Mardi Gras 3000
Collectable Card Game * Novels * Anthologies


"Two immortal races walk among us. Terrapyre warriors rule the night. Celestial knights command the day. For one hour at dawn and one hour at dusk, the Neutral Hours, they clash. The immortals that retrieve and harness the Holy Grail will control reality."

Mardi Gras 3000 (MG3K) is my first published CCG (Collectable Card Game). It was available in a Limited Edition (not sold out) and is shipping early next year as the National Edition. The publisher is Immortal Day Publishing. In addition to the game, there's an anthology of short fiction set in the MG3K world (MG3K: Await the Neutral Hour), a novella by best-selling science fiction author Cris K.A. DiMarco (MG3K: Bloodlines), and a novella by the incomparable (yeah, they're my parents, so how *cool* is that?) Pahemla and Poulon Angel (MG3K: Angelus). All MG3K fiction is published by Windstorm Creative.

For information about writing MG3K stories or novels, or how to get MG3K fiction, including the free MG3K Sourcebook, click here. If you want to find out more about the CCG, keep reading.

It was difficult for me to condense the MG3K world into less than fifty words (above). The Terrapyres and the Celestials are both complex peoples with their own strengths and weaknesses. They are good, evil, perfect, flawed… they are "human" in the sense that they are fully realized. An evening of playing MG3K is sexy, smart, surprising, humorous… everything a good date should be. Even the Grail has back-story--Angels hiding the chalice in the fourth dimension… the Celestials racing against time to beat Christ to the Grail… the Terrapyres not trusting the Angels or the Celestials but fighting for their own relationship with the Divine... the stories go on and on.

The game itself is fast-paced and excellent one-on-one or in a tournament setting. The use of strategy and forward thinking (not unlike chess) abounds. Unlike other CCGs, MG3K consists of cards for your active deck and cards to set the board. Each of your characters is actually a stack of cards that you move across a 64-card board. Every game you play, you can set the board differently. Every game you are dealt different cards to build your character decks (or you can play with your own custom built decks again and again).

Of course, for traditionalists, you *can* play MG3K without a board, more in line with other CCGs. These rules (the Board-Free Rules) are available for free from the download center or from the "For Players" section of the MG3K Forum.

To enrich the game even more, character, weapon and armor cards have Passes (holes) and Stops (no holes). The way you stack your cards determines your characters' strengths, defenses, skills and items according to what scores are Passed or Stopped. This ingenious system is Stacked ((R), (c), patent pending), and I build all my CCGs around it. Remember this operating system, Dedicated Gamers, because it will take over the world.

MG3K is an idea that turned my life upside down and 180 degrees. I was having dinner with a friend and we were talking math (don't judge). One thing led to another and she was telling me about a card and board game operating system that she had designed years ago. It was incredible. A few weeks later, we met up at a convention and I pitched the MG3K idea. I'd never known I wanted to design games until then but now I know I've found my path.

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