Sirens

Sirens is a quick card-drafting, tableau-building game for 1-2 players from Envy Born Games! In Sirens, players compete to lure in sailors by constructing songs. The first player to capture two sailors wins, but as it turns out, putting together a worthy tune is more difficult than it appears!

Overview

The game plays over 2 or 3 rounds, with each round consisting of 2 phases of drafting and playing cards. After a round, each player's song is scored, and the higher scoring player captures a sailor. Then, a new round begins, and play continues until one player has captured 2 sailors.

The main deck consists of 18 cards. At the start of a round, the top card is flipped face-up and set aside. A symbol on the card indicates special rules for the round. These can vary from changing scoring conditions to changing how cards are drafted!

Next, each player is dealt a hand of 4 cards. Each player will pick one card from their hand and keep it face-down in front of them, then pass the remaining cards to their opponent. This process is repeated until each player has drafted three cards - the final one is discarded.

Players then reveal the cards they drafted so far, and order them in a row however they want. There are several factors that would influence a player's choice of ordering, but we'll go over that later. This first set of cards is called the "Root" of the song.

Once players are happy with their Root, the discarded cards from the first drafting phase are shuffled back into the deck, and new hands of 4 cards are dealt to each player. Play continues as it did in the first drafting phase, but things change once players reveal their drafted cards. This time, players can only add cards before or after the Root, in any combination. The Root is locked in, even if something you drafted this phase would go perfectly in between two Root cards!

Once players are more-or-less happy with their song, round scoring takes place. There are four scoring categories to go through after each round:

❤️ Hearts

🔰 Parts

▶️ Flow

🏆 Charm

❤️ Hearts ❤️

This one is easy. Players total the number of hearts on cards in their songs, and the player with the highest total scores the difference (e.g., if I have 6 hearts and you have 4 hearts, I will score 2 points).

🔰 Parts 🔰

Next up, players will earn points for song parts. A part is one or more adjacent cards in a song that all match color. Importantly, a song must have at least 3 song parts in order to score any Parts points. Each song part is worth points equal to the square of its size (e.g., a 3-card song part is worth 3*3 = 9 points).

▶️ Flow ▶️ 

Each card belongs to 1 of 4 'suits' or colors, and each suit prefers to be followed by a different suit. This is called "flow," and each properly aligned flow step in your song (they don't have to be all in a row) will net you progressively higher points. Your first flow step is worth 1 point, the second is worth 2 points, the third is worth 3 points, and so on.

🏆 Charm 🏆

Many cards contain an image of half a charm on either the left or right side of the card. If these charms are matched up with their missing halves, points are earned equal to the number on the charm.

The player that scores the most points captures the sailor and takes the set-aside card from the beginning of the round to mark their victory. This card also provides one extra heart in the next round!

Finally, the game also has a companion app that, for $0.99, you can use to scan your final songs and hear them played out on a plucked string instrument. It's not at all required, but it's a cute extra feature!