Pyramid Pick
BRAWL
Published by Cheapass Games
Designed by James Ernest
$6.95 per deck
Six styles of decks; two decks required to play.
Brawl is a real-time card game of street fighting, by James Ernest of Cheapass Games. The cards fly thick and fast, and success requires lightning reflexes, good strategy, and a bit of luck in the draw.The rules of the game are simple. Each player plays cards one at a time from their deck or their discard pile. Up to three bases can be played at any time to serve as focuses for the conflict. Players try to accumulate strings of Hits on their side of the Bases that have been played, matching the colors of the Hits that have previously been played in that string. Other cards can affect the buildup of Hits. Blocks are played on strings of Hits to prevent further Hits from being played on that string. Presses cancel out Blocks to enable more Hits to be played on a string. Clears completely eliminate a Base and all the cards played on it. The game ends when players play the Freezes from the bottom of their decks to lock down all the bases in play.
Brawl can be played in two modes. In training mode, players take turns playing cards. In tournament mode (the standard mode for experienced players), players can each play at their own rate. That rate usually ends up being very fast; a typical game lasts only a couple of minutes.
The existence of the training mode significantly improves the game. Training mode is an excellent way for beginners to learn . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: October 8, 1999
Copyright © 1999 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.