Photograph by Alex Handy
T HE WORLD OF COLLECTIBLE CARD of the game design team at WizKids and a grizzled
games has long been dominated by Magic: veteran of the game design world. “There was such
The Gathering and Yu Gi Oh. But the 2D a resurgence in pirates, but we couldn’t afford to
nature of these games has recently been tossed make ship miniatures,” he says.
aside and the world of card games has a new caveat: “When the styrene thing fell into our laps, we knew
to play, you must first build. we could do ships with the plastic. But then the
Up-and-coming games company WizKids, founded question was, if you do this, how do you make every-
by Jordan Weissman, created Pirates of the Spanish thing in that pack of cards become something that is
Main in 2004. It’s a collectible constructible card useful to play the game with? It was like Apollo 13.”
game based around the idea of using desks and Mulvihill and his team eventually built Pirates of the
tables as a substitute for a board, and tiny punch-out Spanish Main into a game that can be played by two
boats as the pieces in a game of high-seas combat people with only two packs of cards. Total price to play
and plunder. is about $8. Each game pack comes with a tiny die,
Since then, WizKids and its competitors have taken a punch-out island, two ships, a card filled with gold this concept to new extremes, with RocketMen, a punch-out pieces, and a card full of crew.
1950s serial-style space game; a NASCAR-based Since playing the game typically requires more racing game; a driving/jousting game called Racer than two islands, the instructions suggest using the Knights; and the catchall game, Z Cardz. frame left over from the island card as an island itself.
No matter who makes them, constructible card More islands can be made out of the leftover pieces games all have one thing in common: you have to of ships, and even the card pack wrappers. During a build stuff to play. Game pieces come in the form of game, ships move set distances that are measured by perforated polystyrene cards, the parts punched out lines drawn along the edges of the empty cards that and assembled into 3D in-game characters, ships, once housed masts, hulls, and deck plates. The game and weapons. First came pirate ships; now there are is truly a wonder of resourcefulness. pterodactyls, fleets of spaceships, and even race cars that roll like their Matchbox equivalents.
And it all started with Mike Mulvihill, a member
Alex Handy is a freelance journogeek, and his office is now adorned with little styrene pirate ships. He blogs at gism.net.
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