A Mini-Deckbuilding Look at Lord of the Rings Deck-Building Game

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship BoxOver the Christmas holiday I was fortunate to play a new-to-me deckbuilder, the Lord of the Rings Deck-Building Game (2013). It’s based on the Cerberus Deckbuilding system, which is the same game engine used by DC Comics Deck-Building Game (2012). In fact, it seems likely that the two games were developed in parallel, as DC Comics appeared in December 2012, and Lord of the Rings appeared just a few months later, in April 2013. As such, the games are pretty similar.

I already covered the core of the simple and light DC Comics game in a previous article, but Lord of the Rings still deserves a bit of discussion for how it updates and adjusts the Cerberus system. Continue reading

New to Me: Spring 2014

It’s been a light quarter for my gaming, with me missing something like 6-9 of my regular gaming sessions. Still, I’ve got eight “new” games to talk about, running the gamut from awesome to (too much) meh.


The Great

PathfinderPathfinder Adventure Card Game (2013). The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is an astonishingly innovative deckbuilding game, primarily for the complex ecosystem of cards that it creates — one that carries on from one game to the next. The idea of a cooperative game that continues from session to session is also pretty rare, and it’s done quite well here: the whittled down deck of cards that you carry from game to game is very meaningful.

The rest of the gameplay is a bit more pedestrian, with random card draws and random dice rolls allowing you to accomplish tasks via a simple task resolution system. Still, it’s nicely put together and it’s just dripping with evocative theme. I was jazzed to continue playing it after my first adventure, primarily to see my character grow over numerous sessions of play. I racked up a total of six games over the quarter. Continue reading

A Deckbuilding Look at DC Comics

DC: Super Power CardThe newest deckbuilders increasingly mix deckbuilding with other game mechanics to create more complex designs, so it was interesting to finally get to play Cryptozoic’s DC Comics, recently expanded by Heroes Unite (2014), which is a very classic deckbuilding design.

The Game

The DC Comics Deck-Building Game (2012) is a pure deckbuilding game that’s the most similar in feel to Ascension (2010) with a twist of Thunderstone (2009). As in Ascension there are a huge number of varied cards in the game, with just a few random cards available for purchase each round. As in Thunderstone, that’s supplemented by a monster (super villain) that you can kill (jail) if you a lot of money (power) to spend — and those monster/super-villains also act as the timer for the game.

Continue reading