Card Game Review: The Supers:The Good by Neo Productions Unlimited
Reviewed By Joe J Prince
The Supers is a great little customizable card game from Neo Productions. Customizable meaning you have a choice in how to structure each deck, but don’t worry it’s not a wallet-emptying collectible card game. Instead, The Good provides a basic set of 36 cards from which you can print off and construct hundreds of unique decks.
The whole idea is something of an innovation, which I feel works well. The downside is that you have to invest the effort to print and cut out your own cards, it’s not massively time-consuming but may dissuade some (lazy) people. However, this DIY printing is also the game’s biggest strength as it allows you to print as many copies of a specific card as you want, providing choice and flexibility. The artwork on the cards is superb and printer friendly, hats off to the ever dependable Devil’s Workshop.
The small deck size (only five cards) also makes a nice change and means it’s very easy to knock up a few spare decks for friends and for players to customise their own decks.
The game itself is very easy to learn and plays quickly – perfect beer & pretzels material. As a two-player game The Supers is a perfectly adequate distraction, but the game really comes into it’s own with three or more players as alliances, betrayals and petty feuds come to the fore!
Unfortunately the game suffers from a couple of system niggles, inevitable really for any card game’s first edition, but annoying nonetheless.
· Who goes first?
I’m assuming it’s determined randomly, but this is not explicitly mentioned.
· Can tactics cards only be used once per game?
I’m been assuming yes, but I’m not quite sure as it makes many tactics very weak.
· Certain power cards make reference to being played, I’m not sure if this means played from the deck or if they can be played each turn.
I’ve been using them only when drawn from the deck, but this makes Whirlwind and Super-Speed very weak.
· The Charge card – Arrgggh! This is the most problematic card in the game. For a start there’s a typo on it which means the example contradicts the card’s text.
I’ve been going with the example text as the other option makes it a worthless card.
Charge – (Ex if you have 5 and the opposing player has 8, that player now has 5 as well). However using this interpretation has problems too, because the timing rules seem to indicate you could use the tactic in the ready step after you have been reduced to 0 HPs, thus always forcing a draw. I’ve been house-ruling this to say you can only play charge in your own turn, this solves the problem pretty well.
Overall though, these niggles are pretty minor and I’m sure there will be errata available soon. The Supers:The Good is a lot of fun and well worth the asking price.
4/5
