DC Deck Building Game

DC Deck Building Game

 

If you like your Super Heroes, then I'm sure this is right up your alley.

The DC Card Game is a collectible card game (CCG), wherein you use heroes to take down the villains along with their maniacal regime. The core of the game centers around the Justice League, with heroes like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, along with many of their super allies. There are different card types that you will come across, some start in your opening hand, such as Punches and Vulnerabilities, but more on those later. You will encounter many of the arch nemeses of the DC universe, in the form of Villain cards including; Bane, Poison Ivy and the Suicide Squad. Along with Super-Villain cards like Ra's Al Ghul and everyone's favorite grease painted, colourful psychopath, The Joker. 

Fear not though, because these villainous foes can be combated with another card type, Super Powers. Ranging from a humble Kick to X-Ray vision, these cards offer more resources as you square off against whatever rival rears their nefarious heads. Other card types include Locations and Weaknesses, so with acception to flavour, the art of the game doesn't really have any affect on the actual game play. However, this means you can expand your story told through the game. By having expansions like the DC Crisis and DC crossover Legion of Super-Heroes packs, and other core game sets like Teen Titans or Forever Evil, merging all of these together allows players to have a plethora of Heroes and Villains to play with. Utilizing each skill of those heroes against their adversary to save the day once again.

On with the game, and you start by randomly dealing out a Super-Hero card to each player. These Super-Heroes have effects throughout the game, for example regarding the amount of cards you played that turn giving you a Power bonus like Aqua man.  Now you shuffle the Main deck, containing cards types such as; Hero, Location, Equipment, non Kick Super-Power and Villain cards, the last two sometimes coming with additional effects that are represented on the card. Place the Main deck at one end of the play area and leave room for a line up of five cards next to it. At the other end, past the line up, put the stack of Super-Villains you're playing against, with a stack of Weaknesses one side and a stack of Kicks, that I mentioned earlier, on the other. Your starting deck contains seven Punch cards, serving as your primary resource, and three Vulnerability cards, serving the sole purpose to dilute your deck to prevent drawing all action, all the time. At the end of your turn, after you've made your plays and purchased your chosen cards, all of those along with your hand are put into your graveyard. You then draw a new hand of five cards, replace any empty slots in the line up from the top of the Main deck if any cards were purchased, and pass the turn to the next player.

The aim of the game is to use the Power on the cards you have in your personal deck to buy other cards from the Main deck's lineup, the cost of that card represented in the bottom right hand corner, then use those to defeat the Super-Villains. Different cards have different amounts of Power to be gained, for example the Punch cards you start have +1 Power. So, if you draw four Punch cards, you can play them all and have +4 Power to buy any amount of cards from the lineup costing up to four. Either one card costing four Power or two cards each costing two Power if that's available. Cards that you can obtain from the lineup will have +Power and other effects, giving you a bit of variety to play with, or if all else fails you can just by a Kick card that has +2 Power. Eventually, when you run out of cards to draw from your personal deck, you will shuffle your graveyard and it will become your new deck, ensuring that you will get to use your new cards soon.

You win the game when either you have defeated all Super-Villains, by which I mean purchase them in the same way you would any card in the line up, the only difference is they don't get put into your graveyard. Or if you cannot fill the five spaces in the line up. When this happens, players count the number of Victory Points on the cards in their decks, represented by the number in the star. Weaknesses, obtained due to negative effects of cards played or bought, subtract Victory Points. The highest total of Victory Points wins.

The crux of the game is the sculpting of your deck. This game can be played in a team or all on all, so sometimes you might be trying to find cards that have certain bonuses in certain locations or against specific Heroes. At other times you might be looking for things that give you and only you a boost and leaving other cards that may work better for another member in your party.

The core game play is reminiscent of drafting in MTG; picking and choosing the best cards to work in your deck to get maximum value out of them. So if you enjoy drafting and are looking for games that resemble it, like this or Dominion, a game that I'm sure ill take a look at soon, or if you're like me and you're looking to improve your drafting skills, look in the direction of the DC Card Game.

This is a fun game to play with two people and even better with a group of friends. The strategies that you can employ vary so much that it's always a new and interesting experience.

Hopefully this has given you a look into the world of CCG's and I'll be taking a look at other CCG's and Table Top games in the weeks to come. 

In the mean time, keep checking back to Game Changers for more updates.