A Game of Reincarnation

Last updated on: September 28, 2016 at 7:53 am by Ambaa Choate

A Game of Reincarnation 2016-09-28T07:53:13-04:00 Ambaa Choate

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Yes, you heard me right! I am a big fan of tabletop gaming. It is, in fact, how I met my husband. Last week I discovered this new game called Karmaka, which is a card game about evolving from a dung beetle up to moksha.

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Right now the game is not yet available because the pre-order just ended and it comes out in October or November, but they have a free print and play version on their website. You’ll see the cards there are half in color and half in black and white. I didn’t realize at first that that’s because they don’t want to give everything away. I thought the half black and white aspect was pretty.

Speaking of pretty, the artwork is stunningly beautiful. Great artwork really draws you to a game so that was well done on their part. The one thing about the art that I noticed is that it is western in style. It has a UU flavor to it.

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The real game comes with meeples to represent you on the karmic ladder and they are shaped like meditating Buddhas. For our print and play we just used seaglass pieces for both that and the karmic rings.

One thing we talk about when we talk about tabletop games is how the mechanics support the theme. Does the way that you play enhance the topic of the game? So how does this one do? Really well. The best synergy between those two things is that when you play an action card your opponent can take that card to use in a future life. So if you do something mean to your opponent it can literally come back to bite you! That’s a pretty cool design.

The game is quick and involves some very tough choices. You have very few cards to work with and each card can be used three different ways. So you have to decide which way to use each card. They have great abilities and you might want to use the abilities, but you might be better off putting it down as a deed because if you don’t get enough of those you’re not going to progress in your next incarnation. Also because your deck for the life is so small you might not have enough deeds of a certain color and you don’t know if you’ll get the card you need in your deck of two cards. It’s a bit agonizing! You could choose to play a lot of cards towards your future life but the bigger your deck is the longer your life and you might fall behind while your partner lives shorter lives and progresses more. Lots of choices to be made.

I really like this game and it excites me to see a theme like reincarnation show up in my tabletop gaming.

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