by Lowell Kempf
I didn’t get to learn as many new games as I’d hope to at Nitro Billy, a gathering of gaming friends. Of course, I didn’t bring any games that I had never played before myself either :POne game that I knew would be there and I was curious about was the DC Comics Deck-Building Game. I knew that some people loved it and that some people hated it with a manic passion. With so many different opinions, I was really curious to see what it was like.
I have to admit that deck building is a genre that I am a little leery of. I have really enjoyed Dominion and it is one of my most frequently played games. I’ve also enjoyed Ascension quite a bit. However, Thunderstone, while very promising, was a frustrating experience for my group.
Part of the problem is that deck building went through a massive wave of popularity so there is a shocking number of deck building games out there. However, that means that many of them are either slightly tweaked Dominion clones or utter dreck.
The DC Deck-Building Game was a curious looking beast, in my opinion. Among other things, why did they name it something so unimaginable bland? After all, a game based on DC Comics is going to be aimed not at the hobby game market but more of the mass market. So why reference deck building in the title and why not give it a name with at least a hint of excitement?
I found that the game seemed like it had borrowed equally from Ascension with a center row of cards that refills and the cards each fitting into a specific type and from the Penny Arcade the Game: Gamers vs the Evil with the players getting a character that granted them specific powers and a separate deck of boss monsters to fight.
Unlike those two games, DC (which is what I’ll call it for the rest of the blog) only uses one type of currency, simply called power. I was a little worried that would make the game too simple. When it actually came to playing the game, I didn’t find that to be a problem.
There were things that I did like about DC. The character cards felt more distinct to me than their equivalent in the Penny Arcade game. Each one felt appropriate for the comic book character they were named after and gave you a goal for how to hone your deck. I also liked that, unlike Ascension, there were attack cards. I felt that gave some nice interaction to the game.
However, both of the games I played seemed to drag. DC has two game ending conditions. Make your way through the stack of boss monster cards or run through the draw pile. Both games ended running through the boss monsters, with the draw pile only about half way through. However, in both games, we ended getting bogged down trying to get those boss cards.
I do think having alternate game ending conditions is important. However, running through the draw pile seems like a last ditch effort to make sure that there would be an ending. We did manage to run through all the weakness cards in one of the games. Perhaps if that was another game ending condition…
Mind you, this is after two games with four players, almost all of which had never played the game before. Perhaps DC would be better with fewer players or perhaps after players know the cards better. At the moment, I would play DC again but I still have serious reservations about the game.