Game Review
Attack On Titan Deck Building Game
One of the games we picked up over this recent holiday season was Cryptozoic Entertainment’s Attack On Titan Deck Building Game. I may have been more excited to play this than Teenage Son, who received the game for Christmas. Having watched the first season with him–several times–we set out to see how game play compared to the action on-screen and weren’t disappointed. Much like the anime, this game moves quickly and things can get bloody pretty fast.
You take on the role of one of the characters in the anime and your job is to defend the walls that encircle and protect the royal castle inside the center of the last bastion of humanity where the last remnants of humans have gathered to survive against the Titans.
This is a “deck building” game so that means you start out with a meager hand, like a new Survey Corps cadet would start, with real basic equipment and/or moves. Each turn you get the chance to move and purchase new equipment to make your deck stronger. The newly purchased equipment goes into your discard pile but gets shuffled back into your hand later on, so you’ll just have to wait a bit to start reaping the benefits of newer, better gear–and that’s what makes this game intense.
At the beginning of each player’s turn, they reveal new cards that affect the players or the walls, so you wind up with allies, equipment, or the dreaded Titans that must be battled and defeated quickly. Defeating the Titans isn’t always a walk in the park, however. There are “normal” Titans and then there are “Archenemy Titans”–who have their own card deck of tricks and maneuvers that complicate the battle for the Survey Corps slightly. In some instances, battling the normal Titans can be done in one go but defeating the Archenemy Titans requires bleeding their hit points down before you can attempt a killing blow, and lucky you, they regenerate 1 hit point per player each round!
The cool thing about this game is that it’s a collaborative game, so everybody playing gets to see each others cards and there are opportunities to swap cards and equipment depending on which character or resource is in play. This makes things a little easier to deal with but be warned: heroes will die. Fortunately you can pick a new one and jump right back into the game and pick up the killed hero’s gear.
If you’re looking for something with good replay value that gives you a sense of what it’s like to battle the Titans from this classic anime, Attack On Titan Deck Building Game does an excellent job of bringing that intensity to the table top.
Attack On Titan Deck Building Game
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