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Review of Cybertronic MegaDeck
Blurb from the publisher: 'The Warzone Resurrection Cybertronic Faction Card Pack contains all Strategy, Tactical and Gear cards for the Cybertronic faction!'
What you get: Your EUR 26,99 or USD 31,98 or GBP 19,99 will buy you the Cybertronic MegaDeck for you to start battling in the Mutant Chronicles Warzone Resurrection universe under the flag of Cybertronic. By now we have seen almost all the Starter Boxes of the Universe, Cybertronic included. It is reminded that all the rules contained in this rulebook can be found free of charge on the Prodos Games website, even though the free pdfs do not contain the tens of pages of extensive fluff that make the game what it is and breathe life into its history and its armies. Even the actual cards can be found on the Downloads section of the company's site, in order to better peruse before purchasing.
The MegaDecks are a change in production that came up since my initial review of the Cybertronic Starter Box. Namely, each Starter Box now contains the miniatures, the dice, as well as the squad reference cards and the resource cards. It no longer contains the Strategy, Tactics and Gear Cards, making the MegaDecks a must-have if one intends to play a particular faction in the advanced game that uses cards in addition to miniatures. MegaDecks are all-inclusive; they contain all the cards relevant to the faction, irrespective of whether the miniatures are included in the Starter Box or in other packs. In other words, one does not need to hunt for cards here and there. One single purchase and he is done.
The Cybertronic MegaDeck contains 224 standard-sized laminated cards with rounded corners at 87,5 x 62 cm. If you have heard of that little game called Magic: the Gathering, that's the size. All the rules are to be found in the rulebook; the box contains nothing else but the cards.
Out of these cards 120 are Tactical, 12 Resources, 51 Strategy and 51 Gear. Unless something changes drastically in the marketing of Warzone: Resurrection, each MegaDeck contains each card the maximum number of times it can be used in a game. As per the rulebook, that would be an absolute maximum of 3 copies of each Strategy card, 5 copies of each Tactical card and 3 copies of each Gear card. Practically speaking, Cybertronic has at its disposal 24 unique Tactical (12 related to the Starter Box units and 12 related to the additional units, depending on how you count the different iterations of Dr Diana), 17 unique Strategy (6 and 11 respectively, under the same caveat) and 17 unique Gear cards (8 and 9, respectively). A player's deck cannot contain less than 35 cards excluding Resources, while the Resources a player wields depend on his Warlord type. As an example, the Close Combat Warlord brings in the most resources (8), while the Ranged Warlord the least (6).
I had received the new, cardless iteration of the Starter Box for playtesting (with the exception of the Resource cards which are still included), thus I cannot comment on the changes that the MegaDeck brought. The big overall change is that the MegaDeck also includes the cards related to all the other units of the Cybertronic faction that were not contained in the Starter Box. There are twelve units that are not in the Starter Box: the Attila Mk III, the Scorpion, the Voltigeur, the Mirrormen, Pieter Diamond, Enhanced Machinator, Armoured Chasseur, Immortal, Eradicator and the Everassur (I count the three different iterations of Diana as being part of the Starter Box). Each of these figures gets a unique Strategy, Tactical and Gear card, with the exception of the Scorpion (no Gear, one Tactical, two Strategy) and the Everassur (one Gear, two Tactical, no Strategy). Diana Neoclone herself gets only a Gear card.
The Gear cards are almost exclusively buffs with some heals (mostly from Dr Diana), with titles like Infrared Goggles, Resonation Amplifier and Laserbeam. Strategy Cards will allow you to permanently (!) steal unused Resource cards from your opponent, stop all card-playing until someone pays the price for it, hit fast-deploying units, and reduce your opponent's Con and LD. Finally, Cybertronic's Tactical cards permit the elimination of the opponent's ranged weapons, force your opponent to run towards you, gain certain skills, reduce the movement and AV of your opponent and so on and so forth.
The strong points: I cannot but loudly applaud Prodos' policy when it comes to rules and content. Everything, absolutely everything, is free on their website, these cards included. For the number-crunchers out there, there will be no blind purchases, no impulse buying and no disappointment about a unit not working as you wanted it to. You can sit down and take all the time in the world perusing the free documentation, both rulebook and cards, before deciding whether you want to invest on the actual game, what faction you might find most entertaining and what individual units you would like to see in your army. For hardcore players, you can even see your enemies' capabilities and try to devise ways to counter them, again without spending a single cent.
Marketing all the cards of a faction together as MegaDecks was a clever move. It allowed the present holistic approach and eliminated the need to buy multiple packages of unneeded miniatures just to have each card in adequate copies. It's all here; buy it and be done with it for ever.
When it comes to aesthetics and usability, the cards are of a standard, uniform size and not the awkward and practically unsleevable 94 x 68 of the initial Starter Box. The paper is thick and of high quality. Laminated as they might be, I still prefer them sleeved in order for them to last forever. Having round instead of sharp edges helps a lot. The art is taken from previous editions and the text is easily readable. It has nothing to do with the insanely small text that can be found on the unit cards which accompany the miniatures and are not included in this product.
Cybertronic needs players that can rise up to the challenge in order for it to be played effectively. Army and deck building are a lot tighter than what one sees in other factions, something that makes it by default extremely versatile and unpredictable. There is rather limited interference, the deck is mostly about buffing. Disruptions are extremely focused, demanding a good knowledge of the game and what your opponent fields. You will have to consider your army composition more than in other factions, seeing how cards bonded to some units only work for a limited number of them. In that sense, your firepower and presence on the field will have substantially more gravity. There is very limited, if any, meta on the card play.
It might not sound like much, but I very much enjoy that I have all the cards from the beginning to create my decks of choice and see how they perform as if I had all the miniatures of the faction. This option did not exist before, and running simulations on the drawing board is not the same as playing an unsanctioned game, with the 'wrong' miniatures (ooh, the shame!), trying to figure out what works better.
The weak points: I am in favour of the MegaDeck approach, seeing how it adds value to the game. I only wish that Prodos had done this from the very beginning, and not backstep on its initial policy. That having been said, somebody that buys a Starter Box today knows exactly what he is getting into; this is mostly an issue that touched the first players to embrace Warzone Resurrection.
There are a few typos (nothing grave or confusing), but still. This is the second iteration of these cards. By now the cards should have been perfect.
Some of the cards have a slight, almost imperceptible dent on their side. I am not suggesting that they are marked, they are not. There is no chance one will be able to identify a card by trying to pay close attention to this. It is irrelevant, I am however wondering why it's there.
Conclusion: Cybertronic is probably the best match for those that enjoy the direct approach. Buff your units, attack, kill everything in site. Simple, straightforward, unstoppable... ...as long as you play your cards right.
To find out more about the Cyertronic MegaDeck of Mutant Chronicles Warzone Resurrection, visit the Prodos Games website at prodosgames.com/.
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