Poseidal
15-01-2013, 09:23
What are people's opinions on this type of game? I've played a few of them, here are some my thoughts:
Dominion: The daddy of all deckbuilders, the original but probably not the best; it was the first so there are bound to be some mistakes. There are a lot of 'stupid' cards (eg Chapel); it, along with the expansions means it'll take good effort to identify a selection of cards to play, and you'll need to pay for all the expansions. Uses Victory points that clog up your deck, which is an interesting mechanic.
Tanto-Cuore: Questionable theme aside, this is basically Dominion rethemed with a balance patch. There is a smaller card pool, so may not have a lot of the interesting stuff Dominion now has.
Puzzle Strike: This uses chips instead of cards, but is basically the same mechanic. This one is unique in that you have different starting 'characters', who have a different play-style each so there's some asymmetry that makes it different. Does not use Victory points, but is a 'last man standing' game. One thing is they update the game, so if you have an earlier edition some of the chips don't do what they say they do now.
Ascension: In this one, the pool of cards in the middle that players buy from is constantly changes whenever a card is bought (or defeated if it is a monster card). Victory points are not plain 'clog up' cards, but the cards you buy are worth a set amount and you generate VP tokens as well.
Thunderstone: This one is a sort of mix of a dungeon crawler along with deckbuilder. You 'buy' heroes, equipment and actions and you defeat monsters in the dungeon for victory points (going into your deck as usual).
Rune Age: This is sort of an army gathering game, where you buy cards from both your unique faction deck and the centre with different resources. There are cards that need to be 'conquered' and a running 'event deck' that has monsters appear with different victory conditions.
Eminent Domain: Including it here, though it isn't really the same sort of deckbuilder. This space-empire building game is sort of a hybrid between that and a 'role-choosing' game, as most of the cards are a large pool of generic action cards.
Dominion: The daddy of all deckbuilders, the original but probably not the best; it was the first so there are bound to be some mistakes. There are a lot of 'stupid' cards (eg Chapel); it, along with the expansions means it'll take good effort to identify a selection of cards to play, and you'll need to pay for all the expansions. Uses Victory points that clog up your deck, which is an interesting mechanic.
Tanto-Cuore: Questionable theme aside, this is basically Dominion rethemed with a balance patch. There is a smaller card pool, so may not have a lot of the interesting stuff Dominion now has.
Puzzle Strike: This uses chips instead of cards, but is basically the same mechanic. This one is unique in that you have different starting 'characters', who have a different play-style each so there's some asymmetry that makes it different. Does not use Victory points, but is a 'last man standing' game. One thing is they update the game, so if you have an earlier edition some of the chips don't do what they say they do now.
Ascension: In this one, the pool of cards in the middle that players buy from is constantly changes whenever a card is bought (or defeated if it is a monster card). Victory points are not plain 'clog up' cards, but the cards you buy are worth a set amount and you generate VP tokens as well.
Thunderstone: This one is a sort of mix of a dungeon crawler along with deckbuilder. You 'buy' heroes, equipment and actions and you defeat monsters in the dungeon for victory points (going into your deck as usual).
Rune Age: This is sort of an army gathering game, where you buy cards from both your unique faction deck and the centre with different resources. There are cards that need to be 'conquered' and a running 'event deck' that has monsters appear with different victory conditions.
Eminent Domain: Including it here, though it isn't really the same sort of deckbuilder. This space-empire building game is sort of a hybrid between that and a 'role-choosing' game, as most of the cards are a large pool of generic action cards.