The Resident Evil Deck Building Game Review

After trying the DC Comics Deck Building Game, I decided to buy some more deck building games to see what else is out there. I enjoy Dominion tremendously, and I even enjoyed the DC Comics game, even though I didn’t like it as well as I like Dominion. So I made a trip to a game store this weekend and bought three new games, one of which was the Resident Evil Deck Building Game.

I should mention that I am a big fan of the zombie movie genre, and I also loved the various video games in the Resident Evil franchise, so I might have been predisposed to like this game a little extra just because of my interests. On the other hand, I had no problem distinguishing between the greatness that is Dominion compared with the relative mediocrity of the DC game, and I’ve been into comic books, especially DC comic books, since I was 7 or 8 years old.

The production value of this game is excellent, but I have one quibble. I’m not young, and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. Still, I don’t think anyone has such great eyesight that reading the rulebook for this game is going to be an easy or pleasant experience. For one thing, it’s a tiny book, but for another, it also uses and extremely tiny font. Some of the text is in a lower contrast color with the background, and I literally had to ask one of my nieces to read some of the rules to me because I just plain couldn’t make out the text for myself. The artwork on the cards is great, though.

Like the DC game, Resident Evil requires you to randomly select a character to play, and your character has a couple of special powers. The characters, like Ada Wong, will be familiar to anyone who has played through the video games. One aspect of this game that I enjoyed was the Health score for each character and the leveling up aspects. It added a touch of RPG-like fun to the game, and it was entirely welcome. Characters start at level 0 but once they defeat a couple of infected, the level up fairly quickly. Each character’s special abilities were interesting and fun to play, too.

The rules for the basic game have a “Story” mode and a “Mercenaries” mode. We only played the “Story” mode, but it was a lot of fun. The mechanics of the game are quite similar to the mechanics of other games of this genre, but the combat had a few nice wrinkles that distinguished it from other deck building games I’ve played. For example, you have ammunition cards as well as various firearm cards, and in order to use certain firearms, you must have enough ammo for that card. Generally speaking, the more damage a weapon does, the more ammo you need. Some weapons, like the combat knives, don’t need any ammo at all.

On each turn, a player gets a single action to take, a single buy action to take, and a single explore action to take. The player can take these actions in any order they like, and they can also use items. Using an item doesn’t cost an action. Certain action cards allow the players to gain additional actions, buys, and cards.

The winner of the game is the person who receives the most “decorations”, which is Resident Evil speak for victory points. Each infected that you fight and destroy becomes attached to your character’s card, and at the end of the game, you count up and compare your totals. The number of decorations you have also determines your level.

Combat takes place during your mansion exploration phase. You don’t have to explore the mansion if you don’t think you have enough firepower, but if you do choose to explore, you usually face a monster from the top of the mansion deck. Each monster has a health score and a damage score. If the total amount of damage your weapons deal are equal to or greater than the infected’s health, you defeat him. If not, then the creature lashes out at you before retreating back into the mansion. This requires a little bit of bookkeeping on the part of the players, because they have to track how many hit points they have.

If you run completely out of health, you lose a turn, then you get back into the game, but your maximum health is reduced by 20. If your maximum health ever reaches 0, you’re out of the game. This didn’t happen to any of our players either time we played.

The game ends when the boss monster is defeated. He’s shuffled randomly into the mansion deck.

The Resident Evil Deck Building Game does a fine job of emulating the video game it’s based on. If you hated the video games for whatever reason, then you probably won’t find much to like here, either. On the other hand, if you like this genre in general and that video game in particular, you’ll find a lot to enjoy about the Resident Evil Deck Building Game.

Also, this game requires less strategy than Dominion, but more strategy than the DC Comics Deck Building Game. At some point in the future, I might invest in the expansions, but there are still several scenarios in the rulebook that I haven’t tried yet. I’d say that this game has excellent replay value. It’s a good value for the money, but the audience for it is somewhat limited by its theme.

One last thing–the box says that the game is for ages 13+, but I played with my 11 year old niece, and she had no trouble with the rules at all. I think it’s possible that the age range is based more on the type of content the game represents than how difficult the game is to play.

Have you played the Resident Evil Deck Building Game? If so, what did you think?

DriveThruCards.com Grand Opening

I don’t just play card games. I’m also a fan of RPGs, especially old-school roleplaying games like Runequest and Dungeons and Dragons. So it’s probably not a surprise that I’ve spent a few dollars over the years buying products from DriveThruRPG.com. Today they sent me an email announcing the launch of their new site, DriveThruCards.com, which is a pretty nifty idea, and I thought I’d mention it here.

Basically, DriveThruCards.com offers a print-on-demand card game publishing service. This is great news for game designers, because one of the biggest expenses involved in self-publishing your own card game is the printing costs involved. With print-on-demand, indie card game publishers don’t have to pay for that, and they don’t have to maintain inventory or deal with shipping. DriveThruCards.com handles all of that for them.

This is also good news for card game aficionados like me. I love trying new card games, but the expense involved in most of them can be a bummer. They’re having a grand opening sale at the site today, and their prices looked really affordable. The prices on the 10 card games they were featuring ranged from $1.99 to $20.99, but most of the products hovered around the $10 mark.

The $1.99 game was called Mayhem Mines. I’ve never played it, so I don’t have any first-hand knowledge of the game, but how can you go wrong with a $2 game? According to the description on the site, players take the roles of Dwarf miners who are trying to collect treasures before the mine collapses on them. I was expecting something cheap-looking, but the pictures of the product were in color and seemed to have reasonably high production values. It’s hard to be sure just from looking at pictures, but I did like the artwork.

On the other end of the spectrum is a game called Directors Cut Survival Horror, which features over 250 cards. Players take the roles of characters in a horror movie. Only one of them will survive to the end of the game. The description indicates that each card includes gory photographs, but there were no example cards on display at the site. If you play with your kids, this probably isn’t the right choice, but I know a lot of horror film fanatics who would love something like this.

Of the publishers listed, I was only familiar with two: Cheapass Games and Looney Labs. I’ve been a fan of Cheapass games for a long time, and their games never fail to be a lot of fun. I’ve never played any Looney Labs games, although I’ve heard good things from some of the gamers in the Dallas area when I visited.

At any rate, I just thought this was the kind of thing readers of this blog might be interested in.

Horse Racing Card Game – The Drinking Game Horserace

I don’t generally cover traditional card games here. By “traditional”, I mean card games that are played with a standard 52 card deck. I leave that kind of coverage to bigger sites like Pagat.com.

I have a cousin who lives in Texas, though, and he’s always been fascinated by horse racing. In fact, he took me to Lone Star Park not long ago, and I found some interesting stuff about horse racing on the Web. For one thing, you can learn about the best horse racing betting sites, which is an endlessly fascinating subject. For another, there’s a drinking game played with cards called Horserace, and that’s what I’m going to write about here today.

Instead of betting money on horses and how they’ll place, players of Horserace bet on each of the four aces. One player is the announcer. She takes the ace of each suit out of the deck. These represent the horses. They’re laid face up at one end of the table, which represents the gates.

The rest of the cards are shuffled and placed face down along one of the edges of the table. These cards represent the links. If that’s hard to picture, just imagine an L shape, with the short end of the L being made up of the line of four aces.

The players make bets on their horse. For example, they might place a bet on the nine of spades. Some of these bets can mirror the bets that are made in an actual horse race, but it depends on who you’re playing with and how well they understand these kinds of bets.

Some players just pick a single horse. Depending on who’s playing, the winner might be awarded drinks, or the winners might be immune from having to take a drink, while all the other players have to drink.

The race happens after all the bets are placed. The announcer flips over the face down cards (the links). The suit of each card that is flipped over determines which ace moves forward on the track. Generally speaking, since this is a drinking game usually played by a lot of young and enthusiastic partiers, the people involved are cheering on their horses and getting excited by the action. A good announcer will really get into her role and ham it up.

You can read more about the Horserace drinking game at DrinkingGames.com. I should also point out that I’m not encouraging anyone to play drinking games or even to drink alcohol at all. If you do decide to enjoy alcohol, you should do so responsibly, and that means not driving.

I guess I just thought it was interesting to see what kinds of interesting and unusual card games are available out there that aren’t designed by professional card game designers like Donald X. Vaccarino or Reiner Knizia. You might consider these to be folk card games.

DC Comics Deck Building Game Review

My group has been playing the relatively new DC Comics Deck Building Game over the last few weeks. I’m a huge fan of Dominion, of course, so I was thrilled when my buddy John bought me a copy of the DC Comics Deck Building Game for Christmas. Even though I TRY to keep my ear to the ground, I’m not always up to date on the latest in card games, and I didn’t even know that a game of this sort existed with a focus on comic books. In fact, I didn’t quite realize that Dominion had spawned a hugely-popular genre of card games.

Players take on the roles of the major heroes of the DC Universe–Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. In fact, the game features the latest line-up of DC’s flagship superhero team, the Justice League. There are 7 superheroes available to play.

You start off with nothing but punches and vulnerabilities, but as the game moves along, you gain new superpowers, equipment, heroes, villains, and locations. You can use these cards to achieve more impressive combos and defeat more powerful villains.

Your goal is to achieve the most victory points. All of the cards (with the exception of the Weakness cards) are worth victory points; there is no distinction between victory cards and the other cards. This is a major difference between this game and Dominion, where victory cards are usually useless until it’s time to count up the scores. Unfortunately, it also seems to result in more of a luck-based game than Dominion, which is largely dependent on your strategy.

Each superhero has a special ability. For example, if you’re playing the Flash, you always get to go first in the game. Also, any time you play a card that allows you to draw an extra card, you get to draw a bonus card. Another example is Cyborg, who gets +1 Power any time he has an equipment card in play, and who gets to draw an additional card any time he has a superpower card in play.

These special abilities are neat, and the game seems balanced. I didn’t notice that any of the characters’ special abilities made them unbeatable. In fact, for the most part, the special abilities of the superheroes just add a little bit of flavor to the game. I think it would be quite possible to win easily without ever using your superhero’s special ability, just because there’s so much luck involved in the game.

Each player starts with a deck of 10 cards, consisting of 7 punch cards and 3 vulnerability cards. You’ll notice that this is very similar to the starting deck you get in Dominion, which consists of 7 coppers and 3 estates.

The game board consists of a main deck, a line-up, and 3 stacks: kicks, weaknesses, and super-villains. The line-up consists of 5 cards that are drawn at random–this is another big difference from Dominion, in which the lineup consists of a limited number of set cards. The cards in the main deck and the line-up each have a power cost, an amount of power they lend the player when they’re used, and a victory point value. Most cards have some kind of special ability, too.

The kick cards in the stack are just like punches, only more powerful. Punches only give you +1 power each, but kicks give you +2 power each. The kicks have no special abilities, though–the other cards in the lineup will almost always have some special gimmick, like the ability to destroy a card, draw a card, or force players to discard cards.

The weakness cards are comparable to curses in Dominion. They subtract one victory point each at the end of the game, but worse, they clog up your hands with useless cards.

The final of the 3 stacks is the super-villains stack. These cards are treated just like the other cards in the line-up, but all of them cost more to defeat. They also (with the exception of Ra’s A Ghul) each have a “first appearance” attack that affects all the players when they become the top card of the deck.

Players can buy as many cards from the line-up as they have power to buy; there are no limits to the number of buy actions a player can take. In fact, the players can also play any cards in their 5 card hand. There are no limits to actions, either

The game ends immediately when all the supervillains are defeated, or when a player is unable to refill the line-up. Everyone counts their scores and compares them to see who won.

The DC Comics Deck Building Game also has some variant rules in the back, and you can control (to an extent) how long or short a game is going to be by deciding in advance how many supervillains to use.

As far as production values goes, it’s hard to complain about this game. The artwork is nice–modern, but nice. I’m not a fan of the New 52 version of the DC Universe, but the market for a retro DC Comics card game probably isn’t very large, so I understand the choice they’ve made here.

I’ve already mentioned that I prefer Dominion to the DC Comics Deck Building Game because strategy plays a greater role in the former. You might be someone who enjoys more of a random card game, and if you are, then this is probably the perfect game for you. I’d describe this as a beer-and-pretzels card game. It’s easy to learn, easy to play, and you’ve got a fair chance of winning even if you’re playing with other, more experienced players. I also thought the price was reasonable. If you like DC Comics and card games, then this one is worth a try, for sure.

Odds and Probability

I’ve taken a little bit of a sabbatical from blogging about card games lately, but I’m back today, and I’d like to write an article about odds and probability in card games and other games where luck is a factor. I know that’s different from our usual format here, but I thought it might be a fun change of pace. I also have a new review that I’ll be posting later today. By the way, if you hate math, you should just skip this post, because probability is ALL about math.

What Is Probability?

Probability is the mathematical study of chance. It’s how we measure the likelihood of certain events occurring. If you want to know how likely it is that you’ll be dealt an ace on the river, then you’ll get your answer using this branch of mathematics. If you want to know the likelihood of rain tomorrow, then this is your field. In fact, probability is used in almost all fields of human endeavor, from business to politics to science to education.

There are two kinds of probabilities. Some of these are uncertain, like when we try to predict how likely it is that the planet Earth will collide with an asteroid. They’re just estimates. The other kind, and the one we’re most interested in, is certain probability, where we know all the potential outcomes and the likelihood of each.

For example, if you ask someone to pick a number between 1 and 10 at random, and you want to know how likely it is that they’ll pick an even number, you know that the chances are 50/50. Half of those numbers are odd, and half of them are even, so in a truly random trial, the odds of getting an even number are the same as the odds of getting an odd number.

The easiest way to start thinking about probabilities is by thinking of them as fractions. The likelihood of something happen is a fraction where the number of ways the desired outcome is the numerator, and the number of total possible outcomes is the denominator. For example, if you want to calculate the chances of rolling a 6 on a single six-side die, you take the number of ways you can roll a 6 and divide it by the total number of potential outcomes. That probability becomes 1/6.

This can be expressed in multiple ways, including as a decimal, a percentage, or as odds. 0.1667 or 16.67% or 5 to 1 would be those expressions, respectively. You should have already learned how to calculate decimals and percentages in school. You might not have learned how to express such a number in odds format, though.

To express a probability in odds format, you take the number of ways something can’t happen and compare it to the number of ways something can happen. In this example, there are 5 ways to NOT roll a 6 and only 1 way to roll a 6. So the odds are 5 to 1.

This starts to matter in card games when you want to estimate how likely it is that the next card you’re dealt will help you or hurt you. For example, in a Texas holdem game, you might have 4 cards to a flush, and you want to know how likely it is that you’ll hit your card on the river.

There are 13 cards of each suit, but you already have 4 of them, so there are 9 of them left in the deck. 6 of the 52 cards in the deck are accounted for already–you have 2 of them in your hand, and there are 4 cards on the board. So there are 46 possibilities, and 9 of them will fill your hand, so your probability of hitting your flush is 9/46. That’s almost 20%, or close to 4 to 1.

How would this information help you? Suppose there’s $1000 in the pot, and you need to put $100 in the pot in order to stay in the hand. That’s a 10 to 1 payout if you win, compared to a 4 to 1 probability of winning. By understanding the odds, you’re able to estimate whether it’s mathematically correct to stay in the hand.

Sometimes you’ll want to estimate the likelihood of multiple things happening at the same time. In that case, you multiply the probabilities by each other. For example, if you’re playing an old-fashioned slot machine game, there are 10 symbols on each reel, and there are 3 reels. The probability of hitting a particular symbol, say a cherry, is 1/10 on the first reel. That chance is the same on the 2nd reel and on the 3rd reel, but if you want to know what the likelihood is for getting a cherry on all 3 of the reels at the same time, you’d multiply 1/10 x 1/10 X 1/10, and you’ll get an answer of 1/1000. That’s 999 to 1 on that particular symbol.

That kind of problem occurs when you’re calculating the odds of this happening AND of that happening. If you want to calculate the odds of this happening OR that happening, you add the probabilities together. Since there are 10 symbols, you theoretically have 10 different winning combinations. How do you figure out your chances of winning some combination? You add up the probabilities for each symbol:

1/1000 + 1/1000 + 1/1000 + 1/1000 + 1/1000 +1/1000 + 1/1000 + 1/1000 + 1/1000 + 1/1000 = 10/1000.

You can reduce that to 1/100, which converts to 99 to 1 odds on any single combination coming up.

The main thing to remember is that if the probability question includes the word “AND”, you multiple the probabilities. If the question includes the word “OR”, you add the probabilities.

I’d like to thank my cousin in Texas (who runs http://www.slotmachinemakers.com/) for that 2nd example regarding slot machines. I came up with the other examples myself.

Of course, this is just a beginner’s introduction to how probability works. You can find additional information about calculating probabilities on these pages:

• A Basic Probability Textbook Online - This one’s a little bit dry, but it’s detailed and accurate.
• A Beginner’s Primer on Probability from GnomeStew.com (See also Part 2 of that post.) By the way, if you’re into RPGs, Gnome Stew is one of the coolest blogs out there.
• Probability for Kids - I’ve found that with math-related topics in general, stuff that’s aimed at a younger audience is often more easily understood, especially by adults who have a little bit of math phobia.
• MathProblems.info - The author of this site specializes in probability, and he runs another site about casino gambling, too. The math problems on this particular site aren’t all probability-related, but it’s still a great resource.