I plan to avoid this like the plague.


I got hooked on Magic (the gathering) a few years back & it really did suck my wallet dry.

I picked up a couple of starters and a dozen boosters yeasterday, and my initial impressions are quite negative. First thoughts, with only having seen a few of the cards and played a couple of games, are:

The cards themselves are pretty, and good quality, but feel cluttered. Printing the card number on the card is v.good - other CCG manufacturers please do this!

Distribution of rares seem good, value of starters vs boosters feels about right.

The rules texts on the cards is quite simplistic - they've obviously never faced cross examination by MtG rules lawyers.

The rules booklet is quite badly designed, the introductory game ( "first patrol" ) too simplistic, the play mat is nice, but useless.

The prebuilt decks in the starters omit an entire card type (locations) - baaaad!

Two different and completely unconected ways to win - not sure about this, I suspect that in actual gameplay people will only win by collecting destiny points.

Too many required combos (you must have card X to play card Y); too many rare-rare combos. Aswell as reducing the effectiveness of single cards, and requiring you to by a disproportionally large number of cards, these significantly limit the number of choices open too players and reduce the flexibility of the game.

It's got potential to be a nice simple game for people new to CCGs, but needs a few wrinkles ironing out before it will appeal to more serious players.

Personally I'll probably not pick up more cards, in part due to timing - the first expansion comes out in about 2 months but between now and then there's a Shadowfist expansion set due out which is going to get preference.

Bought some cards and the villians starter deck.

Bought it, played it, got confused, put it away on shelf

The instruction booklet was really confusing and I never really understood how the playmat was supposed to work. I think this is going to end up like my Buffy board game...sitting in a cupboard only having been played once.