F.A.R.T.

Rules

As the commander of the Frontline Alien Resistance Team, you must resist wave after wave of invading aliens. You have a squad of ~~disposable~~ elite soldiers under your command.

Setup

Separate the black cards (defender deck) from the red cards (alien deck) and shuffle each. Place the defender deck face down on the table, and deal six cards face up (defenders). The position of the defenders on the table don't matter. Hold the alien deck face down in your hand. Leave space for a discard pile.

In F.A.R.T., Aces have value 1, while Jack, Queen, and King are 11, 12, and 13 respectively.

Gameplay

The game is played over a series of turns. Each turn, you reveal three new aliens, then defeat or avoid these aliens one at a time. Flip the top three cards of the alien deck (or as many as are left) face-up in your hand. Be careful to maintain the order. The top face-up card is the current attacker, and you should also be able to see the next two attackers coming in.

One at a time, in order, you must choose to engage the current attacker via either a dual attack, a single attack, or a sacrifice.

Dual Attack: Choose two defenders whose sum adds up exactly to the attacker’s value. Discard the attacker, while leaving both defenders in place. While one soldier suppresses, the other strikes with a clean flank attack. No casualties.

Single Attack: Choose a defender with a greater value and opposite color from the attacker. Discard your defender and replace it with the attacker. Your soldier was hurt in the fight; it now has a lower value. Note that the color swap means it can’t be used for another single attack again - at least during this first wave.

Sacrifice: If you cannot or do not want to defeat the invader via an attack, choose a defender and discard it. Then move the current attacker to the back of the alien deck face down. You order a soldier to break formation and distract the alien temporarily. Both of you know this is suicide.

If after any attack or sacrifice you end up with less than six defenders on the table, immediately draw cards from the defender deck to replace them. If you run out of cards in the defender deck, you stop drawing and must make do with the forces on the board for the rest of the game.

Once you've handled all three attackers in order, flip the next three alien cards face up and repeat.

Second Wave

Once you’ve defeated all cards in the alien deck, shuffle the discard pile and start a second wave of attack using these cards. Remember that all cards are discarded to the same pile, including defenders! The second wave should thus have a greater number of aliens, now with a mixed force of black and red cards. In the second wave, the aliens are deadlier: Whenever you perform a dual attack, you now also discard any defender used in that attack whose color matches the alien’s color.

Game End

If you run out of defenders on the board, you lose the game. Your score is negative of the number of cards left in the alien deck, including all face-up attackers. Subtract 50 from your score if you’re somehow still on the first wave.

If you successfully destroy all the attackers of the second wave, you win the game! Your score is the number of cards remaining in the defender deck (if any) plus the number of defenders on the table.

Story

Reddit user efofecks designed ten modern solo games which can all be played with just a standard card deck and shared them with the community in the attached PDF.

This page implements one of these games, F.A.R.T..

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