Illusions of Prestige Cards

Roll and Write Revolution continues with Illusions of Prestige! In this trick-taking game, players are magicians battling it out on stage with their best tricks! Each trick plays out so there is a winner and everyone else loses, but in losing the magicians gain support from apprentices and gather props to pull off rule-bending Illusions!

Although Illusions of Prestige is intended as a game you print and play at home, here you can buy the necessary custom deck of cards professionally printed by The Game Crafter. If you want the files so you can print a less expensive deck at home, go here. And if you want the entire game printed and shipped to your door, go here.

As you may remember from Standing Stones, Benny is trying to push the boundaries for what we know roll-and-write games to be. In Illusions of Prestige, instead of rolling dice, the core is actually “trick-taking”. Which means that players are dealt a hand from a deck similar to a deck of standard playing cards. The starting player “leads” by playing any card from their hand. Everyone else at the table must try to play a card with the same suit. The player who played the highest value card matching the suit wins the “trick”, earns some big points, a little bonus, and gets to lead next.

The roll-and-write aspect is important for everyone else. All of the cards have props on them and losing players get to mark the props from their played card on their sheet. Those props allow players to perform fantastic illusions that grant some pretty special bonuses (like moving a card from your “lost” pile to your “won” pile). Players who lost the trick also earn apprentices, who can later respond to an opponent’s play by boosting the value of a card.

Our final ploy here is the scoring. Of course players earn fat stacks of points for winning tricks. However, you also score points for strategically losing. Completing illusions and having a majority of each suit in your lost pile can both earn pretty sizable rewards. In fact, a player who carefully and cleverly loses well can steal the game from a player who predominantly won tricks.

Below, Benny shows how to play the 2-4 player version of Illusions of Prestige.

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Illusions of Prestige is designed to play great with 1, 2, 3, and 4 players. The 2 player game features rules for "drafting" hands for more balanced play. The solitaire game finds the player facing off against a dreaded master of illusions who will lead by dealing TWO cards to challenge you or cycle his deck to find a suit that matches yours.

Here, Benny explains how to play the solitaire version: