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Writer's pictureZerbique

Nobel Run is live

Nobel Run is a 1-4 player deck-building game in which you manage a scientific team in order to be successful enough to snatch the Nobel Prize. It is now live on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for another 16 days. You may pledge for a copy of the game.

Image source: BGG

You begin with eight starting cards in your deck, of which you draw 5. The other cards constitute the pool deck.


On each turn, you start by revealing cards from the pool deck to form a ten cards display. You play first, and your AI opponent, Peio, plays second. During your turn, you can play cards for their resource (data, effort, and money) to purchase cards from the market. Both the cards you played and the cards you purchased will go to your discard. You can also “publish” one card from your hand every turn, putting it into your Curriculum Vitae. Most cards published that way will give you Prestige Points at the end of the game, but you may want to publish any card just to cull your deck.


At the end of your turn, you can discard as many cards as you want that are still in your hand, and keep as many as you want as well. You then draw cards from your deck to refill your hand up to 5, re-shuffling the discard into the deck if the latter ever runs out.

Image source: BGG

Next, Peio will play. Peio will only snatch the lowest-scoring “Paper” card from the pool, if any. Paper cards are cards that cannot be used as resources but go straight into your CV; they are also the ones that score the most points.


At the end of the round, you remove from the game pool cards of your choice, until only five remain. Then, you refill the pool to 10 cards. Some cards from the pool deck are “events” that, when revealed, do not go to the pool, but immediately affect you, penalizing you with negative resources you will have to overcome to purchase anything on your next turn.


After 16 rounds, the pool deck shall be empty and the game ends. If you have more prestige points earned from published papers in your CV than Peio, you win the Nobel Prize – and the game.


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Cadet Stimpy
Cadet Stimpy
Jun 20, 2021

Z, managing a scientific team. This has you and your wife written all over it! Do you think you'll go for it?

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Zerbique
Zerbique
Jun 23, 2021
Replying to

Exactly that.


Or more accurately, that equating "Nobel prize" and "successful research" in popular culture reinforces the climate of harsh competition that the politics force on us more and more and which just goes against a quality science.


And, yes, I'm thinking about Big Bang Theory's last season and last episode as well. I felt betrayed!

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Derek
Derek
Jun 18, 2021

As always, I'm amazed at the themes in tabletop games today. What a cool theme. That alone interests me (along with deckbuilding of course LOL)

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