Let's Talk 'Small' Deckbuilders

Still in the market for my first official deck builder. Played a bunch of Marvel Legendary recently. Fun game, not gonna buy it though.

Deckbuilding isn't my absolute favorite, so not interested in a huge box of cards. I'm looking for something that doesn't take much storage space.

Leading candidates are Rune Age and Star Realms. Do either have real legs? Are they on the easy or complex side? Any other candidates along these line I should consider?

Star Realms is the perfect small deck builder in my opinion. You can teach it in five minutes, has a little depth, plays in twenty minutes. It can scale for three or four. You need to buy a second box for those though to get more of the starting hand cards. Same company about to issue a small box comparable to MTG that has positive reviews... Epic Card game.

Damn, I think I will go play the app version on my IPad right now.

STAR REALMS is fun enough I suppose. I prefer ASCENSION, and probably even PENNY ARCADE. All of these have cheap iOS implementations if you want to try them before you buy them for reals. Avoid DOMINION, that is boring as fuck all. Half your hand is victory points and they don't do anything. It's bizarre.

STAR REALMS is a great choice. I also really like ASCENSION, but I'm not sue that it counts as "small". The only one of my favorites that has not been mentioned yet is the aptly named DC DECKBUILDING GAME which is quick, easy and fun.

engineer Al wrote: The only one of my favorites that has not been mentioned yet is the aptly named DC DECKBUILDING GAME which is quick, easy and fun.

If your kids/friends like LOTR, The Hobbit Deck-Builder is the same exact system.

And if you prefer your games to be silly and semi-broken, please try the impossible mode LOTR Fellowship of the Rings deck-builder. Two Towers and Return of the King are fun as well, but less silly.

I swear that Amazon had the LOTR deck-builders on sale for $15-20 recently. (Just checked: Still on sale.)

Having only played Rune Age and Dominion, I can see the appeal of the latter, but it kinda left me cold. Rune Age, OTOH, I really like because it involves the players against each other in multiple game modes and is very easy to teach and for non-gamers to pick up, but still has enough meat to it for regular gamers to get into. I'm kinda disappointed that FFG hasn't produced more for it, especially since they're still in full swing on Runebound universe stuff (new Runebound, Descent, 2nd Ed,, Battlelore, etc.) but I'm not sure how well it sold.

I've played a lot of deck builders over the years. I love the genre to be honest, even though they are generally money pits. Dominion, Arctic Scavengers, Nightfall, Puzzle Strike, Thunderstone, DC Deck Builder, that Marvel thing, Star Trek OS, Ascension...

Rune Age is my favourite of the lot, especially when you consider how much it does with so little. I do think the expansion is pretty much necessary but both base game and expansion are less money than the base game in any other deck builder... or at least close. It does a great job of giving you that dudes on a map feel with just a bunch of cards. You can play it solo or in co-op mode (which doesn't appeal to me but does work pretty well) or co-op with competition and there are even a couple of Euro versions based around getting monuments or some crap. It's an incredible game with lots of options and I'd have a hard time finding a game that does so much with so little. It has a little bit more rules complexity than the others because of the three types of currency that are used but once you wrap your head around it the game is very straightforward to play.

That said I never played Star Realms so I can't comment on it.

A couple of strong opinions on Rune Age, so starting to lean that way. Counting the expansion, there looks to be 6 different ways to play as well. If each way is interesting in its own (sure, some more than others), then this seems like a lot o game.

One thing about that expansion...I know nothing of the Terrinoth setting, having mocked and avoided it in the past. So, sure, I'll read any flavor/world-building text in the rules for a game I'm playing. The RA base game rules has a little summary for each of the four factions. I don't see anything like that for the orcs and dwarves in the expansion rule book. This is lazy and a big oversight, IMO. If FFG doesn't even take their setting seriously enough to follow-up appropriately within the same game...why should I invest emotionally? This hasn't done much to win me over to Terrinoth as a setting, but hopefully I'm wrong and there is setting background in some other part of the expansion, but I don't see anything in the rules as posted online.

One of the cool things about Rune Age is that it solves the mechanical disconnect of deck builders. Normally I just can't grasp why I need to shuffle stuff I buy into my deck before I can use it, but in Rune Age it makes kinda sense. Your deck is your standing army, and your hand are the forces you currently have available in the part of the realm you want to attack/defend. It's still a stretch, but I like to think of it this way.

Also it's a great game. I've mostly played solo or coop, but the Runewars scenario where you duke it out amongst two-four players feels very much like a DoaM with just cards.

I found Star Realms to get boring pretty quickly. There just isn't much to it. Maybe the expansions fix this, but I lost interest before they came out.

I really like Valley of the Kings as it's small yet has a lot more going on. It also has much more interesting interaction, and it plays well with 2-4.

Zeppelin Attack is another to consider. It's goofy yet fun, and also small.

Valley of the Kings is now on the radar. I like that it plays 2-4 out of the box as opposed to Star Realms.

Is anyone aware of a deckbuilder set in a cyber-punk/dystopian setting?

EDIT: Besides Shadowrun: Crossfire.

I think I may have spun-off too many deckbuilding threads now...

Anyway, back to Rune Age. Think it'd play well with three bright 8 year old boys ? Oh, I'd be playing with. I'm considering hosting a twice a month game session for my son and his friends. I've got Heroscape and Nexus Ops lined up for the occasion. I may possibly add Death Angel to the mix, but Rune Age seems like it would be a pretty good fit.

That'd give me decent multi-player games in the Minis, DoaM, Co-op, and Deckbuilding genres.

Mr. White wrote: I'm considering hosting a twice a month game session for my son and his friends. I've got Heroscape and Nexus Ops lined up for the occasion. I may possibly add Death Angel to the mix, but Rune Age seems like it would be a pretty good fit.

That'd give me decent multi-player games in the Minis, DoaM, Co-op, and Deckbuilding genres.

I host my son's group (they're all 12) and we have a very similar lineup and schedule (believe me, twice a month is enough). I'd also recommend Risk: Legacy, Cutthroat Caverns, Escape: The Curse of the Temple, and Super Fantasy. Our minis game is Imperial Assault, but we've all burnt out on it after the 4th campaign mission and may switch over to just playing skirmish.

Rune Age is probably what you are looking for here. I was lukewarm on it back when it first came out, but I got it and the expansion a couple of months ago and I've realized what a chowderhead I was for not rating it higher. It's an EXCELLENT game, and absolutely not "FFG's Dominion Cash-In". It's funny, because it was in that first glut of deckbuilders but it was the one out of all of that first lot that really tried to do something with the mechanic. It plays VERY different, although some of the core principles are the same. Directly attacking other players (instead of some kind of target cards) makes a big difference, and it's got a round-based combat resolution which isn't something you see in most of these games. This makes it feel much more "CCG like" in some respects.

The scenario modes work really well. A couple of them are kind of iffy, but it is nice that you can play solo, co-op (or solo with multiple hands) and competitively. And there are different frameworks that make for more VP, development or conflict oriented games.

You can probably get it all for under $40, and I think it's the only deckbuilder that I would regard as "permanent" at this stage. Definitely a sort of cult classic.

Legendary Encounters is way better than the Marvel one, BTW.

Well, i think I just went from zero deckbuilders to about three. Did I err...?

Rune Age - for The Pit Kid's Krew

Thunderstone: Numenera - for The Pit League (BB/DB/RPG group)

Valley of the Kings - for The Casual Player's Club as well as for the wife and I

Too many games. Gonna have to unload some others now...