Puzzle Strike Variants/House Rules

Hey everyone! Thought it would be cool to have a thread discussing Puzzle Strike variants/mods that people might have.

I don’t know if this really counts as a variant exactly, but my favorite way to play the game is random characters for both characters, and random bank. No re-rolls. I like it this way because I feel like it forces people to understand the whole game rather than just the characters they typically play. Balance wise it can be wonky sometimes; some matchups are hard and they become really hard if certain chips are in the bank, but, I actually think it’s pretty fun even playing those matches because it forces you to try to come up with some form of Hail Mary strategy to try and win anyway.

Do you have any house rules or special ways that you like to play?

2 Likes

I play with similar rules :slight_smile:

We pick two random characters each and then we can decide which one to play.

Bank is random as well but each player can swap out one chip for a random new chip. Actually we select 12 chips for the bank and then each player has to discard one.
After the first match the looser can swap out one chip against a different random one.

I usually play with my girlfriend and it is not the most competitive endeavor. So the main point of the rules is to have as much variety as possible. Otherwise we would end up playing the same two characters all the time :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I’m thinking of a variant myself, that I haven’t tested.

What house rules would we need to play that the player with the MOST gems wins? You could play until the 1 gems run out or up to a specific amount of total gems.

Possible rule changes could be that purples are reversed: You select a players gems to crash to you.

OR purples must be played while in hand (no action?), you can’t buy wounds, double crashes cost 0 (they’re the new wound chip), crashes cost 1, and combines 2 (all 1 or 2 chips go to three?)

Do any experienced players see anything in this?