Total Plays: 5 cooperative, 5 soloI want to apologize for the strong language used in my playthrough. I was going for the realism of being in the middle of such a terrifying battle, but I may have gone overboard. Please forgive me.
Xenoshyft: Dreadmire is a deckbuilding game based on the movie Avatar. Ok, not true. But the premise is the same. You have taken up residence on an alien planet in search of a valuable resource (xenosathem, in this case). Instead of dealing with half naked blue people, you are attacked by giant bug-like and animal-like creatures that tear you limb from limb. Before releasing Dreadmire in 2017, Cool Mini or Not released Xenoshyft: Onslaught in 2015. There are also several expansions.
Collecting xenosathem allows you to buy new troops, weapons, armor, and items. After the buying phase of your turn, you're going to place your troops, equipped with weapons and armor if possible, in your lane. You can have up to four troops in the lane. Then, you'll battle 3 or 4 of The Brood (the baddies in this game). They start face down so you don't know what you're facing until they're right in front of you.
During battle, your troop and the enemy creature attack at the same time. So, often, you will kill each other at the same time. Also, The Brood have reveal effects that take place before the battle happens. Luckily your own troops, along with their equipment, have some offensive and defensive abilities as well. There are instant cards that you can play from your hand to attack, defend, or neutralize the enemies in another way.
At the end of a battle, if any Brood are left alive, their combined attack power goes against your base. When your base dies, you die. If any of your troops are alive, they can stay in the lane until the next battle but if they are wounded, they are not healed. Next round, you do it all over again.
There are three waves of enemies (represented by three different decks) and each wave is far worse than the previous one. But, as you move up through the waves, you gain access to more powerful troops as well. You'll spend three turns in each wave and if you can survive all nine turns of the game, you win.
This is rare.
COMPONENTS
If you like, sinister-looking art, then this is perfect for you. I'm more a happy, fun-loving guy, but the art looks really good still. Definitely gets you in the mood of the game. The creatures are nasty looking. The cards all seem pretty good quality and the tokens are plastic as opposed to cardboard so they'll last forever. The box is nice, but I was disappointed because Logan's copy of Onslaught has all these little holders for the specific cards. Organization was very easy. Dreadmire didn't have that! I mean, no games do, but I was sure this one would if the first one had it. 4/5
RULES
The game is pretty straight forward, but there are some piddly little rules and things that are easy to forget and mess up. For example, when you start trading in wave 1 xenosathems for wave 2, there is a very specific time to do this and I also mix up the order. Also, some of the abilities that let you draw cards from your discard pile on your turn have to be done at a certain time too and I think I always cheat when I do that. That being said, the basic concept of the game is very straight forward and pretty easy to figure out. The rules are nicely laid out, look dark and creepy, and give examples of gameplay. 4/5
GAMEPLAY
You probably think I'm a broken record, but I really love deckbuilders. There's just something special about starting out with crap and then slowly adding to it over the course of the game so that by the end you have a super deck! Unfortunately, I usually die in this game long before I have a super deck. My first solo game I made it all the way and one. My other 9 plays were all losses on either round 6 or 7. This game was a round 6 loss. One game I lost on round 3. I don't talk about that one. The game is hard and that makes it fun. You're not so much playing to win but trying to last as long as possible. I like the unique spins that this game puts on the deckbuilding mechanic. In many deckbuilders, like Star Realms for example, you build up a collection of purchase cards (i.e. money) and attack cards. This is how you attack. I like that in Xenoshyft the cards you purchase, the troops and items that you equip, get used in almost a secondary game where you battle evil. Really good. 5/5
REPLAYABILITY
There are a lot of items to buy and aliens to kill. They are never the same between two games. I wish there were some more options for troops, because I do feel like the order and kind of troops that you buy starts to feel repetitive between games. Maybe I'm greedy. Maybe that's because I never make it far enough to buy the wave 3 troops. 4/5
FUN
This game is fun and I think much more fun solo than cooperative. Even though you can play troops and items into another player's lane during a cooperative game, you never really DO that because you want to keep cards in your own deck and it's not really useful that often. Then the game just slows down waiting for each player to fight their enemies. The solo game is much quicker and streamlined. Like I said before, the dark art draws you into the dark theme and really adds to the enjoyment of it. 8/10
TOTAL SCORE: 26/30
If you like deckbuilders, especially playing them solo, you need this game.
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