QUARREL design notes

some designer's notes:

the game is called "quarrel" because "quarren" are the squid-headed people from star wars and the game it's based on is "cuttle," like cuttlefish. i know, i know.

the rules of cuttle can be found here. i was also heavily inspired by "control," a time-travel-themed game based on cuttle. thank you to @jessfromonline for introducing me to control.

the game was originally designed with an illimat deck in mind, so the rules have been written using the card and suit names from illimat (ace = fool, jack = knight, suits = spring/summer/autumn/winter/stars). but because the superweapon cards never get shuffled in to the rest of the empire deck, you can easily use a regular deck (hearts and diamonds for the rebel player, clubs and spades for empire), and then just use an ace thru 10 of any other deck as the death star deck, as long as those ten cards are easily distinguished from the other deck.

jacks are called knights in an illimat deck, and here the knights = jedi. i kept their original cuttle mechanic, because victory point cards changing hands represent them being "mind-tricked" onto or away from your team.

i took the "look at opponent's hand" ability away from the 8 (though i do like the original flavor of cuttle's sideways 8s being "glasses"). i made it an alternate ability of the queen, to represent leia stealing the death star plans.

i took out kings making it easier to win, and replaced it (sort of) with the death star mechanic giving both players a special way to win with 14 instead of 21. i gave kings an "oblivion ring" sort of mechanic (that's a magic the gathering reference), since i took away the 9's ability to return cards to hand and wanted another form of removal.

thanks to my wife for playtesting. 

(ps, illimat is a game based on casino and i highly recommend it.)