Serendipity

I like card-driven mechanisms for command control and I've bolted one on to Song of Blades and Heroes for this Friday's multi-player game but I was concerned that it wasn't fast enough having one card per player.

Troglodytes threaten the crew of the Susanna Salcita. 

Then, by coincidence I downloaded the latest copy of the Meeples and Miniatures podcast to find Neil and Co talking about Muskets and Tomahawks and how it uses cards but with a given card triggering the activation of all units of a particular type (e.g. all irregulars).

Our game will have three Troglodyte players, three Explorers and three Umpires!  This gives us an ideal opportunity to run with just four cards:

Explorers - all of the Explorer players get to activate their figures

Troglodytes - all of the Troglodyte players get to activate their figures

Wild Thing - a new animal enters or a figure encounters a patch of quicksand or gets lost.  Any existing animals are activated and anyone trapped in quicksand rolls to see if they drown.

Siesta - the turn ends (unless this card comes up first in which case it is ignored).

I'm hoping this approach (and playing with a smaller table than the playtest) will allow us to get through the game in the time available.