Dem rulez
So, as mentioned before, Safe House Blues is a post-apocalyptic survival card game for 2-6 players. Each player strives to be the last one standing after others have perished due to perils of the world torn asunder by nuclear war. In other words, this is a competitive game of cards where players must focus on keeping themselves alive the longest.Each turn players must decide to do one of the following:
1. Fight Nasties. Creatures of ill will are drawn to Safe Houses like moths to flame, and players must fight off Nasties like bandits, mutants, zombies, and irradiated rat swarms. This is done by using ammunition, mines, chainsaws or other similar Equipment.
2. Clean up Safe House. Dangerous Irradiated Sludge seeps into Safe Houses occasionally, and players must clean up their havens from time to time to prevent precious Rations from spoiling and turning into more Irradiated Sludge. This can be done by using Equipment such as radiation suits, shovels, safety gloves, lead buckets etc.
3 a. Scavenge for supplies. By doing this, players draw Resource cards as a sign of finding supplies to survive another day. Resources include useful items such as Equipment and Rations, but players might also stumble into Irradiated Sludge. Nasties at a scavenging player's Safe House won't deal damage to him during that turn, but Irradiated Sludge can spread and ruin Rations.
3 b. Sabotage other players. This is similar to scavenging for supplies, except the player draws less Resource cards and in return plays a Sabotage card on another player to make his or her life more miserable. The sabotaged player may play a Resource card to prevent a sabotage attempt, possibly even turning the attempt against the saboteur. Example sabotage cards are 5-Finger Discount, Chunk o' Meat, and Sludge-A-Pult.
This process is repeated every turn until all but one player have lost all of their health tokens at the end of the final turn.
Nasty card layout
The monsters of the game will play an important role in the survival of the fittest, attacking players each turn. Here's how such cards will look like.
As an example Nasty, I'm using one of the ooziest of creatures, the BOOM Dog. This feisty little puppy has been mutated into a fur(r)ious beast bloated with Irradiated Sludge.
As for the card layout, the idea is that the player is viewing the Nasty from behind a semi-boarded window of his Safe House, the ruined city he struggles to survive in viewed in the background as the Nasty itself prowls at the haven.
At the top the name of the Nasty is located.
At the bottom are the rules of the creature's behaviour.
Next to the Nasty rules is a symbol of what the creature does. The symbol of radiation represents the spreading of Irradiated Sludge, cards which the player must draw when the creature's effects come into play. Another symbol, open jaws and a splatter of blood, represents damage the Nasty deals. Some Nasties deal either damage or spread Irradiated Sludge, some do both.
