Hahah, nice -- hooray for being a random inspiration :)
It feels like the ability to ruin someone else's recipe so easily would lead to nothing getting finished... that was what I liked about the 'communal' concept it had in the dream, where you could 'steal' someone else's meal by finishing it first (but the enormously higher value of more complex meals would make it worth risking continuing to build instead..) - the tendency would be to collaborate until you manage to stab each other in the back, trying to guess what recipe your opponent is trying to make.... (in my version, anyone is free to make any recipe at any time; the factor that would influence someone's choice of recipes would be their hand at the moment... basically, the more I think about it, I think my game is something like Mahjong Hold 'Em....)
The dueling idea is neat, though! Maybe if it just cost a lot more to interfere with someone else's recipe, like if it were only possible to interfere by swapping your ingredients with someone else's, but you can only swap if their ingredient actually does have a role in your recipe... so people would leave holes in their own meals, hoping to fill them as an offensive move if their opponent plays an ingredient they need (and also trying to play cards that they suspect their opponent might swap with as early as possible, so as little damage as possible is done -- but earlier in the round is also precisely when it's hardest to guess what your opponent might need...)
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It feels like the ability to ruin someone else's recipe so easily would lead to nothing getting finished... that was what I liked about the 'communal' concept it had in the dream, where you could 'steal' someone else's meal by finishing it first (but the enormously higher value of more complex meals would make it worth risking continuing to build instead..) - the tendency would be to collaborate until you manage to stab each other in the back, trying to guess what recipe your opponent is trying to make.... (in my version, anyone is free to make any recipe at any time; the factor that would influence someone's choice of recipes would be their hand at the moment... basically, the more I think about it, I think my game is something like Mahjong Hold 'Em....)
The dueling idea is neat, though! Maybe if it just cost a lot more to interfere with someone else's recipe, like if it were only possible to interfere by swapping your ingredients with someone else's, but you can only swap if their ingredient actually does have a role in your recipe... so people would leave holes in their own meals, hoping to fill them as an offensive move if their opponent plays an ingredient they need (and also trying to play cards that they suspect their opponent might swap with as early as possible, so as little damage as possible is done -- but earlier in the round is also precisely when it's hardest to guess what your opponent might need...)