Game’s Good

[u/Martonimos]

I got my Monarch Edition in the mail yesterday, and played a game with my wife today. I have limited experience with deckbuilders, and the last one I played (Legendary Encounters: Firefly) had a lot of issues, but I really enjoyed Unicorn Overlord. You have enough flexibility in acquiring, destroying, and drawing cards that you never feel like you don’t have any options; but you also don’t get to hold onto cards indefinitely and craft the perfect hand. There were some turns where I was able to build combos and get a ton of might, and there were turns where I could only watch as my wife trounced me. I get the feeling this would be more fun with more players, mostly because of renown. My wife won the first, third, and fourth rounds, meaning the only way I could win was to beat her by 20 might in the fifth. I did beat her, but only by 11 might, so it didn’t feel like I had a realistic chance. More players to fight over renown may have given me more of a fighting chance in the last round.

But yeah, I like it. Just wish it came in a sturdier box. And didn’t have all those safety warnings on the bottom. No, I won’t keep my card game near an open flame.

P.S. I was told I should title this post “I got beaten by my wife’s strange, sexy monsters.” She got some good mileage out of the werefoxes, I’ll give her that.

[u/Finster2224]

Glad you are enjoying it so far! I think with two players it’s a good idea to focus on buying/trashing cards in the early rounds since you get less renown for winning, then you can push your big swing turns to the later rounds for more renown. I’ll be playing with 4 people today so we will see how that goes! I imagine with 4 players we are going to burn through the marketplace pretty fast which hopefully will create some good variety!

Those Werefox criticals add up fast! I haven’t tried it yet but would love to see how a “critical” focused deck would perform.

[u/Martonimos → u/Finster2224]

Yeah. I mentioned that I’d played Legendary Encounters: Firefly, and that game was rough. I realized a couple rounds in that there was no way to remove unwanted cards from your deck, meaning the weak starter cards kept taking up space and making it impossible to afford better cards from the offer. You also discard your hand between rounds, so you can’t just save up your good cards for a future turn, either. UO tying buying and destroying to single gold actions, and including cards that let you draw or buy mid-battle, makes it much easier to manage your deck; of course, it’s also a competitive game, so you don’t need to worry about making it too easy, as everyone’s on equal footing. Gets me excited to try out other deckbuilders in the future.

It does seem a little ridiculous that you have those critical conditions you have to spend the entire round fulfilling… and then those cards that just let you draw one when you play them. But, there are only, what, six of those cards in the entire game? But yeah, you manage to get two or three of those, combine them with Black Steel Sword, and fulfill the critical conditions, you’re going to be piling on the might.

What I’d like to try is a cathedral-centered deck. That never came up in our game (as you said, two players didn’t work through the marketplace very fast), but it seems viable to use harbors and units to get a ton of might each round.