What could be more convincing, moreover, than the gesture of laying one’s cards face up on the table?
~ Jacques Lacan
A game in which you play as a group of friends who play the fictional CCG “Millennium Blades”.
You will build decks, play the meta, acquire valuable collections, crack open random boosters, and compete in tournaments for prizes and fame.
Millennium Blades is an incredibly simple game with a very good theme.
You all start off with a starter deck of themed cards that work well together. Although the cards aren’t the best, they do a job. They do remind me a lot of the pre-con Magic the Gathering decks you can get when a new set comes out. I play White a lot in Magic so I took the White ‘Good’ deck.
You also get a character…
They give you two abilities, a Deck Building Power and on the other side a Tournament Power you use in the second half of a round. I took the Purple one because Purple 🙂
With your deck, you also get a bunch of cash which is paper money, but each note is taped together in a bundle so you’re throwing wads of cash around all game, very fun!
So the game is divided into 2 phases, Deck Building and Tournament. The deck building phase is real-time and divided into 3 periods of 7,7 and 6 minutes.
Buying & Selling
In this phase, you buy and sell cards. The available cards are made up of several sets that come with the game and the backs of the cards are made to look like Foil Packs while the front looks like a trading card.
Several cards are laid out in the ‘Shop’…
You pay the amount a ‘Pack’ costs and buy it, then you can flip it over and take a look. Down the side of this area is a place where you can trade in 5, 7 or 9 cards for ‘Promos’. These are OK through to Good cards and a good way to get rid of a bunch of unwanted stuff from your hand.
Selling
Another way to get rid of cards is to sell them. You add them to the aftermarket, put your colour token on them and take the money. The other players can now buy them and add them to their hands. You sell a card for its value but you only have 4 ‘Sale’ tokens in your colour. You also use these to show when you’ve taken a Promo so use them wisely.
The goal of this round is to get your deck together. Your player board has an area where you put the cards you need for the tournament. This is 1 Deck Box, 2 Accessories and 8 Cards but there is also space where you can put cards you’re keeping for the next round but not using this tournament.
In the top left of your board is the ‘Collection Area’. Here, you can place cards you don’t want that are all of the same Type or Element, for extra points. I didn’t know what this was supposed to represent apart from you collect these cards into a folder at home never to play them… Not sure.
Anyway, after this combined 20 minutes of real-time buying and selling, you go to the tournament.
Millennium Blades Tournament
This plays out in a similar way to Boss Monster where you take turns to play a card with the major difference being this is a good game 🙂
First, you need to clear and flip your board. Discard the cards in the collection area, put your binder to one side, take your deck in hand and flip your sheet.
Here you have space for your Deck Box, and Accessories as well as spaces to play your cards.
You also flip your character card to show their Tournament ability… I could play a 7th card where normally each player will only play 6.
Tournament Play
So, to play a tournament, starting with the first player and going around the table you put a card from your hand into the leftmost slot of your tableau and do what it says.
Some have immediate effects, others just for scoring at the end of a tournament, and some have both…
Only face-up cards count at the end of a tournament and some will make you flip yours, or your opponents. Many of them have an effect based on their position such as copying the card to the left or protecting the cards on either side of it… Like Boss Monster.
You’re trying to set up combos with cards that work together, use your Deck Box and Accessory abilities the best you can and protect your tableau from the other players while taking out their high-scoring cards.
Once everyone has played all their cards you add the score and gain points depending on your position in the Tournament.
You also gain points based on predetermined Metagame cards.
These cards are revealed one at a time in the Deck Building phase and give a bonus. Here you got 15 points if you have a card with the Dark Element. You also get 15 points for an Animal on your tableau at the end of a Tournament.
Millennium Blades Summary
This game is great. You can’t help but spend every penny you have on new cards. You feel a great ‘what if’ factor like buying them in real life.
Also, you have the tension you get when you go to a real-life ‘Sealed Deck’ tournament. You have all these cards, you need to read them and understand them but you’re on a timer.
Your deck is so important in Millennium Blades as it’s the main way you score points in the game so you need to get it right… and quickly.
Having restrictions on selling cards to 4 is a good idea. There were plenty of times when I wanted to sell 6-7 cards but couldn’t. So while money didn’t feel too restrictive (you always wanted to buy more packs) you didn’t have ‘Infinite’ cash.
Millennium Blades is a very good game, I enjoyed it a lot. I’m looking forward to playing it with some of the other sets of cards in the box.
Jesta ThaRogue