Call of Cthulhu: The (Living) Card Game Review

Since I really enjoy Living Card Games (or LCGs), for today's review, I tracked down a copy of Call of Cthulhu: The (Living) Card Game.  And, for the purposes of this review, I will be writing about the game system, but will also be focusing on the core set, to let you know how well the basic game plays without buying expansions.

In Call of Cthulhu, each player is attempting to explore various stories that they have heard about.  At any given time, there will be three stories on the table that you may commit characters to investigate.  Once a player accumulates five "success" tokens on a story, they immediately claim that story, and once they claim three total stories, they have won the game.  However, to get to that point, players must alternate in taking turns.  Each turn consists of several phases, starting with making a character sane and readying all of your other characters and resources.  Then you draw two cards.  After drawing cards, the active player may select a card from his hand to turn into a resource.  Next, the active player can exhaust resources in order to play characters, attachments, and events.  Finally, the story phase begins.  In the story phase, the active player commits their characters to various stories, and then the other player may respond by committing his characters.  Next, each story resolves.  When resolving a story, the players have four different struggles - terror, combat, arcane, and investigation, and then the overall story is scored.  Each of the first four struggles compares the corresponding icons that are located on committed characters.  Whoever loses a terror struggle has a character go insane, the loser of a combat struggle has a character take a wound (and probably die), the winner of an arcane struggle gets to ready one of his committed characters, and the winner of the investigation struggle gets to place a success token on the story.  Finally, with whatever characters are still alive and sane, the players compare total skill on the story.  If the active player wins, he gets to place a success token - if he wins and his opponent's skill is zero or less (generally because they didn't play anyone there), then he gets to place an additional success token.  Play alternates like this until one person acquires three stories.

All these do is marked your drained domains

So, before breaking down my thoughts on Call of Cthulhu, I should probably make you aware of something.  Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, like Arkham Horror, is set in H.P. Lovecraft's world of Cthulhu.  I haven't read anything about this mythos, nor is it something that I care terribly much about.  Honestly, in general, I don't care much about horror themes.  So, my thoughts on this one will be based about the game and how it plays.  I'm sure that someone that enjoys this theme will have a different opinion on it - they may love it more because they like the theme and the artwork, or they may dislike it because they think that the theme wasn't applied well.  Either way, it seemed important to let you know where I'm coming from on this review.

My first pro for the Call of Cthulhu card game is that I really like how resources work in the game.  Resources are based on "domains."  To start the game, you take three cards that aren't being used, and place them face down to form your starting domains.  Then, you draw a setup hand of eight cards.  You keep five of these cards, and you place the other three (upside down) under your starting domains.  Then, each turn during your resource phase, you have the option of adding an additional card from your hand to one of these domains.  When playing cards from your hand, you must be able to "drain" a single domain with at least as many cards as the cost of the card in question.  Additionally, at least one of the resources must match the faction of the card being played.  I really like this mechanic.  First, it prevents you from having to draw specific resource cards (like Magic: The Gathering), but allows all of your cards to be dual use.  Second, I like that there is an opportunity cost to gaining resources.  Presumably, every card in your deck is useful (though this is more true when you build a deck than when you use a starter deck).  Thus, whichever card you are using as a resource was a card that was intentionally selected to go in that deck.  And, instead of getting to play it, you now bury it as a resource.  I enjoyed this balance quite a bit.

Though powerful, rare to actually play

My second pro for Call of Cthulhu was that I really liked the different struggles on the stories.  To me, this is really where the strategy of the game lies.  And, yet, in my experience, there weren't very many turns in which both players committed characters to the same story, and where all of the different struggles occurred.  Instead, it seemed that your opponent having certain characters would deter you from participating in different stories.  For example, if (as the active player) if your opponent had a character with terror icons, but you did not, then you would realize that if you committed a character to a story, then they would be able to counter and drive you insane.  Now, if you were able to commit to several different stories, this might be worth doing, but if you only had one or two characters, you would be better off waiting.  Then, if you played a character with combat and willpower (willpower means that they cannot go insane), then suddenly you have turned the tables.  If you keep that character ready, then you will be able to ignore your opponent's terror attack, and respond by killing them in combat.  I thought these different elements were neat, even if they did wind up turning into a large game of "chicken" more than actually causing direct conflicts.

Now, before getting into the cons, I will mention one thing that I was surprised by about Call of Cthulhu.  The game is really short.  I realize that this will not always be the case - it will depend on what cards you use (and draw), and the skill of the players.  Yet, in all of the games that I played, I don't think any of them lasted ten turns.  Many of the characters in the base set have the investigation icon, and often it seemed best to leave stories unopposed (because otherwise the character you would defend with would become insane or be killed), and thus there would be many turns in which a player would score three success tokens on a story (or even several stories) in a single turn.  That many success tokens can make the game go very quickly.  So, some of the really cool cards that are in your deck (like Cthulhu himself), may never get played because their resource cost is so high.  One of the cards in the game costs eight resources.  He does powerful things, but you would have to put all of your resource cards into a single domain for seven turns in order to play him - and the game would also have to last seven turns in order for that to happen.

Playing this greatly tips the game in your favor

Now for the cons.  I didn't find any of these cons to be detrimental, but they are definitely still worth mentioning.  First, some of the cards in the base game seemed to cause one player to (essentially) instantly win.  The cards are very powerful, but I hesitate to say "overpowered" because I haven't played it enough to make that judgment, and because I know of cards in the base set that can counter them.  But, if you aren't using the faction with that counter card (or don't draw that card immediately), then there won't be much you can do.  For example, one of the cards (when committed to a story) inflicts a wound on every other character committed to that story.  Well, if you keep him for defense, then you will basically be able to kill off all of your opponent's characters that they commit to a story each turn.  This will give you a major numbers advantage, and probably win you the game.  There are ways of countering him - driving him insane, or taking away his text.  But, if the person who plays them also gives them terror icons, then they can no longer be insane, and instead they just wreak havoc all over their opponent.

The other con that I have for Call of Cthulhu is fairly common for customizable or living card games.  There is a lot of ambiguity.  It would have been really helpful if the rulebook had a glossary, or at the very least an index.  There are some rules that are buried in unexpected places, and with the number of different cards wording things differently, it would be nice to easily look up what an "ability" is - does this include passive abilities, or just triggered abilities?  Instead of putting a glossary (or index) in the back of the rulebook, they included seven pages of advertisements for other Cthulhu products (with the back of the rulebook being an ad for The Game of Thrones living card game).  As a player, I feel that this space could have been used more productively.

Overall, I give Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game an 8.0/10.  I thought the game was enjoyable, and that people who love the theme could really get into this one.  I was glad to get to play it, thought it wound up as my least favorite of Fantasy Flight's living card games - but that is more of a testament to how good the other games are than a knock against this one.  And, since I'm only willing to invest in a few of them, I will probably pass this one along in a trade in the future.

If you are interested in living card games, make sure you check out Android: Netrunner LCG, Star Wars LCG, and Lord of the Rings LCG.

Android: Netrunner Review

A game that I have had the opportunity to play a few times recently after much hype is Android: Netrunner (or, Netrunner, for short), one of the newest living card games from Fantasy Flight.  Just for fair warning, Netrunner is a fairly involved game, so the rules overview will skip a lot of the smaller rules.

Netrunner is a two player game in which one player plays the "Runner" and his opponent plays the "Corporation."  Both players are attempting to score seven points from agendas.  The Corporation scores them by playing them and advancing them to completion, whereas the Runner scores them by stealing them - either stealing them from the Corporation's deck, discard pile, hand, or in play area.  In order to protect their agendas (and other cards), the Corporation can install "Ice."  Ice defends any server from the Runner.  However, to counter Ice, the Runner can play Icebreakers.  On his turn, the Corporation can draw cards, gain money, install cards, play cards, and advance cards (like agendas).  On the Runner's turn, he can do similar things (other than advancing cards), but he can also make a "run."  Making (and defending) runs is the crux of the game.  When the Runner decides to make a run, he first chooses the target.  Then, he encounters each piece of ice on that server, and if the piece of Ice is face down, the Corporation has the option of "rezzing" the Ice (turning it over).  Only rezzed Ice gets in the Runner's way.  During his run, the Runner will use Icebreakers to get through his opponent's Ice.  However, most Icebreakers are initially weaker than Ice.  Therefore, the Runner will have to use "credits" (money) in order to increase the size of his Icebreaker; and he will also have to use credits in order to break each of the "subroutines" (bad things that would happen) on the Ice.  If he successfully gets through all of the Ice on that server, then the run is successful - and thus he gets to steal any cards that he can now access.  On a "remote server" he can access the single card that was installed.  On other servers, he can access the entire discard pile, a random card from the Corporation's hand, or the top card from the Corporation's draw pile.  The first player to score seven agenda points wins!

The Runners in the base game

The first pro for Netrunner is that it is beautifully asymmetric.  I have played a lot of games, and many of them have some element of asymmetric gameplay.  Often this takes the form of slightly different rules, different starting positions, and different victory conditions.  However, Netrunner blows that completely out of the water.  In Netrunner, there is nothing that is shared.  The two sides have different inherent strategies, play cards differently, and are the counter of each other in every way.  Whereas this makes the game a bit hard to teach, it is done so beautifully that the time spent learning the game definitely feels like a worthy investment.  I still struggle to wrap my mind around how you would create a game where the sides are this diverse and yet make it balanced for both sides.  Bravo.

The next pro for Netrunner is that I think the secret information in the game adds an interesting suspense.  Though, specifically, it is primarily the Corporation that is hiding information from the Runner.  Between the different pieces of Ice that are not yet revealed and the different cards installed on remote servers, the Runner must make a lot of decisions based on limited information.  This also adds a bluffing element to the game.  The Corporation may create a remote server that is highly protected by Ice and then put a non-agenda card in it (unrevealed) in order to get the Runner to focus a lot of effort on it (thinking that it is an agenda).  More so, the Corporation even has some trap cards that are allowed to be advanced, and thus it will look exactly like an agenda until the Runner has some way of seeing it - either by playing a card that exposes it, or by making a successful run against it.  But, a successful run against one of these traps will probably be very harmful to the Runner.

A third pro for Android Netrunner is that I like that nothing is safe (well, unless it is highly protected by Ice).  A Runner is allowed to target any cards the Corporation has, aside from scored agendas.  Specifically, the Runner can target your hand, your discard pile, your draw pile, and any card that you install on your side of the board.  Thus, you can never have an agenda that the Runner can't steal - all you can do is hope to protect it enough (or bluff well enough) that he doesn't manage to steal it before it is completed.  I also like that the runs can be helpful ("the runs can be helpful" - yes, maybe I have the mind of a teenager, but that makes me chuckle; ah, bathroom humor) even without finding an agenda.  The Runner has the option of trashing any card that he finds, if he is willing to pay the trash cost for it.  This is a good (but expensive) way to counter what the Corporation may be planning.

Icebreakers ready to go

I could probably list off several more pros, but let's get to an important point of note and then a couple of cons.  First, the point of note - the Runner is very reactionary, whereas the Corporation is very defensive.  If you tend to strongly prefer one of these strategies over the other in games, then you should know that you will probably have a favorite side to play.  Specifically, the Runner is always trying to make runs to have a chance of stealing agendas.  His turn will be easier or harder depending on how well the Corporation has defended his servers.  His success in scoring points is also dependent on the Corporation - because if the Corporation never draws agendas, then the Runner can never score (granted, neither can the Corporation).  Conversely, the Corporation's entire goal is to defend.  It is in his best interest to have a lot of ice on every server.  The more heavily defended that the Corporation can be, the more likely that he will have time to advance his played agendas to completion - and thus the higher his chances of victory.

Now for the cons of the game.  Both of the cons will be related to the Corporation drawing agendas.  First, the entire pace of the game is set by the frequency with which the Corporation draws agendas.  If they are all at the beginning, then the game will be very fast and hectic.  However, if all of the agendas happen to be on the bottom of the deck, then the game can really start to feel like it is dragging quite a bit as the Runner is making (possibly successful) runs, but they all seem pointless.  Even as the Corporation, not drawing agendas for a long time can start to feel boring, as you're constantly setting up defenses (which is good for you), but you can start to feel like you are stalling.

Highly protected Corporation HQ

This leads to the second con which is that the frequency of the Corporation player drawing agendas can highly favor one player over the other.  Now, yes, most card games have a luck of the draw element, and Netrunner does as well where each player hopes to draw their best cards, but that's not what I mean.  Netrunner is unique in that the draw of one of the two players will help determine who is "luckier".  If the Corporation player draws a lot of agendas early, this highly favors the Runner - the Runner is able to make a lot of runs before the Corporation is able to setup a lot of defenses, and has a much higher chance of stealing an agenda.  Whereas, if the Corporation draws a lot of his agendas near the bottom of the deck, then this highly favors the Corporation - he can setup a large number of defenses and have them all in place before the Runner has the opportunity to gain anything useful; plus, the Runner quite possibly will have used many of their best cards on making successful runs earlier without scoring any points.  I think that this is a very strange dynamic of Netrunner - but the best games of Netrunner seem to be when the Corporation's agendas are evenly distributed throughout the deck.

Overall, I give Android: Netrunner an 8.5/10.  It is a really fun game, and I'm glad that I got to invest the time to play it several times.  However, since it is a living card game, I must decide whether I'm going to continue with this franchise or not.  I currently have three other living card games that I prefer over Netrunner (Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and Star Wars) and so I will probably not to continue investing in this one.

If Netrunner sounds interesting, you might also check out Mage Wars, Glory to Rome, and Star Wars: Customizable Card Game.

ARC Review

An interesting little game about time travel is called (I believe) ARC (yes, admittedly, I'm not 100% sure of this name; more specifically, I'm not sure if it is called "ARC" or "ARC: The Game", and I believe it used to have a different name).

In ARC, each player controls an Aeon (time traveler), and your goal is to kill (or "knock unconscious" if you want to have a PG-13 rating) your opponent's Aeon.  Each turn you draw one card and then play or exhaust as many cards as you want.  However, when playing a card, you must meet the Arc Energy requirements.  Arc Energy consists of the number of cards in your hand in addition to any cards (such as your Aeon) that give you bonus Arc.  When playing cards, you can find Relics, attach Trinkets and Armaments to your Aeon, encounter Events, or even lay Traps to spring on your opponent.  Many of these cards are attached to a given era on the timeline, and if your Aeon "Rifts" between eras, the cards that are attached to the previous era will be left behind.  Each card, when exhausted, can no longer be used - with the exception that each Aeon can be exhausted twice.  Players alternate turns attacking each other until only one player remains standing.

There are really a lot of interesting concepts in ARC.  First, I really like how Arc Energy works.  Since your Arc Energy is calculated based on the number of cards in your hand, you won't want to play everything that you can every turn.  Some turns, you will need to save up to play an expensive item.  However, once you play that expensive item, you have two options - unload the rest of your hand in a furious flurry of attacks against your enemy, or keep most of your hand intact in order to have enough Arc to play another massive card the next turn (assuming you draw another one).  Overall, the balancing of these energies is critical for the game.  Unfortunately, this balance isn't quite as difficult as I would like - your Aeon always adds Arc (unless you are using the Mercenary), some Trinkets add Arc, you draw a card at the start of each turn, and your Aeon can draw a card as an action (once per turn), so you can pretty quickly accumulate the necessary Arc to play almost anything.  That is, assuming that you are patient enough to wait the 1-2 turns needed to build up.  Plus, since there is no penalty for playing your entire hand in a turn, you aren't actually losing out on anything by building up your Arc - you're simply stalling when all of the cards in your hand are played.

Currently available sets

My second pro for ARC is that I like Traps.  Basically, you can play a Trap in your era, but it comes into play exhausted (and facedown so that your opponent can't see it - otherwise it wouldn't be a very good Trap).  So, on your next turn, the Trap becomes refreshed (and ready to spring).  I thought that this was a nice element to the game.  And, though it's a bit confusing to me that you're not able to set a Trap without your enemy knowing that it's there, it still makes sense to me that you have to wait a turn for the Trap to be ready.  And, since your opponent does get to know what's there, simply having a Trap might discourage them from attacking you; regardless of how potent the Trap is.

Another thing that I thought was interesting about ARC was that your Aeons can exhaust twice.  However, this is really a tricky thing.  If your Aeon could only exhaust once, then the game simply wouldn't work - each turn one Aeon could run away, and the other Aeon wouldn't ever be able to catch up and attack (with their Aeon; they would still be able to attack with cards).  But, because you can exhaust twice, this means you can't ever run far enough away - your opponent can always just rift to your era and then attack you.  (I said "run far enough away" and, to be fair, this is assuming that I played the game correctly.  I was unclear on whether, when rifting, you had to go to an adjacent era or if you could go to any territory.  Really, though - if I am able to travel through time, it better not be in a linear fashion.  Otherwise, I need a better time travel machine.  And, yes, I did just complain about a machine that lets me travel through time!)

However, with all the things that I like about ARC, there are a few things that are definite cons.  The first one is the rulebook.  The rulebook was designed to look pretty - not to be functional.  This game desperately needs an FAQ before you even play the game!  (And, I'm not sure if one even exists.)  I've already mentioned one rule that is unclear.  Here's another one - when playing a card from your hand, do you count it towards your Arc Energy total?  No idea.  Can you play the same Trinket or Armament on your Aeon multiple times?  (On this one, at least the example image of what the game should look like implies that you can.)  But, if you play the game, expect to be house ruling various situations and rules, because the rulebook simply won't answer them - and if it does answer your question, you might spend a bit of timing looking and flipping the rules over back and forth until you find it.

Aeons in their respective eras

My next con is that the time travel theme, though exciting, seemed a bit artificial.  There is really nothing unique about the fact that you are traveling "through time" that wouldn't work exactly the same if you were traveling to different locations on a map.  You can only attack someone if you're in the same era?  This would be true if you are in different places on a map.  When you leave, you have to leave Traps and Relics behind?  I don't see people bringing Stonehenge with them when they go home.  Now, theme isn't really much of a requirement in games that I play.  Gameplay is much more important to me.  With that said, the biggest draw for ARC will probably be that it is about Aeons fighting through time - so I wanted you to be aware that the theme isn't really interwoven throughout the mechanics before you decided if this game is right for you.

Finally, I really didn't like the effects of some of the eras.  Specifically, the "Future" causes the game to be artificially lengthened.  If you end your turn in the Future era, then you gain two health.  Most attacks do around three damage - some actually do only one.  So, if most of your game occurs in the Future, then the game will be much longer than it should be, simply because both players are healing at the end of each round.  And, unfortunately, you can't force an opponent's Aeon out of a given era - so if they aren't willing to leave the Future, then there is nothing that you can do to avoid fighting in this era.

Overall, I give ARC a 7.0/10.  The game works, and I really don't mind playing it.  Additionally, it is using the Living Card Game model that allows you to customize decks, but without having to buy randomized packs, which I appreciate.  However, though I think that ARC is a solid game, there isn't really anything that pulls me in and makes me want to play it repeatedly.  I would be willing to play it more, but it probably won't be a game that I suggest.

If you like card games like ARC, you might also enjoy Game of Thrones: Living Card Game, Nightfall, and Star Wars: Customizable Card Game.

I would like to thank Tech Lab Games for providing me with a review copy of ARC.

Existenz: On the Ruins of Chaos Review

A game that came to me highly recommended by some of my fellow bloggers is Existenz: On the Ruins of Chaos (not currently available on Amazon).

I was told that because I liked the Game of Thrones: Living Card Game, I should try out Existenz.  However, I found Existenz to be much more like Magic: The Gathering.  If you're familiar with Magic, most of this will sound familiar, but I'll go ahead and give an overview for anyone else.  On your turn, first you re-activate (untap) all of your cards, you draw a card, and then you can play cards from your hand.  You may play one Crystal (Land) per turn - these give you Energy (Mana) which you can then use to play other cards.  You can play Summons (Creatures) from your hand, and there are about six different types.  You may only have one summon of each type in play at a time, and it must be summoned onto either a warp dot or a start dot.  There are also Catalysts (Enchantments) that can be played that affect gameplay, and Flux (Instants) cards that can be played at essentially any time, but are discarded after use.  On your turn, you may move and attack with your Summons, as each has a speed and range - all damage they inflict goes onto the targeted summons, and once a summons takes more damage than it has defense, it is destroyed (think of defense as hit points instead of damage they can prevent).  The game is played until one player's Life Base (a summons type that starts in play) is destroyed, reaches an end dot, or one player runs out of cards in their deck.

You have to be in position to attack

The first thing that I like about Existenz is that, through the board, it adds a spatial element to Magic.  Instead of everything being in some ethereal realm where everything is conveniently adjacent, summons actually have to get near each other in order to fight.  This makes sense.  However, one of the rules is that you cannot move over "sharp turns" (acute angles).  This is a really neat mechanic, and allows for the board to not require tons of icons representing when you can and when you cannot move (though the board is still pretty busy).  However, it also makes most creatures' movement speeds not matter very much, and it also makes the combat much less frequent - especially considering that you're only allowed to have a few summons in play at any given time.

The biggest pro to Existenz is probably that the publishers of the game are listening to their fans.  Specifically, the game was initially launched as a Collectible Card Game (where you have to buy packs of random cards).  In fact, the back of the instruction manual encourages you to buy extra packs in order to expand your gameplay.  Their fans apparently hated this (I can't blame them, I hate the CCG model, too), and so they have changed it to the "Living Card Game" model, where you still buy packs, but the packs are not random.  I appreciate any time that a company listens to their fans like this, so kudos to X610Z for doing so.

Now, there are a couple of things that I need to mention before moving on to the cons - these are just points of note.  First, my copy was mis-packaged.  I had four decks, but two of them were the same (though the boxes for each were different).  I have contacted the publishers, and they are fixing the problem - but this is something to be aware of, as I don't know how prevalent this problem was.  Secondly, as I said before, this game is very similar to Magic.  I don't know why this is - I don't know if the designer was trying to "fix" Magic, if they were trying to appeal to Magic fans, or if this really is a giant coincidence (this is my least likely scenario), but I don't think that anyone who has played Magic more than twice will see this game without immediately making the comparison (and, in fact, when I teach the game to Magic players, I teach what is different, instead of the full rules).  Honestly, though, my biggest frustration with Magic is the mana system (I inevitably draw too much Land or not enough), and so I don't understand why Existenz kept this flawed mechanic!

This is a Crystal - yet no colored background on "H1"

Now for the cons - first, the game is hard to visualize.  There are several elements that go into this.  First, the iconography is both bad and inconsistent.  Instead of having an icon to represent what type of mana you need (again, like in Magic - maybe I'll stop this reference soon), energy is represented with a letter and a number, and sometimes this has a colored background, but sometimes it doesn't.  The inconsistency of the coloring makes the coloring essentially useless.  So, you have to remember what Crystals gain H, B, R, and M.  There is also a "C", which stands for Colorless - this is not intuitive, though, as it has a white background, and the cards don't all show the background color for Energy.  In our first game, one of the players kept hoping to draw a Crystal that would give him "C" Energy.  Also, the cards in general just seem very busy so that it is hard for me to quickly see what I need to know at any given moment - I don't know if this is because of the layout of the card itself or because I have not played it enough to be accustomed to it.  I would guess that it is both.

The next thing that adds to the difficulty in visualization is that all of your summons are represented on the board with a marker that shows their summons type.  However, when looking at the board, because of the "sharp turn" rule, it takes a few moments to see what can attack and where.  Next, you have to figure out where each card is on the board - and then what your opponents pieces represent.  Nothing intuitively associates any given card with something on the board.  Part of this might be more iconography problems - instead of my card saying "dragon", and then having a picture of a dragon on the playing piece, maybe both the card and the piece should have a picture of a dragon.  Ultimately, I'm not really sure how to easily fix this problem, but it definitely caused us to have confusion when we were playing.

Who is who??

One of the biggest cons that I found is that there is a strategy that makes the game horrible.  I haven't played it out enough to know the full ramifications, however.  Surrounding all of the "start dots", there are "no attack dots."  A summon (including your life base) cannot attack or be attacked while on these dots.  So, here's a basic strategy - don't move your life base off of the no-attack dots.  Sure, you're not going to win by having your life base reach an end dot, but if you kill your opponent's life base, you win just the same.  And he can't kill yours!  However, envision what happens if both players use this strategy - nobody can attack their opponent's base.  So, you are basically playing the game until someone runs out of cards!  I will confess that this isn't entirely true, as there are some cards that allow you to attack a summons that is on a no attack dot, but I think that these cards are infrequent enough to cause this game to be wretchedly boring if two players decide to use this incredibly basic strategy.

The last couple of things are that the basic decks aren't very basic, and some of the rules seemed a bit artificial.  In Magic terms, each of the starting decks was a "three color" deck - this means that in order to play all of the cards in your deck, you had to have three of the four different kinds of crystals in play.  This really makes the decks slow - though fortunately, there are several Crystals in the deck that can give you two types of energy.  When it comes to artificial rules, the "sharp turn" rule, though neat, doesn't really seem to make much sense to me thematically.  Also, the fact that you can only have one summons of each type seems to be because otherwise you couldn't tell which piece on the board represented which summons, instead of having a thematic reason.  This rule also means that you can't always play the cards in your hand - even if you can afford their energy cost.  And, once you finally can play something (because you lost a summons), you have to play them on a warp dot or a starting dot, so they are horribly out of position for the fight that you need to reinforce (and because of the sharp turn rule, it will be several turns before they can get in position).

Overall, I give Existenz: On the Ruins of Chaos a 6.0/10.  There are definitely people that like it (that's why I tried it), but I'm not really one of them.  But, don't just read my review and discard the game completely - check out what other people have to say and decide for yourself.  If you like Magic, this game is worth trying, just to see the spatial element of the game, but for most people I would recommend trying Existenz before buying it.

If you like games like Existenz, you might also want to check out Warhammer Invasion, Summoner Wars, and Game of Thrones: The Card Game.

I would like to thank X610Z for providing me with a review copy of Existenz: On the Ruins of Chaos.

Game of Thrones Living Card Game Review

A game that I wished that I had discovered a long time ago is the Game of Thrones: Living Card Game.

In A Game of Thrones, each player takes a deck representing one of the four main houses (expansions add more houses) in the Game of Thrones book series (by George R.R. Martin). From here, the game is played in a series of turns until one player has collected 15 power. First, each player selects a plot card and reveals it at the same time - the plot cards have an immediate effect, but they also determine how much gold each player receives, what each player's initiative is (who goes first), and what each person's claim value is (how much damage their house does in combat). Next, players draw two cards and have the option of playing any cards from their hands - characters, attachments, etc. Next come challenges. In initiative order, players have the option of challenging their opponents in three different areas - military, intrigue, and power. Both attackers and defenders have to "kneel" (turn the card to the side) in order to participate in the challenge. If an attacker successfully wins a military challenge, the defender must lose characters equal to the attacker's "claim" value. Intrigue challenges force the defender to lose cards from his hand, and power challenges force the defender to give power from his victory pile to the attacker. Plus, any undefended challenges gain a power for the attacker. After each player gets to take his turn initiating challenges, players compare how much gold and "standing" (non-kneeling) characters they have; whoever has the most gains an additional power. Finally, all kneeling characters are returned to standing, and any leftover gold is discarded. Play continues in this manner until one of the players has gained 15 power - that player is immediately the winner!

I love plot cards

There are several things that I love about the Game of Thrones card game, but the first is the plot cards. I have not seen anything like plot cards in any other game that I have played. The plot cards have a lot of strategy in several different ways. First, they determine how much gold a player has to spend; but the more gold you have, the lower your initiative value probably is. You also have to decide when to play your plot cards with higher claim values - they can be incredibly powerful in stretching an advantage, but if your opponent is able to keep you from winning any challenges, then it doesn't matter how high your claim value is! Finally, the plot cards can be great equalizers if one player is gaining too much of an advantage - one plot card (that comes with the House Stark deck) states "When revealed, kill all characters in play."  This card can be phenomenal when your opponent has a distinct advantage; yet putting it in your deck means that you will have to play it at some point, even if you are the one with the advantage.

The next thing that I love about the Game of Thrones card game is how the challenges work. This works well with the initiative, because if you are able to get a higher initiative, then you can be the one forcing your opponent to react to your moves (after all, if you attack first, then you might be able to kill some of his characters before they have the chance to do anything - or at the very least convince him to kneel some of his characters to defend). Each of the different challenges are very strong, but in entirely different ways. Military is phenomenal and straightforward - if you kill your opponent, then they cannot attack or defend. Yet, with intrigue, you can prevent your opponent from bringing in reinforcements; or from hitting you with a nasty Event. Power, finally, wins the game. Regularly defeating your opponent in power will keep him from ever being able to gather enough power to defeat you - while helping you grow ever-closer to victory. These different strategic elements give an abundance of different strategies when building decks, but they also are critical during gameplay. Each turn you must decide how many characters you want to commit to which challenge - sometimes attacking simply to force your opponent into defending, and sometimes pressing all of your attack into a single challenge that you know your opponent cannot prevent.  Once you have mastered the challenges in Game of Thrones, you will be a very skilled player!

The next thing that I like about Game of Thrones is that you truly are playing a game in which your cards represent characters - they are unique. Game of Thrones takes this uniqueness a step further than any other game that I have played. In Game of Thrones, if a unique character dies - he is dead. He cannot be played again, and he is placed in a separate discard pile. This makes deck building more interesting, as you must decide whether a single character is valuable enough to put multiple copies of in your deck - and if it is that important, you need to make sure that you protect that character, or else you will have extra cards that you cannot use later in the game!

Finally, I believe that the decks that come with the core set of Game of Thrones are well balanced and provide enough strategy that the game is enjoyable, even with a single core set of cards. If you are not intending to play in tournaments (I'm not), then you could play the game with just the core set, and you would really have a very solid game.

This is one of the duplicated cards

With all that is right with Game of Thrones (I basically love every part of the gameplay), there are a few things that I wish were different. These things are all related to what is included in the core set. For example, though each card can be included in a deck up to three times, you do not have three copies of each of the cards - in order to get these, you have to buy the game three times. Yet, some of the cards are included multiple times (such as Robert Baratheon), so if you did buy three copies of the core set, your extra cards would be worthless (this isn't nearly as bad as in the Lord of the Rings LCG in which you have a lot of cards with two or three copies; in Game of Thrones, most of your cards only have a single copy). Also, though a tournament legal deck consists of 60 cards, the core set provides you with four decks of 45 cards. I wish that you had decks that were legal to play in a tournament, even if the decks weren't tournament-quality. Finally, the game is setup out of the core set to be mutliplayer, and several of the cards are only useful in that kind of game. Yet, the game is incredibly fun two-player (this is how I play it and how I believe it is played in tournaments), so you immediately need to modify the decks for two player, or just play with certain cards not having much value.

Overall, I give the Game of Thrones: Living Card Game a 9.5/10. The gameplay easily deserves a 9.5, and the small nuisances of the core set are trivial enough to not drop the total score. Plus, the great news is that Fantasy Flight (I believe) is releasing all of their new expansions with the three copies of each card that you need, and are even re-releasing some of the older expansions to have this same three-copies of each card format!  I truly look forward to continuing to play this game, and I really hope that I have several friends that fall in love with it so that I can have people to play against.

If you enjoy the Game of Thrones: Living Card Game, you might also check out the Game of Thrones Board Game, the Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game, Star Wars: Living Card Game, and possibly Summoner Wars.

Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (2011 Fantasy Flight) Review

A game that I thought would be innovative (and thus I really wanted to play) was Lord Of The Rings: The Card Game.

In Lord of the Rings, players can construct a deck of cards and heroes, and then they play cooperatively to attempt to defeat one of several scenarios that are available (each consisting of a different mix of enemies and events that the heroes will face). Each turn the players will collect resources for each of their heroes with which they can then play ally and attachment cards (or wait and play events when they would be most effective or use them for special abilities). Next, they may send some or all of their characters to go on a "quest" (this is the crux of the game - if the players never send anyone on the quest, they will lose). After questing, players can "travel" to a location - which essentially makes questing a bit easier. Next comes encounters and combat; based on how much "threat" each player has, the monsters will be divided up among the different players - and then those monsters attack. Players can choose who to use as a defender (who only serves as a shield), and then from whomever is still not "exhausted" (tapped), they can attack the monsters in front of them. Finally, the players do cleanup - untap, increase threat, assign a new first player. This continues until either the players are all dead (through having their heroes die or gaining too much threat), or until all of the phases of the quest have been completed.

My first pro of the Lord of the Rings card game is that it has found a way around the "a super-bossy person making a cooperative game miserable" problem. Often, in great cooperative games like Pandemic, a single bossy player will essentially tell everyone what to do (while all the other players are thinking of telling him where to go... and I imagine it's not a nice place) and attempt to play the game as if it was one player and he was just taking everyone's turn. However, in the Lord of the Rings card game, each person is holding an ever-changing hand of cards that only he knows. This means that each player is forced to make his own decision of what the best play is at any given time. This really helps the cooperative genre in general, and I hope that future games continue to do something like this to fix the annoying bossy guy problem.

The next pro for the Lord of the Rings card game is two-fold. First, you may construct your own deck before playing; secondly, there are different scenarios. When I first heard about the game, my immediate thought was "once I create a deck that wins, why would I ever bother buying any new expansions or creating anything else?" (Which seemed very short sighted of Fantasy Flight, the kings of the board game expansions sales.) Well, this is where quests come into play. This is the first cooperative game that I know of that has this concept of playing with different win conditions each time. (Though it's not actually win conditions - the win condition is always beat the quest; but the quest does change.) Since there are different quests, with different levels of difficulty, a player may need to construct his deck in a different way for one quest versus another - and, of course, a really dedicated player would try to create a deck that could defeat any of the quests. However, as soon as he does that, the next "adventure pack" will probably come out, consisting of a new quest for him to defeat. This will let him know if his deck really is awesome (as he assumed), or if it still has weaknesses (and the adventure pack should have new cards he could add to his deck to address these). These two concepts fit together masterfully, and I was quite pleasantly surprised by the outcome.

The next thing that I will list as a "pro" (though it's more of something that I think is interesting) is how the characters are used. Each character gets exhausted when he is used on a quest, to defend, or to attack. And, if you don't wind up putting characters in each of these three areas, you will probably lose the game. This causes an interesting balancing act. The specific thing that I think is interesting is that the characters that you use to defend get exhausted by defending and don't have the opportunity to attack. I don't think that I've ever played a game in which my characters could not attack whatever enemy was attacking them - but it adds a very frantic dynamic to the game, as you never feel like you have enough characters (which is good for a cooperative game).

As a neutral point of note before moving on to the cons - the Lord of the Rings card game seems to scale in difficulty with number of players. I have played it a few times with 4 players, and I have played it solo. With 4 players, we actually won a few times, and normally at least made progress on the quests (using the basic, un-constructed decks). I attempted the game solo with a constructed deck (albeit not a "well-constructed deck"), and I got completely obliterated each time (I need to construct the deck better, apparently). I have tried to figure out what makes it so much harder, as the number of monsters and such you see from the encounter deck does scale based on number of players. I think that it is ultimately that you cannot cover all of the different areas of strength without having extra players. (For example, some heroes heal well, others fight, others quest, others defend, etc. With less than four players, one of these areas will be missed at least to a degree.)

My first con for the Lord of the Rings card game is that there are lots of minor things to remember. Once you play it several times (especially with extra people helping keep track), the game flows pretty well. However, after about 5-7 plays, I am yet to be able to play the game without the instructions next to me as a reference guide to step through each stage. Even things that sound basic like an enemy attacking you have extra steps - you play other cards from the encounter deck on top of the attackers before they attack to see if they have a "shadow effect." It makes the game much harder to teach, and also harder to play.

The next thing that annoyed me about the Lord of the Rings card game is that it seemed designed to force you to pay extra money to get the full game. The basic starter set is designed for 1-2 players, but claims to be up to 4 players if two starter sets are combined. The main two reasons that a single starter set is only up to 2 player is that 1) there are only 2 "threat dials" (which you can remedy with a scrap piece of paper) and 2) there aren't enough cards to allow you to make 4 "tournament legal" (50 card) decks. However, if you play with scrap paper and the basic introductory decks, you can support 4 players out of a single starter deck. This really isn't a game play issue at all, but it just seemed disappointing to buy the game to immediately realize I had to buy another copy of it if I wanted to be able to play with a group.

Overall, I give Lord of the Rings: The Card Game a 9.0/10. I really enjoy the game, I appreciate the new elements that they have brought to the cooperative genre, and I look forward to seeing what the new adventure packs bring. If you aren't completely turned off by constructing a deck or by cooperative games, I would recommend trying it out.

For more reading about this game, you can check out this Review of Lord of the Rings LCG from Play Board Games, or another Review of Lord of the Rings LCG from Games With Two. You can also read my review of the Shadows of Mirkwood Expansions for Lord of the Rings, my Game of Thrones living card game review, and my Star Wars living card game review.

Warhammer Invasion Review

A game that I was really excited about was Warhammer Invasion.

Warhammer Invasion was one of the first "Living Card Games." This means, like Magic, Pokemon, etc, you would construct a deck out of cards and play against your opponents; however, unlike with normal Customizable (or Trading) Card Games, in Warhammer, the packs were not randomized. Now for gameplay... In Warhammer, each player controls a capital with three different area - the battlefield, kingdom, and quest areas. The object of the game is to destroy two of your opponent's three areas. First, you get to generate resources based on the amount of power in your kingdom area; next, you draw cards based on the amount of power in your quest area. After this setup, you use your resources to play any units and/or support cards in any of the areas of your capital. Next, you can attack your opponent, and finally, it is the other player's turn.

The first pro for Warhammer Invasion is that it is a Living Card Game. I personally loved playing CCG's when I was younger - my CCG's of choice were the Star Trek and Star Wars CCGs made by Decipher. Unfortunately, I have one of those personalities that gets addicted to buying packs. Therefore, LCG's are a great way that I can still enjoy all of the elements of deck construction, playing the game, having tournaments, etc, without having to worry about how many packs I will wind up buying or how much I will spend on the game in any given week. I really appreciate Fantasy Flight introducing several of their new games in this format.

The next pro that I have for Warhammer Invasion is how the different areas of your capital work together. Whenever playing a new unit you had to decide which area you want to place them in - do you want to use them to get more resources, more cards, or to be able to attack? If you put them in the kingdom or quest areas, they may help more in the long run, but they will also wind up serving primarily as defenders. Whereas, if you place your units in the battlefield, they really serve only as attackers - but if you don't play any attackers, you can't possibly win the game.

The third pro that I will mention for Warhammer Invasion is that each of the races plays differently. Honestly, I expect this in a deck building game (such as the different colors in Magic), but it is still an important element. Fantasy Flight did a good job in making sure that playing as the Dwarves (who have a lot of defensive things they can do) takes on a different feel than playing as the Orcs (who are almost exclusively attackers - even injuring their own units to attack more), or the Chaos (whose specialty is "corrupting" units), Humans (who are able to move units between areas of their capital), or any of the other races.

A final pro about the game is quests.  One of the types of cards in the game is the "quest" card.  These are placed in the Quest area of your capital, and once you have played one, you have the option of having your units (as you place them) be "questing".  While questing, a unit builds up resources that can then be spent for a bonus (for example, one of the Dwarf quests allows you to discard the unit on the quest to destroy two attacking units - but only if there are at least 3 resources on it).  I really think that the quests are a neat concept, and I'd be interested to see how different people would be able to use them when constructing their decks.

The biggest con that I have for Warhammer Invasion is that it really didn't have a very unique feel to it. As one of my friends put it, "it feels generic." Whereas I liked the different areas of the capitals, there wasn't really anything else that set this game apart (even the quests seem to just be a different way to represent an effect that has to "charge up"). I could continue playing it, but I don't feel like it has brought something entirely new to the table.

Another con that I had for Warhammer (that I have heard was fixed in later expansions) is that they don't give you all the cards needed to build the deck however you want. As with all deck building games, there is a limit to the number of copies of a card that are allowed in a deck. This is true in Warhammer as well. However (at least in the base set and the first few expansions), instead of the set of cards including enough copies of each card to allow you to put the limit of each card in your deck, the sets have several copies of some cards and only one copy of others. Therefore, if you wanted to build a deck consisting of several of the card you only had a single copy of, you would have to buy several of the packs - and then you would get around 9 copies of some of the other cards, with absolutely nothing to do with them (you don't really trade cards in an LCG format), so you might as well throw them away.

There's really not all that much more to say about Warhammer Invasion - the complexity of the game (as often happens) doesn't lie in the mechanics of the game, but rather in the cards and their interactions. Learning the game is really fairly simple and straightforward (another pro), but the number of different cards prevent the players from constantly playing the exact same way. To me, the key aspect of pre-constructed deck building games is how many other people in your geographical area are playing them - if a lot of people are playing them, then you have lots of opponents and have the possibility of playing in tournaments, and the game can be a lot of fun. If nobody else around you is playing, then you probably won't wind up playing it, and you won't have a great desire to work on improving your deck.

Overall, I give Warhammer Invasion an 7.5/10. I enjoyed the game well enough that I would continue to play it if the people around me played. Unfortunately, since I don't know anybody that actively plays the game, my hope for being able to enter a tournament is basically non-existant; and so I will probably wind up getting rid of my cards.  And, in full disclosure and fairness to the designers of the game, there's a really good chance that I would have liked this game a lot more if I had the opportunities to play it more as it was meant to be played - where I would construct a deck and try it against many different opponents.  This would have also kept me in the game long enough for them to further develop the 4 base races as well as the races that they introduced in the expansion sets.

Warhammer Invasion on Noble Knight Games (about $35 for the Core set)
Warhammer Invasion on Amazon (about $29)