Carte accepted my challenge and sat across from me at the table.
“As for gambling, I would like to play the original game as I have always done, but would you like to play a game you do not know?”
“As long as it’s fun, I don’t care. I don’t really know any games.”
I answered, handing out a piece of chocolate to Ethel, who was sitting next to me.
“Are you okay?”
“okay. After all, I’m going to win anyway. Well, if it’s a game that’s too absurd, I’ll reject it.”
“… … Indeed, I understand.”
He seemed to have a lot to say, but as if he decided that he had no reason to care about me as a gambling opponent, Carte took the deck from the woman in a suit and put it on the table.
“Then, let’s do this with the recently completed development.”
Carte laid out the cards nicely in front of me.
“Which game is it?”
Roughly 3 to 40 cards had swordsmen, musketeers, and wizards drawn in fairy tale-style pictures. Numbers like 3 and 4 were written on the left and right, which looked oddly familiar.
‘Attack power and stamina, are they the same thing? It’s like a card game we played at school when we were little. Most of them were physically blown away.’
“The name might be something like ‘Line Battle’. Because I don’t have much talent for naming.”
“Swords and guns, magic? Is it like rock-paper-scissors?”
Ethel stretched out in front of the table, showing interest. I was also curious, so I pushed for an answer with my gaze.
“I guess you could say that. The rules are much more complicated than that, but I’ll explain the basic flow.”
Carte gathered the cards back together. After briefly shuffling, he placed 3 cards in front of me and 3 cards face down in front of himself, giving 3 chips and 1 small gold coin-shaped chip.
“Draw a set number of cards from the deck each turn. There you buy cards that you can buy with your gold coins. Right now, the deck only has cards worth one gold coin, but we’ll add more and more expensive cards later. Oh, you can also sell your cards.”
I picked one of the most passable inspection cards. The price was one gold coin.
“How can I increase my gold coins?”
“At the end of each turn, you receive a new one and increase it by one. However, no savings. When you’re done buying, shuffle the rest of the cards. Then, we reveal each other’s cards and compete.”
Karte and I revealed the cards we picked. I was a swordsman with 2 attack and 3 health, and Carte was a musketeer with 4 attack and 1 health.
“Priority is determined by tossing a coin. This is pretty important. Also, since there is only one card for each other, I will omit it, but the attack starts with the card on the left. The target to attack is determined by rolling dice if there are no cards with shields. Is it okay if I don’t have to explain about attack power and health?”
“okay. Is the situation a draw now? I think we’re both going to die.”
The moment I said that and looked at the card, both of them turned gray with their HP values turned to 0. It was quite interesting what kind of magic he used.
“that’s right. It ended in a draw. Battles are repeated until one side is annihilated, and the side with at least one remaining card wins. And the winning side adds up the value of the remaining cards and receives a chip from the loser.”
“Is it possible to give up the match if the hand is bad?”
“That is not permitted.”
Carte answered briefly and picked up his gray card.
“After the match is over, the used cards are collected again. Then add another gold coin and repeat the first process. And every two rounds, a card of one higher rank is added to the deck.”
When I brought the card that had turned gray to my hand following Carte, the color returned and the HP value returned to its original state. It looks like it can be used again.
“Interesting. Then when will the game be completely over?”
“It is when one side runs out of chips or withdraws. Since you said you wanted to bet everything on each other, now the expression chip doesn’t fit.”
Carte pondered while spinning the chips, then smiled as if he remembered something good.
“I prefer to call it ‘Life’. I do it around 40.”
“I like that it’s easy to understand.”
I liked the expression “life rather than chips” because it feels like a game. It’s like a cartoon I enjoyed watching as a kid.
“Then, going back to the description, as I said, there are three types of cards: swords, guns, and magic. Basically, the sword beats the gun, the gun beats the magic, and the magic beats the sword. Even so, it is not absolute.”
“Are you saying it was just designed that way?”
“You understand quickly. Also, as before, there are many cards that simply have numbers of attack power and health written on them, but there are also cards with special functions because that is not fun.”
Carte took out a sword, gun, and magic card from the deck and flipped them over.
“The sword card has a shield. You can take advantage of your opponent’s attack. The gun card is sniper. If you succeed in attacking first, you can only deal damage without taking damage. Magic cards are wide. You can make an attack that spreads left and right from the attacked target.”
“Right. I roughly understood.”
It was not very difficult to understand because it was an effect commonly seen in general TCGs.
“There are a few other special cards, but read the description and you’ll know. I don’t know that detail either.”
Carte gathered all the spread cards in one place and organized them.
“And last but not least, if you put two of the same card together, you can create an army to turn it into a strong one and then take another card. The maximum number of cards that can be held is 6, so it is important to actively combine them to create a strong card.”
“It’s a synthesis. Now it tastes like gambling.”
“Of course, it’s not that easy since we both share the deck and only have 5 identical cards. Unit cards can also increase multipliers.”
“You mean the multiplier for the chips you receive when you win?”
When I pointed out that I was going to just mention it and move on, Carte nodded as if he was doing quite well.
“Aside from that, there are quite a few cards that are involved in multipliers, but I’ll save them for the fun of doing it. That’s about it.”
“It is surprisingly complex. I do understand.”
“Since it’s something I’m preparing quite ambitiously. It is something that can be established as a pure game, not gambling.”
Certainly, when viewed as a game, it was a fairly high-level item. No, more than that, games like this already existed in modern times.
It was a game called ‘auto battler’ genre.
‘Except for the fact that it’s in the form of TCG and not automatic, but manual.’
Having done it a few times in real life, the flow was easy to grasp.
In other words, buy strong cards, combine cards to increase multipliers, hit opponents with luck, or prepare counterattacks according to combinations.
“How are you, are you okay with this? If it’s too difficult for you, you can do something else.”
I pondered for a while. It was a much more comfortable game for me than the usual gambling such as poker and blackjack. And I liked that there are many elements that are randomly determined by coins and dice.
The moment you get used to it, randomness becomes nonrandom for me.
“Go with this.”
“All right. Would you like to try it lightly as a practice?”
“There is no need to waste time. It goes like this.”
The explanation is already boring. As for tutorials, if you are a Korean, you can skip them.
The first draw has begun. I looked at the card I received.
“‘Knight’s Apprentice, 2/3’, ‘Rookie Gunslinger 3/1’, ‘Enchanted 2/1 Area’?”
It was a rather modest start. I inadvertently looked at the unit with a wide area, but the answer right now is probably a knight apprentice.
‘Magic is said to be strong against swordsmanship, but if they face it, the swordsman wins. It’s not right from the start. No, it’s because the shield of the swordsman card loses its meaning for wide-area attacks rather than simple stats.’
I paid gold coins to buy a knight’s apprentice and shuffled the cards again. And I submitted my card to compete.
Carte’s card was a fledgling gunslinger, and the result was a draw.
“At the beginning of the game, there are a lot of draws. Then let’s keep going.”
“okay.”
After adding a higher card to the deck, draw again. This time there was a rather interesting card.
‘Old commander, 2/2. It was a 2 gold card with the words ‘give +1/+1 to the sword card on the left and set it up as a shield’.
‘As expected, synergy between cards of the same type occurs.’
There were elements like this in the game that I played in real life. When I bought the commander and put it next to the apprentice, as if he recognized it somehow, the value rose by 1 to 3/4, and a shield pattern was engraved on it. It’s small but quite sturdy.
“Come to think of it, you haven’t signed a proper contract yet.”
“contract?”
While looking at the card with satisfaction, Carte covered his card and said.
“yes. It’s a gamble with everything. Wouldn’t it be nice to leave something in writing? So that you can’t run away or pretend.”
“indeed. the pants you want. I don’t want to see you run away after being defeated.”
“I don’t know yet where the fleeing side will be.”
Carte raised her hand, and a woman in a suit handed over the document in a familiar motion. Carte quickly signed the two documents and handed them over to me.
“The content of both contracts is the same. Please fill out and hand me a copy.”
I accepted the contract and looked at the contents. If you lose at a casual gamble, you will pay the lost amount in any way, a contract that no sane person would ever do.
Of course, I’m overflowing with ideas.
“This… … A family of nationally certified contracts. A contract like this was well accepted.”
“It cost me a bit of money along the way. This is the second time I have used this contract.”
I stopped my hand at Carte’s words.
“Who is the first?”
“There was one stupid commoner.”
I would say bytes. I inadvertently suppressed the tension in my hands and quietly signed.
“Right.”
From noble mtl dot com
As I signed, I signaled Ethel. Ethel, who was yawning bored, looked at me, then grinned as if she understood what I meant.
I wrote my name on two copies of the contract and returned one copy to Carte.
“Just in case, I hope you didn’t think of writing down a pseudonym.”
“Where is the fool who thinks of deceiving those who have the magic of truth?”
Satisfied with my answer, Carte looked over the contract and set it aside.
“Excuse me. Then restart the game. First of all, it is the first and second.”
The first to decide by flipping a coin was Carte. The result that follows is
“Damage 2 damage to both of them with the magician’s area of effect, knocking out the commander next to you. The wizard is also dead.”
It was a bit unpleasant. After that, the apprentice with 2 remaining health killed the gunman and it was over.
“It rained again. Do you just keep drawing?”
“The beginning is usually like this. But that’s where the fun starts.”
At the time I didn’t know yet.
That this game is a very ‘garbage game’.