That list of spells was done with no prior testing, and I haven't played more than a couple of times, so problems are bound to be found…

We used the original twenty four spells on this page, in the way they are said to be used the post below that.

Any time you cast a spell, you spend the runes on the card by discarding said card. If that means that some runes go to waste, then they go to waste.

To decide the order of turns, when each player plays their card (To get runes.), the player who played the highest numbered card goes first. Pawns were the same as two, aces were worth one, and crowns were worth 11. If someone played the excuse, then they would go first that turn. Play would then proceed in a clockwise motion.

The excuse worked as a special rune. You could use it in any spell to double the strength of said spell (As if you cast it twice.).

The game actually worked out very well. The only problem we found is that one two occasions out of the four games we played, one player would only draw one or two knots the whole game. And because only five spells can be cast without knots, they were knocked out extremely early on. In general though, we thought it was fun and we played it several times.

Possible Examples:

• Fire + Water + Wyrm = Lighting Bolt
• Fire + Leaves + Knot= Summon F. Elemental
• Waves + Leaves + Knot = Summon Ice Elemental

etc…

Other spells that could be added are: Amnesia - The caster turns face down a number of cards from the other player's played cards (as many as energy cards played). Confusion - The caster selects randomly a card from the other player's hand to be played this turn. Charm - The caster plays a card from their hand into the opponent's play area.

Instead of a long list of spells with all kinds of "hard to remember" combinations of spells, there will be a small table of effects related to the 6 suits. Players then can combine the suits in different ways to modify the effect.

Here's what I came up with:

"Energy" Suits: Suns, Waves, Leaves - They power up different kinds of spells.
"Action" Suits: Moons, Wyrms, Knots - They activate a spell from played energy cards.

So, for example, to shoot a fireball the player would first play a number of suns suits on the table, then at some point he'd place a wyrm. The action for the wyrm is to use the energy for an attack. The damage for the spell is the number of suns played just before the wyrm.

Other examples are, Heat resistance: Water + Moons (moons direct the energy to the caster). The number of water suits played is the number of turns the effect will last. Or healing Leaves + Moons. The number of leaves is the number of hit points recovered.

What I'm not sure of is should I keep the two-hands structure and the requirement for the suits to be contiguous without other suits in the middle? or maybe give the players more flexibility and let them just choose any energy suits from their played cards in any order (the action suit which actually activates a spell must be played, so you cannot use older action suits to activate spells).

In both cases, there will be a limit to the number of cards that each player can have face up in front of them. After the limit is reached, each time a new card is played, the oldest one is discarded.

I'll try to test this idea and write up preliminary rules. Right now The table of effects I thought of is:

Moon - Sends the energy to the caster
Wyrm - Sends the energy to the enemy
Knots - Crafts the energy into a complex spell

For leaves and wyrm I was thinking about a drain spell, but it seems more powerful than both the fireball and icebolt, so I'm not sure. Maybe some spells could require a bigger minimum number of energy suits, but of course, that will make the table harder to remember…

Each player selects one card secretly and places it face down on the table. When both are ready they reveal the card. If the card completes a spell then its effects are applied. Spells occur in order, the one with the highest ending card first. The cards have to be placed slightly on top of eachother so the sequence of suits for each hand is clearly seen.

Aces and crowns act as it they had two instances of the same suit, one for each "hand".

Pawns let you use any of the three suits in any hand (but just once each). Each time you activate an spell, the chosen suits can be differents so you don't have to keep track of which ones you chose before (so this card is pretty powerful).

Players track their hit points with a 10d dice (or smaller one for a shorter game) and other markers can be used for effects and creatures summoned.

The spells effects are as follows:

Thoughts

I think the game can be made to work, but some spells feel underpowered or overpowered. Magic Mirror is too easy to cast (maybe a solution is to require both hands to cast it), for example. Clairvoyance seems too weak for such a long sequence. I like how it's easy to cast resist heat and then a fire elemental. Kind of makes sense (the same with the ice elemental and resist cold.

Another thought is that sequences should be limited to a number of cards. Cards older are discarded for future use. This way cards are reused quicker and players can have a bigger variety of cards. I was thinking of maybe re-shuffling the deck each time cards are discarded but it may be too much…

Also, the Excuse can be used as a special card, like an End of the Round. When drawn players discard their spell sequences and start over. I'm not too sure about this…

but the idea of memorizing all those spell sequences would be a really unpleasant chore to me

He he :) It's been a while since I played Waving Hands, but I never memorized the spell list… Maybe that's why I was never very good at the game :D (used to play at the gamerz.net server long ago)

Here are the spells I came up with (before realizing about the order of suits in the cards).

I counted all the suits and here are the results. The Both column takes into account aces, crowns and pawns as cards that can be used for any hand:

Moons Up: 8 Down 0, Both 4
Suns - Up: 5 Down: 3, Both:4
Waves - Up: 5 Down: 3, Both 4
Leaves - Up: 3 Down: 5, Both 4
Wyrms - Up: 3, Down: 5, Both 4
Knots - Up: 0, Down: 8, Both 4

Another problem with the grid idea is that for each card you have two secuences of suits horizontally but only one (2 times as big) vertically… I know, it's possible to just use the first suit for one hand and the second for another, but visually it can be difficult to see well…

I'll see if I have time to test the idea a bit…

On the other hand, if you use one card per hand, then the multiple suits kind of get in the way, making it ambiguous which spell is being cast. But maybe that could be worked into a positive aspect, somehow.

(You might want to discount my comments, though, because I don't think that Waving Hands is my kind of game. I've read about it before, but the idea of memorizing all those spell sequences would be a really unpleasant chore to me, evoking flashbacks of the hated "501 Irregular French Verbs" book I had in high school. Chacun a son gout.)

This would mean that (unlike in Waving Hands) there would be an asymmetry between the two spell lines. The first spell could only contain a Knot with an Ace or Crown, since Knots are always listed second on number cards. Similarly, the second spell could only contain a Moon with an Ace or Crown. (There is an underlying order to the suits: Moons, Suns, Waves, Leaves, Wyrms, and Knots. When multiple suits appear on a card, they are in that order.)

The 2D grid idea sounds cool, but it would make simultaneous play more difficult. I can't now think of a way to secretly select both a card to play and a place to play it.

Gestures become Suits (let's call them Runes, for example). Instead of placing one gesture per hand, players would lay down cards in sequence horizontally and each suit in a card would be a "gesture" from a hand. This way, two lines of suits are made, and the each form one sequence for spells.

As you're more limited in what suits you can use (in Waving Hands you can freely choose each gesture), spells would have to be shorter too. Example of spells could be Wyvern, Sun, Sun for a Fireball spell, or Wyvern, Wave, Wave for an Ice bolt. I've made a small table with some spells, using the meaning of each suit as a guideline for combining them in to each spell.

Another idea I had is that the players play the cards on the table making a 2-d grid of cards as they play. When a player places a card so that when a sequence is completed (maybe restricting spells to horizontal from left to right and vertical from top to bottom) the spell is released. This way players have to take advantage of the growing board and can hinder each other efforts.

Of course, this would dramatically change the game…

Thoughts?