Beasty Pageant

Beasty Pageant is a card game about combining various monster parts into Beasts- combinations with unique abilities and scores. The game is split into two phases, looping into one another over and over during gameplay.

In the Buy Phase’, players take turns buying part cards from a shared shop and making beasts with their newly acquired cards.
In the ‘Pageant Phase’, all the players add up their beast’s scores. The player with the highest score wins and collects medals for their efforts, while the losers learn more from their apparent mistakes, gathering ‘science points’ to use in the next buy phase.

A few factors add depth to the whole process- first, Beast’s strange abilities can go off at all sorts of odd times, and with effects that can boost your own card economy or completely screw with your opponent’s.

The other factor is the simple fact that each card can only get a single medal, whereas you need a whole 4-6 (dependent on player number) to actually win the game- you can’t win without swapping things out.

The abilities are really where the game lets you get all mad sciency. Perhaps you set yourself up to lose one round just to activate an ability and win the next! In that way, swapping out parts and deciding when to go all-in on a combat score or a good ability are key to getting ahead.

Hardcore hobbyists might find the strange miniature-scale engine builder mechanics engaging, enjoying the weird board states that they need to analyse a good way through, while more casual or younger players might enjoy the mixing and matching thematically.