Card of the week: The Work of God

Verse:  PofGP, Moses 1:39

Text: “For behold, this is my work and my glory--to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man”

Verse Rule: ABILITY: If this verse is in the same chapter as “The Glory of God”, the chapter may be closed as a Wisdom Book.
Sacrifice Cost: 3
Markers: Strength
Icons: W, W

We are literally the spirit children of a great and loving God. I believe that to my core. And just like I want the best for my kids, He wants the best for His. And just like I should dedicate my life and work for the betterment of my own children, so has He.

So, this father’s day, I want to share one of my favorite verses, and one of my favorite combos. In fact, I based a whole deck on this combo.

The combo itself is, of course, obvious. You play “The Work of God”, and then you play “The Glory of God into the same chapter. Ba-boom. Quick and easy two blessings.

Where it gets crazy is when you build a deck around it.  Here’s how it works: First, you have three copies of each of these main cards in the deck. Then, you have other verses that can fetch these two directly, like verses with “Keyword: Man/Men” or “Keyword: Eternal”. Put three copies of each of those in your deck. Maybe even a few “Judgement Day”s to fetch the two back from the discard after you’ve used them. Finally, load your deck with higher-value Prayer Effect verses. These will help you cycle through your deck more quickly and get to these two verses. Then, add some simple 1-drop verses that you can either play into chapters your opponents are building, or use as sacrificial fodder to play the two big ones.

Seeker’s Quest! It’s the most fun you can have with your scriptures! To get the game, and get in on the fun, go to https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/seeker-s-quest-scripture-mastery-set

Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

Card of the week: The Gateway

Card of the week: The Gateway

John 3:5

“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”

Verse Rule: Quote
Sacrifice Cost: 1
Markers: Wisdom, Law
Icons: W, F

This one is a pretty core doctrinal verse.  It’s part of the story of Nicodemus, who comes to Jesus asking questions. Jesus teaches him about the necessity of baptism and repentance. At first he doesn’t get it. He thinks of being literally “born again”. But Jesus teaches him that he needs to be baptized and that his heart needs to change.

Because it’s such a core doctrine, I gave it “Quote” as its verse rule. This is one that we should all know by heart. It’s icons are wisdom and faith. This is at the core of our doctrinal knowlege and our faith.

In game, it’s not the strongest card, but the fact that it’s quotable, with two icons can move you forward pretty quickly toward closing a Wisdom or Faith book. Also, there are a number of verses that allow you to set wisdom verses from your hand (like “Clear Sight” or “Revealing” - which also lets you draw a verse). “Treasures of Knowledge” allows you to search your deck for a chosen Wisdom verse, so you could fetch this one, then quote it and play it for free.

Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

How to get the most powerful cards in the Game!

Two Special Cards

Today I want to tell you about two special and unique cards for Seeker’s Quest.  A long time ago, as I was first formulating my ideas for this game, an image came to my mind, one that would guide me much later in the shaping of the game’s logo.  The sword, and the book.  This iconic idea references one of the many scriptures whose essence is: The word of god (the book) is like a two edged sword (the sword - of course). As I researched the idea, I chose Doctrine and Covenants 6:2 as the final exemplar of the concept.

It reads: “Behold, I am God; give heed unto my word, which is quick and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, to the dividing asunder of both joints and marrow; therefore give heed unto my words.”

I’ve created two cards based on this verse, called “The First Edge of the Sword” and “The Second Edge of the Sword”.  Here they are:

They are obviously quite powerful, and both tied into the quoting mechanic.  They’re pricey to play, at a sacrifice of 3, and they’re unique, so once they’ve been played once, it can’t be played again. One of them makes it so that you can quote your own verses and play them for free, and the other makes it so that you can force your opponent to quote his own verses or discard them.  I’ve played with these verses and against them, and, trust me, they are big, bad cards.  But they don’t make a player invincible.

So, why am I bringing this up?

Well, I have some of these verses, and I want to share them, but they’re promotional verses only.  That means that they’re not included in any of the purchasable sets!  So, for a limited time, anyone that buys the Seeker’s Quest Scripture Mastery Set will get one of these promo verses, signed, sent directly from me!  The only other way to get one of them will be to get them at a demo or some other face-to-face event.

Get the game! Get the sword!





Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

You Can Finally Buy the Game!

About 8 years ago, I started working on this game. We've developed and tested the cards and the rules, trying to make it the best possible game, so that the players could have a way to have a great time engaging with the scriptures.

We went through 11 revisions of the rules, and I can't count how many sets of cards I printed and cut out.  But now, all that work has come to a fruition!

I'm very excited to announce that you can now purchase the first Seeker's Quest package, the learning game, at TheGameCrafter.com. Simply click to the "Buy the Game" link, above, or go to https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/seeker-s-quest-learning-game

The Learning Game package is an introduction to the game, with enough cards and rules for 2 players to play, right out of the box.

Come check it out!

Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

What Happened? Exciting news for this LDS Game!

Hello!

There's been a lot happening in this little card game's world lately!  It's all very exciting, and a lot of work.


First of all, we've been rebranding.  It turns out that there's another scripture based game on the market already that got published using the name Chapter and Verse.  It actually looks like a pretty cool game.  While it's been a challenge to rebrand, it's a good thing for us, too. My use of the Chapter and Verse name was always a "place holder", and I was never certain I wanted to use the name in publication.  Now, we brainstormed, researched, and have chosen the name "Seeker's Quest".

In addition to having a more enticing, exciting sound, it also ties in better with the game's theme and backstory, as well as connecting strongly with advanced achievement gameplay.

I've also been preparing the graphic look and feel of the game, setting up prototype logos, icons, and cards. That's been very time consuming, as it's difficult to find royalty-free graphics for almost 200 cards!  Still, I've been very pleased with the results so far.

Here's the card back design:

And here's an example of the face of one of the cards:

Most of this is being shared and posted over at the new Facebook page, at https://www.facebook.com/seekersquestgame.  I hope you'll join the fun over there, for regular posts and updates as the new cards get ready for publication!





Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

Judgement Day - LDS Card Game Verse of the Week

• Revelation 20:12 “…And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” 
• Verse Rule: DISCARD: Remove this verse from the game. Then, for each verse in your blessing stack, choose up to one verse from your discard and place them in your hand. 
• Sacrifice Cost: 2
• Markers: Strength  
• Icons: S, H, T

The Book of Revelation can be pretty intimidating and confusing, in much the same way as Isaiah, and, by extension, 2 Nephi.  It’s so full of metaphoric images and rhetorical devices it’s hard to tell what’s up and what’s real.

I wanted to give the player of this verse a really strong benefit for playing it, tied in with their blessings.  So, the idea is that they’re judged, and found blessed, so they get to pull things back into play.

In practical play, it turned out to be too powerful at first, because it was phrased badly.  When it was discarded, it allowed itself to be pulled back into the hand as one of the chosen discarded verses.  So, I rewrote that so it got discarded after the returning effect triggered.  That still didn’t work, because if a player had two Judgement Days, they could do essentially the same effect.

Finally, it was decided that it had to be either unique or removed from play.  In the end, I decided on the latter.  It’s a cool verse, and it’s now not the game-owner that it used to be. Thank heavens for playtesting!






Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

General Authority Trading Cards

http://www.thebunyion.com/2013/07/17/general-authority-trading-cards-unveiled

I had to chuckle a little when I saw this article. Obviously, from the name of the site, I can tell this is a parody, but it sure is a sweetly done one. A while ago, someone had made some other GA trading cards that looked a lot more like sports cards, and they were pretty cool, too. http://www.nine-moons.com/?p=594

I kind of liked that these new ones were based on Pokemon, both in design, and in the way the rules text was laid out and written. Pokemon is kind of a fun game, and how my kids got introduced to the whole concept of collectible card games. Later came Yu-Gi-Oh, and Magic.

What's kind of funny about this is that I had imagined something kinda similar early on in the life of Chapter and Verse. I had thought about a sort of promotional mini-set of, maybe a dozen or so cards that could come out after each conference, based on quotes from the talks. I think it would be cool to be able to intermingle the words of the current prophets with those of the ancient and even the historical Latterday ones.

I think it's really cool to see how fast the stand-out quotes from each conference show up as meme pictures on facebook, as fast as that afternoon.

I thought that there might be copyright and trademark issues involved. Those might get sorted out under either "Fair Use" laws or through negotiation with the church's intellectual reserve. In any case, I thought it was a kind of fun idea!

Check out Mark's other blogs, like Mark's Black Pot - Dutch Oven Cookbooks, and Mo'Boy