Pazak deck and game play

Kovnyn

Sr Member
So I started playing KOTOR again, for like the fifth or sixth time, and spent more time playing the Pazaak side game than anything else. Then I found a Pazaak Cantina game on the Google Play Store.

Long story short, I decided I want to make my own decks. The problem is, each player is supposed to bring their own deck to the game, having collected cards from all over the galaxy. Clearly, that's not a viable option, so I'm tweaking the rules a bit.

According to Wookieepedia, the master deck, or what I've been calling the house deck, is made up of 40 cards, four sets of 1 through 10, all of the same color. In KOTOR, they're green, and all are positive values.

To alleviate the issue of having players bring their own decks, I've decided to make a Players Deck, which is a single deck that both players randomly draw or are dealt, ten cards each. For the sake of ease and fairness, it'll be random, instead of chosen like in the actual game. Included in the players deck, are all the available cards in KOTOR, add 1 through add 6, subtract 1 through subtract 6, add or subtract 1 through add or subtract 6. These would all have four sets included in the deck. And then, one each of the five specialist cards.
+/-1 tie breaker, +/- 1 or 2, double, reverse 2&4, and lastly reverse 3&6.

The game would include the set tokens, a game mat with 9 card slots (since, with KOTOR 2, a 9 slot fill without busting counts as a win, regardless of the point total (which I'm calling a Pazaak)) for each player, as well as regular poker chips for betting. I'm leaving it as a 2 player game for the time being, but developing rules for 3+.

What sort of card stock would be good to make these?

I think prototypes can be easily made with regular playing cards, or even UNO cards, but eventually I want to print out a complete set.
 
I just finished my own personal Pazaak deck actually. I had it printed through a card printing service, I will get some pics/more info to show you in a bit.


Here's a picture of the cards I made.

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There are 108 cards total between the two decks I made. The house deck consists of the standard 40, 1-10 green cards. The player cards consist of 4 sets of (+)1-6, 4 sets of (-)1-6, 2 sets of (+/-)1-6, and 2 of each of the yellow cards.

I'm not sure that's the optimal number of each card, but I wanted to make sure I had 108 cards total, and multiples of each card type.

So far I've been playing with similar rules to what you stated. There's a single "player deck" consisting of all the player cards and each player is dealt 4 random cards from that deck for each game. I thought it was important to keep the 4 cards maximum for each game.

I used a service called Printer's Studio to print the cards.

GvJ7GQY.png



Let me know if you have any questions.
 
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Hey! Currently working out some rules for Pazaak to be played with TB-7021's 62 card Sabacc deck. So far it has played alright...of course a few changes have been made but it has been enjoyable to play. I would also like to put together a deck made for Pazaak, but the deck I have now will do for the time being.

I'll type up my notes soon and share!

- - - Updated - - -

Hey! Currently working out some rules for Pazaak to be played with TB-7021's 62 card Sabacc deck. So far it has played alright...of course a few changes have been made but it has been enjoyable to play. I would also like to put together a deck made for Pazaak, but the deck I have now will do for the time being.

I'll type up my notes soon and share!
 
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Would love to have a high quality set of Pazaak cards to fool around with (I'd like the back of the cards to be metallic in color, kinda steel-y), maybe redesign the face graphics a bit, but haven't put much thought on starting it.
 
I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any ideas for setting up rules for 3 players with the standard Pazaak cards.

Also, if anyone wants my card files (they're Photoshop documents) so you can modify them to your liking let me know!
 
Huh, those are interesting. Please do let us know how they look when you get them. Do you know if the cards will include the play instructions?
Probably not, the description didn't mention anything about that. Indeed, might be helpful...The best way to get familiar with the rules are to download the Pazaak standalone program based on the Kotor SWTOR games, and just play it a couple of times. You can find it here (only on windows): Pazaak Cantina | World of The Old Republic The download link is on the bottom of that page. That's the way I learned how to play it.
Pazaak.online (online gaming for free) is not bad to get a feel for the game, but the negative (to subtract) cards don't subtract at all; a very annoying bug which pretty much ruins your games.

The deck I ordered contains 40 green main deck cards (values ranging from 1 to 10) and over 40 side deck cards in different colors - normally meant to play with 2 players, so each player has a complete side deck to choose from. There are also some blanco cards inside for each color, don't know what they are for. Side deck cards can have positive (to add) or negative (to subtract) values, or both so you can choose to add or subtract. The yellow (gold) cards flips the values of certain main deck cards from positive to negative or the other way around. One golden card doubles the value of the card last played, and one golden Tie card can be used when both players end at the same outcome; the Tie card wins the set in that case.

Playing goes like this, according to the original Pazaak Cantina app:
Everyone starts the game with 10 side deck cards, so if you don't mind to divide all the side deck cards, you can play with up to 4 players with this deck. After dealing each player the 10 side deck cards (which you choose or take at random ), each player takes 4 side deck cards out of his/hers 10 and use this in the first set, face down. A game consists of at least 3 sets, the player first to win 3 sets win the game.
The first turn starts with taking a random green main deck card and place it face up on the table. After that, the player decides to end his turn immediately or use a side deck card to complement the green card, and then ends his/her turn. Each turn goes the same routine with first taking a green card and checking wether you will use a side deck card, and after several turns (when you get around, at or above 20) with all your cards combined, the player closest by or exact at 20 wins the set. Players above 20 are busted. You can choose to stand while other players still need to continue more turns to get to 20. You keep the side deck cards you didn't use for the next set, and replenish the side deck cards with cards from your 10 side deck cards you started the game with. When your 10 side deck cards are all played, you're out of luck for the following sets. Making wise use of the side deck cards is therefore paramount in this game, and it takes some practice to get used to it; but it's really an exciting game to play with 2 or more players.
 
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