Tag: Deck Building

Deck Building is a mechanic where players build a deck of resources that is randomly drawn and used for future turns.

Deja Vu: Fragments of Memory

| OTSG Staff

As the nameless girl returned to consciousness, she found herself lying in an egg-like space pod, holding a bowl of luminous blue flowers, and her forearm was tattooed with some kind of alien symbols. “What is this place? Who am I?” She did not remember anything. In the space pod’s computer was a black box with records of all the planets it had visited. Bewildered but resolute, she set out to revisit all the planets in reverse order in the hope of retrieving all her lost memories.

Deja Vu: Fragments of Memory is about memory, but it is NOT a memory game; instead the game focuses on tableau-building and set-collecting, and to win the game, you must perform well both tactically and strategically. In the tactical part, players collect wooden tokens on the map with various combinations of color and shape, and both the color and shape are essential to success! The process of collecting is a pleasantly perplexing mind puzzle.

In the strategic part, players use the wooden tokens they gained to add cards to their tableau, building up their “card engine”, which serves to generate victory points, reinforce their resource-collecting ability, and improve the engine itself. Should you increase your selection of cards first? Or create more space to save up resources? Maybe you should plant more cosmic flowers? Balanced and efficient long-term planning is the key to victory.

The central cosmic map, aside from being a place to hold resources, is also a battlefield to contest precious memory fragments which, when paired with the right cards, can earn enormous amount of victory points for you!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck, Bag, and Pool Building
  • Mancala
  • Modular Board
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.67

The Big Book of Madness

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The Big Book of Madness

The Big Book of Madness

So far your first year at the Elementary College has been slightly disappointing. They taught you to light a flickering flame at the tip of your finger, but other than that you’ve spent much more time reading books than learning powerful spells as future great wizards like you should.

So when you heard about the Big Book of Madness hidden in the great school library, you couldn’t help but to sneak in and peek in this intriguing tome in spite of your professors’ warnings. When you slowly lift the cover of the terrible book, dozens of dreadful creatures rush out, threatening to destroy the world itself! This was your mistake, and only you can fix it now! Learn from the library to fight back against the monsters, and try not to sink into insanity…

The Big Book of Madness is a challenging co-operative game in which the players are magic students who must act as a team to turn all the pages of the book, then shut it by defeating the terrible monsters they’ve just freed.

Each player has their own element deck that they build during the game and use for several purposes, such as learning or casting a spell, adding a new element to their deck, destroy or healing a curse. Spells allow you to support your playmates, improve your deck, draw cards, etc. — but the monsters from the book fight back. Each comes with terrible curses that are triggered every turn unless you dispel them in time. They will make you discard elements, add madness cards to your deck, or lose spells…

If you manage to turn six pages and defeat all of the monsters, you win the game!

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Managment
  • Player Elimination

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.68

Wrathborne Champions

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Wrathborne Champions

Wrathborne Champions

You and your friends have been chosen by the gods to become Wrathborne; the strongest fighters the world has ever known! Using special class skills, unique weapons, and a few items, you must work together to defeat monsters intent on destroying the civilized world. This fully cooperative game will require your party to tactically dismantle each enemy in a different way before all of you are out of options. Whether casual or hardcore, Wrathborne Champions is the perfect game for all those brave enough to face the monsters’ wrath.

Each player is assigned a deck of cards comprised of their specific class abilities, a series of attacks specific to the weapon they are using this game, and a few personally selected items. These decks control not only the moves available to players, but also their life total, with damage being applied directly to the deck itself.

Player fight against one or more giant monsters printed on 10×10 miniboards placed in the center of the play area. Unlike most “big bad” games, the Monster Cards in Wrathborne Champions have set attacks and actions performed each round. This “AI code” lets players predict a great deal of how the monsters will act, allowing them to make tactical choices during their turns to increase the likelihood of success.

Monster Card life is tracked via Life Cards in a similar fashion to player decks. Most of these life cards are benign, but some alter the state of play dynamically, sometimes twisting the control out of the player’s hands. Players defeat a Monster Card when all Life Cards are removed from the sectors of the Monster Card that can attack. The game ends when the last Monster Card is defeated, or the final player is killed.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deck Building
  • Pattern Recognition

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.14

War Chest

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War Chest

War Chest

War Chest is an all-new bag-building war game! At the start of the game, raise your banner call (drafting) several various units into your army, which you then use to capture key points on the board. To succeed in War Chest, you must successfully manage not only your armies on the battlefield, but those that are waiting to be deployed.

Each round you draw three unit coins from your bag, then take turns using them to perform actions. Each coin shows a military unit on one side and can be used for one of several actions. The game ends when one player — or one team in the case of a four-player game — has placed all of their control markers. That player or team wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Area Control
  • Deck Building
  • Grid Movement
  • Hand Management
  • Team Based
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.32

Village of Legends

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Village of Legends

Village of Legends

Village of Legends is a two to four player (6 player with expansion pack) deck building/dueling game where players choose a unique Hero and enhance them throughout the game by combining their individual skills with purchased items from the market including; weapons, spells, scrolls, treasures and more.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Vikings Gone Wild

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Vikings Gone Wild

Vikings Gone Wild

Each turn in Vikings Gone Wild — a deck-building, resource management game based on the online real-time strategy game — players can either buy permanent buildings sitting in front of them (resource factories, resources containers, etc) or buy units, towers and special cards that improve their deck and offense/defense capacity.

The only way to win is by successfully attacking each other, and each attack involves interesting bluffing mechanisms in which the attacker doesn’t know the defense capacity of their opponent…

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.24

Vigilante

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Vigilante

Vigilante

In Vigilante, you lead a team of heroes to fight back a swarm of villains running free in the city. Vigilante brings social deduction, action management, and tableau-building into a unique combination that leaves you with many different paths to take to accomplish your goals, new strategies and synergies between heroes, and a lot of tension!

There are a variety of scenarios (game modes) depending on player preferences. The game plays in rounds, where players have 4 actions to either fight (and imprison) villains, recruit new heroes, search for equipment and other helpful cards, or heal. Afterwards, players secretly roll their dice and contribute one of them, which sometimes will help the group but usually hinders them.

In Brought to Justice, each player gets a secret role. ‘Good’ players represent the majority and must imprison 7 villains per good player before the end of the game (i.e. if there are 2 Good players, they need a combined total of 14). ‘Evil’ players are trying to foil their plans, and Neutral players have independent missions which generally throw a little chaos into the mix.

Shifting Allegiances takes Brought to Justice and creates even more uncertainty by only guaranteeing one ‘Good’ player, while the rest of the mix could be any combination of ‘Good’, ‘Evil’, or ‘Neutral’ players. Even though there’s a possibility that all players are good, it will take time to gain each other’s trust, and you could end up sabotaging your own victory!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Deck Building
  • Deduction
  • Hidden Roles
  • Storytelling
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Video Vortex

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Video Vortex

Video Vortex

Video Vortex is a competitive deck-building game for 2-4 players set in a radioactive future Earth inhabited by video-obsessed mutants. Each genre-worshiping character must strategically employ their individual mutant powers while battling opponents and navigating game effects in an attempt to seize control of the wasteland.

On their respective turns, players will spend energy to play special cards, power their deck with rentals from the local video store, and eject chosen cards from play to weaken foes. Runtime, the measure of mutant health, is limited and unique to each character. By advancing an opponent’s runtime beyond their limit through Lo-Fi and Hi-Fi attacks, mutants collect “Be Kind” tokens as trophies representative of their conquest. Once three distinctive trophies have been collected, victory is declared by the reigning champion.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.33

Untamed

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Untamed

Untamed

This standalone edition increases player factions to 12 allowing up to 4 players to play but includes no rules changes from the original edition.

The Deluxe Edition includes everything from the Spirit Strike Edition, however all your cards are foil (only available in this edition). The box also includes card sleeves, a metal first player token, a collector’s artbook, a box sleeve, and a special foil-stamped box!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.88

Undaunted: Reinforcements

| OTSG Staff
Undaunted: Reinforcements

Undaunted: Reinforcements

In North Africa, the Long Range Desert Group is a thorn in the sides of the Italian forces, disrupting vital lines of communication and striking at strategic targets ranging far and wide. In Normandy, U.S. forces brace against German counterattack, determined to maintain their foothold in the region. The fighting is intense, and the outcome hangs on a knife’s edge. With everything at stake, you desperately need reinforcements!

Undaunted: Reinforcements is a modular expansion that introduces a range of new rules, scenarios, and units. Unleash the might of the German and American tanks and see how your new squad options fare against them in Undaunted: Normandy, or make use of mines, assault aircraft, and other new units as you attempt to outfox your opponent in Undaunted: North Africa. Whether you have one Undaunted game or the other, with Reinforcements you can play for the first time in a four-player mode, or test your mettle in a solo mode by Dávid Turczi and David Digby.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 1- 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.33