all players lose. If they survive a number of rounds equal to player count, they win!
WHAT MAKES THIS GAME UNIQUE?
Hit the Deck shares many attributes with classic co-op games: action selection, automated enemies and variable player powers. A couple of quirks give the game extra individuality and/or strategic depth:
- The “Captain” role (Parrot card) giving everyone the chance to “quarterback” and to make use of others’ abilities.
- Paying Doubloons for Actions and then Gambling them each round, introducing a risk-taking element and the chance to “power up” your next round.
- A wide variety of different player powers which tie neatly in to the theme.
APPENDIX
Below are some ideas of different possible pirate roles and surfer types.
Pirate roles & abilities:
– Lookout: for a free action the Lookout may look at the top 3 cards of the Surfer deck, learning the upcoming types of Surfer and where they will be placed on the board.
– Powder Monkey: for a free action the Powder Monkey may fire all 3 cannons at once OR use one cannon to hit a space which does not share a row with a cannon.
– Helmsperson: for a free action the Helmsperson may “steer the ship”, meaning all Surfers who are not at the edge of the board move one space either left or right.
– Carpenter: for a free action the Carpenter may build a Barricade over a Hull space, which acts as additional Hit Points and can be built at any point (even when the Hull is at full “health”).
– Ship’s Cook: for a free action the Ship’s Cook may determine a player who can use their free action twice next turn.
– Quartermaster: for a free action the Quartermaster may redistribute Doubloons between two players (e.g. taking from a player who has already had their turn this round, giving more to the player whose turn comes next).
– Diplomat: for a free action the Diplomat may choose a Surfer who does not move or do damage at the end of the turn.
Surfer types & abilities:
– Standard: Standard surfers have 1 movement, do 1 damage when adjacent to the hull.
– Quick: Quick surfers move 2 spaces instead of 1 during turn upkeep.
– Heavy: Heavy surfers do double damage during the hull damage step.
– Ranged: Ranged surfers can damage the hull from up to 3 spaces away, instead of needing to be adjacent.
– Twins: The Twins occupy two rows of the board (they use a double-hulled board) and have twice the hit points of standard Surfers. – Siren/mermaid: A Siren on the board flips over the cheapest/first available Action in the market board, meaning players have to use the more expensive actions.
Big Crow Games 