This game works best in groups of 3-6 students. Students create characters with superpowers using the provided cards and must debate who would win in a hypothetical fight. I mostly use this game in my high school Debate class when we have extra time/need an end-of-semester activity, but it would also work really well for ESS or conversation classes. The game is best suited for higher level high school students (the classes I've used it in are all 2nd or 3rd year elective classes), but you could provide extra help/scaffolding or alter the game rules to make it suitable for lower levels.
The original version of this game is very reliant on knowledge of Western (especially American) pop culture, so I created this version which centers on references that are more familiar to Japanese students. I made the cards using PowerPoint, so you can change any of the characters or powers to fit your needs! :-)
How to play:
1) Separate students into groups of 3-6. Each group will need their own set of cards (both a character deck and a power deck), so prepare these in advance according to the number of students in the class.
2) The students will take turns debating in pairs, so have the students play janken to decide who will go first (the player to the left of the winner will be their debate partner).
3) Have the first set of debate partners each draw three cards from each deck (3 characters, 3 superpowers). The students may look at their cards, but they shouldn't show anyone else.
4) The students may choose one of each card type to create their character. After they choose, the leftover cards should be discarded into separate piles. Then, to make things more interesting, students must choose one power card from the top of the deck (some of the powers are made intentionally bad for this purpose). To summarize, the students will use x1 character card + x2 power cards (x1 chosen, x1 random) for the debate.
5) The two students will reveal their cards to the group and begin the debate. The student(s) who is/are not debating must listen carefully because they will decide the winner after the debate has finished.
6) After the students finish their debate and are ready to move on, the other students will discuss/vote on a winner. The winner gets to keep their cards and the loser must discard theirs.
7) The students rotate debate partners (this will differ slightly depending on the number of students), and repeat until time is up. The student with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.
Since there are many steps involved in setting up a debate round, it's best to demonstrate this game to the students with the JTE (this also means the JTE must understand the game before going into class). This, in combination with simple verbal instructions (you might want to prepare these in advance), should be enough to successfully set up the game. Another thing that I've found useful is writing useful phrases/hints on the board ("My character would win because he/she can...", etc.).
Depending on class size and available time, I sometimes format this as a debate tournament, where the winners from each group play against each other to determine an overall class winner (the non-debating students can still participate by voting for a winner of each round). As stated before, feel free to modify the cards or rules to fit the needs of your class.
In my experience, the students have caught on to the rules of the game pretty quickly and now I'm able to pull it out when I need a time-filling activity without much additional explanation. It tends to go over well with the students and depending on the class you can usually get some pretty lively debates. Enjoy! :-)
I fixed the bug in the activity description. I think that the spaces at the start of every paragraph were causing the auto-formatting to act strangely.