The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Brawl Catfight: Sonia & Tamiya

The Basics:

Brawl is the real time “not customisable, but collectible” card game from James Earnest Games, otherwise known as Cheapass Games with a decent set of clothes on.

Each deck represents one fighter, and contains 35 cards plus a rules pamphlet.

The cards, incidentally, are lovely to look at; the “Americanised manga” style isn’t my favourite, but no corners have been cut with the presentation on these. A great deal of the flavour of the game is imparted from the illustrations, without which Brawl could well feel like Uno on speed. Top marks to Bryce Nakagawa.

The cardstock is good, by which I mean better than adequate, but in this game, they'd have to be published ready-laminated to stand up to some of the beating their going to get...

Each player requires on set of cards each: the mix of different card types in each deck makes the character of each deck different, some being very “tricksy”, and others lending themselves to all-out, slam the cards down and hang the consequences play.

The Mechanics

In this release there are ten types of card:

Bases are the central cards that are fought over. There are two on the table to start with, there may be between one and three in play at any time. The Bases are aligned linearly between the players: if there are three bases, the middle one can’t be Cleared, nor can a lone base.

Depending on the deck, Bases can look like they're a particular colour for card laying purposes. When that kind of thing holds up the first game anyone plays of this, it starts to put them off. Could future decks NOT use the primary colours of the hit cards so prominently in bases?

Hits, Hit-2’s & Blocks come in three colours, red, green & blue. A player may lay a card to either side of a base. Hits may be placed on empty bases, or hits/hit-2’s of the same colour (ignoring any non-hit or block cards played since the last hit). Hit-2’s can only be placed on similarly coloured hits or hit-2’s. Blocks can be placed in the same way as hits, and prevent any more plays on that side of a base apart from a Press, which nullifies the block. Once a base is Frozen, ownership of the base is awarded to the player with the most hits on their side of the base.

Clears remove a base from play (and scoring).

And in the two decks I have, they look green, leading to an even more annoying error of not removing bases because "It looks like I don't have any red or blue clears... oh, clears can be played on ANY base, okay, can we start again..."

Presses can be played on Blocks to cancel them (treat the stack as if no block had been played), or to cancel the following two types of card if played on the base already.

Double when played on a base doubles it’s value for victory point totals.

Reverse when played on a base makes that base won by the LOWEST total of the two sides.

Freezes are always at the bottom of the players' decks, there are three of them, and they stop all play on that base.

Cards are played one at a time from the deck, either into play or onto the discard pile. A player may play the top card of their discard pile rather than the top card of the deck before turning the top of the deck over.

Bases with an outright majority in favour of one player score one point for that player (modified by doubles and reverses): tied bases score half a point for the player who laid that base (modified by doubles).

On being confronted with the basics of gameplay, and in the more traditional “take turns to play” style given as the training variant in the rules, one of my friends sniffily commented “So where’s the game?” Like I mentioned before, it can start to look a little too simplistic, a little too UNO for it’s own good at first. And taking turns kills the more straightforward decks DEAD.

There's a game there, trust me. And one that takes time to learn properly... see my summary later on.

The Decks: Tamiya

I tried to enter the flavour text for this deck, but couldn't bring myself to. My Manga Allergy wouldn't let me.

The composition is as follows:

Blue Hit	3
Blue Hit-2	1
Blue Block	2
Green Hit	3
Green Hit-2	1
Green Block	2
Red Hit	10
Red Hit-2	1
Red Block	-
Base	3
Clear	5
Press	-
Reverse	1
Double	-
Freeze	3

Ignoring the whole manga angle of girls in sailor suits (even cat girls in sailor suits, yeesh), this is an out an out thugs deck. TEN, count 'em, red hits, and a double in each colour. More tellingly, NO PRESSES, and only one reverse. Okay in non-red blocks, but this deck begs to be played fast, and if a base isn't going your way, spray it with red or trash it. Losing bases, blocked bases, can't be rescued by this deck, so if you can't have 'em, no-one can.

Sonia

Oh, another back story... an excuse for lion skin mini skirts. Okay, less psychologically unsettling than the sailor suit, but hey...

Blue Hit	6
Blue Hit-2	-
Blue Block	1
Green Hit	3
Green Hit-2	-
Green Block	1
Red Hit	4
Red Hit-2	-
Red Block	1
Base	6
Clear	5
Press	3
Reverse	-
Double	2
Freeze	3

FAR better rounded than Tamiya, this deck can finesse it's way out of most trouble with the clears, presses and bases to work around most bull-headed attacks. Shame about no reverses, though, it's the weasel's favourite...

Comments:

I like this game. It doesn't like me. I cannot win at it. If I think things through, my opponent runs rings round me and freezes the bases before I can make an intelligent move. If I go hell for leather, just before I get to the freezes, my opponent clears my two winning bases and reverses my third.

The secret seems to be to be pick a deck that suits your style, and practice with it until you play with a Zen like rhythm. However....

That means you'll have to play with quite a few, if not all, of the decks to get to one you like. Now, the decks ain't expensive, but getting a full set ain't exactly, well, cheapass, to coin a phrase. And part of the initial appeal of the game is that you can play right away with any two decks, nominally eliminating the "crack for gamers" syndrome that still dogs CCG's. Just pray one of your first two decks matches your playing style.

But, if you do enjoy the first couple of decks you get, you'll want to get more because you're enjoying the game. Bah. At least this is a marketing pull (I like it, I'll get more) than a despicable push (I can't play competitively until I get more).

A couple of the design choices, especially in the use of colour on cards where they "have no colour," can get in the way of gameplay, forcing me to think (always a bad move at the best of times), rather than just play intuitively... of course, if all the non hit /block cards were black & white, I'd win every time.

My opinion on the depth of this game keeps flip-flopping. Some days, I get annoyed that I can't tweak the decks. There's not much meta-game, apart from choosing the which deck to play with. I got really annoyed at the "where's the game" comment, displaying the speakers' total missing of the point and flavour of this game. Some days, I think the small deck sizes makes any subtle strategy a hostage to the whims of low-sample random distribution (reverses are always FAR more useful right at the end of the game, but they'll never turn up there...). On balance, each deck probably has an ideal strategy, but finding it out takes time, and implementing it each time requires card counting skills beyond Rain Man's ability ("RedHitRedDoubleHitToYourSideReverseFreezeFreezeFreezeRaymondWins.Yuh.Definitely.")

There's just one thing I really don't understand about this game... why is the shallow, awful, kindergarten game Button Men more popular than this wonderful, infuriating game?