Magic: The Gathering creator has co-designed a new card game
Catch the Mindbug.
Take control of opponents’ creatures and turn them against their owners in Mindbug, a new card game co-designed by the creator of Magic: The Gathering - Richard Garfield.
A game for two players, Mindbug sees competitors battling against one another using a deck filled with different kinds of monsters, such as strange hybrids like snail hydra or kangasaurus rex. Besides the monsters, players will also have access to mindbug cards which enable them to take control of an opponent’s creature whenever they play them, potentially shifting the flow of gameplay to their advantage.
Unlike in many other card games, players do not construct their own decks, rather they both share a deck that is pre-generated that features certain creatures. Players begin the game by drawing five cards from the deck - which is made up of 10 cards total - alongside two mindbug cards. Turns then proceed with players laying down cards and activating their abilities. Playing or activating cards does not cost any resources and there are no mechanics around ramping up play, such as mana in Magic: The Gathering.
Different creatures will have different effects that trigger when players lay them down, as well as abilities that trigger when players want them to. Should a player be in a difficult situation, they can decide to use a mindbug card on one of their opponents’ active creatures - thereby taking ownership of that card and being able to use it against them. Whichever player successfully whittles their opponent’s health down to zero first is named the winner.
Apart from Garfield - who is also responsible for designing the beginner board game King of Tokyo and the unique deck game Keyforge - Mindbug was co-created by Marvin Hegen, Christian Kudahl and Skaff Elias.
Mindbug is set to be published by Nerdlab Games, with this being the debut tabletop title released by the studio.
The Kickstarter campaign for Mindbug is live until December 11th with a pledge of €15 (£13/$16) getting backers a copy of the base set for the game in June 2022.