Discuss this
topic on the
MESSAGE BOARD
|
RIFTS |
|
Having played many CCG's/TCG's,
including Magic: The Gathering, Legend of the Five Rings, Star Wars,
Babylon 5 and Doomtown, I have come across game systems that I have really
liked as well as systems that I have disliked. I'm happy to say that
RIFTS CCG is probably one of the best I have yet seen. The rules are
simple but allow for great freedom of use and the card pool is a
phenomenal beginning to what will surely become a major player in the CCG
industry.
Within this review, I
hope to cover some of the major issues that I, personally, would want to
know as a gamer. I have organized the review into three sections:
Overview, Game Play, and Card Issues. Those who are familiar with
the RIFTS universe might do better to bypass the Overview and skip
straight to Section 2: Game Play.
Section 1: Overview
Earth is not as you and I
know it.
RIFTS is set in the
distant future of our own world. Warfare has ripped the world apart
and the nations of today are gone from the Earth. As if this were
not enough, massive eruptions of magic washed over the planet and gathered
into powerful lines of energy. These "ley lines," as they
are called, crisscross the planet to form a huge network of magical
energy. Where the ley lines intersect, a powerful nexus may form and
tear a hole in the fabric of reality. These holes, or
"rifts," can act as portals to other worlds.
Once the way was clear,
monsters, aliens, demons and other beings that previously only existed in
fiction poured through the doorways and began to force themselves on the
Earth. Humanity was in peril, having already been devastated by war
and the ley line eruptions. Some chose to fight against the tide of
newcomers and some chose to fight alongside them. Our story begins
in North America where eight great powers vie for control over the entire
continent.
The Coalition States are
the technological and economic superpower of North America and they appear
to be the strongest of the nations. Led by Emperor Karl Prosek and
backed by mechanical marvels such as the Hellraisers, the Coalition seeks
to rid the world of mages and aliens alike. Human supremacists, the
Coalition could defeat any other nation in single combat, but with the
wealth of opponents and fearing combined forces, have not yet attempted to
conquer anyone. Until now.
Cyberworks is home of
"Archie Three," the ultimate supercomputer. With his
programmers long dead, Archie has spent years and countless programming
cycles deciding what to do with his huge production capabilities and
massive robotic soldiers. Now that he has seen others on the surface
of RIFTS® Earth, he has gotten an idea. Emerging from their
underground bunker in what was once Maryland, Cyberworks forces are
beginning to claim territory above ground.
The Federation of Magic
is home of many of North America's most powerful and prolific mages.
Based in the fertile Ohio River Valley, the mages and magical beings have
generally gathered behind the evil mage Alistair Dunscon who hopes to use
his command of the Demonic to fend off the Coalition States' advances as
well as forming a magical empire of his own.
In what used to be
Canada, Free Quebec has seceded from the Coalition States and declared
that they are the true champions of humanity. Using technologically
augmented humans such as Cyborgs and Juicers, Prime Minister James Lorne
has prepared his people for the coming war with the Coalition.
A powerful technology
center as well as a center for research into magic and history, the people
of Lazlo only want to be left in peace. Although they lack a true
center of power, Erin Tarn, a renowned author and philosopher, is the de
facto head of Lazlo. She and her people seek peace, but could easily
defend themselves in a war, if necessary.
Loosely grouped guerillas
make up the Pecos Empire in what once was Southern Texas. Like Lazlo,
Pecos lacks a true leader, but Emperor Sabre Lasar is the head of the
largest war-band in the area, and thus carries a lot of weight.
Lasar seeks to unify the Pecos Empire as well as drive out any encroaching
conquerors. They are a mobile and versatile people and can be
fearsome enemies who strike without fear or warning.
Tolkeen was once a great
and peaceful kingdom that sought only trade between humans and aliens,
magic and technology. The imperialist tendencies of the Coalition as
well as their military escalation have ended much of that, for now.
Still diverse, a king, with the support of the Council of Twelve, governs
Tolkeen. Though they are wealthy and powerful in their own right,
the Council has a tendency to bicker. Warlord Uxluth has stepped
forward as one of the leaders of the Council and a defender of Tolkeen.
The Xiticix are the enigma of North America. Though they seem unintelligent, this race of giant insects has dominated the entire area of the northern plains with little ground lost after they gain it. Their numbers have swollen into the millions and they appear to exist only to kill, conquer and terraform the Earth. Led by the Elder Queens, no real communication with the Xiticix has ever been successful.
These eight powers have
the resources and the desire to go to war and you, as a player, will
decide how their battles against each other will go.
Section 2: Game
Play
In my opinion, as well as
others, play in the RIFTS CCG system is fast-paced and intuitive.
The game style is known as "decking," which means that each time
you do damage to your opponent, they lose cards from their hand or deck.
When they run out of cards, they lose.
There are four types of
cards (besides the Nation Card) which makes play relatively simple.
There are Field Units who are your basic combatants, Base Units who
generate resources to play cards, Assets, which are enhancements for other
cards, and Events, one-time use cards to produce a certain effect.
Events are the only cards that you can play outside of your Play Round.
Players generate
resources by rotating either their Nation Card or Base Units. When
you generate these resources, they have the Traits that are on the rotated
card. Units have a cost that is listed in multiple kinds of
resources. For instance, Dead Boy Heavy Infantry costs 2 Coalition
States (2 resources from a resource generating unit with the trait
"Coalition States") or 3 Tech (3 resources from a unit with the
"Tech" trait). If I have a two Base Units that both
generate 1 and have the Tech trait, and a Base Unit that generates 1 and
has the Coalition States AND Tech traits, I can rotate all three to get
resources and then pay 3 Tech to play my Dead Boy Heavy Infantry. If
I had my Coalition States Nation Card ready, I could rotate it to generate
2 Coalition States AND Tech resources, and use the 2 Coalition States to
play my Dead Boys.
An interesting twist in
the game is that you can only pay for Base Units with resources that you
generate from your nation card, unless they are a rare special exception.
Thus, you cannot flood the play area with Base Units that you paid for
with other Base Units.
Combat is simple and
damage can be assigned to Field Units (combat units) or to your deck or
hand. The defender assigns ALL damage dealt in a combat, and the
defender can reduce the amount by discarding cards with a "Decking
Value". Events and Assets have a Decking Value that can be
higher than one, so when you discard one of these cards from your hand or
deck, it can be worth two or more points of damage instead of the normal
one.
Overall, the game system
appears very intuitive and simple. In addition, it is incredibly
fast-paced and games should not take longer than half an hour.
Section 3:
Card Issues
The meat of a game is in
its cards, in my opinion. A great game system cannot work with a
lousy card base and RIFTS is no exception. Precedence knows this and
has decided to launch RIFTS with a fantastic card base and quality cards.
The first thing to look
at is card design. The cards have a simple, tried and true layout.
The picture is the main aspect of the card, covering nearly fifty percent,
followed by card text that appears below it. To the left of the card
text are the primary statistics for the Field and Base Units, and for
Events and Assets, the Decking Value appears on a little bullet (dot not
gun) on the right.
Each of the four types of
cards is framed in a colored border to denote its type: blue for Base
Units, red for Field Units, gray for Events, and green for Assets.
The borders are simple but have a nice lightning design embedded in them.
I assume it is supposed to depict a Ley Line Storm.
Artwork for the Premiere
Edition appears to be phenomenal. The quality of certain
illustrations as well as the quantity of fantastic examples impresses me,
and the entire spectrum of art for the set is far superior to many of the
games I have played. Overall, I believe the artwork to be a four on
a scale of one to five.
Superior artwork led
Precedence to spare no expense in preserving the quality of the color in
their printing. Using a new ink printing technique called
Hexachromal printing, which differs from the current industry standard
CMYK, Precedence brings us vibrant blues and reds which really make the
cards seem to come alive. The Hexachromal printing requires a
glossier coating on the cards that protects the cards better and makes for
better cardstock, but it brings out fingerprints on cards. Bust out
those sleeves, guys!
The cards themselves have
generic types, like the "Pre-Rifts Industrial Complex" as well
as special units with strong abilities like Sniper and Assault. Each
of the special abilities is defined in the rulebook that is available at
the Precedence home page at: http://www.eternity.com
An interesting quality of
the cards is that they possess two tiers of uniqueness. There are
Hero and City cards (representing specific people or places) that are
unique in that only one player can have them in play at a time, but the
player who has them can play additional copies of those cards, called
"Stacking". The second tier is the "Unique"
tier, such as the legendary sword "Ironbane." Players can
only have one unique card in play at a time.
The only decision that
Precedence made about the cards that I disagree with is printing the
Nation Cards without artwork. The Nations are well designed, but I
feel that they would benefit a great deal from having illustrations or at
least a little symbol to differentiate them.
The final interesting
aspect of the cards is the "Secret Weapon" trait. Each
nation has a face down Secret Weapon Pile that one can only be compare to
a sideboard in Magic, which holds a set number of cards that the player
can access during the game. Each of the cards in the pile must have
the Secret Weapon trait and accessing the pile costs you cards out of your
deck. Secret Weapon cards are generally "Silver Bullet"
cards (to use a bit of gamer jargon) that Precedence designed to counter
specific deck strategies and enable others. You can also use Secret
Weapon cards in your deck and use them as normal cards, if you so desire.
In general, I find the RIFTS CCG to be a fantastic adaptation of an RPG which I previously knew very little about. It has piqued my interest in the RPG and I will probably investigate that avenue further, while I wait for more RIFTS CCG cards to come out, and in between games with friends. The game provides many areas of resource management on multiple levels as well as giving a simple game engine with great depth of strategy from the card base. I give the game a 4.75 on the NGG scale of 0 to 5.