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Welcome to Hardwood Duel, the thrilling two-player basketball card game! From shooting three-pointers to grabbing rebounds to energizing the crowd, Hardwood Duel is everything that we love about basketball! Each player commands their own team, using a deck of cards that represent everything you’d see in a basketball game. You alternate slapping down cards to throw down huge dunks, hit deep threes, call out quick coaching adjustments, and even get the crowd screaming and yelling and cheering! As you play, you can use the applause generated by your eager fans to add advanced, game-changing cards to your deck. The goal? Score the most points to claim victory!
The game takes moments to learn and only a few minutes to play. While the rules are simple, mastering Hardwood Duel is a challenge that will keep you coming back over and over and over!
—description from the designer
- Quick card game suitable for mass market and enthusiasts.
- Good intro to deck building for new players.
- Very quick gameplay, around 15 minutes for a game.
- Serves as a good short filler game that can be taught to anyone.
- Facilitates strategy through three levels of play (pickup, college, pro).
- Asymmetric starting decks in advanced modes add strategic depth.
- Clever timing of plays with cards like 'timeout' and 'first player'.
- Market refresh mechanism keeps the available cards interesting.
- Streamlined and simple design for a mass market audience.
- Some players might dislike the 'take that' mechanisms present in certain cards.
- Lack of ways to thin out or call out one's deck.
- Applause (currency) doesn't have much utility towards the end of the game if not used for buying cards that will be discarded.
- Wishes for cards triggering based on the last card played.
- Wishes for some cards to go directly to the draw pile instead of the discard pile.
- basketball
- basketball game
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Card drafting (for starting decks) — In college and pro modes, players select extra cards to add to their starting deck, giving them an asymmetric start.
- Deck Building — Players start with a deck of cards and build it up by buying new cards using applause (currency). When the draw deck is depleted, the discard pile is shuffled to form a new draw deck.
- Hand Management — Players draw five cards and play one card per turn, alternating with the opponent. The hand management comes into play with deciding which cards to play and when to use abilities or buy new cards.
- Take That — Some cards allow players to steal points, force discards, or reveal the opponent's hand, which are described as 'take that' mechanisms.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- So, that was why I was interested in this game.
- And you could teach them an intro to deck building game. Pretty easy.
- The game's very quick. I mean, it could be if you know what you're doing and you're playing, you know, at a good place, that's gonna take 15 minutes to play a game, one of the quicker games.
- Uh, I would like to see ways to thin out your deck or call out your deck.
- He did have that mechanism there at one point, but he decided to kind of keep it more straightforward and streamlined for this more mass market audience. And I I get that.
- So overall, I think the I think the game does what it stepped out to do, which was introduce a quick, easy filler game for the mass market.