Grid game first prototype

This relates to my new game log in the last post. I have been thinking about this concept for a while now and have finally had a few hours of spare time to get it out of my head and onto my table.

I got rid of the colors idea, and just went with various combinations of orthogonal and diagonal lines on the cards. I think my prototype ended up with 4 copies of about 8 different patterns. Here is a picture of how one game looked while bieng played:


Sorry the lines are so light, the index cards I cut and used were super thin and I didn't want to mark heavily with pencil due to needing lots of erasing when I didn't like how a pattern worked with others.

It is less of a game, and more of a mechanic at the moment. I have no real end condition, but i liked how the mechanic started working itself out. The current rules are simple, you play one card which has every line match another line already on the board and then put a token of your color on that line. The central card is the starting spot and it generates all the rest of the lines.

I have lots of ideas about where I want to go with this, but i'm not convinced on any. I'm hoping to get a conversation going either here or in a game night setting to get other people's opinions. I love the idea of making this cool looking grid, as well as the interesting decisions of which cards to play and when. However it is WAY to simple right now, in my ideal world it would in time develope into a game with player boards and skill advancements. Each playing card would have a symbal which equates to some stat perhaps, and controlling various numbers of them will allow you to do more things. I obviously need to work in some kind of real player interaction as well, so you could stop your opponents from running away with an awesome set of stats.

Unfortunately I think I need to flesh out the base mechanics first. And come up with an interesting end game condition. Like normal I don't want VPs, and I am trying not to have the same condition as Mutation (where after X turns the largest network wins). Perhaps it will have to do with controlling a certain number of a variety of "stat" markers? I should put some on the cards and see what tha tlooks like.

As far as interaction, I have some ideas too. Maybe when you fully surround another players card with cards you control you remove their piece and put yours in? My concern is that that player who got removed might have a very hard time getting back into the game.

What if that opponent was simply displaced? Well that brings up the other big thing I want to integrate into this game. Multiple actions a player can take on a turn, but they have to only choose one. So perhaps instead of placing a card and placing a token, you only get to do one or the other. Currently this doesn't make sense since opponents could then just place their tokens on cards you placed before you get a chance at going on them. But its the direction I want to go with the game so there would need to be some sort of barrier others would have to overcome to do that.

Ok, thats enough of my ideas onslaught. This is more of an extended brain dump, but I'd love anyone's opinions on this game if they have any.