To start with, both players draw their hand of cards. This is all too typical of card games I know, but sometimes the old mechanics are the best ones, whether it’s progressing through a level by shooting people in the face or drawing cards.
In my test game for this write up, the Social Justice Warrior team didn’t draw any Ethics Breaches in their first hand – strange, as they never seem short of some new miscreant behaviour in real life. Anyway, with no Ethics Breaches to hand their first set of cards are discarded and they draw again.
This time they do draw an Ethics Breach and so the game can start.
The SJW team always goes first. Since there’s no Ethics Breaches in play and they have one, they have to play it out for their normal action. However, you can also play any number of Action cards, whenever it makes sense to do so and the SJW player has a doozy of a card to
play.
First they play their Ethics Breach – The Chloe Post (Not actually anything to do with Gamergate, still, people insist). Then they play Pox Prime (From schlonghounds to diversity lounges, how the mighty have fallen), a big convention that distracts all the misogynerds, giving the Social Justice Warriors a second turn straight away. Gamergate aren’t going to get a turn yet, since they’re all too busy frotting cosplayers and failing to wash, so the Social Justice Warrior player has an opportunity to bolster their defences.
The SJW player starts their second turn by redrawing their hand back up to five cards.
Now they need to bolster the defences of their Ethics Breach. The best Defender they have to hand is a Corrupt Moderator (Can’t have a discussion if I don’t allow you to discuss, therefore I win!) so they play that. Raising the scores of the Ethics Breach to:
Corruption 5
Outrage 7
Bullshit 6
Now Gamergate finally gets a turn.
Gamergate needs to beat all three scores to win this Ethics Breach, nothing less than total victory will do, but right now the priority is beating any single score to buy themselves a little time. About the only card they have that will do this at the moment is Cicero Everybodypeeps (In his honour they renamed it the gayro) who has a really high anti-corruption score. So they play him out. The floppy haired journalistic Spartan begins his fabulous journalistic investigation.
The scoring turn follows.
The SJWs are currently scoring:
Corruption 5
Outrage 7
Bullshit 6
Gamergate are currently scoring:
Corruption 7
Outrage 1
Bullshit 1
The Breach can’t rotate backwards more than being upright (this is how you track who is winning), so it doesn’t move for the Corruption issue, but the SJWs are beating Gamergate on Outrage and Bullshit so The Chloe Post rotates 180 degrees to be upside down. Halfway to being gotten away with!
The SJWs start their new turn by drawing their hand back up to five.
They have drawn ‘Dox‘, a powerful card that can knock an enemy card completely out of the game, with no penalty (It’s OK when they do it). However, the best tactic here is to bolster defences as well as unleashing an attack.
First they play Literally Woo on the Ethics Breach (Driven from their home, by courtesy car, to a TV studio). This raises the scores to:
Corruption 6
Outrage 9
Bullshit 7.
That’s not an end to it though. They also play Dox on Cicero Everybodypeeps, taking him out
of the game completely. Syringes full of mystery fluid and being buried in mountains of toilet paper will do that.
Gamergate starts this turn in deep shit. They have no Attackers on the Ethics Breach and it’ll be scored next turn if they can’t stop it. The enemy will get away with it and no amount of ‘pesky kids’ will stop that happening.
None of the cards they have can even equal a score to delay things. The best move is a desperate card draw, hoping its a good action.
It isn’t.
With no Attackers to contend with and with a Corrupt Moderator and Literally Woo pushing the agenda, The Chloe Post rotates all the way back around to its starting position. They got away with it and it’s scored for the SJW side!
The game of Lolcats and three-button mouse continues with the forces of evil in the lead.
Here’s a couple more preview cards.
Postmortem Studios 