Game Design Notebook - Horde - Step 1: Contest entry

So, I entered a game in the newly-shrunken monthly BGDF design showdown in January.  I got second in the voting. I'll put up a few posts about it here, the first being my entry there.

The restrictions for the contest were (1) that players had to make permanent rules as they go (inspired by New Year's Resolutions) and (2) that things have to come in pairs.  These aren't that important, but they did lead me to a game design I like a lot.  The new word limit for entries was 200 words.  In case you were wondering, it's very difficult to make a robust game whose rules fit in 200 words; none of the other entries described a full game.  Here's my entry:

Horde 

2-6 players

Object: 

Build the highest-scoring horde of monsters

Components: 

10 Rule cards – 5 colors, 5 monsters (red, yellow, blue, black, white; ogre, dragon, knight, goblin, ooze) 

50 monster tokens - pairs of monsters (2 each of five colors and five types)
Scoring board – 10 score spaces (0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10) 

Setup: 

Shuffle the rule cards and place them and all other components between players (rules face down).

Play: 

Each turn, a player first draws a rule card and places it on the board on any open scoring space. This establishes (resolves?) the scoring for the monster or color shown. Next, the player chooses one, two, or three monsters from the common pool. None of the monsters can match (same color or same monster). The other players then each take the same number of monsters from the pool. These monsters also may not match each other. Players unable to take the full number legally must take fewer.

Scoring: 

Game ends after ten turns (all rules played). For each rule card, the player with the most of that color or monster type gets the point value shown for that rule on the board.