Drawing Stacks

A collection of cards or tiles that have a sequence in which they should be drawn to determine outcomes of certain gameplay actions.

This pattern is a still a stub.

Using the pattern

The memory function of Drawing Stacks of Cards or Tiles offer design possibilities both regarding player actions and timing of events in the game session. Being able to view or select Cards

In games where players may wish to empty Drawing Stacks since they Dominion

Further, Cards and Tiles allow the distribution to be changed explicitly during gameplay through events in the game.

Rerolls

In Shadows over Camelot there are two Drawing Stacks, one for good events and one for bad. When one is depleted both are reshuffled which may entice players to draw from one stack just to empty it so the other stack is reshuffled.

The Chancellor card in Dominion allows the action of putting the entire Drawing Stack in the discard pile, forcing a reshuffle. This can be advantageous if one knows that the cards one wants has already been played so one wants a reshuffle as soon as possible.

In the Fluxx Reduxx and Family Fluxx variants of Fluxx the card Choose a New Rule let a player go through the Drawing Stack or Discard Pile and choose a card, after which one reshuffles the searches stack or pile.

History

An updated version of the pattern Drawing Stacks that was part of the original collection in the book Patterns in Game Design.

Acknowledgments

Marcus Brissman, Guy Lima Jr., Stephan Meyers, Johan Toresson, Jose Zagal