A first look at the demo decks
I had an opportunity to finally try the demo decks. These can be downloaded from Decipher’s website, under the ‘resources’ tab. It pits Rambo against “Sil” from the Species movies. In order to get into the moment, I also loaded up Netflix and played the movie Species frommy watch instantly queue.
The demo decks include two 21 card decks. 1 hero card, 6 fight cards, 1 drop card, and 13 draw cards.
Hero cardsrepresent the hero or villain your playing. In this case, either Sil or Rambo.
The Drop card show who’s turn it is
Fight cards are what’s used to play out the fight. During the fight phase, you lay down 3 of these and then resolve them in a certain order.
Draw cards are evrything else. They consist of the following:
Gear Cards are weapons and other items that can be used to help your fight.
Conditions are cards that effect you (and presumably your opponent). These cards are played and last until they’re used or taken away.
Instants are cards that can be played during specific phases and immediately affect the situation.
Effects are cards that can be played during the fights that boost your strength across 3 fighting attributes.
The demo deck allows you to play 2 complete rounds pretty well. I played about 5 games and never really was lucky enough to kill my oponent, but I got the gist of the game.
It was clear that each hero had their particular strengths. I could see that these strengths can be supported by creating a properly tuned deck.
Sil’s strategy is a search deck strategy. She burns through a ton of cards and then has a number of effects that allow you to root through your draft or discard pile to find just the card you need. In fact, her special ability is just that: For 1 yellow resource, it allows you to search the draw stack for any instant and put it into your hand. This strategy is also supported by the fact that she draws down to no cards at the end of every turn.
Rambo’s strategy (as best I can tell) is a gear-reliant/raising the stakes strategy. In other words, many of his effects in this demo deck were reliant on Rambo getting his gear out. This compound bow is just ok. it adds 1 or 2 points to his survival attribute. his other strength is nullifying score cards. This can be a pain when trying to put your opponent out of his misery.
I’m looking forward to seeing the full set of cards when they come. Look for more posts at that time.
Again, to download these demo decks for free, go to Decipher’s Homepage. Type “spycraft69” into the door and then register.
