By Tracey McGarrigan
With a plethora of DC inspired video games now (or soon to be) available including LEGO® Batman 2: DC Superheroes, Injustice: God’s Among Us, Young Justice: Legacy and Infinite Crisis, taking on the role of a famous superhero has never been easier. Now, card game fans can get in on the action with the DC Comics Deck-building Game.
We invited Mike Garley, Editor-In-Chief of
VS Comics, to join us in a three player struggle against the forces of Super-Villainy in a 40 minute long game. The initial set up time was fairly quick and not much room was needed to play. Our first task was to find out which Superhero’s boots we would be filling. Each DC Comics Superhero card has a unique special ability that opens up different options to the player by way of card combos or strategy. There are 7 heroes including Batman, Superman, The Flash (who always goes first because he’s the fastest, obviously), Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Green Lantern (who none of us wanted to be but the role fell to Mike with SFL representing Batman in the blue corner and Superman in the red). Rather good Christian Bale Batman impressions were also attempted during pre-game trash talk. Each player started with 5 basic combat ‘PUNCH’ cards and 3 good-for-nothing vulnerability cards. After shuffling our decks, we then had to select 5 to play with. Each Batman illustrated punch card had a power value of 1 and the total amount of power in a hand each turn, determined what we could spend on the line-up.
The line-up was unsurprisingly a line made up of 5 upturned cards from the 114 card deck which included hero, villain, location, equipment, and power cards. There were also 3 decks in play with stacks of ‘KICK’, Weakness, and Super-Villain cards. Each card had a cost and a Victory Points (VP) value. The ultimate aim was to build up a deck with a bigger accumulated amount of VP than anyone else. We each took turns to purchase cards with combined costs less than or equal to our hero’s total power. As soon as a card was bought or gained, it got placed in our discard pile (unless otherwise instructed); the line-up was refilled and play continued to the left.
The first round was simple but the game ground to a spectacularly early halt as we entered round two. The language in the rule book didn’t clearly explain the process of using discard piles which is a crucial part of the game! First time deck-builders will probably do exactly what we did; guess and make up what we thought we had to do or look on YouTube for gameplay tutorials. We questioned why we were playing and buying cards to immediately discard in such a crazy deck-building antithesis. At the end of a turn, players are instructed to “Place all the cards you played and any remaining cards from your hand into your discard pile, and draw a new hand of five cards”. The confusion came because none of us were sure where the new hand was coming from. Hidden on the back page rather than in the main Gameplay section of the rule book, we finally found this: “Do not reshuffle your discard pile just because you have no cards in your deck. Wait until you must draw, discard, or reveal a card from your deck. Then shuffle your discard pile, and it becomes your new deck”. Once this simple rule was learnt, the fun was unlocked and the action was speedy but it’s a mystery why it was explained in this way. There were other little informally written quirks in the rules with my favourite being the ‘clearing up after the game’ rule where “After a winner has been determined, all players will need to take apart their decks, placing all of the cards back into their proper stacks. Be sure to return any Super-Villains that were not used during the game to the Super-Villain stack, so they can be used in the next game” (m’kay mum) or the bit where it advises those playing 1v1 to takes alternate turns!
The cards were shiny and thick with bright fan-favourite art. Clearly, the target audience for this game is comic book readers, deck-builders and gamers who already know and love DC characters; what they can do, who their friends are, what villains they fight with what equipment and abilities, what they eat for breakfast, what colour their underpants are etc. The art work is the best from the DC Universe, so it was a sad discovery that despite having a whole comic universe as source material, some of the cards in the main deck were repeated. Being part of a character’s story, spotting and buying a card in the line-up that resonates with that character and working this into the game was satisfying but this ‘authentic’ experience was totally destroyed when three Scarecrow villains appeared (I will accept that poor shuffling skills also played a part here). For those playing who aren’t as familiar with some of the characters, the lack of additional information about the characters seemed a missed opportunity to engage new audiences. There were also occasions where the instructions or actions on the card didn’t match up in any way to the character but this was because the whole set is compatible with other Cerberus Engine: Heroes games by designers Cryptozoic, meaning you can mix collections together for some epic building and ultimate throwdowns!
Overall though, there was a lot of merriment as we were playing. Flipping up Super-Villain cards and watching the carnage unfold as a special First Appearance Attack shook up everyone’s hands or feeling the tension build as we were constantly adapting to the ever changing line-up created humourous rivalries. Dishing out Weakness cards with negative VP which could reduce an opponent’s final tally and watching them desperately pray for NTH Metal so they might get a chance at destroying their new found Weakness brought out the evil competitive side out in all of us – so much for heroics. The constant shuffling mean that even the best strategies could go awry so slick shuffle skills were also the key to victory. Slamming down a successful power combo, recruiting heroes to the deck or collecting super powers for added bonuses meant every shuffle had to count!
For DC comics or deck-building fans, DC Comics Deck Building game should be part of a gaming collection whilst newcomers to deck-building will find this a simple and enjoyable way into card games. With future expansion packs in the works, Cryptozoic’s odd oversight here and there in the execution is forgiven as there is plenty of fun to be had as a superhero.
Visit Esdevium Games to find your local DC Comics Deck Building Game stockist.
