How a Portability Problem Led to 52Sails’ Best Mechanic
How a Portability Problem Led to 52Sails’ Best Mechanic
When designing 52Sails, one of my core design principles I put down was portability. I wanted players to be able to take the game anywhere - a brewery, coffee shop, anywhere you can find a table to fit a 2 foot by 2 foot mat. I wanted everything to be easy to carry, nothing too bulky, no crazy full table of terrain. That also meant, no dice, no tape measures, just an easy grab and go with minimal components.
This is where playing cards came in. Did you know that playing cards lengthwise are 3.5 inches and 2.5 inches wide? Well, most measurements for movement in games are 4 inches. So why not just use the playing card for your movement? Then that was it, it clicked. Why not just use the playing cards for everything? That way players just need a 2x2 mat, 2 deck of cards, some tokens and some models. Problem solved, but little did I know…
The more I designed, the more I realized I was on to something. The cards became this battle of resource management and decision making. Every decision mattered because your hand is limited. 52Sails resolves ranged combat and boarding with a clash system. In this system players put cards down one at a time face down until you’ve reached your crew limit (a stat in the game) or you decide you are done. After this you both flip the cards and total up your score, the winner has the highest total. With this system, you begin to think, do I use my 10 for that final bit of movement or do I save it for combat? Each card was impactful, no matter the size.
Then we started playtesting and discovered an aspect of the game I didn’t think about at the time. The other player. Players started to bluff their opponents into using higher value cards to defend themselves, while they threw smaller cards down. Leading to a mind game that I never anticipated and an additional level of complexity due to one design decision.
That one design constraint became 52Sails. In a sense it forced me into a solution, and the entire game grew from that constraint. 52Sails became a better game because I limited myself and it made me think outside the box.
52Sails launches March 2026. If you want to follow the journey or if you’re designing your own game and found this useful. Sign up below to get updates on my launches and every new blog post I write.
Thank you for reading!