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Literal Wild Card

 Literal Wild Card
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 Literal Wild Card
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Literal Wild Card
 Literal Wild Card
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LiteralWildCard
 Literal Wild Card
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For a character with unpredictable allegiance, see Wild Card.
In many Tabletop Games, players will have their options limited by the supplies they have on hand, meaning if you don't have the last piece required to make a play, you'll have to make do without. However, some games have alternatives that can be subbed in for the missing piece. For example, if a player held two red cards, two green cards, and a wild card, they could use their wild to make a three-of-a-kind in either color without having to wait. Or if you need five stones to build something and only have four, you can spend them and a wildcard resource to build it without having to wait for your fifth stone.
Mathematically speaking, having wilds will generally open up the game, as having them will increase the number of possible combinations that allow any given value to appear. For instance, the probability of drawing two consecutive aces without replacement is 1-in-221, or about 0.45%. However, if two wilds are added to the standard deck, the odds increase to 5-in-477, about 1.05%. Similar arguments apply for wildcard resources — they make it less likely that someone will get stuck because they don't have the right resources, and they make resource-intensive game pieces more manageable to use. That being said, don't expect this difference to lessen the frustration when the same player keeps getting lucky.
Aside from opening the game up, if wilds need not be used right away, they can also create interesting dilemmas. Because wilds are inherently valuable, a player who has one will often be left pondering whether they should use it right away, or hold out for what they're looking for, allowing the wild to be saved for later. This risk-reward tradeoff adds some strategy to games which, by nature, have an element of chance. Additionally, some wilds have drawbacks like low point values, which can raise the question of whether you should use them at all.
While primarily a tabletop game trope, examples do appear in other media involving player decisions. This mechanic is especially common in card games, where even the best players can lose out due to sheer bad luck. If a game features playing cards and uses jokers, expect them to fill this role. Conversely, a piece need not be a literal card to fill the same function, so long as the primary purpose is to be substituted for a player's chosen value.
Also see Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic.
 Literal Wild Card
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2024-02-23T22:31:15Z
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DBTropes
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Literal Wild Card
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Bubble Witch Saga: A rainbow orb boost can substitute for any colored bubble on the screen.
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In Luck be a Landlord, the Very Rare Wildcard symbol gives out the highest coin value in a spin. Card Sharks turn adjacent Suit symbols into Wilds while the Copycat item makes all Cat symbols function like them.
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The quasi-official rules for Cripple Mr Onion, the Discworld card game, have an "eights wild" variant, and a "null eights" variant, where they can increase the number of cards in an Onion without affecting the value. If eights are wild, three eights are a Wild Royal and eight eightsnote Discworld cards have eight suits; on Roundworld it can be played with a Fatpack deck or two decks with different suits shuffled together are a Lesser Onion that beats any other Lesser Onion and can only be crippled as a Great Onion. You can't Cripple Mr Onion if your nine card run contains fewer wild eights than the Onion you're crippling.
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Late in the run of the CBS edition of Card Sharks, in the Money Cards round, a contestant could uncover up to three Wild Cards which were used to select which of seven face-down cards had the word "Car" on it to win said car.
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Risk: Each of the territory cards has a symbol of either a soldier, a cannon or a horseman. Any three cards with the same symbol or one of each symbol can be traded in for more armies. There are also two wild cards which have all three symbols on them, allowing them to act as any of the three symbols. A wild card can be combined with any two other territory cards and turned in for armies, thus replacing one of the needed cards.
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The Card Game on The Price Is Right used a deck of playing cards to make bids on a car. Numbered cards multiplied the value of it by $100, face cards multiply 10 by $100, while aces were wild. A contestant could make the next bid anything he/she wants or just give a final estimate on the car.
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In Warframe, the Requiem mod "Oull" can be used as a correct substitute for one of the three Requiem mods that must be installed on your parazon in correct order to strip away your personal nemesis' (Kuva Lich or Sister of Parvos) immortality.
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Uno: The classic version (pre-2018) has two types of Wild cards, which allow you to declare the next color to match. The regular Wild can be played on any turn, while the Wild Draw Four forces the next player in line to take four cards and lose a turn. However, you can only use a Wild Draw Four if you don't have any cards of the current color, and the next player can challenge you on this; if it turns out you were bluffing, you take the four cards instead. Post-2018 decks and specialized versions add their own types of Wild cards and rules for playing them.
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The Owl House: In “Hooty’s Moving Hassle�, Eda spends most of the episode playing a magical card game called “Hexas Hold ‘Em�. Her main strategy relies on the Wild Card, which incinerates the opponents cards with its fire breath, then mocks the opponent by flexing the figure on the back’s muscles at them.
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Res Arcana:
The game effectively lets your cards function as a kind of wilds. Any card can be discarded for a Gold or any two non-Gold resources.
Many components have effects that can generate any type of normal essence, or at least offer some choice (e.g. letting you choose between getting one Elan and one Death).
Perlae Imperii introduces Pearls, which can be converted into a Gold or any two normal essences as a free action.
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Lost Ruins of Arnak: Any travel icon can be paid for using a higher travel icon. This means that the plane, the highest icon, can pay for any travel symbol.
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Shadows over Camelot: Most Fight cards have a strength score from 1 to 5. A couple are wild cards that can be any number in that range, making them especially useful for Sidequests that require Fight cards to be played in a specific order or combination.
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Flamecraft: Potion Dragons are a partial example — while they only create potions as a good, their ability is to swap them with another dragon at another shop, then activate the swapped dragon’s ability. Additionally, gold coins can be exchanged for any trade good during the game, but are worth reputation at the end of the game.
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Settlers Of Catan Dice Game: Unlike the other five resources, gold is not useful in and of itself. However, players may trade two gold for one of any other resource, providing more flexibility in development decisions.
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Cards Against Humanity: In a game about finding the funniest combination of cards, blank cards may be filled in by whatever the player sees fit.
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Magic: The Gathering:
Basic lands only produce one color of mana. However, there are also lands that can produce all five colors, or another subset of them. These come with drawbacks such as entering the battlefield tapped (which means you can't use them the turn you play them) or damaging you when you use them.note The sole exception is the "original duals" from early in the game's history. Certain creatures and artifacts can also make mana of any color.
Several cards have effects that go something like "you may spend this mana as though it were mana of any color", which turns that mana into a wildcard.
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Wingspan:
When you play a bird, you can spend any two food as though it were one wildcard. For instance, if a bird costs one fish, you can play it for two grains instead.
Several bird powers can take any food from the supply.
Star nests count as all four nest types for the purpose of bonus cards, end-of-round goals and bird powers that care about nest types.
The Oceania Expansion introduces the "*" wingspan for flightless birds. These always satisfy wingspan requirements like "less than 30 cm", and can be treated as any value for the bonus cards that ask for wingspans in ascending or descending order.
The Oceania Expansion adds Nectar, which can count as any food type when paying a bird's food cost. There are also some endgame bonuses that revolve around who spend the most Nectar. However, it has the downside that any unspent Nectar goes away at the end of each round.
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Imploding Kittens, the first expansion pack of Exploding Kittens, has four Feral Cat cards, which can act as any of the five types of normal Cat cards, to increase the chance of getting Doubles (to steal a card from an opponent), Triples (to ask for a specific card type from them), or Five Different Cards (to take any card from the discard pile).
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In the TV game show Concentration, contestants had to match the prizes the squares to (1) add that prize to their bank, and (2) reveal more of the rebus puzzle for them to solve (which won the game and allowed them to keep all their banked prizes). But there were two Wild Cards among the 30 squares, and they would automatically match whatever was behind the other selected square. Plus, on the NBC version, a contestant who called both Wild Cards in the same turn would win $500 (later a car) — regardless of who won that game!
The NBC revival Classic Concentration had three Wild Cards on the board for each game. A contestant was credited a $500 bonus on his/her prize rack for finding two of them in a row, and another $500 for finding the third one immediately afterward. They had to solve the puzzle to win the bonus.
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On The Joker's Wild, as the title implies, when one or two jokers appear on the board, the contestant may either match the joker(s) with one displayed category or go "off the board" for a question in a category not displayed. If three jokers appear, the contestant can win the game by correctly answering one question in any category.
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In Trivial Pursuit, trivia questions come in six categories (Geography, History, Entertainment, Literature, Science & Nature, and Sports & Leisure). Most spaces on the board are labeled with one of these categories, and what space you land on determines the sort of question you'll get. The exception is the center space, which lets the player choose which category their question will come from ... unless answering the question would win them the game, in which case it's their opponents who choose the category for them.
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7 Wonders:
Both the original game and 7 Wonders Duel have resource symbols that can be used as any raw resource, and symbols that can be used as any refined resource. 7 Wonders also has brown cards that can provide one of two resources per turn.
The Scientists Guild and both sides of the Babylon wonder feature a symbol that can count as any one of the three scientific symbols at the end of the game. This means that you're free to choose whichever gives you the most points, which varies depending on which symbols you already have.
In 7 Wonders Architects, coins are a wild resource that can substitute for any missing Resource needed to construct a stage of your wonder. Since constructing a wonder stage is mandatory if you have the resources for it, you can't really hoard coins.
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Century: Spice Road gives every player a card to upgrade any cube in their inventory twice, or two of them once. While other cards may convert for more value, this card stands out for its sheer flexibility.
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Hanabi: Inverted with the multicolor firework available as one of the provided variants. Said variant makes them a wild card, but this actually makes the game harder because they count as wilds only for identifying the card's color for the card holder when they still need to be built as a separate pile rather than going into the other suits.
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Scrabble: In addition to tiles featuring letters, there are two blank tiles per game. These tiles have no point value, but may be substituted for any letter.
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Elder Sign: Some powerful buff effects add a red die to the dice pool; it has better results overall, plus a wildcard face that can substitute for any other symbol on the dice. This is invaluable for quests that require a difficult combination of die results to be rolled.
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Chess: A promoted pawn can be turned into any non-king piece. 99% of the time you'll make a queen — the strongest option — but you do have the option to go for a weaker piece in the niche situations where it's useful.When? Occasionally, a knight's move will be necessary on a congested board, or a rook or bishop will be summoned to prevent stalemate. Alternately, a player confident in their position may do it to show off.
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Poker: In some variants, the dealer decides at the beginning of the game which cards, if any, are wild.
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Ticket to Ride: All variants of Ticket to Ride require matching cards equal to the length of the railroad be played in order to build on that stretch — with some routes requiring one color in particular. However, locomotives, which are gold on a rainbow background, may be substituted for any other color. However, if a player claims a face-up locomotive on their turn, they may only take one card, instead of the typical two.
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Yu-Gi-Oh!: Normally, Fusion Summoning requires a set of materials as stated on the target card in order to complete the summoning. There exist however some cards that are able to acts as substitutes for any specifically-named fusion material, provided the other material is correct. "King of the Swamp" is the most well-known of these due to having an additional effect of discarding itself to search for the fusion spell "Polymerization", making it an objectivally superior choice to all the classic fusion substitutes (newer fusion substitutes might be more useful in their appropiate archetypes however).
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LEGO Games: Skeletons in Monster 4 act as wild cards, taking the place of one of the monsters you would otherwise place.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

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