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Game Review: Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

Posted on February 9, 2014 by

A forgotten evil stirs in the ancient land of Varisia. Dark magic once more thrums amid crumbling ruins, giants gather in titanic armies, cultists murder in the name if foul deities, and maniacal goblins plot a fiery end for the peaceful town of Sandpoint.

First unleashed at Gen Con 2013, designer Mike Selinker and Paizo Publishing have melded roleplaying, card gaming, and dice rolling into the entirely unique and wildly entertaining Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. The Pathfinder universe (it is much much larger than a world) experienced its Big Bang moment in 2008 with their beta RPG of D&D’s version 3.5 system. Officially released to critical acclaim the following year, Paizo has since taken Pathfinder to extraordinary levels with unending expansions, novels, miniatures, comics, and now a card game. By diluting the intricacies of a pen and paper RPG and adding CCG and Magic elements, Pathfinder Adventure Card Game has broken down gaming boundaries to appeal to the masses…and it does so masterfully.

In a nutshell, a party of adventurers (1-4 players, I’ve played mostly solo) set off on a quest to explore various locations and find and defeat villains. The base set (nearly 500 cards, ~$50) and all six expansions (110 cards and ~$18 each) is considered the Adventure Path, while the individual expansions are called Adventures, and each Adventure consists of multiple Scenarios. Players can choose to do a standalone Scenario, or work through each consecutive Adventure in the path. The base set comes with the first Adventure, Burnt Offerings, but each additional expansion is sold separately.

Each individual game comes with some set up. First, players must pick and assemble their character deck, then the individual locations are assembled from a randomly selected set of boons (weapons, spells, items, etc.) and banes (villains, monsters, henchmen, barriers). At times, and especially when a new expansion is shuffled in, this can get tedious.

Set aside 30 blessings cards, which are important in your deck or at locations, but in this instance are simply a game counter (flip one per turn)…and you’re ready to go. Players choose a location and ‘explore’ it on their turn. You attempt to acquire boons and defeat banes. Attempts are called ‘checks,’ essentially a dice roll. As you will come to find out, there are times it turns into a Russian nesting doll of checks, with one action requiring three or four dice rolls…and can get confusing if you don’t keep track. Death or end of game (which can roughly take up to 90 min) comes when you can no longer draw a card from your character deck or you run out of blessings cards. Winning comes when your band finds and defeats the villain. Success adds additional cards to your deck and/or skill and power feats to your character, which can all be carried forward to the next Scenario.

The single most frustrating aspect of this game is the dependency on the rulebook, and in the case of the base set, an incomplete rulebook. As the designer admitted, assumptions were made that shouldn’t have been made, and dozens of questions remained that forced players to turn to web forums and message boards for answers. Selinker and Paizo dutifully created an updated PDF version, and still actively visit sites to respond to pleas for help.

I’ve also heard the “all you’re doing is flipping cards and rolling dice” comment. Yes, at its core, that’s what it consists of (aren’t most games?), but it can be so much more than that if you let it. Read the card descriptions and backgrounds, check out the Pathfinder Tales (there are free chapters online), and immerse yourself in the story. If you’re going to monetarily invest in it (and that you will, trust me), then you should intellectually invest in it as well.

The initial factory line product was far from perfect, but the transparent response from Selinker and Paizo, and subsequent attempts to rectify errata, card conflicts, and unanswered questions has made me a true fan. Detailed artwork, fantastic mechanics, and an immersive story will see this successfully through to this summer’s second follow-up Adventure Path, Skull & Shackles. Though I’m still working through Burnt Offerings, I’ve purchased and neatly placed Adventures 2 and 3 and the Character Add-on Deck in their allotted slots. Hours have been put into this game, and there are hours to come…some frustrating, all worth it.

Designer: Mike Selinker
Overall: 9 Recommendation: Buy

It’s a Dark City for Marvel Legendary

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Brett

One of my favorite games from Gen Con 2012 is getting an expansion! Upper Deck has announcing that Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game is making new waves with Dark City, the game’s first expansion set. Dark City will offer players opportunity to use a vast array of new characters, including 17 new heroes, 6 new villain groups, 2 new henchmen groups, 5 new masterminds and of course new Schemes!

Players will seamlessly be able to add the expansion set of cards right into the core set, bringing the total Legendary count to over 850 cards! Gamers and collectors alike are going to be very happy to hear that all heroes will now have a whopping 4 unique pieces of art, as opposed to just 1 from the core set. In addition, Devin Low is returning as the designer, and has created all new content that Marvel fans are sure to love.

Dark City still offers the highly popular Heroes vs Mastermind theme from the core set, but offers players an intriguing twist with a much darker tone. This time around, the heroes are going to need as much help as they can get against evil new masterminds such as Apocalypse and Kingpin. Players need not worry, as the powerful X-Force and mighty Marvel Knights will be joining the fight in this new expansion!

Marvel fans can become “legendary” when the expansion set arrives in stores on June 25. Dark City carries a suggested retail price of $39.99 per set and includes 350 new and unique cards. Legendary is darker, grittier and tougher this time around, so prepare, the Apocalypse is coming!

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Gen Con 2012 – Review – Legendary, Marvel’s Deck-Building Game by Upper Deck

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Brett

Along with my friend Dan, I was able to sit down with members of the Upper Deck team to play their newest entry at a Marvel comics’ based card game, Legendary. The game is a deck-building game meaning you start off with a few cards and through moves that improves your deck throughout the game. I’ve played a few deck-building games, but this one has stood out to me as the game has a neat mechanic in that it fights back, forcing you to team up with other players to beat the game.

The game has a few cards you play with, there’s Heroes such as members of the X-Men or Avengers, Villains, like Magneto (who we played against) or Loki, Bystanders (who hurt you if you fail to save) and what I’ll call actions (don’t remember their official name) like Cyclops Blast. The game has you attempting to take down a main villain, while other villains attempt to escape. If you allow 12 villains to escape, you lose. Your goal is to defeat the main villain while building up your deck in strength and points. It’s as simple as that.

The mechanic of taking on the villain is what’s interesting to me. It forces you to work with your opponents, instead of just attempting to screw them over. It makes you think and cooperate which adds a dynamic I haven’t experienced in this type of game. It also brings a great feel to the game that fits the material it’s based on. While the X-Men or the Avengers fight as a team, they’re also individuals who often want to be the one to be in the spotlight and save the day. That’s reflected through that mechanic.

We played through the entire game and definitely took a bit to get into the groove of things defeating villains. About 4 or five escaped before we took down Magneto and most importantly, it was fun. I enjoyed it. The game’s mechanics were great and the art solid.

What made me cringe a bit was the price, which we were told was about $60, but that’s for the entire game, about 600 cards. The game was fun, but not sure it’s quite worth the $60, it feels more like a $45 game, which I’d have no problem plopping down. But, we’ll see what the deal is when the retail price is officially announced. It’s a great game though, and I absolutely recommend checking it out.

Art: The art is is solid, featuring original work. That makes it great not just for fans of the game, but also fans of the comic. You get to see art you normally wouldn’t see and everything I looked at was solid. Score: 9

Mechanics: The game play is top notch that reflects the material it’s based on. You’re attempting to come out on top with the highest score at the end, but fighting villains also forces you to work with others, otherwise you both lose. That’s a great twist which really changes up the game play enough to keep me coming back often to play. Score: 8.5

Product: The cards looked and felt great and the box looked nice as well. There’s a hell of a lot of cards included in this game. I believe there’s a mat that comes with the game too, going off of what we played on. All together, there’s a lot there and what I saw was of high quality product that made me check out what I was playing with as much as the mechanics fo the game. Score: 8

Overall: The game was fun with pretty unique mechanics. The cards were beautiful with unique artwork. The game play was easy to understand and complicated enough to make me pay attention and think through what I needed to do. There’s also the aspect of having a goal to meet as a team and as an individual. Overall a solid product, it’s only the price that I have reservations about at all. The game should be out in the fourth quarter, about November. Overall score: 8.5

Publisher: Upper Deck

Art: 9 Mechanics: 8.5 Product: 8 Overall: 8.5 Recommendation: Buy

Graphic Policy was able to review the game for FREE at Gen Con.

Gen Con 2012 – Review – DC Comics Deck-Building Game

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Brett

Out in late September or early October, game company Cryptozoic attempt to work their magic with a deck-building game based on DC Comics’ universe of characters. The game is imaginatively titled, DC Comics Deck-Building Game. I’ve played a few deck-building games in the past. The idea is pretty simple, there’s a finite set of cards and through some mechanism you gain cards in your deck competing for cards against other players.

The game was fun, but I can’t say I’m too impressed, yet. I played the game as Superman, as each player takes on one of the DC titans like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Cyborg and more. Each character provides different abilities and interact with some cards in different ways.

The good is, the game is pretty simple. I didn’t have a huge background in this type of game and was able to pick it up and come up with some complicated moves in a matter of minutes. The art is also pretty good, following the DCnU style of comics. There’s also some good themes of how cards work together. There’s clearly cards with certain characters in mind and how each character works makes sense, Flash works on speed and speed based cards. It all works well.

The bad is, the game, like the comics they’re based off of, are paper thin. It feels like a game-light with decent mechanics, but not the meat you’re really looking for in a game. I know there’s combos and you can play card off of card with great effect, but in my demo, I didn’t see any of that. I could of stopped paying attention and the results would have been the same. It’s very much, grab the right cards for yourself and that’s about it. There was little in my game where you’d either work against or with your opponents.

So, I’m a bit unconvinced in the game. It could have been the cards we were dealt or the random people I played against, but the game was very vanilla to me without the fun interaction I want or expect in my games.

Art: The art is pretty good. It’s lifted straight from DC comics, so you know what to expect. There doesn’t seem to be special art made for this, some I know I’ve seen before. For the die hard comic fans, there doesn’t seem to be art unique to the set, but I could be wrong. Score: 7

Mechanics: The game is decent, but there’s something off for me. I could not pay attention and I feel like the game would have played out the same. There was talk of combinations as far as cards, I just didn’t see it. Score: 6

Product: The cards were nice in my hand and the game is $40 for about 214 cards. That’s about 5 cents a card. I’m not sure I’d pay that loose. I’d almost buy this game if it were $30 or less, but $40 makes me hesitate for what you get. Score: 5

Overall: The game was good and with some expansions it might be great, but as were it stands I wouldn’t personally buy it. Maybe, if I got to really look at the cards, I might see more of the depth that was mentioned, but from my one game, the play was pretty weak and mindless for me. I don’t think it’s quite to my taste, but might be good for kids just getting into deck-building games. Overall score: 6

Publisher: Cryptozoic

Art: 7 Mechanics: 6 Product: 5 Overall: 6 Recommendation: Play

Number of Players: 2-5
For Ages: 15+
Playing Time: 30-45 Minutes
MSRP:$40.00

Game Box Contains:

214 Game Cards
7 Oversized Hero Cards
1 Rulebook

Graphic Policy was able to review the game for FREE at Gen Con.

Upper Deck’s Marvel Deck Building Game

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Brett

One thing I’m looking forward to checking out next week at Gen Con is Upper Deck‘s Marvel deck building game. There’s been rumors of it’s release for a while, and I got confirmation at San Diego Comic-Con, but the upcoming game convention will be the first look at the game in the wild. The game has been revealed to be called Legendary. Besides popular Marvel superheroes like Spider-Man, Iron Man and Wolverine, the game also features a never-before-seen game engine designed by Devin Low, the former Head Developer of Magic: The Gathering.

In Legendary, each player starts with a deck of basic cards and then improves that deck throughout the game by recruiting Marvel’s greatest heroes in an effort to take down evil Marvel super-villains like Sabertooth and Dr. Octopus. Legendary has all the cool combos of a trading card game, but all 500+ cards in the game come in one big box and you build your deck during the game.

Unlike other deck building games, in Legendary, the game actually fights back, with an evil mastermind like Magneto working on a dark scheme to crush all the players at once. Every time you play the game, a different evil mastermind will be pursuing a different dark scheme with different rules and it is the player’s job to thwart their evil efforts so good can prevail. Not only will players battle the evil masterminds, but also each other as there are several instances during game play where conflict arises within the team and it is up to the players to work through that.

What’s more, every piece of art used in Legendary, is original. Upper Deck Entertainment wanted to provide Marvel fans not only with a brand new gaming experience, but also treat them to compelling artwork that has never been seen before.